‘I want to know where we stand, Graham.’
He felt a flash of anger. Bloody women. Even someone like Stella, with her vaunted independence, Stella, the quick office fuck, wanted to immobilise him with commitment and responsibility.
‘We stand apart,’ he hissed.
She flinched as if he had hit her. Then, clenching back the tears, she announced quietly, ‘Graham, you’ll regret it. Just wait. Next time you want something from me, you’re going to be disappointed.’
‘I cannot envisage,’ he replied, equally quietly, ‘any occasion when I would ever want anything from you.’
That released the tears. ‘You won’t get away from me. I’ll wait here for you, Graham. I’ll get you!’
He walked away as she started to speak, and, though her voice came after him, it did not get any closer. He kept on walking and did not look back until he was at the end of Boileau Avenue. The Mini had not moved and he could see the hunched figure inside it.
By the time he reached Castelnau and the approach to Hammersmith Bridge, the glow of freedom had returned. With it came hunger. The morning’s first interruption had kept him from his breakfast. He looked at his watch. One o’clock.
He went into a Mini-Market where he bought a couple of pork pies, an orange and two cans of beer. The Pakistani girl on the check-out did not look up as he handed over his money.
As he walked towards the bridge, there was a bubbling excitement inside his head. There was nothing to restrain him. Lilian. Stella. They were as irrelevant to his life as his dead wife and his discarded children. No one was relevant but Graham Marshall.
Near the bridge he suddenly crossed the road and walked down to the tow-path. It was a little delaying tactic, a teasing foreplay before he revisited the scene of his triumph.
He walked along the towpath in front of St Paul’s School Playing Fields and sat down on a bench to eat his picnic. The sun had summer force and glinted on the river before him. Must sort out a holiday, he thought, as he opened the second can of beer. Somewhere nice, abroad, luxurious.
He dawdled some of the way along the footpath towards Barnes Railway Bridge, prolonging the foreplay, but then gave in indulgently and returned to the scene of the old man’s death. He lingered sentimentally by the parapet, even caressed the rail over which his first victim had plunged, already dead. He no longer feared drawing attention to himself. Graham Marshall was invisible, secure in his impenetrable aura of success.
He used his afternoon’s freedom to go to the cinema in Hammersmith. The film was Monty Python’s Life of Brian. The bits he saw he enjoyed, but the combination of his exhausted state and the lunchtime beer meant that he slept through most of it. He emerged round half-past five, feeling rested, and thought about going home.
But why should he? He had no reason to return to Boileau Avenue. There was nothing he wanted there — or, if Lilian or Stella were still around, there were things he positively didn’t want there.
And he was, after all, meant to be pampering himself. For the first time in nearly fifteen years he was free to act on impulse.
An impulse decided him where he wanted to go.
He managed to get to a couple of King Street shops before they closed and bought a shirt, underwear, pyjamas and shaving tackle, together with a neat overnight case to put them in. Then, in spite of the afternoon traffic, with the luck that he knew now would never desert him, he hailed a cab and told the driver to take him to Paddington Station.
He caught the next train to Oxford, and took a taxi to the Randolph Hotel. Yes, they did have a single room for two nights. Graham Marshall booked in.
He ate well, pampering himself. The credit cards could cope. Soon, after all, he would have the Head of Personnel’s salary to fund him.
On the Saturday evening, as he drank through a second bottle of Chambolle Musigny, he thought about the sequence of events which had brought him to this point.
He was now where he should be. It was amusing to speculate what might have happened had he been appointed Head of Department when he first applied.
Presumably he would not have killed the old man. If they had met, Graham would not have felt the same repressed violence, and another derelict would have survived a few more years.
And if he had never inadvertently broken the taboo, presumably Merrily and Robert Benham would still be around to irritate and frustrate him. Even dear old George would be alive, drunk and lonely in Haywards Heath.
Graham Marshall couldn’t regret any of it. The murders had given him strength when he needed it, identity and power when he had none.
He wondered again about Lilian’s charge of madness. Certainly he had been in a tense state, yes; but not mad, no. He had been logical and efficient.
And, above all, it had worked.
Four murders. He couldn’t resist a little, complacent smile at the thought.
But, with slight regret, he knew that that must be the end. His luck had been incredible, but the risk was always there. So many times he could have been seen and had proved invisible. So many times he could have been caught and hadn’t. It was exhilarating, but dangerous.
Besides, he had achieved all that he had wanted.
He felt like a world motor racing champion retiring at the peak of his success. He had taken all the risks, he had survived, and could now enjoy the benefits of his achievement.
And, anyway, he reflected, if it became necessary, he could always come out of retirement.
With that comforting thought, he signed his dinner bill and retired to the delicious anonymity of his hotel room.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
He pampered himself all weekend. Expensive meals, leisurely strolls around the colleges, a trip on the river. He felt he deserved it.
After a large lunch in the hotel on the Monday, he paid his bill with a credit card and had a taxi summoned to take him to the station.
He did not regret leaving. He felt rested and indulged and was keen to get back to work. The next day, whether or not the appointment was officially ratified, Graham Marshall would take over as Head of Personnel.
And he was determined that no one in the Department would be unaware of the change.
He took the Metropolitan Line from Paddington to Hammersmith and walked to Boileau Avenue.
He knew there was no one in when he put the key in the lock. Lilian must have taken her bitterness away, no doubt to plan further ineffectual gestures.
As he walked, he had been thinking. Except for another moment of homage on Hammersmith Bridge, he had concentrated on work. His mind was relaxed and well tuned, and he thought he saw a solution to an interminable dispute between Personnel Department and the Staff Association over a new grading system. The idea had grown as he walked along, and he was impatient to check its feasibility with some figures Terry Sworder had produced from the computer.
Graham rushed up to his study as soon as he got home and pulled Terry’s report out of his briefcase. He jotted a few notes as he galloped down the columns, then sat back with satisfaction. It would work. Put a few backs up, certainly, but his scheme had the required mix of appeal to greed and illusion of consultation; it couldn’t fail to be accepted.
Preoccupied, he hadn’t noticed until that moment the flashing light on his new Ansaphone, which registered the messages left. It had been switched on to record before he left on the Friday morning and he hadn’t had time to check it since.
He was reaching to set the machine to ‘Playback’ when the phone rang. He switched off the recorder and picked up the receiver.
It was Charmian.
‘Hello,’ he responded guardedly, anticipating a new tirade about his shortcomings as a father.
‘You’ve heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘About. . Mummy.’
‘No.’ What the hell had Lilian done now? But Charmian didn’t give him any time for conjecture. ‘She’s dead.’