‘I won the three-legged race, once,’ he volunteered. ‘My school reports said I was “resourceful”.’
And Marianne Shearer branded me a wimp. And trusted me with something precious.
‘Thank you,’ Hen said, without any argument. ‘I should like that very much, although what I really want is forgiveness. For the wrong things.’
He shook his head, the weariness coming back to hit the back of his neck like a cudgel, making him realise he would soon be slurring his words and there was nothing more to be said or done before morning. No stamina, that boy. There were dark hollows below his eyes.
‘You have my bed, and I’ll sleep here,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to sleep, we’re dead on our feet. I’ll just check there’s nothing overcooking downstairs.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘There’s no need. And I don’t want you staying on false pretences. I want you to stay because it’s late and you’re tired and I can press that suit in the morning and find a clean shirt. Not because Rick Boyd’s going to turn up here in the middle of the night. He won’t come here.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘He won’t come here,’ she repeated.
Peter followed her downstairs to the basement. It was cooler, full of the chemical smell which revived him, but only a little. There was so much more he wanted to ask. The place was a laboratory for cleaning. Their footsteps sounded loud on the stone floor. He watched her detach a piece of cambric from the clothes line and lay it flat. It would be easy for a thief to gain access here, but there was nothing a casual thief would want to steal. Marianne’s skirt hung on the overhead pulley, accusingly. Not even the eyeless teddy bears held any appeal.
‘Why wouldn’t Rick Boyd come here?’ he asked. ‘He can get in anywhere. Squats, other people’s house, the Lover’s perhaps. He just walks in to other people’s lives.’
Hen was standing by the light switch, ready to usher him out, pausing before moving.
‘He won’t come here,’ she said, ‘because he came here before. The one week he was on bail, he came to find Angel. She was waiting for him upstairs, hiding in the dressing room, dressed in her best. She would have gone with him, but I found him first, down here. He came in the back.’
Peter moved to stand close to her, touched her arm gently.
‘And?’
She shrugged.
‘I chucked a bucket of dry-cleaning fluid all over him. It was fluid out of the drain from the tank. It blinded him for a while. I pushed him out. I should have killed him.’
She turned out the light and Peter followed her up the stairs. Again, he felt he was following in the footsteps of someone he did not know. Hen spoke over her shoulder.
‘He won’t come here,’ she was saying. ‘So you’re safe with me. Rick Boyd may hate me like poison, but as long as he’s on his own, he’s still afraid of me.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Wake up, Frank my lad. We’ve got things to do. I think we’ll take a Mercedes.
C’mon, it’s a Saturday, the place is closed. I found where Marianne put her stuff. It’s OK, Frank.
Peter slipped out of the house in the dark of early morning and hit the street running. He could forgo a pressed suit or a clean shirt until he was home. The most ominous thing she had said was that Rick Boyd was afraid of her. He could make himself believe she was safe where she was and that Boyd was afraid of the place. He must be, otherwise he would have come back long before and would not return to the scene of a previous humiliation without an ally, and Rick Boyd had no allies; no ally or friend mentioned in the whole of that trial; men like that did not. He made others conspire with him, though: that was what he had done with his series of hapless women. Peter went back to his own flat in a state of suppressed panic he could not fully explain either to himself or to anyone else, except by saying that he had to see what was in the post. And then the nine o’clock appointment with the police to make a statement and say his piece about all the rest as well as he could. In the growing light of day, it all seemed as woolly and ephemeral as dawn mist.
Tube quicker than taxi for the route to Camden on a Saturday morning. Hen had promised she would not move. She had plenty to do indoors, she said. There might even be customers.
Thomas Noble, another early riser, had already phoned. Peter found himself looking round the carriage of the underground train, so prompt, so efficient at this hour, so half full of silent listeners, he wanted to hide inside his coat so that his own thoughts would not be overheard.
Would sir like the services of a solicitor to accompany him on his visit to the police station? I’m not au fait with these situations, not my kind of law, but I think I might owe you that. Early morning sarcasm. No, thank you, Peter muttered. I know what I have to say. Besides, you would alienate them and I need them to listen.
Whose side are you on, Peter?
I didn’t know there were sides.
You know what you were hired for.
To find out Marianne was murdered, rather than suicidal, isn’t that what you want, what the client wants? I thought you said it was to find out why.
Why was an obscene word in an early morning train bearing passengers in and out of town to open shops, markets, weekend businesses, anything, whilst bearing home the night shift. Whatever had been sent by post should have arrived. Snail mail. Why on earth had Marianne Shearer failed to commit her intentions to email? Too easy? Perhaps her laptop was at the bottom of the trunk. He should have paid the price and towed it all back, not left it lonely.
His flat was stuffy and warm. He hated it on sight, but then he had never loved it, or any place he had ever lived alone. It was not home, it was a stopgap. The post in the front door was disappointingly small. A manilla envelope, A4-sized.
An envelope, punctiliously addressed in a sloping hand. To Peter Friel, Esq. in the Lover’s old-fashioned hand. Inside it, a few pages looking for all the world like a part of the transcript of the trial. All that trouble to send him something he might have missed from the original volumes which still lurked in the corner of his room; in a corner of Thomas Noble’s office and in several other damn corners; a big, paperwork reminder of failure.
A single sheet of paper clipped to the front.
You never read anything properly, Peter. This is Why. Look after the relics.
Peter changed his clothes in his colourless flat, feeling homesick for where he had been, wishing he had not slept in Hen’s bed without her. He could not stop to read now, stuffed everything in the knapsack he used in lieu of a briefcase and ran for the next appointment. He was dressed in jeans and the same dusty black coat, his boots were worn. He thought how the Lover would be appalled, and wished there could be a chance to meet him again. It was piercingly cold: Peter went back for his gloves. Concentrate on one thing at a time. Make the statement, set them rolling, pray for them to believe him, and then get back to Hen. Get Hen to join him. West End Central Police station was close to the station where they could take the train. He wanted her to see what was in storage long before it was given to Thomas Noble.
They kept him waiting. It was the fate of a witness to be kept waiting. There would be a certain pleasure in keeping a witness as to material fact waiting even longer if they also happened to be a lawyer – although he doubted if there was anything contrived about that. It was Saturday morning, and a pall of resentment hung about the place. Peter remembered from the original police report in R v Boyd, that this was the station where Hen had first taken Angel, over a year ago. Police stations did not change. They could be painted in different colours and vain attempts tried to make them user-friendly, but it never made them different. He never went inside without feeling he was under arrest, although to his knowledge he had never committed an offence worthy of that. Drunk and disorderly, perhaps, cheating on train fares in the critically poor days of student life. He was only ever guilty by proxy. Guilty of not doing enough. He waited and read what Marianne Shearer had sent him.