The Heart Broke In (19 page)

It was nine o’clock. Alex tucked his right trouser leg into a steel clip, unlocked his bike and set off from Mile End against a stiff west wind, under a sky that promised rain and rumbled with jets.

He accelerated between the cherry trees and tight little terraced houses of Lichfield Road, stood up off the saddle, pistoned the pedals, shot round the back of a white van reversing and forced it to brake, barrelled over the Grove Road pedestrian crossing between lines of jammed-up traffic and through the gates into Mile End park, hissed past two schoolgirls in white headscarves close enough to make them yelp, hit the canal towpath, headed under the railway bridge as the fast train to Ipswich crossed, rang his bell, drove a woman pushing a baby buggy out of his way, ducked under Roman Road, past coots fighting in the water, over the hump of the towpath at the Hertford Canal junction, down the far side in high gear with a bang on the bump at the bottom, sliced between a man in a tracksuit and his pit bull terrier, under the concrete bridge of Old Ford Road and the stencilled HOW’S MY GRAFFITI? DIAL
0800-NOBODY-CARES,
up the ramp by the lock keeper’s cottage and round as the canal turned west, past the chestnut trees of Victoria Park and the
line of narrow boats at rest in their own smoke. He ducked under a branch two boat-dwellers carried from the park for fuel, fired his bike through the dim narrow space under Approach Road, came out from under Mare Street bridge’s pigeon-infested girders at twenty miles an hour, forced another cyclist to turn sharply into the thin strip of verge and flew under the Lea Valley railway.

Into the long open curve towards Broadway Market he lowered his head and sprinted past the frames of deflated gas holders on the far bank. He dived under the Goldsmiths Row bridge, charged on towards the lock, up the slope, round the wooden shaft of the lock gate with the roar of the weir in his ears and up onto the straight. The loose paving slabs of the towpath rocked under his wheels and he hurtled over three thick white lines and the painted word SLOW. The ringing of the bell filled the murk between the brick arch of the Queensbridge Road bridge and the green water. He passed the painted sign for Ron’s Eel and Shell Fish and went under the grey steel bowstring of the East London Line bridge. The towers of the City rose to the south. He put on speed to beat another cyclist to the barriers choking the lock ramp, wove through them, built up momentum and took the steep ramp to street level without changing gear. He pulled out in front of a Range Rover, rushed through the Danbury Street choker, raced across the roundabout, accelerated past the gardens to Goswell Road and jerked into the bus lane. The old clock on its column reported twenty past nine.

The lights were green at Angel and Alex sped across into Pentonville Road, racing and dodging buses, jumping lanes, knocking against the sides of cars with his handlebar ends. He crested the hill, saw the long slope down to King’s Cross ahead
of him, made a dash for the bus lane, lowered his head, added his pedalling to gravity and built up speed till the slipstream buffeted his face. Just short of the Thameslink station he was boxed in by buses and railings. He jumped off the bike, lifted it over the railings, threw it down with a crash on the far side, clambered over after it, got back on the saddle and sped along the pavement, half riding, half scootering, one foot on the pedals, one hopping off the ground.

Nine-thirty
, the clock on King’s Cross station said, and the clock on the great red spire of St Pancras far above agreed. Alex kicked on past the British Library. It began to rain. Sirens shrieked around him. He dived steeply into the tunnel at Warren Street Tube, toiled up the far side and with a whoosh smashed through the membrane dividing east from west London. He passed the first white crescents of the ultra-rich.
Nine-thirty-six
said the clock on the Landmark Hotel. He belted past the Western Eye Hospital, jumped the lights, veered off down the Harrow Road, rocketed between a column of taxis and the vaulting concrete of the Westway, took the bridge over the tracks and entered the flow of black cabs streaming into Paddington station. He cut in front of a middle-aged couple heading for the taxi queue and they braked their luggage trolley and a suitcase slid off and span like a curling stone towards Alex’s rear wheel and he dodged it and rode between the grey and white columns into the station, past the statue of Brunel, into the roar of a west country express heading out and the smell of diesel under the far-off roof arches. His tyres glided smoothly over the beige tiles, passengers leaped for safety, coffee spilled, cries rang to the girders and Alex rode past McDonald’s, WH Smith, Ladbrokes, the West Cornwall Pasty Co. and Costa Coffee, ting-tinging his bell,
round the corner, past the ticket barriers, a policeman with a raised hand and a shout that had to be obeyed, but Alex didn’t obey until he saw the yellow snout of the next Heathrow train, looked up at the clock on the far wall, stopped and got off his bike with sixteen minutes to spare.

Breathing heavily, flushed through with heat, his heart hammering, his legs tingling, he walked alongside the train, looking in through the windows and over his shoulder in case she was coming up behind him. He went the length of the train without seeing her, thinking how jealous he’d been the night before, watching her dance with other men, and how he’d felt, when she hesitated on the steps of Harry’s house before leaving, that she wanted him to give her a reason not to go. He turned round and at the far end of the train saw someone who could have been Bec hurrying to get on board. He ran back and saw her through the glass, sitting at a window seat. She saw him, gave a puzzled smile and got up. Whistles sounded and by the time Alex and Bec reached the train door it was locked and couldn’t be opened.

‘I left Maria!’ shouted Alex through the glass. Bec shook her head and pointed to her ears. She took out her phone, keyed in numbers and held the screen up to the glass. Alex dialled the number and Bec answered.

‘I left Maria,’ said Alex.

‘Not for me, I hope,’ said Bec.

‘Only for you.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that. I never promised you anything if you did. I’m not a homebreaker.’

‘It was already broken.’ He put his palm against the glass.

Bec shook her head. ‘I’ll write to you,’ she said. The train began to move and Alex got back on his bike and cycled
alongside it, still holding the phone to his head and trying to speak to her.

‘Stop!’ said Bec into the phone. The train pulled out of the station and she lost sight of him.

Alex had been silenced. Bec wondered if he’d flown off the end of the platform chasing her train. How lost he’d looked with his hand against the glass. She would have opened the doors to let him in if she could. She waited for him to call again; he didn’t.

There were no texts or calls waiting for her when she landed and she sent him a message saying:
I WILL write to you
. A moment later he messaged back
What will you write?

In the days after Val threatened him Ritchie would wake up moaning in the night and reach for Karin, or she would shake him out of his sleep. He found the sound of his own moan in his ears, half actual, half dreamed, worse than the nightmare that caused it. Karin made him tell her what he had dreamed. When he could remember, he gave her a toned-down version of the horrors, missing out Dan’s, Ruby’s and her dismembered corpses stacked neatly on the corner of a street next to the bins, compressed and bound with string like old newspapers. Or menace came unattached to specifics and he felt a merciless force set against him, as omnipotent as it was without form.

Worst were the nights when he dreamed sweetly or not at all, woke up purged of memories and felt the terror of exposure materialise in him; it would linger, stuck in his gullet like a box with sharp corners.

Gradually the acid of time softened the corners. As the months went by after meeting Val, the intensity of the impression faded, even though that same passage of time must, it seemed, bring the moment when he would be exposed as a cheat and a sex criminal closer; when his family, his home and his work would be taken away.

Ritchie drank. A bottle of strong red wine and three fingers of whisky was standard fare for an evening. He mixed it with ideas of how Val might die. In the first weeks after the meeting with the editor he took shy thought-steps towards murder. He wished Val did not exist; he hated Val; Val didn’t deserve life; how much better if he died! But how to kill him in such a way that Ritchie could be absolutely certain he would never be found out? It was impossible. Val was full of blood, and overcrowded England was full of witnesses. What if he could discover when Val went on holiday abroad, to some place where killers could be hired cheaply and anonymously? The Caribbean, perhaps. Without knowing whether Val ever went to the Caribbean, Ritchie tapped the words
Barbados hitman
into Google and pressed the return key. In the instant it took the search engine to return the results he saw he’d incriminated himself. The project of murdering another man, even one as loathsome as Val Oatman, was too complex and time-consuming. It was too much like the unattached dread of his more diffuse nightmares.

From then on he restricted himself to fantasising about Val having a heart attack, or a car accident, or being on a plane that crashed. It was unlikely, but it happened. Why should it not happen to Val? One night before going to bed Ritchie climbed the stairs to his study and instead of turning on the lights lit a candle. He kneeled on the floor in the glow of the flame, clasped his hands together, turned his face upwards and whispered: Our Father
Who art in Heaven
Hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come
Thy Will be done
In Earth, as it is in Heaven
Deliver us from Evil
Deliver us from Val
For Thine is the Kingdom
The Power and the Glory
For ever and ever
Amen.