Runaway (44 page)

‘That she was going to sleep with some guy and get herself pregnant.’ Jack held his gaze, unblinking.

Maurie swallowed back his emotion again, then spat it out as anger. ‘It was only too clear to me. History repeating itself. First that thug Andy . . .’ he hesitated, ‘. . . and then you, Jack. She gave herself too easily. Just like her mother. And you took advantage.’ His lip trembled as he sucked in a breath. ‘And I was right. Because it happened, didn’t it? Just as if it were programmed into her DNA. Got herself pregnant, just like her mother had! And I saw the whole damned cycle repeating itself a generation on. It was only ever going to end badly.’

No one knew what to say, and silence hung among them like a pall of cigarette smoke in a sixties pub.

It was some minutes before they heard it. The first scrape of leather on concrete. Footsteps disturbing rubble on the stairs. Slow, cautious steps. Jack glanced at his watch. Whoever it was had arrived early. And the tension in the common room became palpable. A beam of torchlight played out on the landing then snapped into darkness, before a tall, lean figure stepped into the undulating wash of candlelight in the doorway. An elderly man, well into his seventies, Jack thought. He wore an expensive camel coat and shiny black shoes. His strong, handsome face beneath a head of thick white hair swept back from his forehead was still extraordinarily familiar. Even after all this time.

Jack had been half expecting Dr Robert, and so it came as no surprise. What did surprise him was the rude health and powerful build of a man who was anything up to ten years their senior. Evidently life had treated him well.

But if he was still familiar to them, his incomprehension as he looked at the faces gathered around the table was patent.

He frowned. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Don’t you remember?’ Maurie said.

Dr Robert swung his eyes in Maurie’s direction, and his shock at the appearance of the dying man briefly widened them.

‘Five lads from Glasgow who lived for well over a month in the basement flat at Onslow Gardens. Who were there the night that a young thug called Andy McNeil was bludgeoned to death by the actor Simon Flet. Must be hard to see those young boys in these old men.’

The doctor’s transition from confusion, to fear, to recognition and resignation passed across his face like so many shades of the same colour. But darker each time.

‘The Shuffle,’ he said.

And Jack wondered how on earth he remembered the name after all these years.

‘Jack,’ Jack said.

‘Luke.’

‘Dave.’

Dr Robert’s eyes swung back to Maurie, whose smile seemed more like a grimace.

‘No. You wouldn’t have recognized me in a million years, would you?’

‘Maurie,’ Dr Robert said, his voice so soft it scarcely penetrated the still of the room.

‘Well remembered.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Just about everything that could be. Sit down, doctor. It was me that emailed you.’

Dr Robert took a step into the room, but didn’t sit.

Maurie watched him, unblinking, totally focused. ‘Must have scared the shit out of you, my message, eh? Scared to come, scared not to. It was the sting in the tail that caught you, though, wasn’t it?’ He bared his teeth. ‘Just irresistible. I knew it would be.’ He paused for effect. ‘That I knew who really killed Andy McNeil.’

Dr Robert was impassive, and his voice was stronger now. ‘It was Flet.’

Maurie shook his head. ‘It wasn’t.’

Jack turned towards Dr Robert. ‘Then it must have been you.’

And the doctor’s eyes flickered in his direction, hostility flashing briefly behind his apprehension.

But Maurie shook his head again. ‘No. Not the good doctor, either.’ He kept his eyes fixed on the older man. ‘But you did kill Simon Flet. Didn’t you?’

The blood drained from Dr Robert’s tanned face and left him looking jaundiced. But he said nothing.

Maurie leaned forward on the table. ‘That scumbag Andy McNeil attacked you that night, didn’t he? Ripped your phone out of the wall and came at you round the desk. And you lifted that Oscar paperweight and hit him with it. And who could blame you? A clear case of self-defence. He went down on to his knees clutching his head, blood oozing through his fingers.’ He drew a tremulous breath. ‘I know, because me and Rachel were out in the hall. We saw it all. And you ran out to go and call the police from another phone somewhere else in the house. Ran right past and didn’t even see us.’

He was having trouble breathing now, and took a moment to collect himself before he turned his head to look at the rest of the group.

‘It’s the only reason I wasn’t up on the roof with you when you went looking for Jeff. Rachel thought she could talk sense into Andy. I didn’t, and I wasn’t about to let her try.’

There was almost a full minute when the only sound in the room was Maurie’s stertorous breathing.

Then Luke said, ‘So what happened, Maurie?’

‘When the doc had gone, we went into the study as Andy got to his feet. He was pretty unsteady, seriously concussed, I’d say. The blood was streaming down his face and he was in a filthy mood. Rachel wanted to help him, but I wouldn’t let her. He started shouting at her. Cursing her, calling her every foul-mouthed name he could think of. Told her how he was going to make her pay for running out on him. Lock her up and make her his fuck puppy.’ His mouth curled in distaste. ‘His words.’

Maurie reached into his coat pocket now to bring out a handkerchief, with an almost uncontrollably shaking hand, and wipe his mouth.

‘He was a piece of shit. And that was my sister he was threatening. So I picked up the Oscar and smashed his fucking head in.’

There was not a sound in the room. And as far as Jack could tell, not a soul breathing in the entire universe.

Then Maurie said, ‘I can still hear the sound of his skull breaking.’

‘
You
killed him?’ Doctor Robert was almost breathless with incredulity.

‘I killed him. And I’d do it again. A hundred times over.’

‘But you weren’t there when I got back. Only Simon. Crouching over the body.’

Maurie was having trouble speaking now. ‘Do we have any water? I need some water.’

Luke went through to the kitchen and found a cracked mug that he rinsed under the tap, filled and brought back for Maurie to drink from. Maurie tipped his head back as he drank, water cascading from both sides of his mouth to run from his chin on to his chest. His face was the colour and texture of wax. He breathed deeply for a good thirty seconds. Then summoned all his strength to speak again.

‘Rachel was hysterical. She knew I’d killed him. I dragged her back out into the corridor.’ He let his gaze wander around the table. ‘You guys were probably never aware of it, but there are service stairs at the back of the house that go up from the ground floor all the way to the attic. Rachel knew, though. There’s a door at the end of the corridor beyond the doctor’s study that leads out to them. She took me out there and said we could escape without being seen. But I told her this was my problem now, not hers, and I wasn’t leaving without Jeff. But that she should go. When she refused, I screamed at her and slapped her. Hard. And told her if she didn’t leave I wouldn’t keep her secret any more.’ His eyes blazed at us.

Dave said, ‘What secret, Maurie? That she was your sister?’

And a tiny, bitter smile twisted his lips. ‘No. Not that. And, after all, she went, didn’t she? So it was a secret I kept.’ He returned his focus to Dr Robert. ‘I came back into the hall just as you returned to the study and found Simon there. Obviously he’d gone in looking for you while we were out on the stairs. He found Andy McNeil lying dead on your study floor and he thought you’d done it. And when you came back to find Andy dead, you thought you’d done it, too.’

For the first time since his arrival, Dr Robert looked his age. Paler and frailer, the certainties of a lifetime suddenly stripped away, to confront him with a truth which had evaded him all these years.

Maurie said, ‘You really did think you’d killed him, didn’t you? So when Simon looked into your eyes, that’s what he saw there. Guilt, fear. The realization that your life as you knew it was about to change irrevocably because of one stupid, thoughtless act. And that foolish young man sacrificed himself for you. For the man he loved, the man he believed loved him, too.’

Maurie was transported back through fifty years, the little life left in him burning fiercely in his eyes.

‘He didn’t know that his lover was a serial molester of young boys. Or maybe he suspected it, who knows? Who can even begin to guess what was in his mind? But I saw you flinch when he lifted that paperweight, as if you thought he might hit you with it. And I was just as confused as you when he put it down again, standing it upright on the floor next to the body, covered in his fingerprints and began smearing his face and hands with blood. And it dawned on me that he was taking the blame. Taking the fall for you. The stupid man almost knocked me over when he ran out of your study.’

Dr Robert pulled up a chair and sat down heavily, staring at his hands laid flat on the table in front of him. ‘I always thought it was me. My whole life. That I’d killed that man. And it took me all that time to figure out why Simon did what he did.’

‘Because he loved you,’ Luke said.

‘And you killed him for it.’ Maurie fixed the doctor with a look so filled with hate that Jack recoiled from it, as if it were something physical. ‘Half a century later, you killed the man who sacrificed his life for yours.’

Dr Robert looked up, eyes on fire. ‘No! Sy was . . .’ he searched for the word, ‘. . . he was an egomaniac. Arrogant. Disruptive on set. He’d been fired from the film he’d been working on that morning. They’d just had enough of him. And his agent had dumped him. So he was in a pretty volatile state of mind. You see, Sy wasn’t an actor, he was a
celebrity
. All he was interested in was fame. And what he did that night, taking the blame, it didn’t just make him famous. It made him . . . a legend. The man who simply disappeared off the face of the earth.’

He looked round their faces, as if looking for their sympathy.

‘You think it was love? Really? So how is it he comes back fifty years later threatening to expose me if I don’t stump up? If I don’t get him a little apartment somewhere in London with a monthly stipend, so he can live out the rest of his days in anonymous safety, financially secure.’

‘Why didn’t you just do that?’

‘How could I trust him? How? I mean, who knows how he survived all these years, or where? Or what bitter jealousy it was that brought him back. Seeing me reach the pinnacle of my life and career. Honoured by my country. Arise, Sir Cliff. Who the hell knows? But I wasn’t about to risk it. To let him spoil it all now. Even if no one believed him, the publicity would have tarnished me. I couldn’t allow that.’

He stood up again, suddenly agitated.

‘And anyway, the man was already dead. That’s what everyone thought. No one to miss him, or regret his passing.’

He paused, gazing beyond them all into some personal hell all of his own.

‘I was sure I had removed all possibility of identification when I cut away his tattoo.’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘But I was wrong. Wrong!’

And he thumped his fist on the table. The noise of it reverberated around the room and out into the hall. The blood had flowed back into his face now, coloured red by a cocktail of mixed emotions.

‘I suppose you’re going to go to the police.’

Maurie shook his head. ‘No.’

Dr Robert’s relief was tangible, but it vanished in a moment as Maurie drew a pistol from an inside pocket. Bizarrely, to Jack, it looked like a toy gun he’d had as a kid. But he was under no illusions about it being a toy. It shook so much in Maurie’s hand that he had to steady it with his other, both arms extended in front of him, the gun pointing across the table at Dr Robert.

His three friends were on their feet in a moment, chairs toppling backwards to raise dust in the candlelight.

‘For Christ’s sake, Maurie!’ Dave’s voice was elevated by alarm.

Maurie’s smile was grotesque. ‘Amazing the acquaintances you make during eighteen months behind bars. And the things they can get you when you really need them.’