Then? The invisible finger prodded me gently, almost sympathetically. I felt a sudden urge to sit down and resisted it.
“You’ll remember in time,” said Miss Dare, smiling. “After all, you’re the one who never forgets a face.”
I watched him as he worked it out. The mist had thickened; now it was hard to see beyond the closest trees. At our backs, the bonfire was nothing but embers; unless it rained it would continue to smolder for two or three days. Straitley frowned, burnished like a wrinkled totem in the dim light. A minute passed. Two minutes. I began to feel anxious. Was he too old? Had he forgotten? And what would I do if he failed me now?
Finally, he spoke. “It’s—it’s Julie, isn’t it?”
Close enough, old man. I dared draw breath. “Julia, sir. Julia Snyde.”
Julia Snyde.
Such a long time since I’d heard that name. Such a long time since I’d even thought of her. And yet here she was again, looking just like Dianne Dare, looking at me with affection—and a touch of humor—in her bright brown eyes.
“You changed your name?” I said at last.
She smiled. “Under the circumstances, yes.”
That I could understand. She’d gone to France—“Paris, was it? I suppose that’s where you learned your French.”
“I was an apt pupil.”
Now I recalled that day in the gatehouse. Her dark hair, cut shorter than it is now, the neat, girlish outfit, pleated skirt and pastel sweater. The way she’d smiled at me, shyly then, but with knowledge in her eyes. How I’d been sure she’d known something—
I looked at her now in the uncanny light and wondered how I could have failed to miss her. I wondered what she was doing here now, and how she had changed from Porter’s girl to the assured young woman she was today. Most of all I wondered just how much she had known, and why she had hidden it from me, now and all those years ago.
“You did know Pinchbeck, didn’t you?” I said.
Silently she nodded.
“But then—what about Keane?”
She smiled. “As I said. He had to go.”
Well, serve him right, the little sneak. Him and his notebooks. My first glance should have warned me; those lines, those drawings, those whimsical little observations on the nature and history of St. Oswald’s. I remember asking myself then whether it wouldn’t have been better to deal with him straightaway; but I had a lot on my mind at the time, and anyway, there wasn’t much—besides that photograph—to incriminate me.
You’d think a budding author would have been far too busy with his Muse to go messing with such ancient history. But he had—plus he’d spent time at Sunnybank Park, though he was three or four years ahead of me, and wouldn’t have made the connection straightaway.
I hadn’t myself for a while, you know; but somewhere along the line, I must have recognized his face. I’d known it before I joined Sunnybank Park; remembered watching as a gang of boys cornered him after school; remembered his neat clothes—suspicious for a Sunnybanker—and, most of all, the library books under his arm that proclaimed him a target. I’d known right then it could have been me.
It had taught me a lesson, watching that boy. Be invisible, I’d warned myself. Don’t look too smart. Don’t carry books. And if in doubt, run like hell. Keane hadn’t run. That had always been his problem.
In a way I’m sorry. Still, after the notebook, I knew I couldn’t let him live. He’d already found the St. Oswald’s picture; he’d talked to Marlene, and most of all there was that photograph, taken from God knows what Sports Day at Sunnybank, with Yours Truly at the back (the Thunderpants mercifully out of sight). Once he’d made that connection (and he would have done, sooner or later), it would have been a simple matter of going through Sunnybank’s photo archive until he found what he was looking for.
I’d bought the knife some months before—£24.99 from Army Stores—and I have to say it was a good one; sharp, slim, double-edged, and lethal. Rather like myself, in fact. A pity I had to leave it, really—I’d meant it for Straitley—but retrieving it would have been a messy business, and besides, I didn’t want to be wandering around a public park with a murder weapon in my pocket. No chance of finding any prints on the knife, either. I was wearing gloves.
I’d followed him to the cordoned area, just as the fireworks were starting. Here there were trees, and in their shelter the shadows were doubly dark. There were people all around, of course; but most of them were watching the sky, and in the false light of all those rockets, nobody saw the quick little drama that played out under the trees.
It takes a surprising amount of skill to stab someone between the ribs. It’s the intercostal muscles that are the trickiest part; they contract, you know, so that even if you don’t strike a rib by accident, you have to get through a layer of tensed muscle before you do any real damage. Going for the heart is equally risky; it’s the breastbone, you see, that gets in the way. The ideal method is through the spinal cord, between the third and fourth vertebrae, but you tell me how I was expected to locate the spot, in the dark, and with most of him hidden under a great big Army Surplus parka?
I might have cut his throat, of course, but those of us who have actually tried it, rather than just watching the movies, will tell you that it’s not as easy as it looks. I settled for an upward thrust from the diaphragm, just below the wishbone. I dumped him under the trees, where anyone seeing him would assume he was drunk, and leave him well alone. I’m not a biology teacher, so I can only guess—blood loss or a collapsed lung—as to the technical cause of death, but he was pretty damn surprised about it, I can tell you.
“You killed him?”
“Yes, sir. Nothing personal.”
It occurred to me that perhaps I was genuinely ill; that all this was a kind of hallucination that said more about my subconscious than I wanted to know. Certainly I’d felt better. A sudden stitch dug painfully into my left armpit. The invisible finger had become an entire hand; a firm, constant pressure against my breastbone that made me gasp.
“Mr. Straitley?” There was concern in Miss Dare’s voice.
“Just a stitch,” I said, and sat down abruptly. The muddy ground, though soft, seemed astonishingly cold; a cold that pulsed up through the grass like a dying heartbeat. “You killed him?” I repeated.
“He was a loose end, sir. As I said, he had to go.”
“And Knight?”
There was a pause. “And Knight,” said Miss Dare.
For a moment, an awful moment, my breath caught. I hadn’t liked the boy, but he was one of mine, and in spite of everything I suppose I’d hoped—
“Mr. Straitley, please. I can’t have this now. Come on, stand up.” She put a shoulder under my arm—she was stronger than she looked—and hauled me upright.
“Knight’s dead?” I said numbly.
“Don’t worry, sir. It was quick.” She wedged a hip against my ribs, half hoisting me to my feet. “But I needed a victim, and not just a body, either. I needed a story. A murdered schoolboy makes front-page news—on a slow day—but a missing boy just keeps on giving. Searches; speculation; tearful appeals from the distracted mother; interviews with friends; then as hope dwindles, the dragging of local ponds and reservoirs, the discovery of an item of clothing and the inevitable DNA testing of listed pedophiles in the area. You know how it is, sir. They know, but they don’t know. And until they know for certain—”