Vision swims in and out of focus. I feel heavy all over, and everything aches.
I say, “Where is she?”
“She’s dead.”
And with that, something falls away, as if a circle I never wanted completed has just swum into existence, conjured from the ripples of a long-ago splash.
“But then, you already know that. You killed her.”
I try to speak. It doesn’t come out right. I swallow. Try again. “That’s your plan?”
He cocks his head to one side.
“To make out I did it? To kill her, and make out—”
But that same head shakes in denial.
“I think,” he says, “we need to clarify some issues.”
It is only now that I realize what that strange object behind Dennis is. It is a ladder. There is no door into this room; there is only a ladder out of it. This reaches up to a trap in the ceiling.
And at almost the same time I realize that the room is part of a pair; that the shadow against one wall is actually a space leading somewhere else. And that somebody is hovering on that threshold.
“I don’t mean your wife,” Dennis goes on. “I mean mine.”
The somebody walks forward.
Michelle says, “I found the locket.”
XV
At last she nods. All this is fine. Barring one small detail.
“We need to unwrap these bottles,” she says to Dennis Farlowe.
“Because?”
“So he can’t stack them. Build himself a staircase.”
She looks up at the barred window, about the size of eight bricks laid side by side, containing no glass.
“You think he can squeeze through that?”
“We’re leaving him a tin-opener. He might hack a bigger hole.”
“He wants to treat that thing with care. If he doesn’t want to starve to death.” But he concedes that she has a point. “You’re right, though. We’ll unwrap them.”
In fact, she does this after he leaves. Leaves to return home; to find out what David’s up to. To give him a nudge in the direction of the postcard.
Some things are best not left to chance.
XVI
“I believed you,” she says. “For so long, I believed you. I mean, I always knew you had a thing for Jane — I’d have had to be blind not to — but I honestly, truly didn’t think you’d killed her. Raped and killed her.”
I so much want to reply to this, to deliver a devastating refutation, but what can I say? What can I say? That I never wanted it to happen? That would sound lame, in the circumstances. Of course I never wanted it to happen. Look where it’s left me.
“But then I found her locket, where you’d kept it all these years. Behind that tile in the bathroom. Dear god, I thought. What’s this? What’s this?”
Jane and I had grown close, and that’s the truth of it. But there are missteps in any relationship, and it’s possible that I misread certain signs. But I never wanted any of it to happen. Or have I already said that?
“But Dennis recognized it.”
And there you go. What precisely is going on with you and Dennis, I want to ask. Am I supposed to lie here while she reveals how close they’ve become? But lie here is all I can do. My limbs are like tree trunks. There is an itch at my neck, where Dennis stuck me with his needle.
“And those other women,” she continues. “The way you made it look random — the way you killed them to make it look random. How can you live with yourself, David? How could I have lived with you? You know what everyone thinks when this happens. They always think the same thing — that she must have known. They’ll think I must have known.”
So it’s all about you, I want to tell her. But don’t.
“You told me you were at a conference.”
Well, I could hardly tell you where I really was, I want to explain. I was doing it for us, can’t you see that? To take Jane’s story and put it at a remove, so we could continue with our lives. Besides, I was at a conference. Or registered at one, anyway; was there enough to make my presence felt. It passed muster, didn’t it? Or it did until Dennis came back, and poured poison in your ear.
Did you really just find the locket, Michelle? Or did you go looking for it? It was the one keepsake I allowed myself. Everything else, all those events of twelve years ago — my seven-year itch — they happened to somebody else. Or might as well have done.
And I thought things were okay again. That’s why I came looking for you. I didn’t think your disappearance had anything to do with all that. All that was over long ago. And you said you loved me — in your note, you said I love you. Or was that just part of your trap?
And now Dennis says, “She’s right, you know. All this will reflect on her. It always does. And that’s not right. You destroyed my life, you ended Jane’s. You killed those other poor women. You can’t destroy Michelle’s, too. We won’t let you.”
At last I find my voice again. “You’re going to kill me.”
“No,” Dennis says. “We’re going to leave you alone.”
And very soon afterwards, that’s exactly what they do.
I sometimes wonder whether anyone is looking for me, but not for very long. They’ll have parked my car far away, near an unpredictable body of water; the kind which rarely returns its victims. Besides, everyone I spoke to thought Michelle had disappeared of her own accord — only I believed otherwise; only I attached weight to the clue so carefully left me. I remember the conversation with her sister, and it occurs to me that of course Michelle had spoken to her — of course Elizabeth knew Michelle was fine. She had promised not to breathe a word to me, that was all. Just one more thing to be produced in evidence when Michelle returns, and I do not.
She hadn’t known I’d take it so hard, she’ll say.
I never imagined he’d take his own life—
Meanwhile, I have drunk one hundred and three two-litre bottles of water; eaten eighty-nine tins of tuna fish, forty-seven of baked beans, ninety-four of corned beef. There are many hundreds left. Possibly thousands. I do not have the will to count them.
I already know there’s a lifetime’s supply.
Chris Takes the Bus
Denise Mina
They stood outside the plate glass window at the bus station, because inside was so bright and cheerful, so full of happy milling people, that neither could bear it.
The cold was channelled here, into a snaking stream that lapped at their ankles, a bitter snapping cold that chilled them both. His eyes were fixed on the ground and she could feel him shrinking, sinking into the concrete.
“Jees-ho!” She shivered theatrically, trying to bring his attention back to her.
Chris looked at her and pulled the zip up at his neck, making a defiant face that said, see? I can look after myself, I know to do my coat up against the cold. They were huddled in their coats, shoulders up at their ears, each alone.
He tried to smile at her but she glanced down at the bag on the floor because his eyes were so hard to look into. The backlit adverts tinged the ground an icy pink and she saw that Chris had put the heel of his bag in a puddle.