If they’d done a post mortem the day we dumped Bob they’d have known from his lungs he was dead before he reached the water. But after a few weeks surely it wouldn’t be so easy to identify him? How long would it take for the lungs to decompose? For fingerprints to be undetectable? Wouldn’t all the forensic proof have washed off?
I found myself slipping off to the big library by the cathedral in my lunch hour and scanning the reference books for any information that could provide answers but there wasn’t much available on forensics and it wasn’t the sort of thing you could ask about without raising suspicion. I bumped into Zak there once and we shared a look as we revealed the covers of the books we were reading.
It struck me it was quite sad that the only time he and I really talked to each other now was when we were discussing Bob in whispered conversations that a few weeks before we could never have imagined having.
“It says here bodies always rise to the surface eventually,” I said.
“Not always.” Zak looked around and nodded his head at a child sitting on his mother’s lap as they turned over pages together of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We moved down the lines of bookcases until we found a quiet one. If anyone noticed they probably thought we were going in for a snog.
“Not if they get trapped in a cave,” he said. “Or eaten by fish. Or broken up. A body without a head or hands is hard to identify.”
It wasn’t a nice thing to hope and I felt awful doing so but it was all we had. Once or twice I caught myself wondering if our last night with Bob had really been as unplanned as it had seemed. It struck me that Zak might have already done his research and chosen that way to dispose of the body because it gave us the best chance of getting away with it. But that led me into thinking all sorts of worse things about him. I suppose it was all part of the paranoia that was developing in all of us. There was always that nagging doubt that you’d wake up one day and find the others gone and you’d end up taking the blame for everything.
Or that you’d end up as the next Bob.
What appalled me most was that we were starting to think like killers now, as though by doing what we did we’d stepped into their shoes.
We were used to reading all the newspapers between us for work and ordered the main ones so we could follow up on relevant stories for our magazines but now we were scanning them feverishly and leaving radios on in all the rooms.
“For God’s sake who turned this on again?” Imogen would say. “The electricity bill’s going to be mental.”
It worried away at me, the fact we were keeping something so enormous from her and I wondered how she’d react if she found out. But I envied her too – for being able to sleep without nightmares, for being able to see a future that didn’t involve court cases and prison cells. And perhaps most of all for her clear conscience.
***
“Are we okay?” Zak asked in the curry house one evening after work when Stuart had gone to the gents, leaving us alone together.
The question took me by surprise. I played with my food, not sure how to answer. “I wasn’t aware there was a We.”
“Ouch.” He dragged his hands through his hair. “I thought we were heading that way – you know, before…”
I nodded and shrugged. But that was Before. Everything had been different Before. And then he’d disappeared without a word.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He tried to articulate his feelings a couple of times and eventually came out with, “Look, it’s not like Stuart says. It wasn’t about that at all.”
“I know that.”
“I mean, that’s not how I normally do things.”
“Zak, nothing about that weekend was normal.”
He nodded. “It’s just that I can’t think about that night – any of it – without remembering the other things that went before.” He snapped a poppadum and ground the piece into crumbs under his thumb. “It’s messed everything up.”
It was a relief to know he felt the same way as I did although it wasn’t great to know that being with me reminded him of death.
“But it doesn’t have to stop us being friends does it?”
I forced a smile. “No, I suppose not.”
***
A few evenings later when Imogen was at her Callanetics session Stuart called a house meeting in the kitchen. He was holding an envelope. His face was white.
“You were stopped for a broken light? Why for God’s sake didn’t you tell me?”
Zak and I looked at each other.
“Ah, that,” said Zak.
“Yes, that. Don’t tell me you forgot about it. How many times did I ask you to go over everything that happened that night? I told you it was essential that there wouldn’t be any surprises. This is what trips people up. And then it turns out you kept quiet about something as major as this.”
“We didn’t want to worry you,” I told him.
“Worry me? I have every reason to be worried. You nearly gave the game away.”
“It was never a game, Stuart.”
He was pacing the room now, red-faced and ragged-breathed. “You realise they could have taken the car off you? They could have opened the boot and bingo, they’d have got you.”
“Yes, but they didn’t,” said Zak.
Stuart dropped his voice and put his face close to Zak’s.
“No but they now have a record of someone driving my car on that road at that time - someone who apparently gave them my name. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
Zak shoved him away. “What choice did I have? If I’d made up a name and they’d checked the car ownership details and found it was registered to a different name they’d have arrested us there and then for stealing the car. Is it my fault that your stupid light needed fixing?”
“You won’t have to pay the fine anyway,” Xanthe said. “The car’s reported stolen.”
Stuart slammed his hand against the wall. “That is not the point. How would a random thief know my name?”
Zak threw his arms up. “I don’t know. I didn’t know what else to say. We were caught by surprise. Why didn’t you spot the broken light yourself? Then we wouldn’t have got stopped. They’ll most likely think there was something of yours in the car with your name on.”
Stuart’s head was nodding fast as though he’d forgotten how to stop. “Or that it was someone I knew.”
“Okay but that could be lots of people. Just try and stay calm about this.”
“Calm? Are you out of your mind? I never thought you’d be so bloody stupid. Now are you sure there aren’t any other little secrets you’ve been keeping from me?”
We assured him there weren’t. But I was beginning to wonder if he was losing his sanity. I swung between thinking it was only a matter of time before we were discovered and, by making a series of feverish calculations, concluding that even if the body was found our chances of avoiding detection were fairly good simply because it had all been so random.
But in a way I found these moments of optimism more frightening than the doomful feeling because it seemed so dangerously deluded, like a soldier who stands in the middle of the battlefield convinced he won’t get hit.
And then in February the worst happened.
Chapter Eight
February
After we finished our first magazine placements we were sent up to Birmingham to a trade show at the NEC. Together we had to produce a daily exhibition newspaper from stories wrung out of every stand. It was a hectic schedule as there were hundreds of stands to get round. Exhibitors often weren’t free to talk to us or only wanted to talk to sales reps so we had to keep traipsing backwards and forwards between different halls until we found a good moment.
We were given a stringent set of rules including not being allowed to eat garlic, onions or curry, get drunk, swear, use the phone in our hotel rooms or take anything from the mini fridge without paying for it ourselves – in short anything that might have made the experience bearable. The com
pany would pay for two drinks only in the hotel bar, after which we’d have to buy our own at extortionate prices.
In the middle of one of these afternoons in the press room at the exhibition hall Xanthe had one of her hysterical outbursts, questioning what she was doing busting a gut over a story about roof felt and had to be peeled off her typewriter in tears.
The Awards dinner held on the final evening was a major opportunity for hobnobbing with the big cheeses from the industry and our publishing director issued a decree that nothing short of death should stop us attending – words that came to have a dreadful irony.
We had around twenty minutes in our hotel rooms after being dropped off from the exhibition hall by the courtesy bus before meeting back down at the bar in our gladrags for our transfer to the dinner.
I’d just come out of the shower, wrapped in a hotel bathrobe, hair in a turban. My feet after traipsing the exhibition halls for hours felt like someone had hammered nails into them and my mouth ached from maintaining a smile but there was just about time to change into a different set of clothes.
I flicked on the TV while scrabbling through my travel bag for a pair of tights and was halfway through untangling them when I saw it. The camera panned across a wide section of coast and then zoomed down the rocks to the churning sea and a little cove. It could have been anywhere but there was something about the outline of the cliffs, the gorse and the little coastguard hut. Even before they showed the map I knew I’d been there.
My stomach dropped. My legs gave way. I sank down onto the bed. The world seemed to shrink around me until I found myself in a tiny, hostile space struggling for breath. I turned up the sound.
Police don’t know yet how long the body has been in the water or the cause of death, but tests are being carried out to establish the man’s identity…
A harsh sound jarred me to my senses. It took a few seconds to register it was the phone. I stared at it stupidly as if it was a bomb, thinking about the most likely callers. The police? The managing director? A work colleague who’d been at our party and had pieced events together? Imogen?
The body had been found by a couple walking their dog on the beach. My head filled with irrational hatred. Why did they have to walk their stupid dog on that beach of all places and at that moment?
I realised the telephone was still ringing. I pounced on it – but then had second thoughts. Very quietly I replaced the receiver. I jumped back as it started up again. How long would they keep trying before they gave up? But then what would they do – come round in person? I moved towards the phone but wheeled round as someone knocked at the door.
Had it definitely been this door? Hotels are disorientating places and it’s easy to mistake a knock a few doors down from my own. I stood frozen halfway across the floor trying to come to a decision. The phone stopped ringing. Started again. I kept thinking if I answered the phone I’d immediately know that I should have answered the door and vice versa.
“Emily?” said a voice outside the door. Low and urgent.
I opened it. Stuart looked more agitated than I’d ever seen him. I stood back to let him in and he swept through, looking lovely in his dinner suit, his blond hair gleaming and smelling of citrus shampoo but his eyes fixed on the TV screen. He grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.
“The north Cornish coast near Bude. Does that sound right?”
I shrugged and nodded, my eyes also glued to the scene.
He sank onto the bed and brought his curled fist up to his mouth, pressing his knuckles against his lips. “That’s it then. This is where it ends.”
“Not necessarily.” Although I was aware I was grasping at straws. “They might come to the conclusion he lost his footing, or he jumped. Or that he’d been out partying, he was high and walked off thinking he could fly like that student did off the Suspension Bridge a few weeks ago. Even if they suspect, they can’t do anything without proof.”
Stuart didn’t seem to hear me. “Tell me again how you did it,” he said. Not this again. He was breathing through his mouth as he listened – short, tremulous breaths. His right thigh was jiggling as though he’d lost control of it and he had to lean down hard with his forearm to stop it.
“You’re sure no one saw you?” he said when I’d finished.
“I don’t think so.”
His face filled with panic. “You don’t think?”
I closed my eyes. “I’m sure.”
“And nobody followed you at the other place, the spot where you left the car?”
“Not as far as I know.”
He shot me another look.
“No, they didn’t.”
“And you definitely removed his clothes before he went into the sea?”
“What? No, we never said that. We’ve been through this.”
Stuart looked aghast. “No? He was fully clothed?” He gave a groan and fell back on the bed, setting his mouth into a tight line. In a strangely calm tone he added, “That’s it then. They’ll identify him by his clothes in no time at all. They’ve got us. We might as well hand ourselves in.”
“They’d identify him anyway from his dental records,” I said. My stomach was churning, and I felt as if I was going to be sick.
Stuart’s face was contorted as he chewed the inside of his cheek. “Too soon. This has happened too soon. Seven weeks – it’s nothing. This is where our luck runs out.”
The phone started up again. “Shall I answer it?”
His face was ashen as he nodded. I could feel his eyes boring into me when I picked up. I couldn’t speak.
“Em?” said Imogen. “What the fuck are you doing? I’ve been ringing for ages.”
My voice caught. “Sorry, I was in the bath. I’ll be a few minutes. You go on down.”
She finally agreed but said, “Don’t be late. Donald’s just given Xanthe a bollocking for that piece on Gibsons. Turns out the man she quoted has been dead ten years.”
“What?” I said, not really listening.
“It was his son she spoke to. He said he was Mr Gibson and she didn’t check his first name and used his dad’s name. Donald’s apoplectic. If we’re late to the dinner he’ll probably fire us all.”
I laughed weakly. What difference would it make now?
“Don’t you dare leave me alone with that prick from the sauna company. He keeps trying to feel my bum.”
“Right. Okay, no I won’t.”
As I put the phone down I felt another surge of nausea. “I don’t think I can do this.”
Stuart grabbed hold of my shoulders. “No, we must. It’s not over yet. We absolutely must go and act completely normal.” I tried to wriggle free, but his fingers were digging into my shoulders through the bathrobe. “Listen to me, Emily, you’re going to put some clothes on and we’re going to go down and smile and get through this evening.”
“But that’s just it. I can’t act normal. Not now. Not knowing —”
I felt winded, as though I’d been punched in the stomach. I sank to my knees. “It will be worse if I go and break down or have a fit or something.”
He twisted me round to face him. “Stop it. Look at me. Pull yourself together. That isn’t going to happen. Because you’re not going to let it.”
But then he didn’t know, did he? I’d never told him about my epilepsy and the fit on the train. It could happen again and I might blurt out the truth amid the gibberish I usually spouted as I came to.
“Please,” he was saying, “you have to do this. You can’t let everyone down.”
Seeing he wasn’t going to leave the room without me, I grabbed my clothes and went into the bathroom to get dressed. When I came out he was sitting on the bed, eyes still glued to the TV screen although there was a completely different programme on now.
“I think you’re sitting on my hairbrush,” I said.
He shifted position without turning his head and passed it to me in silence and I noticed how much his hands were shaking. I hoped until the last mi
nute that he might see sense and let me stay in the room, but he stood up and steered me out with his hand on the small of my back. I felt like a hostage, but I also knew he was right. We couldn’t risk drawing attention to ourselves by not going.
Chapter Nine
Zak was already in the bar downing a vodka when we got there. He’d just showered, his hair was still damp, and he smelled of after-shave. I’d never seen him in a dinner suit before. Stuart tutted at the state of the tie and retied it for him, but his hands were still trembling, and he kept getting it wrong.
Imogen was perched beside them sipping a mineral water, dressed in a black fishtail dress and heels. Her cropped hair gleamed gold under the lights.
“Xanthe’s not coming. She’s not feeling too good,” Zak said, signalling with a discreet twitch of his eyebrows that he’d seen the news.
“Since when? She was right as rain this afternoon,” scoffed Imogen.
Stuart looked like he was about to explode but said, “Come on, let’s go,” and marched off across the foyer to where the taxis were waiting. Stuart was twitching, springing on his heels as we shuffled towards the front of the queue.
“He’s going to be a liability,” muttered Zak.
Sitting pressed up next to Zak in the taxi, it was the first time we’d touched since that night we came back from our mission. I think he could feel me trembling when I thought about the television coverage of that night because he pushed his leg firmly against mine to stop it and gave me a small smile that didn’t disguise his fear. I wished Stuart had sat in between us but there wasn’t much we could do. Imogen was singing along to the Whitney Houston song on the radio but none of us could bring ourselves to join in.
The Suspects Page 10