Grave Doubts (42 page)

‘Goodbye, Sis,’ she whispered, suddenly tearful. ‘I won’t forget you. Someday, I’ll tell your brother all about you but you’ll need to let me choose how and when.’

She blew a kiss to the stone and walked up to the cliff top. The montbretia, wild and rough on this part of the coast, were starting to bloom, a preview of the colour that would soon flood the rowan groves. She picked a few to take home and paused to watch the butterflies darting for nectar in the heat of the afternoon.

At the highest point she turned on her phone and waited expectantly for a signal. There wasn’t one. If there was no signal here the chances were there wouldn’t be one anywhere. To contact Fenwick she would have to go back to Clovelly and use the phone box again but she’d had enough of crowds for one day. Tomorrow would be soon enough. It had taken this long for the message to reach her; one more day wouldn’t make any difference.

He sent her out first thing in the morning to buy a large-scale map of the area. As soon as she had gone he took two of the antibiotics she’d brought with her and examined his injuries before re-dressing them carefully with smaller bandages. The swelling in his ankle had almost gone so he started some gentle exercises. He needed strength in his legs and hated the idea of incapacity. The muscles ached abominably but he worked through the pain, sweating it away with typical determination. At nine o’clock he went along to the shared bathroom and had a shower.

He could smell toast and bacon. Wendy should have returned by now and his impatience with her increased. He was beginning to feel that he couldn’t trust her, which diminished her usefulness considerably. At nine-thirty he decided to breakfast on his own.

Every twinge in a muscle or pain from the cuts as he walked the short distance to the dining room made him more angry. The little bitch he had killed had seen to him well and truly and the knowledge made him want to kill her all over again. The desire to hurt was strong. He’d noticed that on some days now he woke with it already there, which never used to happen. If Wendy had been here he would have given her a beating for being so annoyingly placid. As it was, he bottled up his rage and put on an injured face in keeping with his disguise.

He opened the door and found the small front room was packed. Only one table was left unused, right in the middle. He limped over to it, leaning heavily on the stick that was no longer necessary. A large woman came in carrying an enormous tray filled with plates of hot, aromatic English breakfast. She smiled at him sympathetically and came over as soon as she had served her other guests.

‘Mr Wilmslow. So glad you were able to join us. Your wife said you might have to have all your meals in your room. What can I get you?’

He ordered the full breakfast, toast, tea and orange juice.

‘My word! You’ve a good appetite for an invalid.’

‘Fortunately my stomach was unhurt.’

He had meant it to sound light-hearted, a joke, but it didn’t work. Her smile faded and she backed away.

When his meal arrived he ate slowly, his eyes moving constantly from his plate to the front gate, visible through the bay window. She still hadn’t returned by the time he had drained the teapot and wiped the last piece of toast around is plate. A brass clock in the hall chimed ten as he walked back to his room. Once inside he started to pack. It wouldn’t be safe here if she’d turned from him. He cursed the fact that he hadn’t killed her the day before. What if the police already had her, or the house was surrounded?

Their room overlooked a side street. The postman drove past, then a few cars. People were walking up and down normally. It didn’t feel like a trap. He turned on the television. A police spokesman was being interviewed, a stocky sandy-haired Scot was doing all the talking but he recognised the dark-haired man behind him as the one who had followed him from his old house in Telford. He was stern, eyes fixed on the camera in a glare, as if daring Smith to materialise. Fat chance. He decided to give Wendy until half past ten then leave without her.

Wendy reparked the car in a spot as close to their original parking space as possible. She had almost made it but when she reached the main road her nerve had failed her. If she ran away he would find her wherever she was and if she went to the police…she banished the thought. That would be impossible. She’d been compliant and willingly ignorant for too long. There might be daydreams of rebellion but they remained just that. Her existence since childhood had been based on willing capitulation within a fabric of routines that created a rudimentary structure for her life.

As she had driven away she had searched for a foundation on which to build her rebellion. Instead she found only shifting sands blown into the shape he expected. And so she had turned the car round and driven back, her face wet with tears, her left foot shaking so much she could barely change gear. After she had parked she sat in the car for a long time trying to control her breathing. She was terrified. He would be furious and only the paper-thin walls at the boarding house would prevent him from beating her unconscious, as he had done before. Eventually, she forced herself out, carrying her paper bag of purchases as a pathetic shield.

He was staring through the glass window when he heard the bedroom door open.

‘Close the door.’ His voice was expressionless.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’

‘I…I couldn’t find the map. Had to look all over the place.’

She was lying.

‘Come here.’ Barely a whisper but the venom made her shake her head in protest. ‘Come here.’ He turned up the volume on the television and she started to tremble with fear.

‘No. Dave, please. I’m sorry I was late.’

‘Here.’ He pointed to the bed, directing her like a dog, his fury trickling out around the edges of his control.

She came towards him, so hesitant that his anger made him gasp. Her fear was pathetic. It elated and infuriated him in equal measure.

The first blow caught the side of her face with enough force to knock her glasses flying. She let out a moan of surprise and tried to back away but he punched her hard in the stomach, doubling her over. He knocked her sideways onto the bed where she curled into a foetal ball in defence, face tucked between her knees. It was no use. He grabbed a handful of hair and yanked her head back viciously so that he could see her eyes.

‘Don’t you ever do that to me again, do you hear?’

He punctuated his last words with a tug that brought tears to her eyes. The long white length of her neck was exposed and he was filled with an urge to bite and stab at it.

‘Go and lock the door.’

‘No, Dave please, no, I said I’m sorry.’ Pale liquid tinged with blood trickled from her nose, disgusting him.

‘Lock it.’ They were both talking in whispers, aware of other people in the house around them.

He watched as she obeyed, unconsciously flexing his fists. Before she could turn round, he pulled her backwards, spinning her face down onto the bed so that her cries were muffled. She was wearing faded jeans that he undid with the facility of practice and stripped her naked to the waist. He pushed straight into her, her faint squeal of pain sending a wave of pleasure through him. He leant his hands on her shoulders to take his weight and smother her cries. Gradually they moved forward to circle her neck.

It took him a long time to climax but when he did it was exquisite, so good that he let out a harsh cry of triumph. When his sight was clear again he pulled away and washed carefully in the sink. She lay there unmoving. He waited a while then nudged her with his foot. She didn’t stir so he rolled her over.

‘Come on you…’ The words died. She was staring up at him sightlessly, her eyes bloodshot, her tongue gorged and extended. She was dead.

‘Shit!’

His first reaction was one of impatience. It was inconvenient of her to die on him like this. What was he supposed to do with the body? Then came worry. He was in a strange house full of people, including a busybody proprietress who probably watched the front door when she wasn’t prying into her guest’s belongings. He would have to hide her in here.

The room was small with space only for the wash basin, double bed, wardrobe and television. He checked under the bed. Fluff balls and accumulated dust told him that the space wasn’t cleaned regularly. He rolled the body off the bed and stuffed it beneath the mattress. Once he’d forced the head under the rest went in quite easily. He pulled the poly-cotton valance back down and made the bed. Then he put her bag under the sink and left with his rucksack. With luck it would be at least a day before she started to smell. He was accosted by the landlady on his way out and explained that he was going to meet his wife and that they would be touring all day. He dismissed her look of puzzlement with one of his disarming smiles and walked on calmly, remembering as he neared the gate to limp a little.

The car keys weighed heavy in his pocket. Once, a long time ago, he had learnt to drive a car and he had managed it only two days before when he needed to dispose of the policeman’s body. Now it was necessary again; he had no choice.

Her car was parked under a tree further down than he remembered. Opening the door was fine; sitting behind the wheel wasn’t too difficult; he even managed to start the engine with only a mild tremor. The problem came when he tried to shut the driver’s door. His fingers froze on the handle, his arm muscles locked, unable to pull the door closed. Sweat beaded his forehead and made his hands clammy. He tried revving the engine for encouragement, but the psychology wouldn’t work.

Inside his head he was already trapped inside the car, strapped in by a seat belt, unable to breathe properly. He screwed his eyes tight and it was his mother’s face that appeared before him. She was screaming, terrified, as the car slowly filled with water. His father was sitting calmly beside her, wrists resting loosely on the steering wheel, impervious to her cries. Inside his head, he could hear him repeating, over and over again.

‘It’s for the best. It’s for the best. This way the world is free of him and neither of us can ever create another one.’

The water was up to the front windows by now, and the car started to sink, tipped at an angle. It settled slowly in the silt and carried on down into the lake.

His father had fixed the seat belts somehow so that they wouldn’t undo. His feet were getting wet, his new trainers letting in the water. But his father had forgotten to take his rucksack away and Dave was a boy who liked to travel prepared. His penknife was in the outer pocket and he started to cut at the reinforced webbing. The material was tougher than it looked. As his mother screamed and the car gently pitched forward a little more, he sawed away, breathing deep to remain calm. After all, he had been born to dare, escape, and dare again. Since the dawning of his adolescence a sense of invincibility had given him limitless courage.

The blade grew blunt. Water lapped his knees. In front, it was already above his mother’s waist because of the angle of the car. She was beating at his father, drawing blood, pleading but he just kept saying.

‘Trust me. We should never have had him. Even his birth nearly killed you.’

Dave prised out the sharp awl that everyone joked was for removing stones from horse’s hooves and started to puncture holes across the remainder of the strap. He punched hard, so hard that he pierced his thigh – something he didn’t notice until much later. Once he had made a series of holes, he went back and tried to slice between them. Sometimes it worked sometimes it didn’t, the fabric bending before the blade. He was working with his fingers under water now. His mother was holding her head and neck up above the muddy ripples. There was another slow-motion slippery lurch as the car pushed past another lake-bed obstacle on its inexorable slide into the deep dark centre of the lake. His father was so stupid to choose to drive in at a point where the incline at the side of the lake was shallow. Even with the brakes off, and how his mother had clawed at the handbrake until her husband had broken her grip, the descent was almost gentle. Had he believed in God, or any almighty presence, he would have offered up a prayer of thanks. As it was he smiled in a wry acknowledgement of fate, which seemed to enjoy testing him to the limit.

The blade finally bent and he resorted to the scissors. They looked too small and for a moment he wavered. Then he rallied and closed the stainless steel blades around one of the holes. To his amazement, after a couple of tries, it snipped through. The next piece of fabric parted quickly. The third was stubborn but he pressed on.

There was silence in the car. His mother had had to keep her mouth closed since the last slide forward. His father, taller, straight-backed stared forwards. Dave became aware of the awful stillness of a tomb and looked up briefly from his work. At that very moment, as if sensing his gaze, his father turned to look back over his shoulder. It shocked Dave to see tears in his eyes and an expression not of anger, but pity. His father turned to his wife, struggling silently for life and smiled such a sweet, sad smile.

‘It’s for the best, my darling,’ he said then turned forward and lowered his face into the water.

Years later Dave had read an article by some learned professor who insisted that it was impossible for someone to commit suicide by drowning. In eloquent prose he had explained how most deaths by leaping from cliffs or bridges arose because the subject was rendered unconscious on hitting the water. He had demonstrated to his own satisfaction that the survival instinct was inherent in motor functions so that even someone wanting to die would fight to hold their breath when their head was submerged, the lungs screaming for oxygen, the throat closed against water, muscles aching in a fight for air.

The article was praised. It was credible, convincing. Dave knew it to be a lie. His father had lowered his head into the water without a ripple. There had been shudders which he remained convinced were deliberate intakes of water, some involuntary movement of the hands but hardly any threshing; then a new silence. He had watched, fascinated, but then the car moved again and he bent his eyes to cutting the remains of the belt. At some point his father died but Dave had been oblivious to the moment, intent on his own survival.