Little Fingers! (23 page)

“
I think so
too.”

“
So, if he
does take your advice, give Mary a ring from your mobile to warn
her, be a love.”

“
I'll do
that.”

“
And I'll
keep you up to date with what Sam is up to.”

“
I suppose I
should be grateful for that, Brenda. Sometimes, though, I feel like
a torture victim.”

“
You are,
Tony, you are. And you keep asking for more. Go on, take Frank over
his pint and his crisps, or he'll become all agitated. Take care of
yourself, Tony.”

“
I will. You
too, Brenda.”

“
I think you
two have a bit of a thing going, if you ask me,” says Frank when
Tony returns to their table.

“
Yes, it
could be going that way,” Tony confirms. “I wouldn't much mind if
it did. She is rather a classic.”

“
Yes, there's
not much wrong with old Brenda. Well, I'll knock this back, if you
don't mind, and get back to Mary. I'll take your
advice.”

“
You do
that.”

Mary lives in
dread of Frank realising what is happening between us. Equally, she
knows that as certainly as the arrival of the next electricity
bill, he will find out about us one day. Then, like the Tower in
Tarot, it will be a terrifying shock, followed by a cathartic
feeling of liberation, if he doesn't kill her in the process. That
would be a liberation none of us would want. I hope and pray that I
will be on hand to protect us all.

* *
*

Chapter
12

Why are we
running, down this s-bended Spanish motorway? The authorities must
have built in so many corners to keep us motorists on the rims of
our wheels.

I know what we
are running from - fate, bad choices, evil, intolerance,
communities, and blind injustice. So please tell me what we are
running towards! I keep tormenting myself with this as I drive (I
am the man in this relationship; I do all the driving, or at least
most of it).

When you are
behind the wheel, and the music is turned off (maybe even when it
is on full-blast, competing with the wind), you have no choice but
to think, eventually. You avoid it for a while as you scan the road
ahead, you count the cars, you take in the scenery, you compute how
many service stations you can pass before you have to fill up with
petrol and dry packaged food. Ultimately, though, you are reduced
to thinking, and that thinking concerns a problem. Maybe it doesn't
for you, Inspector, but it does for me. I have had so many problems
to solve in my life, I cannot waste my time reminiscing about
happiness long gone past (“Exit 47”, I call it. Salida 47, in this
case). I have to build the next better moment and, to do that, I
have to negotiate the everyday minefield, which used to start when
the post arrived. Luckily, I don't receive much post
nowadays.

My problem
today is “us”. Where do we go from here? And I am not referring to
you, Inspector, although that would be another pertinent
question.

Immediately,
Mary and I are on our way towards a converted mill outside Granada
which we found on the Owners Direct website. Cacin Mill. The Molino
Santa Ana. It looks idyllic, contemporary international rustic
décor, flagstones, round bath, rose-head shower, granite kitchen,
swimming pool. However, nothing has yet been idyllic in our lives
together. There have only ever been problems, with golden moments
of reprieve. Do we love each other? I used to think so. When I met
Mary, I was not looking for anybody, I did not need anybody. I was
there on a mission, to take stock, to stop the cycle of violence
with whatever means it took, then to go.

Insofar as I
was planning a romance, I was planning it subsequently, and
elsewhere. I did not know how to handle romance in my new form. I
had only ever experienced it in my old one. I could not even
envisage how it might happen. I considered bars, or a restaurant,
or possibly a chance meeting in the street, and I could never
escort my imagination past that pick-up moment, towards whatever
would happen next. While I might have a new shape, which I was
gradually wearing in, I was never destined to have a real life. I
was going to spend my days in my wealthy isolation up in a farm
amid the hills, with my animals and, maybe my servants, socialising
with neighbours, playing with their children, attending quaint
local cultural events, living a public life in private, and a
private life in public, until I died.

I was not
expecting to find a companion, much as I craved one. I did not
think that anyone would accept me as I am, or that I could even
forgive myself for being who I am. I expected to play the role of a
just judge and necessary executioner, then of a recluse, maybe of a
recluse on the run, although I doubted that. One thing I am certain
of is that I am clever. If I were ever to commit a crime, I would
get away with it. No-one would ever be able to pin anything on me
and make it stick, not even you, Inspector.

And I know
that for a while you considered “fitting me up”, off and on. You
stalked round Hanburgh, searching for an angle, without finding
one. Maybe that alone was enough to persuade you that it was me. It
almost persuaded me that it was me. I could not fault the taste of
the murderer, whoever he or she was, until the final killing, and
maybe that was an error on his part, mistaken identity or
something. Tom, well, what good could you really say about him? He
exploited people. Actually he exploited women. He fucked them and
he threw them away. He treated us all as consumables. I even
thought that he was my father for a time, fucking and abandoning my
mother. I did not see him as a rapist until the day Sam told me
that he could not seduce my mother in any other way, and God knows
he had tried. And then there was good old George, the meek,
compliant offender, who would visit young girls in the time of
their most desperate need, and threaten them that if they were to
even squeak a word against his beloved father-in-law, he would deal
with them. Once Sam had told me about that, even I was ready to
make him sign the audit of his life in his own blood.

And what I
discovered that same day, Inspector, as you will have realised by
now, is how kind you were to my mother. You were her only friend,
the one who stood by her at all costs, while she was spurned and
derided by all those who were singed by her originality. That gave
me a huge respect for you when I heard that, almost a love for you.
I began to see you as my mother might have seen you, as a
committedly caring man, an outsider insider, unafraid to reframe
yourself to face the realities of the world. It is a real shame
that you are not my father. I would have been truly honoured to
have claimed you as my father, however much I tease you. I have
even fantasised about you being him, built on that special bond I
detect between us. Could you not have got past my mother's chaste
guard at least once? Somebody did, although they had to coldly rape
her to do it, and that would never be you.

The moment Sam
told me about you two was the moment I resolved to help you. I felt
for your predicament. What do you do on a case where you do not
have a clue? Where there is nothing? You stir things up - nothing.
You wait - nothing. Nobody can give you any lead.

Your boss
wants a solution. Your public demands a culprit to boo at. And each
day you have nothing.

In the end, no
doubt you seek a miracle, the left-field breakthrough, the deus ex
machina. And, failing that, you hope for an informant who may have
noticed something you have missed. I stepped forward as your
accomplice, the one you also chose, and I swear that the situation
is still as opaque to me as it was to you.

I look over at
Mary. Is she still my accomplice, or is she someone just sitting in
the car I have hired, numbed into unconsciousness?

* *
*

You fix me in
the eye, Inspector, or you want me to believe that that is what you
are doing, and you ask “Julia, what is going on? I know that you
know more than you are telling, which is absolutely nothing, by the
way.” Your outburst is clumsy, but neither of us minds
that.

“
What makes
you say that?”

“
You know
that we found George Knightly dead this morning?”

“
Obviously
not. Why would I know that?”

“
He was lying
strangled in Berringer's house.”

“
Do you think
that Berringer did it?” I tapped your arm at the elbow. “Only
joking.”

“
You have an
interesting way of joking about the most appalling
things.”

“
Appalling?
George Knightly dead? A nondescript vicious bastard?”

“
You didn't
like him much?”

“
I didn't
ever really meet him, but I certainly knew him. I have peered into
his soul.” I smile ironically with over-emphasis. “Please
acknowledge that it does not really matter whether he is dead or
alive. He was Uriah Heep married to Lady Macbeth. Spare us the
soliloquy.”

By now you are
seated at your ease on one of the two rather rectangular sofas in
the sitting room, in front of the sash windows, with the sun
streaming in behind you. “So what do you think is really going
on?”

In line with
the compact I have made with myself to help you in any way I can, I
tell you absolutely everything I have learnt since my arrival,
except for my partying with Sam at the Berringers' house a couple
of weeks back.

“
Are you
being serious?” asks the Inspector.

“
I thought I
was. About what exactly?”

“
All of it.
You really think that an evil is lurking in this
village?”

“
In most
villages, Inspector. It is just that I happen to be
here.”

“
And you
reckon that Berringer is at the core of all this?”

“
Yes, I am
sure of it.”

“
And that
Samantha James and Mary Knightly are contaminated by him to the
point of being totally evil themselves?”

“
I think Sam
may be redeemable, but Mary definitely not.”

“
Why do you
think Mary's husband was killed?”

“
George was a
strange man. Unnaturally submissive. That suggests to me that he
was hiding a lot. He always gave me the feeling that he was
potentially quite dangerous. He had hugely angry
thoughts.”

“
Oh, you can
read people's minds now, can you?”

“
No, of
course I can't, Inspector, but I can read the expressions in
people's eyes.”

“
And what are
my eyes saying to you?”

“
Well, your
thoughts are saying that you wish to tease me playfully. Same old
story. Beyond that, you can never really read the eyes of a
policeman. They are always too well masked in order to keep the
suspects guessing.”

“
Call me
John, Julia, then try again.”

What you start
to think about is how hungry you are, and whether you could get a
bite to eat at the Hanburgh Arms.

“
You are
wondering whether you should ask me out to lunch, John. I would
love to. Thank you.”

As this
prospect is very far from your mind, you double-take, and add “Be
my guest, by all means. I was thinking about dropping in at the
Hanburgh Arms, but there is an excellent Ha! Ha! bistro in town.
Would you like to try that?”

I always find
it interesting when a relationship that starts in one paradigm
slips into another. It is something I miss when I fall in love with
somebody at first sight, like Mary. The source of thunder and
lighting stays where it is, until it slips slowly down through the
sky. There is no progression, only the inevitable dissipation. We
begin on a high and, after a period of bliss, competitiveness,
spitefulness, moral disagreements, disputes over money, and general
lobbying for our own perspectives emerge and submerge us. Mary and
I are still in the blissful phase. I can only guess at how long it
will endure, and I fear our first real argument as deeply as
tripping down a flight of steps. One day I will find myself at the
bottom, laughing uproariously, but that is not my general
experience.

Take you,
Inspector John, here and now. You are transitioning from being a
policeman about your duty into a colleague and an ally. That is not
the direction you anticipated our relationship following, yet that
is where it will go.

You may
consider my attitude cynical, that I am using you ultimately to my
own purposes. You would be right. However, at the same time, you
are planning to use me in all the obvious ways - to solve your
crime and get promoted, to scratch your itches, to stroke your ego.
These are typical human interactions between Mr. Plod and the femme
fatale. You just hope that you can get promoted and sated before
you get embroiled in whatever I am up to. You'll have to be quick,
you think.

As you surely
do not know, I have promised to rid the world of little dictators
without being caught. In this village, I mean to eradicate, or at
least neutralise, Dr. Berringer and Mary Knightly. How do I do that
without getting myself arrested and locked up for life?