That Summer He Died (36 page)

‘I thought I was, too.’

‘So what’s happened?’ David was at his side now, confusion distorting his face. ‘Everything seemed fine last night.’ He sat down on the window seat. ‘You’ve got to tell me. Tell me what’s going on. If you can’t tell her why, then at least tell me.’

James rubbed his face with his hands like he was washing it; like he was washing it all away. But when he lowered them, David was still here, still waiting for an explanation. As with Lucy, though, James had none he could offer.

‘It’s just over, that’s all. You know how it is. Sometimes there isn’t an explanation. Sometimes you just know things aren’t right and they’re going to stay that way. Sometimes it happens.’

‘That’s not good enough.’ David lit a cigarette. His hand was shaking. This was bad. Becky had taken it the same way. He could understand why. The two of them in love, down here for a romantic break – and here James was, screwing it all up, shitting on someone, same as he’d been shitting on people for years. And David had moved on now. He’d got Becky. He’d thought James had had Lucy. He’d thought they’d move on, the four of them, together. ‘I know you, James. Don’t fucking forget that. And I know Lucy makes you happy.’

‘Made,’ James said. ‘Lucy made me happy. Not any more.’

‘She loves you. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I mean
loves
you, James. For real.’

‘I know.’

‘And you don’t care,’ David said flatly. ‘Look at you. You couldn’t give a toss.’

‘Don’t tell me what I feel.’ The pain of the previous night flashed back. It had gone on for hours. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. Hurting people. He wasn’t good at it. All he ended up doing was hurting himself. Even so, Lucy hadn’t deserved that. She’d deserved better. Better than him. Better than being with someone who’d wanted to be with someone else. And that’s why he’d had no choice but to finish it, because he’d known last night, as he still knew now, that to continue would have been so much worse.

David wasn’t being fobbed off. ‘Well, something’s changed. What is it? Who is it?’ His eyes flared and he asked acidly, ‘You meet someone in LA? That it? You meet some chick and have a two-week fling and reckon that’s worth chucking over what you’ve got going with Lucy?’

‘No.’ James felt sick. No, it wasn’t even a two-week fling that had driven him to this. Just a kiss. A kiss and a memory from childhood. Nothing more.

David grimaced, muttering begrudgingly, ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose.’

‘Thanks for taking her back,’ James said. ‘I know it’s cocked things up for you and Becky, having to go home, but thanks. . .’

David doused his cigarette in the ashtray, stood up and shook James’s hand. ‘Call me when you get back,’ he said, walking to the door. ‘Call me when you feel ready to tell me what the hell’s going on.’

James turned away and listened to the bedroom door close behind David. He stayed there, staring out of the window, as his friend got into the car without looking up.

So this was it. This was what it felt like to make a real choice. Now. He could run after them now. He could open the window and shout out and what he’d had with Lucy might be his again. But his hands stayed by his sides. As he watched the car pull away from the pavement and disappear up the street all he felt was relief. For the first time in his life, he’d shown some courage. He’d made a decision. He’d taken a risk.

He thought back to what Suzie had said during their brief encounter in the graveyard yesterday. About the fact that nothing might happen. About hardly even knowing each other any more. He’d see her later today. He just prayed that the moment he did, he’d know that he’d been right and she’d been wrong.

But the time for that wasn’t here yet. Still things left to do. He walked away from the window, over to his desk, and stared down at his computer. Lucy was gone from his life. And he was determined that soon all the bad baggage from that summer would be gone as well. It had to be so if things were going to work out with Suzie. A clean slate. Something on which they could both draw. Something on which they could carve out a life together.

If that was what she wanted, too.

He took his jacket, checked his car keys were in his pocket, and left the room. As he drove from Grancombe to Alan’s house, Alex wormed his way back into James’s mind. Loathing – that was all James felt for him. He wondered if it was clouding his judgement, convincing him that Alex had been responsible for Dan’s death as well as Trader’s.

But it was a loathing he couldn’t shake. It had been with him too long. It had thrown up too many issues of guilt. Like Oldfield. What, he’d wondered down the years, if Oldfield had been guilty of killing Jack Dawes? What if the only reason the police had stopped looking for more evidence to convict him was because of Trader’s death? Because it looked like the same killer had truck again while Arnie was locked up inside?

In sporadic awakenings soaked in cold sweat down the years, James had continued to brood over whether he’d been responsible for letting a murderer stay free, and perhaps kill again.

For years after he’d left the town, he’d resisted Googling the name Oldfield. He hadn’t wanted to know for sure whether Arnie was still out there, whether he might still be hurting people, whether others in Grancombe had been attacked or had disappeared.

But one day James had cracked and gone in trace of Oldfield. He’d died in a fire, cremated in his own house, far away from Grancombe in some seaside town in Norfolk where no one would have known his name. He’d moved there after Murphy had released him due to lack of evidence. A faulty gas pipe had been to blame for his death apparently. If it hadn’t been for the keen memory of the local journalist who’d penned the piece, Oldfield’s connection with Grancombe would have slipped the attention of the world.

News of Oldfield’s death had brought James some relief. If he had been the killer, then at least he could kill no more. As with what had happened to Kenneth Trader that night on the beach, James had tried to forget it. But he’d failed, and now he realised that there was to be no forgetting for him. What had happened to Dan would stay with him, just the same as it would stay with Suzie. And if he and Suzie did somehow make it together, this was a grief they would for ever share.

But if he could work out what had happened to Dan. . . if he could prove what he was beginning to suspect. . . what then? By uncovering the past, might he not also be able to expunge that grief for her?

He thought it through. First Dan. . . Who could have killed him? Of the suspects – or, rather, the lack of them – Alex had to be the prime one. He and Dan had fallen out. Meaning there was motive. And of the other suspects for role of killer, Will Tawnside and Arnie Oldfield couldn’t have done it because both of them were already dead.

OK, but what about Dawes? Who’d killed him? Not Alex, because he’d been out of the country at the time. So how about Tawnside? Will Tawnside had motive, that was for sure. Dawes had been sleeping with his wife. And then there was Arnie Oldfield too. He’d also had motive: money. Killing Dawes would have allowed him to try and claim he’d been given that painting he’d found or stolen, and he could then sell it with impunity.

But these weren’t the motives of a serial killer, only of one-offs. And, following that logic, James’s theory of there being two killers made even more sense. What if Tawnside or Oldfield – or some unknown third party – had killed Dawes? And then Alex had killed Trader on the beach and had copy-catted the recent murder in order to conceal his own involvement. And – hey, presto! – a serial killer had been born.

Meaning Alex could then, years later, have used the same ruse to distance himself from any involvement in Dan’s murder. By cutting off the victim’s hands – and thereby once more convincing everyone that the Grancombe serial killer had returned – he could shift any suspicion well away from himself, since he’d not been in Grancombe the first time the killer had struck.

But this was still just a theory. James couldn’t prove any of it. And, even he could, there was nowhere to take it. Not without implicating himself in Kenneth Trader’s death. Not without being found guilty too.

He checked the yard in front of the barn when he reached the top of Alan’s drive: nothing. He parked and got out. A shining new chain and padlock held the barn door secure. So the crates with whatever they contained were still in there. Alex was still governing his life.

Nothing you can do about it, James told himself. So concentrate on the matter at hand. Into the house. Into the basement. Clear out whatever’s in there, just like you’ve done with the rest of Alan’s possessions. Then Alex can use this place for what he wants. You can wash your hands of it. And then you’re free. To go and find Suzie. To convince her to leave this place and Alex far behind. To get on with the rest of your life.

The door to the shed at the back of the house splintered the first time James put the boot in, its rusted lock snapping its screws and falling into the deep, wet grass. He fumbled around in the gloom inside, searching through the rusted garden tools. When he stepped back out into the drizzle, he held a crowbar gripped tightly in his hands

Inside, getting the basement door open was tougher than he’d expected. For a start, it wasn’t simply a matter of wedging the crowbar into the doorframe next to the lock and hefting the metal free, like in some TV crook drama. Ten minutes of brute strength and strained grunting got him nowhere. A closer inspection of the doorframe where the wood had splintered showed why: the inside frame was metal.

A quick visit to the garden shed and back, and he was hammering at the end of the crowbar with a mallet, driving it in at an acute angle to the lock itself. Then – crack – the end of the crowbar sheared through the bolt.

Wiping the slime of sweat from his brow, he tried the handle: it turned three-quarters round, rattling, the lock mechanism mangled. One last effort. He twisted it violently, slamming his shoulder up against the door. The metal shrieked and he stepped back and threw himself into the side of the door again.

This time, it went. Or rather, he did. Through the open door and down, leading with the side of his face and his forearm, bouncing down a flight of slippery stone steps until he came to a halt, his body crooked, wedged against the cellar’s dusty brickwork.

Looking back up the stairs, through a swarm of dust, to the light in the corridor at the top was like staring out of a well. With the darkness wrapped round him, claustrophobia sent his muscles tightening. The air here felt cold and wet. His breathing was painful and heavy, but he refused to panic or scramble wildly away from the site of his fall. He had no way of knowing what other hazards might be near.

Instead, he gently shifted his limbs and rolled his neck, waiting for the lance of pain that would signal a broken bone. None came and, aside from an ache in his ribcage, he decided that whatever damage had occurred was limited to bruising. He got to his feet and brushed the dust from his clothes.

He looked around: the light wore thin after a couple of feet to his left, then all was darkness, as thick and uninviting as brackish water. He climbed back up the stairs and found a light switch by what was left of the door. Looking down, he flicked the switch and saw dim light spread across the cobbled floor beneath. It flickered like candlelight. It buzzed. He picked up the crowbar and walked back down.

Rounding the corner where he’d fallen, he ground to a halt. There was a closed door set into the brickwork dead ahead, and for a moment depression swamped him. He thought he was going to have to use the crowbar yet again. It wasn’t necessary, though. The door, hung on heavy hinges, was not locked and swung slowly open, allowing him through to another room, again lit by a single flickering bulb.

James halted. This room seemed vast, maybe a quarter the size of a tennis court. But that wasn’t what caused his surprise. It was what stood at the other end of it, against the wall.

There, beneath a layer of cobwebs, stood a desk. On it were papers, stacked high. It made no sense, Alan working down here, away from the light, locking himself up like a prisoner. But it would explain the blank drive of the computer and the absence of any work from the papers upstairs.

Alan working down here, night after night, like some vampire. Whatever he’d been working on all those years must still be here. And maybe, too, there’d be an explanation for why he had finally chosen to take his own life.

James started forward. As he drew close to the desk, his eyes grew accustomed to the strobe effect of the fizzing bare light bulb. Other details stood out – faded newspaper clippings stuck to the brickwork, an unfinished bottle of whisky, a stained crystal tumbler, a pair of old gardening gloves pegged to a clothes line on the wall, a clutter of dictionaries and reference books amongst the handwritten papers, empty food tins on the floor. There were boxes beneath the desk, crammed full of more papers.

James pulled the wooden chair back to the desk and sat down, brushing aside the dust and cobwebs. He picked up a piece of paper at random. Words jumped out at him as the light flickered. They made no sense. Gibberish. Streams of profanities, a madman’s musings. He tried another piece of paper, and another. But they were all the same. Hate letters. Written to whom? To God? To the wrathful deity who’d destroyed Alan’s life by taking from him the woman he’d loved?

James rubbed his eyes, the light and dust and crazy handwriting making them sting. He looked around. Something stood propped against the wall to his right, covered by a sheet, grey and filthy with dust and damp.

He reached down, pulled the cloth off. Underneath was a painting. He got to his knees and peered closer. But it was no good. The air down here had done for it. Just a brown surface, like an out-of-focus photograph, and what looked to be a human figure. He pulled the frame forward, placed it on the floor. Behind stood another, this time wrapped tight in a blanket, and behind that another. He gently tugged the first free, undid it.

This was better. He could make out the body of a woman, the pose erotic, her legs spread wide, her head tossed back. There was something familiar about her, something he––