“ How much is it worth to you?”
What was that supposed to mean? What did his stare imply? Perhaps that he wouldn’t ask a direct question so long as his customer wasn’t too blatant. Angry to be made to feel guilt but helpless, Horridge had no idea what to reply.
At last the old man said wearily “Oh, give us two quid. That won’t break you, will it?”
Perhaps he’d hoped to be offered more – but he could be no poorer than Horridge. He crumpled the notes in his hand as if they were litter, and plodded to let Horridge out. But Horridge said “I’d like my impressions back, please.”
“ Right enough, you wouldn’t want to be leaving them. They’re no use to anyone now, son. I had to crack them.”
“ I’d still like the clay.”
Not until he was crossing the third square of concrete patched with uncombed grass did he realise why Mr Fearon had stared sideways at him. The old man felt suspected now: he thought Horridge hadn’t trusted him to dispose of the clay. Horridge grinned to himself as he limped to the shops. Mr Fearon wouldn’t dare betray him.
Now he must act fast, just in case the painter mentioned him to Craig despite her promise. After all, why had so many pieces been cut out of the newspapers in her flat? Could she have been making sure that none of her visitors saw Craig’s face? He bought a plastic wallet full of marker pens and hurried to his flat.
He lifted his newspapers from their lair. Eventually he found the photograph: the wardrobe in which the first victim had been discovered, with one word hacked out of the wood of the door: BITCH.
He stared at his blank piece of cardboard, then he grinned. Of course! He took it to the window, and gazed at the graffiti that crawled over the fence. He’d never thought he would be grateful for that eyesore. But now, as he wrote BITCH with the pens, he copied the discords of colour, adding flourishes and elaborations as his memory prompted. At last he pinned the notice to his bedroom door and admired his handiwork. It reminded him of the paintings that cluttered the walls in the painter’s flat. He grinned, wiping his hands. He was convinced, and he was sure his victim would be: the writing looked exactly like Fanny Adamson’s signature.
Chapter XI
Craig had one foot in the bath when the telephone rang.
The water was warm around his ankle. Should he answer the call, and perhaps be made to feel worse? By the time he had dried his foot and inserted it into his slipper, the ringing had ceased. He sank into the water, grateful for its soothing embrace. He’d had a bad enough day already.
There had been another letter from the intolerable pensioner. Craig’s colleagues read out their hostile correspondence or passed it around the long Inland Revenue office, but the letters depressed him too much for that. “Maybe if you have time between your cups of tea you’ll deign to work out how much tax you owe me on these dividends.” That was bearable; years ago, bitterly gleeful, Craig had written DIFFICULT TAXPAYER in red ink on the man’s control card. But there was always the postscript: “Haven’t you anyone in your department who can write legibly?”
“ When are you going to buy me new glasses?” Craig knew his poor handwriting was growing worse – hardly surprising, under all the circumstances.
Still, he might have read the letter out if he had been sure of his colleagues, except that he no longer knew himself. One police visit and three phone calls had done that. Not since his marriage had he felt so uncertain how to behave.
He tried to relax, to feel like the water. At least the third-floor discotheque wasn’t thumping overhead; they must all be out, thank heaven. Though he admired Cathy: a capable woman. She needed to be, with that husband of hers.
Had that been true of Daphne? Perhaps she hadn’t been quite capable enough. Memories floated up. Of late they had been uncomfortably vivid, sharp with guilt. Perhaps the lulling of the water might soften them. He knew he couldn’t elude them.
Had he really wanted to marry? He’d thought so then, but had that come of a need to prove he could have a girlfriend? Still, he’d grown fond of Daphne; they’d talked and hummed Mozart together, to the amusement of their colleagues; in restaurants, they were happy to be quiet together as well as to chat. Best of all, she’d seemed content with affection rather than outright sex.
Marriage had released her sexuality. Sometimes he had satisfied her, more often they’d lain side by side, dummies in a bedroom display. He’d known she was brooding on why she didn’t appeal to him – but he had been trying not to believe what was wrong. Surely one teenage relationship couldn’t have exerted such a hold over him.
Had it been desperation which had made him at last go drinking with Nelson, a colleague who he’d known was homosexual? Had he simply wanted to discuss his troubles, or to be taken to the club?
The club had shown him what he was. Despite the shock of unfamiliarity, despite his shrinking from the shrieks of the flamboyant, before the evening was over he had felt at home. He’d been able at last to be open – but how was this helping his marriage? That doubt had stiffened his movements, tripped up his speech.
He’d begun to wonder if an affair might help. Would he feel less unfaithful to Daphne with a man than with another woman? Would it help him to be less inhibited with her? The plan had seemed furtive, almost squalid – like the toilets which the desperate used, where you could hear intruders approaching before it was too late.
One night the solution had seized him. He and Daphne had been sitting by the gas fire, the only warmth they seemed able to share. He had been thinking drowsily about the club. All at once he’d grown randy. As he grabbed Daphne’s hand she had gazed incredulously at him. They’d made love violently and urgently. Hidden within his closed eyelids there had been a young man.
His ruse had worked for months. Sometimes, as they lay embraced, he’d wanted to tell her about himself. Might she have understood a confession? His lips had locked in his words. He was feeling too peaceful. Maybe next time.
Then, without warning, the young man had vanished like a magician’s exposed trick. Craig had been alone with the void within his eyelids. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” he’d muttered to Daphne, invisible beneath him.
He hadn’t wanted to return to the club; it would have been like an addiction. Instead he had bought magazines. He’d gazed at the nude young men until they were fixed in his memory. Had he been tiring of the strain of marriage? Couldn’t he have found a more secret place for the magazines?
When he’d come home, Daphne was standing at his desk, which had been their wedding present from her aunt. Her shoulders grew stiff as a judge, and he’d seen that the bottom drawer was fully open. Yet at first she’d sounded incongruously apologetic. “I was looking for drawing-pins,” she’d said.
He’d never kept them in that drawer. He had been unable to speak, and her anguished inward expression had prevented him from going to her. “This can’t be you,” she’d said low, as if praying tonelessly. “You’re keeping these books for someone else, aren’t you? You can’t be that. I won’t believe it.”
She hadn’t wept. Perhaps her unshed tears had become the ice that froze her into herself. When he’d offered to help make dinner she had said “Please just stay away.” Serving dinner, she’d avoided his touch. He had never been so intensely aware of her.
That night, and every night until she’d returned to her parents, he had lain cramped and sleepless on the couch. She’d achieved a quick move to another Inland Revenue district. Almost her last words to him had been “I think I could have borne it if it had been another woman.”