Five Strangers
Page 32
From simply looking at us you’d never guess what lies beneath. Jamie appears as glossy as ever, but he’s just broken up with the man he was going to marry, partly because he’s in love with a ghost. Steven’s youth, his vibrancy, serves as a protective sheen – no one would surmise that he’d witnessed three violent deaths. Ayesha, dressed in a suit that must have cost her between £1,000 and £2,000, looks every inch the professional doctor she is – and yet both Penelope and I know something about her that would ruin her reputation. And Julia? I remember her daughter’s words to me about how Julia shielded herself by wearing a disguise of toughness; underneath that shell was insecurity, vulnerability, pain, and an increased dependency on alcohol. No one would know she had recently committed a murder.
The pain in my wrist is a tangible reminder of what happened. It didn’t take long for Bex to die. But still, her death was a horrible one. Painful. Ugly. I thought I should have felt some sympathy for her as she lay on the ground, a hand reaching out to me, her lips mouthing my name in a silent goodbye. But I felt nothing for her.
I had considered trying to explain my actions to Julia – after all, she must have seen me press that knife to Bex’s throat – but I knew I didn’t have time. I was conscious that we needed to act fast before we were discovered by a random pedestrian or runner. Luckily, Bex – in her sick way – had thought of everything. From her backpack I took out a new top and changed into it, pushing the old one, covered with drops of Bex’s blood, back into the bag. Julia pulled on the replacement top that Bex had stashed away for herself.
‘Harry,’ Julia had said.
Her son. But what had he to do with Bex?
‘She was the one who had gone on holiday with him – in India. I saw her that day – on the Heath. Do you remember that I was sick – on the grass? Everyone must have thought I was vomiting because of the shock – after witnessing the murder, the suicide. That hardly helped, of course. But really it was because I saw her. Soon after the police arrived, she came to help you, and I realised then that she was your friend. I recognised her from some of the photos that Harry had sent me. To begin with I tried to convince myself it couldn’t be her. But I kept looking at the photos, and the more I looked at them the more I knew. It was her. She was older, naturally, and a little dowdier than she’d been in 2000 when …’
I remembered with a sickening realisation that this was the year that Bex had travelled around the world. When she’d returned I’d always thought it odd that she never liked to talk about her experiences. She didn’t have any photographs either – she’d told me that her camera and all her film had been stolen.
‘I suppose that’s one of the reasons why I agreed to do the interview with you. I knew you were friends. I thought you might lead me to her. And you did. I started to follow her from her flat. I watched her as she walked or ran across the Heath. That was why I was late to do the interview at Penelope’s house on Monday. On more than one occasion I did notice that … that it seemed as though she was shadowing you. I don’t know what she had planned, but it seems—’
‘I’ll tell you everything later.’
‘You see, I suspected that she might be dangerous. Anyway, I followed you both here today. I don’t know what I thought I’d do to her if I came across her. But when I saw you, when I saw that knife on the ground. I’m sure she would have picked it up and …’
‘But what – what had she done to Harry to make you want to—’
‘Harry wrote me a series of letters, some of which I only got …’ her voice cracked before she sniffed back the emotion and continued ‘… after his death. He wanted to be a writer, you see, and thought that the writing of letters back home would be a good discipline. He talked to me about this girl who had joined him on his travels. I’m not sure how they met. In one of the hostels out there, I think. He was really keen on her at first, he said. In one of the letters he enclosed a photo – Rebecca she was called. Nice-looking young woman with dark hair, English graduate. I never knew her surname, so I was unable to find her. Of course, this was in the days before I was an MP – I was still in social work – so I had significantly less clout.’
I wiped the knife clean on a couple of tissues before strapping it back under my top. I checked Julia again for any signs of blood, dabbed her face with another tissue, and put everything back in the bag, all of which I planned on disposing later. As I worked, Julia continued to tell me about the past.
‘The letters seemed to get more desperate as they went on. He was at the end of his tether with this girl. He wanted to end it. He’d thought the relationship was just a bit of fun, a holiday romance. But she thought it had been much more serious. And she threatened to kill herself if he finished with her. I was desperately worried about him and, in our last telephone conversation, I told him to come home. But he didn’t listen. I even said that I’d fly out there and bring him back. But … I was too late. I didn’t hear from him. I rang the hostel, but they said that he’d left. They didn’t know where he’d gone to. Then, one night, I got a call from the British High Commission in India to tell me that a body had been found at the bottom of a gorge. There had been a terrible accident. He’d been trekking in the Hampta Pass and it seems he must have slipped, fallen to his death. But then, a few weeks later, I got his last letter …’
I knew what she was going to say next. She swallowed hard as she remembered its contents.
‘He wrote about how Rebecca’s behaviour was getting more and more unpredictable. He was worried about his own safety. She now said that she would kill him if he left her. She started to follow him everywhere, turning up at bars and different hostels. He told me that in order to try to get rid of her he was going to trek the Hampta Pass by himself. That’s the last thing I heard from him.’
‘So you think …?’
‘Yes – it was her. I’m sure of it.’
She looked down at the body and then at me. The reality of the situation suddenly hit her. She had actually killed someone. ‘What will happen now? To my job? My husband. My daughter. What will Louisa think of me? Shit. Will you call the police?’
I shook my head. A cold breeze was blowing in from the east and I could feel a light drizzle on my face.
‘Let’s start running, but in separate directions,’ I said. ‘You go home. I’ll phone you. Don’t say anything about this, about what happened – to anyone. Do you understand?’
‘Okay, but—’ Her tough facade crumbled and she was finding it hard to hold herself together.
‘Don’t worry,’ I added. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’
On Kite Hill the shoot is coming to a close. After posing for what seems like the best part of an hour I’m exhausted from trying to appear normal. The group begins to split apart, but none of us move that far from the spot. We’re all tied to the viewing point on Parliament Hill Fields, as if each of us understands that a part of us has died here, and we don’t want to stray in case we lose something more of ourselves. But the fact of the matter is we’re lost already. This place will continue to haunt our dreams, our nightmares. Especially for me, for Julia.
I’ve felt Julia’s eyes on me throughout the photo shoot and I know she wants to talk to me. But now is not the time, not the place. We had a brief chat on the phone last night when I reassured her that she would not be linked to the crime. When the police put out a request for information, she was to contact her local force and tell them that she’d been out jogging nearby at that time, but she had not seen the victim; neither had she come across anything suspicious.
When the police came to question me in detail, as I’m sure they would, I would tell them how Bex and I had started our jog together, but as she was a much more experienced runner – a fact that could be verified – she had sprinted on ahead. We’d been due to meet up at the flat after the run. When she hadn’t returned by ten o’clock I’d repeatedly called her mobile (which I’d already destroyed by that point, along with all the other evidence) and then reported her m
issing. Bex’s body had been discovered the next morning by a dog walker.
Penelope lifts a hand in the air and waves me over. She wants me to sit by her. As I approach I can see the newspaper is closed on her lap. She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell she’s read the story about the discovery of a body. She narrows her eyes ever so slightly as she looks at me. She knows.
The question is: will she ever tell?
Acknowledgements
Writing a novel is a mostly a solitary activity, but the truth is: it couldn’t be done without a whole team of people.
Thank you to everyone at Aitken Alexander and in particular my fabulous agent and friend, Clare Alexander. She took a chance on me more than twenty years ago and I’ll be forever grateful to her. A huge thank you to Lesley Thorne, Lisa Baker and everyone in the foreign rights department, Amy St Johnston, Jazz Adamson, and Cony and Joaquim Fernandes.
A big, big thank you to my editor and fellow author, Phoebe Morgan, for making this book so much better than it once was. You are such an inspiration! I’d also like to thank Charlotte Webb for copy-editing, Claire Ward for design, assistant editor Sophie Churcher and everyone at HarperCollins.
Thanks too must go to Lisa Cutts, the crime novelist and detective constable, who provided me with some expert information and advice about certain aspects of police procedure. I’d also like to thank Dr Susan Shaw, consultant psychiatrist and friend, who read the book in manuscript form and provided some useful feedback.
Here’s to everyone close to me: my parents, all my friends who have walked through the streets of north London and trudged across Hampstead Heath with me over the years and to one in particular: Marcus Field.
About the Author
E.V. Adamson is the pseudonym of Andrew Wilson, the novelist, biographer and journalist. He is the author of four novels which feature Agatha Christie as a detective. His non-fiction books include biographies of Patricia Highsmith, Sylvia Plath, Alexander McQueen, Harold Robbins and a group biography of the survivors of the Titanic. His first novel, The Lying Tongue, published in 2007, was shortlisted for the Jelf First Novel Award. He won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Biography (2004) and the LAMBDA Literary Award (2003) for Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. He was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Prize (2003) for the same book. He is also a creative writing mentor on the Gold Dust scheme and the new tutor on the Faber Academy crime course.
@andrewwilsonaw
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com