The Night Book (25 page)

‘No! That’s the whole point, Jess – she’s
not.
She’s wonderful. Well, I thought she was. She’s—’

‘How would you know?’ Jess interrupted. ‘You haven’t been together long. You can’t possibly know what she’s really like, Seb. I’ve been married thirty
years and Sally and I are still finding things out about each other. Although I hope to Christ I never discover anything like this.’

Seb turned his head away, and Jess stirred his hot beer with one finger before continuing.

‘You want my advice? OK, here it is. Take this horrible thing straight to the police. They have to investigate what it might signify.’

Seb began to speak but the engineer waved him to be silent.

‘Look at it objectively, Seb. Put your reporter’s hat on. Here you have a woman whose husband’s drowned. Who was the only witness? Her. You yourself say there was something
off-base about her testimony at the inquest and the coroner picked up on it.’

Jess gestured at the papers scattered between them on the table. ‘Then all
this
stuff turns up. Sadistic death threats hidden away in the dark, like a guilty secret.’

Seb remained silent.

‘It may mean nothing, or it may mean something,’ the engineer went on. ‘Nothing, as in she just happens to be a harmless nutter with a deeply warped imagination. Or something,
as an indicator of foul play. It’s not for you to sit on this, Seb, it really isn’t. You have to come forward.’

Seb pushed his hair back with both hands.

‘But I
love
her, Jess. At least, I thought I did. I can’t . . . I can’t go behind her back. I—’

‘You already have done. You’ve shown it to me.’

Seb rubbed his face repeatedly with both hands, and when he spoke again his voice was muffled.

‘Maybe the bloke just drowned, Jess.’

‘Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. Not your call.’

Seb groaned. ‘Jesus, I want all this to go away. I can’t bring myself to go to the police and I can’t talk to Meriel about it. I wouldn’t know where to begin, and anyway
I’d probably want to believe anything she told me. I mean . . .’ his voice took on an almost pleading quality ‘. . . she must have
some
explanation for this,
mustn’t she?’

Jess gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘You might not want to hear it.’

He stroked his chin, thinking.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘So you won’t go to the police, and you say you can’t talk to Meriel.

‘So, do neither. Baby steps. Go and see the coroner, like you first planned to. Ask him if you can talk off the record. He’s not a policeman; I don’t think he has any powers of
arrest, although you’d know more about that than me. He’s more a kind of civil servant, isn’t he? Anyway, it’d be a sort of halfway house for you, wouldn’t it? Buy you
some time.’

‘Would it? What if he tells me I have to take this to the police? Threatens to turn me in for withholding evidence if I don’t?’

Jess gazed levelly at him. ‘You’re nobody’s fool, Seb. I think that’s secretly what you want, isn’t it? For someone to tell you what to do. That’s really why
you’ve come to me, isn’t it?’

Seb didn’t reply.

‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ the engineer continued, speaking more slowly now. ‘I think you’re beginning to wonder if you’re actually in love with this
woman at all, or if it’s really an infatuation. Do you realise that twice in the last few minutes you’ve told me you
think
you love her?’

Seb chewed his lip for a few moments before replying.

‘All right. I honestly don’t know what I think any more. Reading that thing was the biggest shock of my life . . . and yes, I’ve probably been kidding myself about this whole
coroner business. Of course he’s going to ask the police to reopen the case. You’re right: I suppose I just want the responsibility for that taken out of my hands.’

Jess spread his arms. ‘And there’s no shame in that. Anyway, perhaps we’re both wrong: maybe this horrible story-book has no bearing at all on Cameron Bruton’s death,
legally speaking. Then I suppose you could just shove it all back in the cellar and try to work out what to do next. Although personally I’d run a million miles from someone who could even
dream up this kind of shit, let alone write it down.’

Seb’s voice was infinitely sad. ‘I won’t need to do that. When Meriel finds out what I’ve done she won’t want me anywhere near her. We’ll be
finished.’

Jess leaned forward and briefly squeezed the younger man’s shoulder.

‘Seb . . . I’ve become very fond of you, you know, since you joined the station. I talk to Sally about you a lot. I’ve tried to look out for you and I’m . . . well,
I’m touched you’ve turned to me for advice like this.

‘So let me speak to you now as your Dutch uncle.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Can you
imagine
what life would be like with this woman if you stayed with her? Married her?
Think of the years that lie ahead. No one knows how any marriage is going to turn out. Supposing yours started to go wrong. What if her horrible fantasies became directed towards you? What if you
stumbled across something like this, except it was YOU she was writing about? How easy would you sleep beside her in your bed then, eh?’

Seb stared at his friend. These were thoughts he realised he had been subconsciously struggling to push away.

‘Go on.’

Jess nodded. Good; he was getting through.

‘Apart from all that you’d never be easy in your mind about what happened to the first husband. Be honest with yourself. You’re a journalist. You’d always want to know
the truth of the matter. It would eat away at you. There. I’m done.’

The two men sat without speaking for some time. It was Jess who finally broke the silence.

‘So, Seb? What happens next?’

The reporter sighed.

‘First, I’m going to use the phone in the bar there to call in sick. I can’t possibly do the late shift with all this going on. Then I’ll ring the coroner. If he agrees
to see me privately at his house, I’ll drive straight over to Bassenthwaite, talk to him this afternoon. And then, whatever happens, I’ve come to another decision, Jess. I’m going
to go back to Cathedral Crag tonight. I’ve got to tell Meriel what I know, and what I’ve done.’

He paused. ‘And what I suspect, too.’

Jess raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea? Going back to that house on your own? I’m sorry, Seb, but the woman could be dangerous.’

Seb shook his head. ‘I owe her an explanation, Jess. I owe her at least that.’

Miriam Young put the phone down and stared out of the window at Bassenthwaite. Tim was down there now, making repairs to their little sailing boat.

She hated troubling him with work on a Sunday. But it had been such a
peculiar
phone call. She had recognised the young man’s voice, even before he identified himself as the radio
reporter who covered Tim’s last inquest. He had explained that the inquest was what he was calling about.

But this Seb Richmond had been circumspect. All he would say was that he had come across new information which may, or may not, be of interest to the coroner. Something to do with the widow in
the case, Meriel Kidd. At this stage it may not warrant a formal approach, but nevertheless a face-to-face conversation was probably in order. The sooner the better.

The reporter had been very polite, but there was something unmistakably insistent about his tone.

The coroner’s wife made up her mind.

‘Jasper!
Jasper!
Come on, boy – walkies!’

The three-year-old Labrador bounded into the room from his basket in the kitchen, his leather lead already expectantly gripped in his mouth.

‘Come along, Jasper. We’re going down to fetch daddy.’

‘I told him to ring back in half an hour,’ she told her husband breathlessly as they climbed back up the hill together from the little harbour where they moored
their boat. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted you unnecessarily, darling, but I just had this . . . well, this
feeling
that it was important.’

The coroner squeezed his wife’s hand. ‘Miriam, I keep telling you – I trust your instincts absolutely. Now, tell me again what this chap said.’

She considered, struggling at the same time to bring her breathing under control. She
must
go for more walks with the dog; she was becoming ridiculously unfit.

‘There isn’t a lot to tell. It wasn’t so much what he said . . . it was how he said it. You know, like that Australian chappie off the telly put it the other day:
“It’s not
what
you say – it’s how you come
over
.”’

‘You mean the columnist . . . Clive James.’

‘Yes, him, the
Observer
man. Well anyway, this chap – Richmond, he said his name was, Seb Richmond – he was strangely compelling, Tim. I told him you weren’t in
but he was very clever; he knew how to get my attention. He said one of the reasons he was calling you was that he felt
exactly
the same as you about that missing watch business. That made
me sit up.’

Her husband stared at her for a moment and then shrugged. ‘It could simply be that he noticed I wasn’t entirely happy with that part of her evidence.’

‘Yes, but then, as I said, he told me he’d found out something to do with the widow. Something that might shed a fresh light on things, but that he would only discuss it with you.
Off the record. He must be clever because it worked and here we are.’

‘Indeed.’ The house, a 1930s-built wood-framed building that vaguely resembled a ski-lodge, was coming into view. ‘Anything else?’

His wife thought for a moment before replying.

‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘there
is
one more thing. He sounded sad. Really quite sad. As if he didn’t actually want to be talking about it to anyone at all. And
yet he seemed almost desperate to come over and see you today, as soon as possible.’

‘Most intriguing.’ Dr Young felt his pulse quicken, and it was nothing to do with the fact they were now climbing the steep steps that led to the veranda at the front of the house,
with its stunning views to the dancing waters below and sunlit mountains beyond.

‘The game’s afoot, Watson,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘What’s that darling?’

‘Nothing. Come on.’

There was no direct road from Armathwaite to Bassenthwaite. Seb was forced to follow a series of winding country lanes that skirted beneath the mighty Skiddaw.

He almost turned back when he was halfway there. Was this all a huge over-reaction? So what if his girlfriend had a taste for extreme fantasy? She’d made no secret of her hatred for her
husband, had she? So what if she channelled it in the form of these admittedly gruesome scribblings? Why connect them to Cameron’s death? Or interpret her stumble in the witness box as
anything other than a completely understandable wobble under pressure? She’d explained it all to him, hadn’t she? The business of the watch and those last words?

Seb had a habit of talking to himself when he was wrestling with a dilemma, and he did so now, the wind whipping his words away as he sped, top down, along the dusty back roads.

‘That’s you thinking like a lover, Seb, or more like a fool in love. Finding excuses. Looking for ways out. Now do what Jess suggested. Try thinking like a journalist.’

Almost at once, all the elements he’d briefly succeeded in explaining away dropped back into their sinister, swirling pattern.

Cameron drowning
the very day
Meriel told him she was leaving him – and barely minutes after he’d threatened her with a very public, hostile divorce.

Meriel withholding any mention of that conversation when giving evidence to the coroner. And then lying to him about something else, something to do with the missing watch.

Meriel composing sick fantasies about murdering her husband.

The certainty of what the police response would be after reading those fantasies: an immediate search of boat and lake bed. What might they reveal?

Seb’s mouth set in a grim line. He accelerated, and drove on towards Bassenthwaite.

‘You must understand, Mr Richmond, that I can’t discuss my thinking about this or any other case with you, other than to repeat what I have already said on the
record.’

Dr Young had led Seb into his study as soon as he had arrived; after bringing them both a glass of sherry, Miriam Young had quietly withdrawn and left them alone.

‘I completely understand that, sir. I was hoping, though, that we might have what the Americans call a deniable conversation; what we here know as off the record.’

‘Only up to a
very
limited point, I’m afraid,’ the coroner replied crisply. ‘We are not in America.’ Then, after a moment, he relaxed a little.

‘Look, I don’t wish to be difficult. How about this? Why don’t I listen to what it is you have to say to me not so much as coroner, but more, shall we say, as concerned
citizen? Although I must warn you that if I hear anything I feel should be brought to the attention of the police, I shall do so without hesitation.’

Seb nodded again. ‘That’s fair enough.’

‘Well then, where do you want to begin, Mr Richmond . . . Seb?’

Seb sighed, searching for the right words.

Oh, for Christ’s sake, come on. Just tell it like it is.

He drained his sherry in a single gulp.

‘The truth, Dr Young, is that Meriel Kidd and I are involved. It’s no secret, all our colleagues know about it.’ He paused. ‘I sometimes stay with her at her house and
this morning, after she had gone out, there was a power cut. I had to go looking for the fuse box.’

He paused again.

This was it.

The point of no return.

‘Eventually I found it – the fuse box, I mean – in the cellar. And when I did . . . well, the thing is . . .’

He swallowed.

‘I found something else, too.’

Outwardly Timothy Young had remained impassive throughout Seb’s nervous, hesitant testimony.

But his mind was racing. This was dynamite.

Already he had mentally chalked up some crucial questions for the young man sitting opposite, but for now he kept his counsel, merely nodding from time to time in gentle encouragement as
Seb’s story gradually emerged.