Secret Story (17 page)

Perhaps the repetition of the name annoyed him. A frown squeezed his gaze narrow as he swallowed. “Because they ask for it,” he said.

“You’re saying that’s what your character thinks.”

“Him, yes.” As the frown lifted it appeared to tug at his lips. “Mr Killogram,” he said, “the opposite of Kissogram.”

“Are you calling him that for the film?”

“Why don’t you make it the title?” Kathy said.

“We’ll see what Vincent thinks, shall we? So Dudley, you’re saying he blames his victims somehow.”

“He doesn’t blame them. He doesn’t care that much.”

“He has to have a better reason than not caring.”

“They don’t know he’s there, that’s all.”

“That’s more how he does it than why, isn’t it?” Kathy said.

“It’s both.” Perhaps he felt doubly interrogated, since he added with some irritation “It’s when everything goes right for him.”

“I don’t think I understand that,” said Kathy.

“It’s when there’s nobody about except him and whoever it’s going to be, and the place helps as well. It’s as if it’s meant to happen,” Dudley declared, then shook his head so violently that a forkful of meat on the way to be eaten smeared his lips. “Not as if. When it is.”

However direct an insight into his character this was, it discomforted Patricia. “Maybe you’re best talking through some of your
stories with Vincent,” she felt relieved to have thought of suggesting. “Have you decided which you want him to think about?”

“Let me just—” Kathy leaned backwards to tear off a section of kitchen roll with which she dabbed Dudley’s mouth. “You’ll still be using the underground one, won’t you?”

He snatched his head aside and glared at Patricia until she admitted “Unfortunately not when the real girl’s family would be upset.”

“But you have to publish it at least.”

“We won’t be using that one. I’m sure whichever we do use will help Dudley’s reputation just as much.”

“I thought you signed a contract to publish that story.”

Patricia hadn’t but felt nearly as accused, since her mother had. “It doesn’t actually commit the magazine to publishing it,” she said.

“That’s a bit unbalanced, wouldn’t you say?” When Patricia failed to do so Kathy said “Besides, how do you know the family will mind? It’s only the same station, after all.”

“They heard about the reading and they weren’t at all happy. We don’t know how they heard.”

“Who’d want to ruin everything for him?” Kathy protested, then released a loud breath. “No, you’re right, the family should be considered. I don’t want to think what would become of me if I lost my son. Are you sure you’ve finished, Dudley? There’s lots of goodness in front of you still.”

“I’ve had what I like,” Dudley said and thrust his knife into the vegetable mush.

Kathy didn’t speak again until she’d cleared the table of plates. “Let’s have a bit of sweetness,” she said.

As Kathy brought out of the oven a pie so collapsed it seemed bent on negating its own shape, Patricia couldn’t resist asking Dudley “Is this your favourite too?”

“No, I made it because we had a guest,” Kathy said.

Patricia did her best not to wonder what was involved in creating pastry with such a close resemblance to leather while she cut through it with just her spoon. Once she’d managed to establish that the filling consisted almost as much of honey as of apple she was able to rhapsodise about the dessert, not too belatedly, she hoped. She thought she’d failed to be convincing until Kathy said “Which story do you think he should send in instead?”

“I don’t think I had time to judge.” Patricia couldn’t tell how much of the impression that she retained—of the same sly face peering from behind every tale—derived from the stories, how much from Dudley’s comments. “Which do you?” she said.

“None of them will be the winner, will it?” Kathy objected before chasing away her bitterness with a smile at her son. “Except they all are. How about the one when he pretends he’s going to help her out of the sinking mud on the beach and pulls her on her face instead and stands on her? That gave me the shivers. Or is it a bit too nasty when he’ll be the hero of the film?”

“I shouldn’t think he’ll quite be that,” Patricia said.

“The centre of it, then. The person everybody’s going to want to come back.” Mostly to her son she said “I know the one that frightened me the most—when he meets the girl out walking in the country on a day like this and gives her the water with all the ecstasy in it. How he watches her dance herself to death, that’s horrible enough, but someone giving you a drug like that when you don’t know, that’s worse.”

“Could that be what trips him up?” Patricia suggested. “The drugs could be traced back to him.”

“No they couldn’t. He was out walking like she said and he found them where someone had hidden them, and right then he put them in the water in the bottle. They weren’t ever his.”

“How about his prints on the bottle?”

“He got it back from her after she drank all the water while she was getting hot from jigging about. He didn’t throw it away
there, he took it home and put it in the dustbin because he knew nobody would think of looking there.”

“That isn’t in the story,” Kathy said.

“So I didn’t write it down. So who cares? I know what happened. I don’t have to tell everything.”

“No need to take it personally. Don’t let it put you off your sweet,” Kathy urged, and when he only glowered at his plate “Anyway, which is your favourite story?”

“I don’t want any of them published. I’m writing something new.”

“Will there be time for that, Patricia?”

“Not very much. I’ll find out, but I shouldn’t think more than a week.”

“How long are you expecting to take, Dudley? Wouldn’t you be better letting them have one of the others and then they can use the new one another time?”

He shoved his chair backwards and sprang to his feet. “I’m not doing that. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to write. Longer if you go on about it,” he shouted from the hall and stamped upstairs.

“Excuse him, Patricia. That must be what artists are meant to be like,” Kathy said, but didn’t look at her until the contents of his untouched dessert plate were binned. “Would you like a coffee?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Patricia said, meaning rather that she felt hot and edgy enough. “Let me help you wash up.”

“Why, you’re already like one of the family, but you mustn’t waste any more of your visit on me. Have you seen our hill?”

“I did as I came along.”

“You haven’t been up on it.” When Patricia had to agree, Kathy called “Dudley, I know you can hear us. You didn’t shut your door. Won’t you take your guest for a walk on the hill?”

As Patricia turned to face him he descended considerably fewer stairs than he’d made the sound of climbing. “Might help,” he muttered.

“Thanks for dinner, Kathy. I enjoyed it.”

“I’m sure it can’t be what you’re used to, but I’m just a simple person in some ways.”

Kathy hurried to lug the front door wide for them. The sun had gone to ground behind the ridge, and the mass of greenery across the road was steeped in twilight. As Patricia followed Dudley up a narrow path between trees and tall weeds she heard the door shut with a discreet thud. She ducked under the lowest branches of a tree and felt as if the stealthy gloom was taking hold of her, especially since Dudley had halted, blocking her way. “What’s that?” he whispered.

In a moment she heard a rustle vanishing into the undergrowth. Perhaps he wasn’t attempting to play on her nerves, but she said “What would you like it to be?”

“I’m asking a question for once.”

“Mr Killogram’s victims coming back to find him.”

Darkness seemed to gather in his eyes. “They don’t do that,” he said and turned his back as though grinding an object beneath his heel.

“He must think about what he’s done sometimes though, mustn’t he? He ought to in the film.”

“Why must he?”

“Unless he’s got absolutely no imagination.”

“He’s got plenty.”

“Then oughtn’t he to show it?”

“Oh, he will.”

Did he really think a stare like that could frighten her? Identifying with one’s character was all very well, but he was starting to look capable of taking it rather too far. “Carry on,” she said and walked at him until he couldn’t avoid moving.

In less than a minute they emerged into a stony open space hemmed in by trees that fluttered and chattered with magpies
under a blue sky turning pale. “I hope you aren’t going to mind,” Patricia said. “I’ve been talking to a couple of people about you.”

She had to raise her voice to compete with the jagged racket, and so it was hardly surprising that he glanced about to check there was nobody to overhear. “Who?” he said so loud that the magpies clattered into the sky.

“Mr Fender from your old school.”

“Why would I mind him? Kathy used to say he was jealous because I knew more about writing than he did.” Dudley tramped to the start of a path that led to the disused observatory above them on the ridge and then swung to confront her. “What did you tell him about me?”

“Do let’s keep moving if we’re going to walk.” Once Dudley began to climb towards the squat blind one-eyed tower beside the dome she said “He did most of the talking. Didn’t he object to your story because it was based on an actual case?”

“So what if it was? Writers have to start somewhere.”

The noise like bones snapping came from a bush against which he had abruptly pressed himself. “You go ahead,” he urged, and didn’t speak again until he was behind her. “What else did he say about me?”

“That’s pretty well it. The interview wasn’t terribly productive.”

“Then you should have stayed away from him like you knew I wanted.” All at once Dudley’s voice was lower but felt closer. “Did you tell him about her?”

“You mean the girl at Moorfields.”

“Her, yes. The one that’s causing all the trouble. Angela whatever her name was. I’ll bet he had plenty to say about her.”

“Actually, he didn’t. Nor did I.”

“Do I believe that?”

She wasn’t sure if she was meant to hear that or even if it was addressed to her. She didn’t acknowledge it until she had stepped
onto the deserted ridge, and then she turned to look down at him. “You do if you have any sense,” she said without retreating, though his tight grin was only inches from her breasts. “I hadn’t heard about her when I went to see him.”

“I’ve got plenty of sense. There’s quite a few people who’ve found out how much. Maybe you ought to meet them.”

Patricia was amused by the threatening manner he seemed unable to relinquish, but she stopped short of laughing. “By all means tell me anyone else you want me to interview,” she said. “I had lunch with Eamonn Moore.”

“How’d you manage to get in touch with him? I invited him to my story reading but he never came.”

“He asked me to pass on his apologies. He had a family occasion. He’s a walking picture galley of his little daughters.”

“I should have found out where he lives and not sent his invitation to the office. I’ll bet he told his boss about it and they put him off.”

“Why would they do that?”

“They won’t like imagination where he works any more than where I do. You know why, don’t you? Because it makes them feel inferior. It should.”

Though Patricia merely lifted an eyebrow, this was enough to provoke him. “Who are you going to believe, Eamonn or me?”

“Whoever’s telling the truth.” She wasn’t even certain what his question was supposed to refer to, but it enabled her to add “I wouldn’t mind knowing which of you did about one thing.”

“Me,” Dudley said and stared at her as if he’d resolved to force any disagreement too deep into her brain to be grasped. “What?”

“You probably won’t even remember it. It was just a nasty anecdote about a dog.”

His gaze retreated inwards, apparently in search of an expression. “What did he tell you?”

“That you gave him nightmares with it.”

The left side of Dudley’s mouth tried on a smirk. “I expect that’s true.”

“The story wasn’t, though, was it?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“You don’t want me to think you never make up stories.”

His mouth worked without settling on which half of its expression it ought to extend. “Why not that one? Too real for you?”

“No, I just think you were being like little boys are. If you’ll forgive me, you’re doing it now.”

“I never was. You could have asked Kathy.” He crossed the ridge to a gap in the low wall alongside the observatory. “This is the best bit. Let’s go down here,” he said.

Patricia ventured close enough to distinguish through the canopy of foliage a series of worn steps descending through the twilit woods. “Actually, I think I should be heading for the train.”

“We can go this way.”

“I’ll stay up here, I think. No need to walk me to the station. Thank Kathy again for me, and thank you for an interesting evening.”

Might he suspect her of being ironic? When she glanced back to catch how he looked, he’d advanced several yards but was standing still. “I used to play that game when I was little,” she let him know. “Shouldn’t you be going home to write?”

“I’m thinking about it right now.”

“Then I’ll stop interrupting you,” Patricia said and turned away from his unblinking gaze. She didn’t look behind her until she’d walked at least a hundred yards along the wide uneven ridge. There was no sign of him, nor indeed of anybody all the way to the opposite end, where an obsolete windmill guarded a bridge forty feet above a road. A wiry hound as grey as the name of its breed was tugging a woman across the bridge. “Good evening,” she panted at Patricia.

“It is.”

Perhaps the woman was dissatisfied with the answer. “Good evening,” she said more loudly as she reached the mill.

Patricia peered at her before stepping onto the bridge. Nobody else was visible, but wasn’t the woman a little too distant to have been addressing her? The bulk of the windmill, against which the greyhound was lifting an elegant leg, was enough to conceal half a dozen people, but no shadow betrayed that anyone was hiding. Perhaps the twilight was too dim to cast a shadow. For a moment Patricia was tempted to seek company, except that she didn’t fancy discovering how else the woman might behave if in fact she had been talking to herself. Instead she crossed the bridge, staying clear of both sets of railings, which struck her as rather too flimsy and low, and hurried downhill.