by Frances Vick
He heard it all. He watched Sal barrelling out of the door, stumbling, weaving with drunk defiance towards the hills. He followed, of course he followed. He found the chiffon scarf, bloodstained and already half frozen, pointing like an arrow to the slumped form of Sal; he knew why he was there, and what he had to do. Time looped, merged. Everything was as it should be.
And when, days later, Jenny called him to tell him that the police had been asking questions… she had no alibi, but she hadn’t done anything – ’course she hadn’t done anything…
‘It’s just… it’s so horrible, David,’ she had whispered. ‘Mum dying and the thought that anyone thinks I did anything… if you could just… say you saw me that night? Tell the police that?
Of course he could say that. It was true after all.
59
Jenny. The Windsor Castle, Scarborough
An hour after speaking to Graham on the phone, Jenny was standing at the desk of The Windsor Castle, trying to settle her bill. Rob, the wispy hipster owner, frowned and prodded at his iPhone. ‘Can’t get it to connect.’ His smile was whimsical, maddening.
‘I have to leave, now,’ Jenny told him, not for the first time. Her small bag leaned against her leg. ‘I have to. Look, can you just… I don’t know, email me the bill? I’ll pay it, I promise.’
But the hipster looked at her with rehearsed weary cynicism. ‘Where would I be if I let all my guests check out without paying?’ he said.
‘God, I don’t know. The owner of a completely empty hotel? Oh, wait…’
The hipster clenched his jaw, nodded at the bar with professional impatience – another rehearsed-looking gesture. ‘Craig will give you a complimentary latte if you take a seat in the snug.’
‘You don’t understand. I. Have. To. Leave. I’ve got to! Just – look, come with me to a cashpoint? Yeah? Just please.’
‘You can have a complimentary bagel also.’ He smiled like he’d used some magic words. ‘Locally milled organic spelt.’
Half an hour later, Jenny was on her third complimentary latte, poking holes in one hard-as-concrete organic bagel, and trying to jump-start her tired brain into thinking like David’s. She’d never had trouble with that before, but now he had slipped out of her control, gone rogue. God what a stupid phrase, though. There was nothing roguish about David; in his own way he was the most conventional man alive. He wanted his poor urchin girl to turn into a princess; he believed in the Happily Ever After. Crucially, he believed in her. He believed that she was brave, and strong, and true, and this is what she’d been trading on all this time. They hadn’t even had sex, for God’s sake. Girls in David-Land didn’t have sex until they were safely married, and this suited Jenny because she’d privately decided that there was no way she’d let that happen. David might be handsome, rich and in good shape, but he made her skin crawl. Her plan was always to leave him eventually. Perhaps she’d been silly to move in with him when he asked, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time… it was a way to keep him happy and it meant that she wouldn’t have to worry about rent, do any more stupid temping jobs and carry on wearing shit, cheap clothes. Her mistake had been that she got used to it, got too comfortable. It was the same trap she’d fallen into when she moved back in with Sal – convenience and comfort had superseded plain good sense. She’d stayed, even when she knew he was losing it, even when Freddie had started finding things out about David, things, like the psychiatric hospitals, that even she didn’t know about.
But even then she’d been stupid enough to think she could still control things – control David by doing what she always did – withdrawing love, frightening him into obedience. ‘I’ll handle David,’ she’d told Freddie just two days ago; she’d sailed off to do just that. So sure of herself, arriving at the station, pulling out all the stops... a sad disappointed smile that she let wither on her face, no eye contact, monosyllabic replies, until by the time they were back at the house, David was frantic, stammering: what had he done?
She thought she had him then. ‘I don’t know. What have you done?’
He swallowed hard. ‘You were out all night, I was worried.’ He looked at her, pleading. Jenny, her mouth a line, stared at her knees. ‘Where were you?’
‘Freddie’s,’ she admitted finally. She looked up at him then, saw how guilty he looked, decided to go for broke. ‘You really fucked up, David.’
He winced. ‘Don’t swear.’
‘So Ryan’s back, is he?’
‘Freddie started that – he messaged… he wanted to get some dirt on me. He was trying to split us up, Jenny – and anyway, I used an encryption thing for Ryan and it’s all erased now.’ David was babbling.
‘It’s not “all erased” though,’ Jenny said sharply. ‘Freddie had plane times. Why did you keep the plane times? Why? Do you want to… hurt me?’ She said it softly, but kept her eyes hard on his sweating profile.
‘I’d never do that,’ he replied huskily.
‘Because between Ryan and the plane times, Freddie’s started to ask about… that night. The night my mum died.’ She let a few tears into her voice. ‘David, you said you’d help me, and how is this helping me? I asked you to do one, simple thing, and just tell the police you saw me. That’s all I asked.’
‘I’m sorry,’ David mumbled. ‘I shouldn’t have kept those things. I-I have trouble throwing things away… I—’
‘He’s got more than the plane times and the Ryan stuff.’ She kept her face averted. ‘He found some things in your garden too.’
David slowed and swerved. ‘What things?’ He pulled over into a lay-by. ‘What kind of things?’
Jenny frowned, wondering how far she could afford to take this. Pretty far, she thought. David was scared, grovelling, anxious to make things right. Her instinct was to dump everything on him, make him feel as guilty and responsible as possible. Confuse him. Make him the bad guy, the killer, the stalker, the one who causes problems. The more confused David got, the less dangerous he was. And so she took a gamble.
‘A hat, and a knife. He took photos of them too.’ She turned in her seat and stared at him. ‘And a newspaper clipping. Do I have to go on?’
‘I can explain all that. I wanted to tell you earlier—’ David sounded eager.
‘No!’ she shouted. ‘I don’t want to know. It’s just another thing I’ll have to worry about, and you’ve given me enough worry.’ She left a long silence. ‘I don’t know what to do, David, I really don’t.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s why I went to Freddie’s, to try to sort out your mess. I’ve been up all night trying to convince him not to call the police about the things he’s found. I’ve been up all night defending you, David. Because I love you.’ She stopped. He sounded like he was crying. Good. ‘And I did that even though you’ve put me in danger.’
He looked up, voice choked with sobs. ‘How? I would never do that? How?’
‘You know how. If he shows the pictures to the police, they’ll talk to you, and they’ll dig around the plane times; they’ll find out about Ryan, and your alibi won’t stand up any more.’ Her voice rose. ‘I asked you to tell them you saw me, not to keep a fucking paper trail about it!’
‘Don’t swear.’
‘Well I’m pissed off though, David? You said you’d look after me, but you haven’t. You’ve made things worse!’ She looked with satisfaction at the way his face creased with tears, and pressed her advantage. ‘David, because of you they might arrest me. You’re my alibi, but if they don’t trust you, they’ll come after me again. Think about that. They might take me away from you. And it’ll all be your fault.’ Dispassionately, she watched David cry. After a minute she told him to pull himself together, and get them home.
She’d told him off in the same way you would a dog, to get him back on his best behaviour. Then all she had to do was find Sal’s scarf, the plane times, and destroy them along with the photos on Freddie’s phone, and everything would be all right.
And so she told him off, sh
e made him feel stupid and ashamed, and then she blithely went for a nap thinking that now he’d been taught his lesson, things would go smoothly. She never expected David to kill Freddie.
60
David. Under the Bridge
David felt so grateful to Jenny. Yes, she was angry, yes she was upset, but she had every right to be. Instead of leaving him, she’d given him another chance. But his brain was fogged and slow, and there were too many tendrils to clutch. He didn’t want to get rid of everything; the idea filled him with painful panic. Everything he’d collected, preserved and revered reminded him of how much he’d achieved: Marc vanquished; Sal disposed of; Jenny saved. They formed the stage of his life’s purpose; he needed them.
In the attic room he collected the phone he’d used when he was being Ryan, and put it in his pocket. Then he went to see Mother. She was awake, and it was one of her good days. She held his hand as he knelt by her, patted it and smiled.
‘You’re tired,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
Pat pat. ‘All tired out.’
‘Yes,’ David said. Then: ‘Jenny’s upset with me.’
Pat pat. ‘And why’s that?’
‘I made a mistake. I made a stupid mistake.’
‘Well, I’m sure you can sort it out,’ his mother twinkled at him. ‘You’ve always been a very resourceful boy.’
David swallowed hard and looked at the carpet. He didn’t want Mother to see him cry. ‘What should I do?’ he muttered.
In his back pocket, Ryan’s phone beeped with Freddie. Catherine winced and closed her eyes. ‘Such an annoying thing. Such a horrible, horrible thing.’
‘Yes, he is,’ David told her, and silenced the phone.
‘You must do as you think best,’ Catherine told him with great solemnity. ‘You always know what to do. You always do the right thing.’
And David nodded. He felt his mind calm.
They made plans to watch University Challenge that night, at eight. He brought her some soup, and watched her eat it, and then gave her a Nytol, telling her it was a vitamin pill. When Catherine began to get sleepy, he helped her into bed, and kissed her forehead.
He then crushed up four risperidone and added them to a special smoothie – carrot, lime and kale – Jenny’s favourite. Upstairs, Jenny was wrapped in a bathrobe, rubbing at her damp hair.
‘I made you your special juice,’ David said humbly, put it beside her bed. ‘I am sorry.’
She sighed. ‘I know you are. I just wish you’d think about things before you do them.’ She looked at him in the mirror. She took a sip.
‘Is it nice?’
She took another sip. ‘Mmmmm. It’s all right.’
‘I am sorry. I am you know.’
She frowned at him. ‘I’m going to have a rest and then head back to Freddie’s.’
‘OK,’ he said humbly, and left the room.
Half an hour later she was lying like a carved angel on her bed, half under and half on top of the duvet. He tucked her in, gave her a kiss. When he backed out of the room again he turned the key in the lock.
The pills would hopefully keep both Jenny and Mother asleep until he came back. Back in Catherine’s room, he gently placed his noise-cancelling headphones over her ears; if by any chance Jenny woke and started to shout, Mother wouldn’t hear and get upset. He felt awful about tricking Jenny this way, but he knew that she’d be so relieved that he’d sorted everything out, that she’d forgive him. Once again he was pleasantly surprised at just how well he coped during a crisis.
He took out Ryan’s phone. It was a message from Freddie:
I can meet anytime. Tonight?
David replied:
OK the Narrowboat at 8? There are things about David that I think you should know. I’ve told Jenny too.
Freddie asked Ryan:
How do you know Jenny?
Will explain tonight. I want to help. Please don’t talk to anyone/tell anyone about this.
David pressed send.
Then he took a spade and trowel from the shed and began to dig up the Kitten Box.
Driving through the less salubrious area of the city, David stopped at a poky little place called Da Fone Shop. There he bought an unlocked phone and a sim card with cash. Back in the car, he texted Freddie.
It’s Jen, I’m using this phone. DON’T call the other one! Will explain later. Have you heard from Ryan?
Freddie replied immediately.
Yes, where are you? Is everything OK?
I’m with him now. Lot’s happened but need to tell you face-to-face… don’t worry though we’re both safe
Freddie would bite at that.
Meet now then? Come here?
We’re driving. Narrowboat nearer and your place might not be safe. Will explain I promise XOXO
What’s happening????
David smiled and turned off the phone.
It was eight o’clock, and David’s legs were cramping from slouching in his car for the last few hours. He hadn’t wanted to get out and walk about the city in case he got picked up on CCTV. He’d parked in a street that backed onto the canal. There were no houses close by, no cameras, but even so he’d taken the precaution of taping cardboard over the license plates.
He closed his eyes, breathed deeply. Opened them.
Now.
Ryan messaged Freddie:
Is Jenny with you?
No! She was with you, wasn’t she? What’s happened?
We got separated she said she was coming to see you, look around for her.
David was sweating suddenly.
She’s not here I would’ve seen her What’s happened?
Find her!
What’s happening?
David could practically hear his squeal. Then the text to ‘Jenny’s’ phone came through.
CALL ME!
And the first act had concluded; it was time for Jenny to take the stage.
Come and get me something bad’s happened I’m under the canal bridge behind the pub please come now!
He wasn’t sweating any longer. A strange calm descended. He opened the car door and stepped out into the cold air, towards the canal, and the bridge – the same bridge under which Marc had died. He carried the same knife too. There was a beautiful symmetry to that.
‘Jen?’ Freddie shouted.
He was near.
David swapped phones
QUIET!
Ryan messaged.
I’ve found her Please hurry!
Then:
I can see you, stay there
Freddie’s figure loomed through the mist. He stopped a few metres away with his back to David, and David closed his eyes. The smell of piss under the bridge. The lap of the water. The faint music… it was just as it had been all those years ago with Marc. And then he ran smoothly at Freddie, knocked the phone out of his hand, and thrust the knife just below his shoulder blade. Freddie spun round, and David had time to register the recognition on his face, had time to smile at him. When Freddie slid into the water, he hardly made a noise, surprising for such a fat man.
David found Freddie’s phone and turned it off. Back in the car, he removed the sim card, and put it in a plastic bag along with Ryan’s phone and the unlocked mobile he’d just bought. Then he removed the cardboard from the license plates, slowly drove out of the road, and headed towards the motorway. It was a roundabout way to get home, but he couldn’t risk being seen driving in a crowded area.
Halfway home he pulled into a farm track, tied up the bag and smashed the phones with a hammer so no pieces of them could be found in his car. Every few miles he delved into the bag, took a pinch of the debris and threw it out of the window. Ryan, Freddie and ‘Jenny’ were soon scattered across fifteen miles of muddy country. He’d burn the sim cards later.
He arrived back at home just after ten, washed the knife carefully, scrubbing the serrations with a Brillo pad, put it in a clean plastic bag and hid it under the sink. He should get rid of it, he kn
ew, but… tomorrow. Do it tomorrow. And the hat too.
Both Jenny and Catherine were asleep. He walked around the house putting all the clocks back two and a half hours, put Catch-up TV on ready to go, and then gently shook Catherine awake.
‘How long have I been asleep?’
‘Quite a long time,’ he told her. ‘It’s nearly eight.’ She blinked slowly. ‘Do you still want to watch University Challenge?’ She was tired. He levered her out of the bed, put her slippers on her unresisting feet. ‘Come on, let’s go to the sitting room.’
‘It feels later. It feels like it’s the middle of the night,’ she said, shuffling beside him. The grandfather clock in the hall struck eight, just as they sat down.
Jenny woke to find David lying beside her.