Edris drank a little more whisky. He was drunk now: drunk and sorry for himself. He began to cry, tears flowing down his shrivelled face while he gently beat his stumpy hands together.
Beigler and Hess found him like that, still crying, when they burst into the apartment some twenty-five minutes later.
Ticky Edris went with them without any fuss. What did it matter? he said to himself as he stumped down the steps to the waiting police car. What did anything matter now? You made plans; you played your cards right, then some slob spoils it all.
‘It’s the way the cookie crumbles,’ he said half aloud as he got into the police car, and because he was so very drunk, he put his stumpy hands over his face and began to cry again.
Dear Mel,
I can’t call you daddy any more, can I? This is just to say goodbye and to say I am sorry.
I don’t expect you to believe me, but I honestly didn’t know they had killed your daughter. They told me she had died in a drowning accident.
I know I shouldn’t have taken her place, but there are so many things in my life I shouldn’t have done. I did get a lot of happiness with you... it was a funny sort of happiness which I knew all along couldn’t last.
I’m going for a swim now. I shall go on swimming until I can’t swim anymore. I hope, by doing this, I’ll save you from getting too involved in this mess. I would like to think you will miss me a little. I am glad about Joy; she’ll make you happy and you’ve earned it.
So goodbye, and please try to believe I really wouldn’t have done it if I had known about Norena.
Love,
She put down the ballpoint and read the letter through.
She was in the beach cabin and she had on a white bikini that made her skin look more bronze than it was. She was very quiet and unemotional as she put the letter in an envelope and sealed it. She wrote Devon’s name on the envelope and propped it against a flower vase on the table.
She stood up, looked briefly around the room, then walked out into the hot sunshine.
In the far distance, she could see people bathing, but they were too far away to worry her. With long, easy strides, she walked down to the sea, her head held high, her mouth firm, her eyes dry. She walked into the sea and began to swim with powerful strokes that took her swiftly away from the land, and the new way of life that she had found but that wasn’t for her.