Caedmon’s Song (16 page)

By the side of the shelves was a corkboard, still spiked with old postcards from friends visiting Kenya, Nepal or Finland, photos of her with Sarah and Galen, and poems she had clipped from the
TLS. There were no posters of pop stars in the room. She had taken them all down last year, thinking herself far too mature for such things. The only work of art that enhanced her wall was a superb
Monet print, which looked wonderfully alive in the sunlight that rippled over it.

She also had an armchair with a footrest, for reading in, and the expensive stereo system. Her records were mostly a mixture of popular classics – Beethoven’s Ninth,
Tchaikovsky’s
Pathétique
(which she had bought after seeing Ken Russell’s
The Music Lovers
at the University Film Society) and the soundtrack of
Amadeus
– and a few dated pop albums: Rolling Stones, Wham, U2, David Bowie, Kate Bush, Tom Waits. She wasn’t interested in any of these now, and had a hard time choosing the music she wanted
to listen to. Finally, she settled for the
Pathétique,
and dressed as the music swelled and surged from its slow and quiet beginning.

But she couldn’t stand it. As soon as the lush romantic theme came in, she snatched the needle from the turntable, scratching the record’s surface as she did so. The burning pain in
her loins had receded, but she had a headache that made music difficult to bear. She was sure it was caused by that dark mass lodged in her mind. If she closed her eyes, she could even see it, a
globe blacker than the rest of the darkness behind her eyes: a black hole, perhaps, that sucked everything in and turned it inside out; or the beginning of an emotional or spiritual cancer about to
spread through her whole being.

Kirsten sat down cross-legged on the carpet, holding her head in her hands. With the music gone, she could hear the birds again. Someone called a greeting out in the lane. She could even hear
her mother pottering around downstairs.

It was after ten o’clock and such a beautiful day outside that she felt she ought to go for a walk. Any other day, she would have been up before breakfast and down to the woods at the back
of the house for a leisurely stroll under the light-dappled leaves. Not today, though. After ten and she still had no idea what to do with herself.

She tried to look ahead into the future, but it was all darkness. Before that night in the park, she had never really given it a thought. Somehow, she had always believed, the future would take
care of itself and would be just as privileged, as bright and exciting as the past. But now she had no idea what to do with her life. Whenever she thought of such things her head began to ache even
more, as if the bubble were growing inside it and pushing at the inside of her skull. She couldn’t concentrate well enough to read a book. She couldn’t bear to listen to music. What the
hell was she supposed to do? She put her fists to her temples and tensed up. The headache was pounding inside her. She wanted to scream. She wanted to crack open her skull and claw her brain out
with her fingernails.

But the rage and the pain ebbed away. Slowly, she got to her feet and walked up the step to the bedroom. There, she took her clothes off again, dry-swallowed three prescription analgesics and
crawled back into bed.

MARTHA

Saturday brought Martha two important pieces of news: one that she had been expecting, and another that changed everything.

The day started as usual with a wink from the old man and a glare from his wife at breakfast. Martha wasn’t very hungry, so she skipped the cereal and just picked at her bacon and eggs.
She was wondering whether to move out that day and find somewhere else in another part of the town. It seemed a good idea. People were getting far too used to her here, and there might come a time
when awkward questions would be asked.

After breakfast, she went back up to her room and packed her gear in the holdall. She had one last smoke there, leaning on the window sill and looking left and right, from the close and
overbearing St Hilda’s to the distant St Mary’s. It was the first overcast day in the entire week. A chill wind had blown in off the North Sea, bringing the scent of rain with it.
Already a light drizzle was falling, like a thin mist enveloping the town. Visibility was poor, and St Mary’s looked like the blurred grey ghost of a church on top of its hill.

After checking the room once more to make sure she had forgotten nothing, Martha padded downstairs and found the proprietor helping his wife carry the dirty dishes through to the kitchen.

‘I’d like to settle up now, if that’s all right,’ she said.

‘Fine.’ He wiped his hands on the grubby white apron he was wearing. ‘I’ll make out the bill.’

Martha waited in the hallway. The usual flyers about Whitby’s scenic attractions, restaurants and entertainments lay on the polished wood table by the registration book. On the wall above
was a mirror. Martha examined herself. What she had done hadn’t changed her appearance. She looked no different from when she had arrived: same too-thin lips, tilted nose and almond eyes, the
same untidy cap of light brown hair. All she needed was pointed ears, she thought, and she might be able to pass for a Vulcan.

‘Here you are.’ The man eyed her with amusement as he handed over the bill. Martha checked the total and pulled the correct amount from her purse.

‘Cash?’ He seemed surprised.

‘That’s right.’ She didn’t want to use cheques or credit cards; they could be too easily traced. She had cashed her father’s cheque and emptied her bank account
before she set off for Whitby, so she had quite a bit of money – not all of it so obviously bulging out of her purse, but hidden away in the holdall’s ‘secret’ pockets.

‘I suppose you’ll need a receipt?’

For a second she was puzzled. Why would she want a receipt?

‘For tax purposes,’ he went on.

‘Oh. Yes, please.’

‘Hang on.’

Tax purposes? Of course! She was supposed to be a writer here to do research. She could deduct her expenses from her income tax. She was slipping, forgetting the details.

The man returned and handed her a slip of paper. ‘I hope the book’s a success,’ he said. ‘Certainly plenty of atmosphere in Whitby. I don’t read romances myself,
but the wife does. We’ll look out for it.’

‘Yes, please do,’ Martha said. She wanted to tell him it was an academic, historical work, but somehow that just didn’t seem important now. It was all lies anyway: romance or
history, what did it matter? ‘Thank you very much,’ she said, and walked out of the door.

It really was cool outside. She had been intending to carry the quilted jacket over her arm, but she put it on instead as she set off on her usual morning trek to the Monk’s Haven. She
wasn’t sure what to do with the rest of the day. Maybe go up to St Mary’s again and shut herself in the box pew. She hadn’t felt as safe and secure in years as she had the
previous day up there. And then she would have to find another B&B to stay at.

The rain smelled of dead fish and seaweed. Browsers on Silver Street and Flowergate wore plastic macs or carried brollies, and fathers held onto their children’s hands. Martha thought that
was odd. When the sun shone, everyone seemed more relaxed and the children ran free, swinging their buckets and spades, dancing along the pavement and bumping into people. But as soon as it rained,
pedestrians drew in and held on tight to one another. It was probably some primordial fear, she decided, a throwback to primitive instinct. They weren’t aware they were doing it. After all,
man was just another species of animal, despite all his inflated ideas about his place in the great chain of being. People had no idea at all why they behaved the way they did. Most of the time
they were merely victims of forces beyond their control and comprehension, just as she had been.

You could only depend on reason and organization to a certain degree, Martha had discovered, and beyond that point lived monsters. Sometimes you had to cross the boundary and live with the
monsters for a while. Sometimes you had no choice.

At her usual newsagent’s on the corner just past the bridge, she bought a local paper and the
Independent
and headed for warmth, coffee and a cigarette.

First, she picked up the local paper and found what she was looking for on the front page. It wasn’t much, just a small paragraph tucked away near the bottom, but it was the seed from
which a bigger story would soon grow.
BODY WASHED UP NEAR SANDSEND
, the small-caps headline ran. Sandsend was only about four miles away. That was better than she’d
hoped for. She thought it would have been carried further than four miles, and such an event might not seem so important in a large town like Scarborough. She read on:

They didn’t know very much. Or if they did, they weren’t saying. Martha would have thought it was obvious how the man had met his death. But the sea did strange things, she reminded
herself. The police would probably think that his head injuries had been caused by rocks. The forensic people were clever, though, and they would soon discover at a post-mortem examination what had
really happened.

A little disappointed at the thinness of the story, Martha ordered another black coffee and lit her third cigarette of the day. Should she stay in town until the real news broke? she wondered.
This story just seemed so flat and anti-climactic. She should hang on at least until he was identified. On the other hand, that news would make the national dailies, which she could read anywhere.
No, it was best to stay. Stick close to the action. She had gone so far that it would be futile to pull out now.

Next she turned to the
Independent.
She didn’t expect to read anything about the discovery of Grimley’s body there, but she looked just the same. At the bottom of the second
page, tucked away like a mad relation in a cellar, was a short paragraph that caught her eye. It appeared under the simple heading, ANOTHER BODY FOUND. Perhaps that was it. Martha folded the paper
and read on.

Martha felt herself grow cold. The conversations going on around her turned to a meaningless background hum. All she could hear clearly was the litany of names running through
her mind: Margaret Snell, Kathleen Shannon, Jane Pitcombe, Kim Waterford, Jill Sarsden. And now another, name unknown. Hands shaking, she lit another cigarette from the stub of her old one and read
the article again. It said exactly the same, word for word. The ‘Student Slasher’ had struck again. She had been mistaken in Grimley. She had killed the wrong man.

Choking back the vomit, she crushed out her cigarette, rushed to the tiny toilet and locked the door behind her. After bringing up her breakfast, she splashed icy water on her face and leaned
against the sink breathing fast and deep. She still felt dizzy. Everything was spinning around her as if she was standing on a high balcony suffering from vertigo. Her skin felt cold and clammy;
her mouth tasted dry and sour. She took a deep breath and held it. Another. Another. Her pulse began to steady.

The wrong man, she thought, sitting down on the toilet and holding her head in her hands. And she had been so damn
sure.
The hoarse voice, the accent, the calloused hands, the low, dark
fringe, the glittering eyes – it had all been right. So where did she go wrong? She couldn’t have been thinking clearly at all. It had already occurred to her that her original theory
– that he was a fisherman – must have been wrong, but she had gone ahead anyway. Her search had been based on slender enough evidence from the start. Anyone else would have said that
she was looking for a needle in a haystack and, what’s more, that she had no idea
which
haystack it was supposed to be in. But Martha had trusted her instincts. She had been sure that
she would find him and that she would know him when she did. Well, so much for her bloody instincts.

Looking back, she could see that she should have known, that her perception had been flawed. He was too young, for a start, and though the voice was close, certainly in accent, it was pitched
lower and had less of a rasp. The eyes and hands were the same, but there had been no deeply etched lines on his face.

How could she have let herself get carried away? This made her a murderer, pure and simple. There was no excuse. She remembered with a shudder his body twitching on the sand in the moonlight,
the shattered bone and the sticky brain matter beneath her fingertips and the stifling sea-wrack smell of the cave. She had killed an innocent man. A man who would probably have forced himself on
her eventually anyway, true – but an
innocent
man. And now she had to live with it.

She got up, drank some water from the tap and washed her face. She looked pale, but not enough that people would really notice. Taking another deep breath, she unbolted the door and walked back
to her table. She seemed steady enough on her feet. She hoped nobody in the cafe had seen the way she had panicked. Still, they would have no idea why. Her coffee had cooled down, but the
cigarette, improperly stubbed out, still smouldered in the ashtray. The story in the folded paper stared up at her. She turned it over and looked out of the window. Holidaymakers drifted by like
shades in limbo. ‘I had not thought death had undone so many,’ she found herself thinking, but she couldn’t remember where the words came from.