Kill My Darling (33 page)

His wife had also subsequently identified him at the temporary morgue from these documents and from his clothes, wrist watch and signet ring. She had had to be given medical treatment for shock and distress and had been referred to her own GP for ongoing sedative prescriptions.

There was no doubt about it.

He read through it again, the back of his mind imagining the scene, the smoke, the fires, the vast mangled engines flipped outrageously on to their sides like dying dinosaurs, the debris, the bodies, the wounded moaning, the trapped crying out for help, the stunned survivors wandering in shocked silence until they bumped into the helpers scrambling down the embankment from nearby houses, almost as shocked themselves. And then the emergency services arriving . . .

He had been at one or two major incidents in his time – what copper hadn't? None as bad as this, thank God. The newspapers always talked of screaming, chaos and panic – well, they had to sell copies. But in his experience there was never panic, just empathy and selflessness. The walking wounded always went immediately to the aid of the worse hurt, and the latter waited with a bitter patience and courage for the ‘authorities' to arrive. As for screaming – the overall impression was always one of an eerie quiet, murmuring voices usually accompanied by background hissing and metallic ticking from whatever machines had been involved. The ‘chaos' lay in the physical appearance of wrecked artefacts: the human element were always stunningly calm.

The official reports were equally lacking in hysteria. They didn't need any more drama – they had enough of their own to last a lifetime. He read on, through all the deaths, impelled by a terrible pity to absorb them all: each one a cataclysm for its own small universe. Then, in a groove, he went on through the injuries. Some were horrific, and subsequently added to the final death toll; others were lifelong crippling. And at the end were the minor injuries treated at the scene by medics. Not all such were, of course. Some people would have just tied a handkerchief round the cut and carried on, or were patched up with an Elastoplast by the locals coming down to help.

Near the end, a name caught his eye. Bad gash across the left palm. Paramedic had found him trying to bandage it with a handkerchief and had taken him to the aid station, where the doctor had put three stitches in it and given him a tetanus injection. William McGuire, age 55, hospital porter, Flat 2, Brunel House, Cleveland Estate, W2. He knew the Cleveland Estate – they were 1930s council flats, very like the White City ones on his own ground; a smallish estate within a short walk of Paddington Station. You could see them from the elevated section of the motorway as you headed westwards, facing the multiplicity of railway lines disgorged from the terminus.

So McGuire had been in the Greenford crash as well. Of course the medical reports did not say which train any of the victims had been travelling on, let alone why. And it could be nothing but a coincidence. But Hunter and McGuire were both injured in the same train wreck, one of them fatally, and ten years later Hunter's adored little girl was murdered and her body was discovered by McGuire. It made you uneasy, to say the least.

It made you think.

He went to Walpole Park and walked there for a long time, thinking things through. The haar had stopped and the park was quiet, nobody around but pigeons and squirrels, going about their daily business, bothering nobody. The humans were not up yet: enjoying the Sunday lie-in; the early dog-walkers would have come and gone already. There had not been enough water in the haar even to drip from the trees, but the grass was wet underfoot, and smelled green and damp and springlike. That was the worst of prolonged cold spells that extended winter – no smells.

He had a new theory, now the old one had been dismissed, but there was one big problem with it, one thing that made it impossible in execution, so impossible that it would never get past the planning stage. The planner would look at the problem and say, ‘Oh, forget that, then.' But the maddening thing was that it felt right to him.

Back at his car he rang Mrs Wiseman. The child answered, and when he identified himself, she volunteered the information that her dad was out, watching the Sunday league down at the Rec. He felt a surge of relief, and said it was her mother he wanted to talk to, and could he come round right away. He heard her shrug, even over the phone. ‘If you ask me, she's going a bit dippy. But you can try.'

‘I'll be there in five minutes,' Slider said.

Mrs Wiseman was sitting in the same armchair where Connolly had last interviewed her. In fact, she might not have moved since then, for she looked definitely
mal-soigné
, and there was a selection of untouched drinks and snacks on plates and in mugs on the various surfaces around her. The child, Bethany, greeted Slider with a mixture of aggression and relief that told him she had been left to cope more completely than she ought, or than she was capable of. And the dog, coming straight to Slider and putting its head into his hands, tail wagging pleadingly, told him most clearly of all that the ship had become rudderless.

‘She's hardly eaten anything,' Bethany told him almost in the first breath. ‘I keep bringing her stuff, but I can only do sandwiches and cornflakes really, and Dad keeps going out all the time so
he's
not cooking. I think Mum's going a bit la-la with all this stuff going on, but I don't know what to do for her. She slept in the chair last night. Wouldn't go up to bed. And when Dad tried to talk to her she just screamed at him to leave her alone.'

‘Well, let me have a talk with her, and I'll see if I can help.'

She looked anxious. ‘You won't hurt her, will you?'

‘Of course not. I'm a police officer.'

‘But I've heard some policemen are bad.'

‘Well, I'm not one of those. Look, see how your dog likes me? They always know.'

She looked at the dog, which was leaning against Slider's legs with its eyes shut in bliss while he massaged its scalp, and said moodily, ‘He's not my dog, he's Mel's. Wish he
was
mine.'

‘It seems to me,' Slider said judiciously, ‘that he is yours now. Your mum and dad won't want to be bothered doing things for him, will they?'

She brightened. ‘No. They're too old. They don't even remember to feed him.'

‘And dogs need a lot of attention. He'll need someone to play with him and take him for walks. Dogs have to go for walks every day. Tell you what, why don't you take him out for a walk now, while I talk to your mum? He'll need about twenty minutes. Have you got a watch?'

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You just want me out of the house so you can talk to her without me hearing.'

Slider didn't try to deny it. ‘That too. Grown-ups sometimes have to talk privately. You know that. But the dog does need a walk.'

Suddenly she was close to tears. ‘Marty. Don't call him “the dog” like he wasn't a person. His name's Marty.'

He hunkered, and she was in his arms, straining her rigid little body against him while he folded his arms round her, and the dog licked whatever portions of her bare arms it could reach. How long was it, Slider wondered, since anyone had held the poor child? He didn't imagine Wiseman was a huggy sort of dad at the best of times, and Mrs W had been out of it since Melanie died.

It only lasted a moment. She pulled herself free and dashed away with her sleeve the few tears that had managed to squeeze out. ‘All right, I'll take him out. But don't upset my mum,' she said, roughly, to prove she was not a soft touch.

He saw her off, with the grateful dog on a lead, and then went in to Mrs Wiseman.

She was staring at nothing, her hands folded in her lap, still as death. He drew up a leather pouffe and sat so he would be as near as possible to her face-level, and said, ‘Mrs Wiseman, it's Bill Slider from Shepherd's Bush police. You remember me. I came once before. I want to talk to you about your husband.'

‘Ian's out, at the football,' she said automatically in a toneless voice.

‘No, not about Ian. About your first husband. About Graham Hunter.'

Now her eyes came round to him, examined his face for a long time. He looked back steadily, and saw a trembling begin in the rigid facade. ‘He's dead,' she said at last, faintly.

‘Is he?' he asked with the same steady look, though his heart was thumping with the urgency of the moment. If she didn't tell him, he had nothing.

And slowly her eyes widened and her mouth crumpled. ‘You know,' she said. He saw how afraid she was.

He nodded, trying to project sympathy. ‘Tell me about it. The train crash. That day, when you had to go to the morgue – no one should have to go through that, identifying a body. That was a terrible thing you had to do.'

She nodded, her eyes held by his as though fascinated. ‘But there were lots of us, all together. That helped a bit. We sort of hung on to each other. Some of them were crying, but I couldn't.'

‘Shock takes people different ways,' he said.

She nodded. ‘Those of us who weren't crying sort of helped the ones who were. And they called us in, one by one, to look at the bodies.'

‘They told you they had found your husband's wallet in the inside pocket, and other things with his name on – a letter, some bills?'

Her mouth turned down at the mention of the bills. ‘It was always bills. Gas, electricity, telephone. Everything. He'd open them and take them away without showing me. I'll pay them, he'd say. You don't have to worry about things like that. But the first thing I'd know, a man would come to cut us off. It was humiliating. And right there in the morgue they showed me bills with Final Demand on them in red. And betting slips – must have been a dozen. Right in front of all those people, doctors and policemen and such. I was so ashamed.'

‘But they were his things all right,' he said. ‘His wallet – credit cards and so on.'

‘Oh yes. Everything he had in his pockets – even his hanky. I ironed them often enough, I knew all his hankies.'

‘But,' Slider said, inwardly holding his breath, ‘it wasn't him.'

She looked away into history. ‘They'd covered his head with this green cloth thing, like in an operating theatre, so only his body was showing,' she said tonelessly. ‘They said his head was too crushed to recognize, but I'd have known him by something – his hair, his ears, something. I loved that man for a long time, more than I can tell you. The real reason they covered him up was because they thought I wouldn't be able to stand it. And they were sure who he was anyway, because of the things in his pocket. It was just a formality. But I knew right away it wasn't him. They weren't his clothes, to start with.'

‘A person can change their clothes.'

‘Yes, but why would he? And he'd never have worn horrible cheap things like that. He had fancy tastes. Pity he never had the money to go with them. Besides, I could just see it wasn't him. This man's body was a different shape, he was older. It wasn't Graham's hands. I'd know his hands anywhere.' She shivered.

‘But you told them that it was him anyway.'

Her eyes returned to him, to the present. ‘It came to me, all of a sudden, what had happened. He'd been there, he'd seen this poor man, whoever he was, swapped the contents of his pockets with him, and walked away. He'd walked out on me. I'd been afraid all along he'd do that one day – he wasn't the sort of man to stay put for ever. But doing it this way, it was obvious he wanted to get away completely, not just from me but from everything. Start a new life with a new identity. And my first thought was, what an idiot! He must know I'd know it wasn't him. So I thought I'd denounce him, tell them what he'd done, have him hunted down and punished for – whatever crime it is to do that. Interfering with a body, or something. It must be a crime, mustn't it?'

‘Yes,' said Slider. ‘What changed your mind?'

‘It all happened in a second, you understand,' she said, looking at him anxiously. He saw that it was a relief to her to tell someone after all these years, but she wanted to be forgiven, too. ‘As soon as I realized what he'd done, and I saw how stupid it was, how it couldn't work, I saw how, if it was a way for him to leave me, it was a way for me to be rid of him, too.'

‘And you wanted to be rid of him?'

‘Oh!' An indescribable sound of pain and longing. ‘I loved him, I always loved him, but he was impossible to live with. You don't know what it was like. The lies, the bills, the stupid big ideas that were going to make him a millionaire, the let-downs. I'd save and save and scrape a little bit of money so Melanie could have something she needed, or a little treat, or a birthday present, and then he'd find the money and blow it on some stupid “investment”.' She said the word as though it were a sleazy night with two prostitutes and some furry handcuffs. ‘The drinking – he wasn't a violent drunk, but he was a
silly
drunk. Oh, he made Melanie laugh with his clowning, but I hated the smell on him, and it made me mad that he was throwing away our money on drink when there was so much we needed. He humiliated us, week after week, time after time. I couldn't hold my head up around the neighbours. And Melanie was like an orphanage kid next to those rich girls at school. I half wish she'd never won the scholarship, then she could have gone to an ordinary school and not stuck out so much. But she was always bright – and Graham was so proud of her.' A bitter look came over her face. ‘That was the thing, you see. She loved him. They loved each other. No matter what he did – and I tried to keep the worst of it from her – she adored him, much more than she ever did me. I was just the one who worked and slaved to keep food on our plates and clothes on our backs. He was the fun one. He was magic. She never saw what a lousy husband and dad he really was.'

Slider nodded sympathetically. ‘So it's no wonder, when you saw a chance to be rid of him . . .'