This Way Out (23 page)

He hated the thought of doing so, of course: what decent man wouldn't? And yet, as Packer had reminded him before they parted, Sidney was so handicapped as a result of his stroke that his life had become a burden to him. Remembering the frustration in the old man's eloquent single eye, Derek conceded privately that to give him a massive overdose of insulin might well be an act of mercy.

But he wanted no part of it. True, the role that Packer had allotted him was simple, even inoffensive; but so had been his part in Enid's death, and look what had resulted! He and Christine had already suffered enough from that, and all he wanted now was to be left in peace to sort out his problems with her and restore their former happiness.

Time, though, was not on their side. The possibility that her cancer might recur was Derek's basic fear, more potent than Packer's threat. If Christine were to fall ill, she would need him. He had to stay alive for her sake; and if that meant doing as Packer had said, then he would do it.

Still sitting where Packer had left him, in his car in the Cambridge Post House car-park, Derek looked at his watch. Now that he had made up his mind to do the job, he longed to get the old man out of the way as soon as possible. But Sunday was the appointed day – and here it was only eleven-twenty on Tuesday morning! How was he going to get through such an eternity of time here in Cambridge on his own, without the support of the woman he loved?

There was no way. It couldn't be done. Derek took another decision, started the engine, and turned his car in the direction of home.

Home was where Christine was. He drove along the village street with hardly a glance at the Brickyard, and stopped outside the thatched house on Church Hill. Sylvia Collins, who was taking advantage of a fine April day to repaint her yellow back door with more will than skill, greeted him cheerfully and told him that his wife had just gone out for a walk.

Knowing that Christine was unlikely to have gone through the village, where she would have had to encounter people she knew, Derek set out along the path that ran below the churchyard wall. Although it was no more than two days since he had last walked there with the family, it seemed more like weeks; certainly the vegetation had shot up to knee height, and the lime trees overhanging the wall were in much fuller leaf. There was no sign of Christine there, or on the field path, or in the spinney behind the Five Bells, or on the Doddenham road, but as he returned, walking along the top of the churchyard bank for a better view, he saw from the corner of his eye a movement in the church porch. Christine was there, apparently wandering restlessly from one side to the other.

Derek scrambled over the low wall and hurried towards her, up the gravelled path between the leaning gravestones and the cypresses. It was unfamiliar territory. In all the years they had lived in Wyveling he had been to the flint-built medieval church only once, for the Hardings'daughter's wedding. Christine had been an occasional attender, usually at the major festivals of the Christian year; but religion was one of the things they had never discussed.

As she saw him approach she composed herself and stood still. ‘The door's locked,' she greeted him distantly, as though he were a passing stranger who had come to look at the monuments in the church.

Derek entered the porch and tried to turn the iron handle. The massive silver-grey oak door remained firmly closed.

‘Ah, there's a notice here that says who holds the key. I'll go and get it for you,' he said.

‘Don't bother.'

Christine sat down on the stone bench inside the porch, and stared straight ahead. Her features seemed still numbed by shock; only her hands were mobile, plucking restlessly at the fabric of her skirt.

Derek sat beside her, at a respectful distance but angled so that he could look at her. ‘How are you, my love?'

‘Physically? All right, thank you.'

They were silent for a few moments. Despite the warmth of the spring day, the interior of the porch was as cold as a stone tomb. Shivering a little, dispirited by Christine's continuing indifference, Derek looked round him at the roof bosses mutilated by ancient vandalism, the damp-stained walls, the faded notices, the worn flagstones, the bird-droppings.

‘Let's go somewhere else,' he urged.

‘You go if you want to. I didn't ask you to come here.'

‘I had to see you. I want to be with you, Chrissie. I can't be happy without you.'

Her shoulders sagged. ‘How can you talk of happiness, after what's happened to my mother?'

‘Oh my love –'

He stretched his hand towards her. It happened to be his damaged hand, the bandages now disarranged and grimy with use, and the thought crossed his mind that perhaps it was no bad thing to remind her that he had been suffering too. ‘I know it's been a terrible shock for you, but the worst is over. We're still us, and now we've got our future to think of.'

Christine shook her head, and said nothing more. She hadn't even noticed his outstretched hand, let alone offered to rebandage it for him. ‘Which day am I due to have my stitches out?' he asked presently in a humble voice.

‘On Friday. The casualty doctor at the hospital gave me a letter for you to give to the doctor when you go. It's with my things at Sylvia's. I'll drop it in at the health centre for you.'

Derek hoped that this might be an opportunity to prolong their encounter in pleasanter surroundings. ‘I'll come back with you to the house for it,' he offered.

‘There's no need. I have to go to the health centre anyway, to pick up my prescription before I leave for Derbyshire.'

‘You're still set on going there?'

‘Yes. I should be fit to drive by the weekend.'

‘Oh, Chrissie … Why can't we go somewhere together?'

She sighed. ‘We've been through all that, Derek.'

‘Well – if you
must
go away on your own, at least let me drive you there.'

‘I'll be perfectly all right, thank you.' She stood up, and for the first time took a look at him. ‘Anyway, your hand must make driving painful.'

‘It does,' he said, holding it out conspicuously as he got to his feet. ‘But I wouldn't mind, if only we were together. I love you, you know that.'

She turned and began to walk away down the churchyard path. He strode after her, and caught at her good arm with his good hand. ‘Do you hear me, Christine?
I love you
.'

She pulled away from his grasp and went on walking.

‘Sam is still missing,' she said over her shoulder. ‘Don't talk to me about love, Derek, until you're prepared to tell me the truth about why you dragged him out to the forest on Saturday afternoon.'

‘The dog has nothing to do with this,' he protested, following her out of the churchyard and along Church Hill. ‘What I'm concerned about is
us
.'

‘I'm concerned about Sam,' she said, ‘because he can't look after himself. You can, and so can I.'

She opened the front gate of Mrs Collins's garden, walked through, and shut it against him without another glance.

Right, then.
Right
. Derek drained his second glass of whisky. If Christine was more concerned for the wretched dog than she was for him, let her go to Derbyshire on her own. Let her do what she liked. But when she wanted to come back to him, she would have to make the first move, because he was damned if he would plead with her ever again.

It had been a bad afternoon. He had accelerated out of Wyveling in a fury, and spent the next few hours burning up petrol in an attempt to put as great a distance as possible between himself and his wife. At one point, seeing a signpost to Parkeston Quay, he had contemplated driving aboard a ferry bound for Holland. Losing himself on the Continent for a few weeks would not only teach Christine to appreciate him, but would get that bastard Packer off his back as well.

Then he remembered that he hadn't got his passport with him.

Abandoning the idea, he drove back to Cambridge, parked his car at his hotel, and went out for a drink. He needed someone congenial to drink with, though; after the second whisky, it became imperative to find some friends to tell his domestic troubles to. And so he consulted his pocket diary for the phone numbers of two hockey-playing acquaintances who lived in Cambridge, good old Dave and good old Andy, and invited them to join him.

Derek's subsequent recollection of the evening was hazy. The three of them had been in and out of several pubs, back-slapping and drinking and reminiscing. Then his friends had enquired about his bandaged hand, and that had reminded him of what he wanted to tell them: his wife, he heard himself say with a choke of grief, had unaccountably walked out on him.

Good old Dave and good old Andy, as solid a defensive pair as any forward could want behind him, both on and off the pitch, had given him exactly the support he needed. They'd refilled his glass, put fraternal arms across his shoulders, and assured him that if his wife had been misguided enough to leave a first-class husband like him, he was better off without her. Wives were ungrateful, irrational, and nothing but trouble, they said. Think yourself lucky, old mate! Now you're a free man you can spend every evening like this, having a good time with mates who're only too glad of your company.

For as long as it took them to drain their glasses, Derek basked in the glow of alcohol and true friendship. But then good old Dave and good old Andy looked at their watches, said Help, was that the time? and hurried home to their wives and families, leaving him more alone than ever.

He felt emotionally exhausted. Wanting to drown himself in sleep he bought a half bottle of Bell's, for the second evening in succession, to take back to the hotel. But he needn't have bothered. Tanked up already, he passed out on his bed partially clothed before he'd even got the bottle open.

Inevitably, his sleep was bedevilled by bad dreams. When he woke, sweating cold and crying out with anguish, it was because this time the face under his strangling hands was not Enid's, but Christine's.

And there was still the other prospective horror that he had to attend to: getting rid of Packer's poor old father-in-law.

Next morning, as he sat sweating hot in the sauna at the health club, mentally going through Packer's instructions again and again to be sure of getting them right, Derek knew that he couldn't just hang about waiting for Sunday to come.

Today was Wednesday, the day Packer had said he would be driving up to Scotland. Since there would be no fear of meeting him on the old man's property, Derek decided that he might as well go there now, today, to look the place over. It would give him an occupation, as well as easing the way for what he had to do on Sunday.

He showered, dressed, went into Cambridge to buy an Ordnance Survey map from Heffers, and took off for Newmarket. According to the map, the house Packer had pointed out was about four miles south-west of the town, on a minor road that went nowhere in particular.

It wasn't until Derek was within half a mile of the place, on a tree-lined road that led straight to Winter Paddocks, that it occurred to him that he was doing a very risky thing. All he had thought of was the necessity of avoiding Packer; the house was so isolated that he hadn't anticipated being seen by anyone else. Now, with stomach-dipping apprehension, he realized that precisely because the place was isolated, anyone who saw him was likely to notice him.

If he parked his car anywhere near the house while he sneaked round the grounds – as Packer had parked his car by the bridge at Wyveling – he would probably be spotted by a local passer-by who would report the fact to the police as soon as the murder enquiry started. And whereas Packer couldn't be traced through the car he had been driving, Derek could certainly be traced through his.

Alarmed, he decided to turn at the next convenient field entrance and belt back the way he had come. But then he took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. There were no other vehicles on the road at the moment, and the countryside was deserted. What possible risk would be involved in driving slowly past the house and making a mental note of the extent of its grounds, and the whereabouts of the field that the Pony Club would be using as a car-park on Sunday?

He eased his foot off the accelerator. On his right, a tall brick wall joined the road at a right angle and continued for about two hundred yards, its straightness broken by an inward curve towards a pair of ornamental iron gates. The gates were closed. The road was still empty. Derek slowed to a crawl, and prepared to take a good look.

A wide gravelled driveway led to a substantial, square, creeper-covered house set among lawns and flowering shrubs and mature trees. On one side of the drive was a great copper beech, its new leaves a translucent pink in the sunlight. The property was much more attractive than its name suggested, and far more imposing than Derek had imagined. Must be worth a fortune.

As he stared, impressed, something moved. The trunk of the copper beech had temporarily obscured his view, and now he saw with alarm that there were people in the gardens less than fifty feet away. A wheelchair with a huddled occupant was coming into sight: the old man in person, being pushed by his daughter, the generously built young woman who was wasted on that bastard Packer. She had evidently heard the car's engine slow, and she was looking questioningly in Derek's direction.

Panicking, he put his foot down and roared away. Fool! What a fool he'd been to take that risk!

How much had she seen? Had she hurried to the gate, identified the make of the car, noticed the colour, taken the number? If she had, then she would be sure to put the police on to him as soon as her father died. God, how could he have been so stupid as to give himself away like that!

He was almost back into Newmarket before he stopped jittering. As his heartbeat steadied, he forced himself to think logically about what had happened. And, logically, he had to admit that it was most unlikely that Belinda Packer would have done any of the things his imagination had suggested.