Dark Corners: A Novel (25 page)

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said, ‘but I was hoping you’d sign this. I bought it this afternoon in that little bookshop round the corner.’

Only Carl’s publisher and a friend of his publisher had ever put this request to him before.

‘Of course I will.’ Carl wondered if the smile with which he agreed looked as sinister and forced as the toothy grimace he had an hour before achieved in the mirror. If it did, it had no adverse effect on Andrew Page, who handed over the book open at the title page and Carl signed it. Some instinct from the past must have inspired him, for, repeating the grim smile, he asked his tenant to stay for a while and have a drink. These days the flat was always well stocked with wine and spirits.

‘Thanks. I’d like to.’

Carl produced gin and a bottle of tonic, white wine and a couple of cans of lager, all of it suitably chilled. He was already regretting his offer, not because he cared how much Andrew Page consumed, but for want of knowing what to talk about. In fact it was easy, because the hitherto silent Andrew did most of the talking. He turned out to be a trainee solicitor with a law degree, soon approaching the end of his two-year articles. This, Carl thought, probably accounted for him bringing a solicitor along with him for the signing and witnessing of the contract. Andrew Page explained that both his mother and father were solicitors and his older brother was a barrister. He moved on to say how lucky he was to have found this flat in this nice street and how much he liked living here. He was engaged and intended to marry as soon as he qualified. He seemed to believe that Carl was a successful author with several best-selling books behind him, and Carl was on the point of denying this when the phone rang.

It was a man called Adam Yates that Carl had never heard of. He had a nice voice, civilised and educated, which meant nothing. ‘You know my girlfriend, Lizzie Milsom.’

Did he? The name seemed familiar. A school friend, he thought. Back when he and Stacey were children. All so long ago.

‘I won’t keep you,’ said Adam Yates. ‘I just want to talk with you for a few minutes. I could come round about eight.’

Could he put it off till tomorrow? Carl wondered. But if he did, he would worry all night and half the next day. He suggested nine.

Adam Yates said nine would be fine. Carl put the phone down and apologised to Andrew Page. They talked a little longer. His guest refused another drink but as he was leaving said, ‘If I can be of any assistance, please feel free to ask me. I’ve been thinking for a long time now that you might need help.’ He let himself out, closing the door behind him. Carl felt rather humiliated. And worried. Had his troubles, or the memory of them, shown so plainly, and not just in his rictus smile?

He had two hours to wait for Adam Yates, whoever he was. A friend of Lizzie Milsom’s, he had said. Adam Yates would come and talk to him about whatever it was. But the phone call had transported him back to the foodless life of the previous summer, the time when more and more drink was needed and eating was impossible. He wanted nothing to eat now, but to drink another glass of wine would be stupid, especially considering the three he had already had with Andrew. He needed to be able to defend himself.

Defend? There was nothing this man could accuse him of or suggest he had done wrong; nothing, surely, that would call forth a defence.

At ten to nine, Carl went upstairs and stationed himself at the window that looked on to the mews. Would Adam Yates come in a car? Or by taxi? If he was a Londoner, he would more likely arrive on foot. He sat in darkness and watched by the light of the street lamp that was outside Mr Kaleejah’s. The mews was deserted, lights on in most of the houses. It was a fine night, the moon not yet risen but a single star showing, bright and steady. The Pole Star? Carl kept his eyes on his watch. At one minute to nine, Mr Kaleejah came out of his front door with his dog on a lead and its rubber bone in its mouth. Slowly and purposely they set off in the Castellain Road direction. On the dot of nine, a man of about Carl’s own age appeared at the other end of the mews. Carl went downstairs to answer the door, feeling sick for the first time in months. He was back in that state he recognised of perpetual anxiety.

He opened the door and the man he had seen from the window said, ‘Adam Yates.’

Carl nodded. He stepped back and Adam Yates came in. He was a little taller than Carl, his dark hair cut short, clean-shaven so closely as somehow to have an official look. To Carl, his appearance and his neat jacket and matching trousers suggested a detective inspector in a TV serial. He followed Carl into the living room and was offered a drink.

‘This isn’t a social call,’ Adam said. ‘It won’t take long.’

Carl, retreating into his old world of fear and dread, was longing for a drink. Two bottles of wine, one white and the other rosé, stood on the table by Dad’s sofa. His craving was strong, but not strong enough to break through the inhibition that competed with it. He told Adam to sit down and sat down himself on the sofa, as if the proximity of the bottles could be a comfort. In fact the reverse was true.

‘What do you want to say to me?’

‘The event that I want to talk about happened last September,’ said Adam. ‘By the canal.’

I knew it, Carl thought. Another blackmailer. How could he have believed he was safe, that everything was all right, that there was nothing more to fear? He nodded, moving his head slowly, said, ‘Can I have a drink?’

‘If you need it. I see you do.’

Carl filled a glass from the Sauvignon bottle. The wine had grown warm, but that was unimportant. It had never been so much needed or tasted so good.

‘I was on the canal bank, up among the trees,’ Adam Yates said. ‘I saw you come along the bank below me, kneel down and take a heavy object out of your backpack which you then dropped into the canal. Of course I wondered why, but I didn’t put it together with the murder of Dermot McKinnon. I didn’t even hear about the murder until some time later. I didn’t know you had any connection to Dermot until I came to Falcon Mews to meet Lizzie and I saw you come out of your front door.’

Carl said nothing. There was no point. This man, who looked like a detective but obviously wasn’t, knew everything. He swallowed half the contents of the wine glass.

‘I wanted to tell you that I know what you’ve done,’ Adam said.

Carl sat back, his mind clear suddenly. ‘Well, don’t think you’re alone,’ he said. ‘Dermot McKinnon knew about the first girl who died, and blackmailed me by withholding the rent. After he was dead, his girlfriend came to live here and blackmailed me again by withholding the rent. You can’t aim to do that because you don’t pay me rent.’

Adam seemed surprised by this. ‘You’ve had a bad time,’ he said reasonably.

‘Worse even than all this: my girlfriend guessed what had happened and left me. I’ve got a good tenant for the top flat now, but maybe he’ll leave when you tell your story, because I’m not paying you blackmail money. I’ve had enough of that. I’m not paying you to keep silent. I’m not handing over to you the rent my tenant pays or letting you live in part of the house rent-free.’

‘I’m not asking you to let me live in your house,’ said Adam. ‘I haven’t asked for anything.’ He refilled Carl’s glass. ‘I don’t even want wine from you.’

This made Carl wince. The man was so calm. So quietly condemning. ‘What’s the point of all this then?’

‘I just wanted you to know that I know,’ Adam said. He leaned forward, his voice still reasonable, soothing even. ‘What I’d really like is for you to go to the police and confess what you did. You’d not have any worries then. It would all be over. You’d go to prison, but confessing would shorten your sentence.’

For a moment Carl felt an immense burden lift from his shoulders as he considered a life free from anxiety and fear. But then reality came crashing back. ‘Why should I?’ he said. ‘I’ve got a peaceful life now. I’ve enough to live on, everything’s worked out for me. Why the hell should I confess?’

‘Because I know,’ Adam said. ‘And you know that I know. Look, I’m not interested in retribution or punishment. I promise you I will never tell a soul, and I keep my promises. But why would you believe me? In fact, I can see right now by the look on your face that you don’t.’

He got up. ‘I’ll give your kind regards to Lizzie, shall I? She says you were at school together, but I’m sure you remembered that when she came round with Dermot’s things.’ He turned and looked at Carl. ‘I can see you’re suffering, but there is a way to end this, and you know what that is.’

OF COURSE HE
didn’t believe what Adam Yates had said. You don’t believe someone who makes a promise and then says he doesn’t break them. Anyone can say that. After sleeping well for weeks, Carl lay awake that night. He thought of everything Adam had said, repeated it over and over, considered the man’s promise and dismissed it. He would tell. The police would put it all together. It was only a matter of time.

But the weeks went by, and then months. Andrew Page continued to pay the rent on the last day of each month. Mr Kaleejah continued to take his dog out three or four times a day, and Carl’s neighbours said good morning and hi and how are you when they encountered him.

One fine day Nicola came round. By that time he was drinking again, and as heavily as he had done in the days after Sybil had returned to her parents. Nicola refused a drink but asked if she could make herself a cup of tea. She made the tea and produced the white chocolate biscuits he had always liked but hadn’t eaten since she had left him. She told him she had met someone else, was living with him. They were getting married soon. Nothing of course was said about Dermot or Sybil or Stacey, and nothing about money. Nicola left after half an hour.

Carl watched her from the window, keeping his eyes on her until she had turned out of the mews into Sutherland Avenue. All the time she was with him, he had been drinking, no longer bothering to hide his habit from visitors and friends. Of all of them, only his mother reproached him for drinking so much. Nicola had said nothing. From her face, he thought he could see that she no longer cared.

Now that she was gone, he opened his third bottle of wine of the day and poured himself a large glass. The stronger kinds of alcohol, the whisky and gin and vodka, sent him to sleep quite quickly, but wine only made him feel rather dazed; as if nothing mattered very much. It took away for a time the damning sentences that kept repeating in his head:
You murdered Dermot, you killed him
, and Adam Yates’s
There is a way to end this, and you know what that is.
The words combined to make a kind of mantra.

Nearly a year had passed since Dermot’s death, six months since Adam Yates had come to tell him what he knew. He kept up his habit of walking, and now roamed further and over larger areas, covering Regent’s Park and exploring Primrose Hill. Breakfast started with a large glass of wine, a tumbler not a wine glass, which was refilled, so that when he began on his walk, he was dizzy with drink and had to sit down on a roadside seat, sometimes to fall asleep. He had ceased to write anything. The few attempts he had made to start something new he gave up after a paragraph or two. The rent continued to come in, though, and even after he had settled his utilities bills and the council tax and his small amount of income tax, the money mounted up.

Still, he bought the cheapest wine because there was no point in buying the expensive stuff. He drank it without tasting it, swallowing it fast to bring a few hours’ oblivion, and grew even thinner. His mother, whom he occasionally saw because, despairing of his visiting her, she came to visit him, told him that he looked more like his father than ever. For the first time in months he looked in the mirror, and saw a skeletal man with staring eyes and protruding bones.

Increasingly now his thoughts were centred not on Dermot’s murder but on Adam Yates’s knowledge of it. Few people visited him, and those who did were postmen or someone come to read a meter. He fancied that they stared at the scanty beard he had grown, and his emaciated body.

For a long time after Adam’s visit, Carl was sure that every ring on the doorbell must be the police. Of course Adam would have reported him, he told himself. Of course he would; his promise meant nothing.

He spent whole days thinking of nothing but Adam, about what he’d said, and the soothing tone of his voice when he’d told him that his worries could soon be over. He thought too of what must happen next, of the step that must be taken to restore the peace of mind he’d had before he crashed the green goose down on Dermot’s head. He had dreams about that earlier time, and although he knew he had been in a perpetual state of anxiety and bitter regret, he looked back on it now as calm and carefree.

Adam Yates had been right: if he wanted that peaceful life back again, there was only one way to do it.

‘He’s a very serious young man,’ said Dot Milsom. ‘He acts more like a man twice his age.’

‘Who does?’ Tom asked.

‘Lizzie’s young man, Adam.’

‘He’s a cut above any boyfriend she’s ever had.’ Tom looked up from his newspaper. ‘And very clever. Quite nice too, don’t you think? At least he’s got some manners.’

Tom, who had given up his joyriding on buses – as Dot called it – in favour of a modified form of motorbike tracking on a ploughed field, turned to the crime pages and gave a low whistle.

‘What is it, Tom?’

‘Wasn’t Lizzie at school with a boy called Carl Martin?’

Dot nodded. ‘What’s he done?’

‘He appears to have confessed to murder,’ Tom said. ‘Remember that chap who was hit over the head in Jerome Crescent? Well, that was Carl. Who did it, I mean. It says here that he walked into a police station and confessed. Imagine doing that!’

‘I’d be too scared,’ said Dot.

Tom shook his head, more in sorrow than anger. ‘It wouldn’t be as scary as not confessing,’ he said. ‘It might even be a comfort. Think what it must have been like to have that on his conscience.’

He put his newspaper down and leaned back in his chair. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘now it’s all over.’