Holloway Falls (24 page)

They parked outside the nursing home. The ticking of the engine accentuated the silence in the car. The home was grey against the milky winter sunshine.

Lenny said: ‘Are you sure about this?’

Holloway was eating a king-sized Mars bar.

‘I deserted her,’ he said.

‘It’s not like you had a choice.’

Holloway screwed up the wrapper and dropped it on the floor. Lenny’s eyes followed it, returned to his passenger.

‘I’m scared she’s going to die,’ said Holloway.

Lenny rested his forehead against the steering wheel.

‘It’s just such a risk,’ he said.

Holloway grinned.

He said: ‘Look, if I get arrested, you can dedicate yourself to my release.’

Lenny smiled tightly. ‘They will call the police,’ he said. ‘The minute they see you.’

Holloway’s hand rested on the door handle.

‘Do you think she knows?’

‘About what? Joanne and that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Didn’t you say it was Alzheimer’s?’

‘Yeah.’

Lenny leaned over Holloway to retrieve his tobacco tin from the glove compartment. He began to roll a cigarette.

‘Then no,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know.’

Lenny licked the gummed paper, lit the cigarette. The smoke seemed very blue against the colourless winter backdrop.

‘But if you have to do it,’ he said. ‘You have to do it.’

Holloway opened the passenger door and stepped onto the pavement. He took a step or two towards the nursing home. He imagined Hetty opening the door, seeing his face. His aunt Grace, not knowing he’d been away. The sweet, powdery smell of her.

He walked through the gates and up the drive and stood at the bay window. He knew that, behind the yellowing net, Grace remained in her unknowable limbo. He wondered if time moved for her at all. When she knew, however transiently, that apple cake Billy had come for her, did she see a child? Or did she believe herself to be humouring a delusional madman?

He wanted Hetty to know that he didn’t kill Joanne. He wanted to make a cup of tea in the kitchen and share a plate of biscuits with her, Jammy Dodgers or Rich Tea, and talk about what had happened, the places he’d been.

But if she opened the door to him, she would only see a murderer. She would say,
Oh my goodness
, and she would slam the door and she would run to the telephone on the desk and she would call the police. Or she would be silent and shocked, one hand at the gold St Christopher round her throat, and she would allow him entry like Eloise had, and hang back, around the telephone, and mutter fearfully into the receiver while he kneeled at Grace’s side.

He squinted through the tiny gaps in the net, but inside he could see only gradations of shadow. Any movement might have been the vibration of his own eye. He knew that anybody inside could see him quite clearly, a scruffy man with a woolly cap pulled down over his ears, cupping a hand over his brow and pressing his face to the glass. So he jammed his hands in his pockets and turned away. He half ran, half jogged a step or two and joined Lenny in the hire car.

Lenny had kept the engine running. The moment Holloway was inside, he pulled the car away with a screech. By the time a male nurse came to the door, they were too far away, and too wreathed in smoking rubber, for him to take down the car’s registration.

By the time they arrived back in north London, it was dark. Lenny parked outside the house. For a while they sat silently in the car, listening to the engine tick. Through the sitting room window they could see a blue, flickering light. Shepherd, alone on the sofa, watching television.

They stepped from the car, shivering. Condensed breath ascending to the yellow sodium haze. On the pavement, they exchanged a meaningful glance, shut the car doors quietly, and went to the pub.

It was almost empty. A few drinkers, older men, clung to the darker corners and tatty booths. Holloway went to the bar and got two pints of Guinness.

Holloway set the pint on the table before Lenny. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t have gone.’

‘Cheers. It doesn’t matter. No harm done.’

‘Not for lack of trying. Cheers.’

Lenny lifted his beer and took a small sip. He did not reply.

‘Story of my life,’ insisted Holloway.

Lenny set the glass back on the table. He sighed.

‘Tell me about it,’ he said.

He did not mean that Holloway should tell him about it.

Holloway took a long draught from the glass. It left a foamy white moustache.

He said: ‘I was married for fourteen years.’

Lenny hummed a long, uninterested affirmative.

But Holloway went on.

He said: ‘She was too good for me.’

Lenny nodded. They were quiet for a while. He could feel Holloway looking at him. He gave up. He sagged and nodded again, this time to show that Holloway should continue.

Holloway wiped his upper lip. He said: ‘You’ll hear men say they never looked at another woman.’ He looked sheepish, and for a while he watched people come and go at the bar. ‘But in my case, it was true. I never did. Not seriously anyway; not for more than a second. She was absolutely the only woman for me. Do you know what that feels like?’

Lenny shrugged.

‘Elly and I are happy,’ he said. ‘I suppose it could change.’

‘I doubt it.’

He laughed.

‘You don’t even know us.’

‘I can tell,’ said Holloway.

Lenny was disarmed. He looked at the table.

He said: ‘Yeah. Well. You know.’

‘The thing is,’ said Holloway. ‘Despite everything, I never felt at ease. I always thought she’d married beneath her. And over the years, you know, I began to wonder. The first time we—’ and again he was overcome by coyness. ‘The first time we did it, was back at her student digs. At the time she was going out with this bloke. Sam. And, over the years, I began to think: if she could do that to him, could she do it to me?’

‘And did she?’

Holloway laughed.

‘No,’ he said.

He seemed elated, bitterly delighted by the admission. ‘No, she didn’t. Not until I left her.’

He chuckled, as if it was too funny for words.

Lenny drew in his jaw. He thought for a bit. Then he said: ‘I thought
she
left
you
.’

‘That’s not how she saw it.’

‘What about Dan Weatherell?’

‘He came later.’ Holloway stared into his pint. ‘I used to tease her,’ he said. ‘About men. Men on TV, actors, men in the street, men she worked with. Trying to work out who she might be attracted to. It was all a big joke. Ha ha. She played along. She was good enough to pretend it was a joke. But over time I suppose I wore her down. I badgered her.’

‘It happens,’ said Lenny.

‘You think so?’

‘Of course.’

‘I suppose,’ said Holloway, doubtfully.

‘Did you talk about it? As a problem, I mean.’

‘We tried to.
She
tried to. But there were no—’ He fought for the right word. Then he said: ‘I thought she was humouring me.’

Lenny was confused.

‘So in the end, it was
you
who left
her
?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

He enjoyed Lenny’s expression.

Shortly before Christmas, Kate told him about Dan Weatherell.

At first Holloway was stupefied. He could only think to ask how long it had been going on.

Six months.

He remembered her looking at him with unendurable pity. And then, gently, she said: ‘You left me first.’

He looked at her, bewildered, trying behind his eyes to rewind the last six months.

‘What?’

‘For your job.’

He snorted derisively through both nostrils.

‘What are you talking about?’

She said: ‘Will, look at yourself. You’re never home.’

He drew a long breath. Pinched the bridge of his nose.

He said: ‘I hate my job.’

Something like laughter welled up inside him.

‘Jesus,’ he said.

The idea seemed pornographic. He looked around himself, as if for something misplaced.

Then he punched his wife in the face.

By the time the police arrived, he had destroyed the contents of the sitting room, the indices of their marriage: the furniture and their photographs, the television and the VCR: he had ripped the curtains from their rails and thrown chairs through windows. He ground shattered glass into the carpet, upended the table at which they ate their Sunday lunch, and ripped the legs from it. He used the legs as clubs. He bellowed terrible words and things that were not words at all. Kate made a ball of herself in the corner, behind an upended bookcase, her knees drawn up to her broken face.

When there was nothing left to smash, he deflated and walked to the kitchen. From the cutlery drawer he removed a serrated breadknife. Three times, he drew the blade across his inner forearm. The flesh snapped back like elastic. The fresh wounds were labial, pink. Then there was a slow, rich gathering of blood. It swelled into a gleaming black meniscus, then spilled into rivulets and dripped and dropped like heavy rain on the tiled floor.

When the police arrived, the knife was at Holloway’s throat. He had taken a moment to prepare himself. He remembered becoming aware of a great commotion. Steve Jackson, a beat copper he’d known for seven years, tackled him. The two of them slipped and slid on the tiled floor like new-born giraffes.

Then he was flat on his back. Jackson was pinning him with his knees and babbling into his radio. Holloway relaxed under his weight. He focused on the strip light. It seemed softly to fluoresce.

Lenny was silent for several seconds. Then he drained his pint. With an index finger, he scratched at a raised eyebrow. Then he tugged at the skin beneath his jaw. He blew through pursed lips, as if secretly impressed.

‘You were ill,’ he said, at length. ‘People do things.’

Holloway appreciated the effort.

‘I was in hospital,’ he said. ‘Not for long. Not for long enough, as it happens. When I got out, she’d left and taken Caroline with her. Gone to live with a friend. I had too much time on my hands. And I—well, you know. I couldn’t get it out of my head.’

‘Her and Weatherell?’

‘Well. Yes and no. Weatherell had gone by then. I don’t think I was good for their relationship.’

Lenny scratched at his eyebrow.

‘Weatherell went back to New Zealand,’ Holloway continued. ‘Kate stayed in Leeds. But in a way that was worse. At least I
knew
about her and Weatherell. I began to obsess about other men. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Kate and someone else. Anybody else. In the end, I thought it would drive me insane. One way or another, it seemed better to know. I’m not even sure what I wanted to find out. But I hired a private detective. To follow her.’

Lenny said: ‘You’re
kidding
.’

‘Oh I wish I was.’

‘What happened?’

‘Not much. Not in the grand scheme of things. She had a one-night thing. She slept with a student.’ He swallowed, took a sip from the pint. ‘David Bishop.’

‘You got this from the private detective?’

‘Certainly did. He was very thorough. He
showed
me. He’d filmed it. He’d put a camera in Kate’s bedroom.’

Lenny made a face. ‘Is that even
legal
?’

Holloway smiled. His snaggle tooth caught on his lower lip.

‘Do you think I cared?’

Lenny held up his hands. ‘Hold it there,’ he said. He pushed back the stool and hurried to the bar. He returned with two more pints. ‘Right,’ he said, settling himself. ‘Go on.’

‘Before Joanne disappeared,’ said Holloway, ‘somebody sent that film to me.’

‘Somebody?’

‘Well, who else could it be? The man who filmed it. His name was Derek Bliss.’

Lenny slapped his forehead with his fingertips.

‘That’s why you went to Leeds to look for him.’

Holloway nodded.

‘That’s why I went to Leeds to look for him,’ he said. ‘Except Derek Bliss is supposed to be dead.’

Lenny was nodding enthusiastically. The conversation had taken a direction he could identify with. He made an encouraging noise. ‘Stroke,’ he said. ‘Australia. Apparently.’

Holloway continued: ‘Right. Because of everything that happened, I thought Weatherell must be behind it all, working with Bliss. I thought they wanted to punish me. But I wasn’t thinking straight. She wasn’t—Dan didn’t love her that way. And I was—you know. I wasn’t myself.’

He looked up, checking Lenny’s expression.

‘It’s OK,’ said Lenny. ‘Go on.’

Holloway drew a long breath. He knit his hands on the table. He spoke with a distracted frown, as if reciting from memory.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You’re suggesting that Derek Bliss actually is dead. OK. I accept that as a possibility. And I accept that Joanne’s murder may be associated with Rex Dryden. But equally, you must accept that we don’t know in what way. Or why.’

‘We will.’

‘I accept that too. But listen. That film—the film of Kate and the boy—dates from a time when Bliss had a business partner, Henry Lincoln. It might have passed into Lincoln’s hands any number of ways. Christ, perhaps he and Bliss got their jollies to it on a lonely Saturday night.’ He scowled. Remembered those long-ago beads of semen on the toilet seat. ‘It’s quality material,’ he said, and raised the glass to his lips.

Lenny kept his gaze steady.

‘So,’ said Holloway. ‘It makes sense to me that we assume Lincoln to be involved, somehow. Perhaps it was Lincoln who actually sent me the film. Or perhaps he supplied it to the person who did.’

‘But it could’ve been copied a thousand times,’ said Lenny. He read Holloway’s expression. He said. ‘Look, I’m sorry to say it. But it’s true.’

‘Of course it’s true. Christ, it’s probably posted on the internet, for all I know. Watch My Lusty Wife Enjoy Horny Student Stud. Or whatever. But that’s not the point. Whoever sent me the film knew stuff about me that nobody else knew. I assumed it was Bliss—but only because I’d never met Henry Lincoln. I’d never heard of him. But I know about him now. So he’s next in line.’

Lenny nodded.