“Let’s have a look at what we’ve got here,” Pardey said encouragingly, like a dentist about to examine a troublesome tooth. He went into the flat, followed by Leila, and turned left to go directly into the living-room. She stood beside him as he knelt at the settee and closely inspected the ruined cushion and protruding knife.
“Well, he’s certainly messed that up for you,” he said after a few seconds. “Does the knife belong here?”
“Yes, it’s one of the set that hangs in the kitchen.”
“I see.” Pardey stood up and gave Leila a look which she found strangely speculative. “What do you call that sandy-haired chap you came to Vicki Simpson’s party with a couple of months ago? Was it Redmayne? Something like that?”
“Redpath. John Redpath.” She gave an uncertain laugh. “What has that got to do with anything?”
“Does he live on the far side of town, on Disley High Street?”
“Yes, but…”
“He was here today. Just after one o’clock.”
“How could you know that?”
“I have my methods.” Pardey tried to look enigmatic. “Actually, before I came out here just now I checked with the patrol car that was covering the district earlier on, just in case they’d seen anything out of the ordinary. That’s the way we get some of our best results, you know. The constable said he spoke to a man answering Redpath’s description only about a quarter of a mile from here. He was riding a bicycle and he was wearing a Medic-Alert bracelet that said he was an epileptic. Is Redpath an epileptic?”
“Yes.” Leila found she disliked hearing John referred to by his surname. “There’s no law against that, is there?”
Pardey took the hint. “I’m sorry, Leila. I know he’s a friend of yours—but if he’s going to do this sort of thing…” His gaze flicked towards the cushion.
“What makes you think he had anything to do with this?”
“He had blood on his hands and on his jacket, quite a lot of it, and he was acting a bit strange. And I’ll bet you anything you like his fingerprints are all over that knife.”
Leila tried to picture John Redpath roaming around to her empty apartment with a knife in his hand and her imaginatioin baulked—he could be jealous and childishly spiteful as a result of it, but violence, even symbolic violence, simply was not his style.
“I’m sorry, Frank,” she said firmly, “that doesn’t make much sense to me.”
Pardey moved to the window and stood looking out. “There are some questions I have to ask people so often I wish I could get them printed on conversation lozenges.”
“Go on.”
“Did you and Redpath have a row recently?”
Leila felt an inexplicable breath of coolness. “We had a slight argument this morning. Nothing much.”
“Care to tell me what it was about?”
“No.”
“I see.” Pardey nodded as though she had given him comprehensive details. “It doesn’t affect the charges against him, anyway.”
“What charges?”
“Illegal entry, for a start.”
Leila shook her head. “I showed John where I keep the spare key—he’s free to come and go here as he pleases—and there’s bound to be some simple explanation for this.” Before Pardey could protest, she plucked the carving knife from the cushion and carried it to the kitchen sink. She turned on the hot water and began sponging the handle and blade.
“Hey,” Pardey said gently, appearing at her side. “I’m on your side, remember?”
“Against John?”
Pardey sighed and moved towards the hall. “I’ll let myself out by the tradesman’s entrance.”
“I’m sorry, Frank.” She caught his arm. “And I’m grateful to you for coming over like this, really I am. Perhaps I’m more upset than I realised. It’s just that I know John better than most people and…”
Pardey raised one eyebrow. “It’s like that, is it?”
“Of course not.” Leila was slightly taken aback at the implication that John Redpath had a special relationship with her.
“I wouldn’t want any of my friends to think I’d set the law on them.”
“Well, you haven’t, so don’t worry about that side of it, but please do me a favour—stop keeping that extra key outside your door. Okay?”
“It’s a promise.” She smiled at Pardey and was particularly careful to keep the conversation on safe ground for the remainder of his short visit. He stayed for a cup of coffee and indulged in some social chitchat, several times addressing her as his Rost-kartoffel or pomme frite—standard Pardey mock-endearments— which showed that he too wanted to keep everything light and airy. But after he had gone she began to wonder if he had been overly concerned with putting her mind at rest. In lying about John’s right of access to the flat she had spoken instinctively, prompted as much as anything else by a middle-class desire to avoid the sort of unpleasantness which attracted attention—but what if she did not know John Redpath nearly as well as she thought? What was it he had said to her that morning?
Something’s happening to me.
What did that mean? Surely John Redpath, of all people, was too normal and too commonplace—Freudian psychology and Manichaean philosophy notwithstanding—ever to figure in one of those darkly psychotic episodes reeking of mindless savagery and sadism which were reported from time to time in the media and which she could never bring herself to study in detail. It was an axiom of everyday life that the ordinary people one knew continued to be exactly that, ordinary people, never rising very far or sinking very far, never doing anything very good or very bad.
Leila considered the proposition for a moment, deriving all the comfort she could from it, then switched on the radio and checked that the door to her apartment was securely locked.
CHAPTER FIVE
Redpath awoke to the sound of women’s voices murmuring nearby and to the sight of a pink plastic lampshade casting its glow on a slightly uneven ceiling. He raised himself in the bed and knew at once that he was in his room in the house in Raby Street. The brown-ruled oilcloth on the floor and the assortment of shabby furniture looked familiar and reassuring, if not homely. Betty York and the gaunt, grey-cardiganed figure of Miss Connie were seated on kitchen chairs across the room, and both were looking at him with expressions of mingled interest and concern. The air in the room was cool, the day’s heat having been sucked out of it by the surrounding shell of antique brickwork and plaster. It was a coolness he knew well—cheap boarding house coolness.
“Are you feeling better now, love?” Betty was dressed as when he had first met her in the park, except that she had left off the blue velvet jacket. “You gave us a bit of a fright, you know.”
“I’m all right now,” Redpath said, falling back on the pillow. The pear-shaped switch of the jury-rigged reading light dangled on the end of its flex a few inches above his forehead. He stared at it, freed from one reality and reluctant for the time being to commit himself to another.
This, the fact that I’m lying here in this bed, means that it was all a nightmare—the Class One to end all Class Ones. So vivid, so real, but only a bad dream. That stuff about going down into the cellar in this house and finding a monster—all a bad dream. That stuff about being in the States—-all a bad dream. That stuff about finding the bodies in the bath—all a bad dream. What else could it be?
But why don’t 1 feel happy? Why don’t I feel relieved, overjoyed at being back in the real world?