‘No, I hadn’t. Really, Ms Falkner, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘But there must be something,’ I said, in desperation. ‘I’ve found this piece of paper, Greg wanted to see you urgently, just at the time he died. You must try to think.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t help you any more.’
‘But don’t you see –’ I realized the line was dead. I couldn’t believe it. She’d actually hung up on me.
Almost in a dream, I walked through to the kitchen. I laid the paper on the table. I boiled the kettle, made coffee and stared at it as if it was a mathematical problem that would yield an answer if I thought about it hard enough. Those signatures. I was sure I’d seen something like it before, but I couldn’t think where. It was like a fragment of a story and I tried to piece it together. I’ll ring you about this. Milena Livingstone. You? Greg? Milena calls Greg? Greg calls Marjorie Sutton? Had he seen something in the note that I couldn’t? Had Milena told him something?
I looked at the coffee mug. It was empty. I refilled it. It didn’t matter now. I would take it to Ramsay. Finally it was the connection I’d been looking for. The professionals could deal with it. I found an old envelope and slipped the piece of paper inside. I put the envelope into my shoulder bag. As I was pulling on my jacket, the doorbell rang. It was Joe. I must have looked almost comically puzzled. He smiled.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was worried about you,’ he said.
‘Everybody’s worried about me. I’m fine.’
‘One of our clients phoned the office. She’s in a state. She said a woman had been ringing her and asking her strange questions.’
‘Marjorie Sutton. But you don’t need to concern yourself about me,’ I said, pulling the door shut behind me and walking towards Gwen’s car. ‘I was on my way out.’
‘The way that woman was talking, I thought you might be having some sort of breakdown. You can’t go disturbing old ladies like that.’
‘There are things I need to know.’
‘What things?’
I unlocked the car door. ‘I can’t talk,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go. One of my regular visits to the police.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No, I don’t,’ I said, and then stopped myself. ‘No, thank you.’
‘Could you at least drop me at a station? I let my cab go.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘So long as you behave yourself.’
As I drove off, I half expected to feel Joe’s hand on my knee.
‘What are you seeing them about?’
I told him about the piece of paper and where I’d found it.
‘Isn’t that just a scrap of paper?’ he said.
‘It’s a scrap of paper from Greg’s work with Milena Livingstone’s handwriting on it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But it feels like the thing I’ve been looking for.’
We drove for a couple of minutes in silence and then I thought, He’ll suggest going somewhere else. We continued in silence for several minutes.
‘I could drop you over there.’
‘It’s probably nothing, but why not come back to the office? We could look through Mrs Sutton’s file and see if your piece of paper refers to anything.’
‘All right.’
‘It’s not too far out of your way,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘At least you’d know,’ he said.
‘That’s all I want.’
I felt, almost for the first time, in the midst of all the fog and all the darkness, that I was seeing with clarity. The office was no good to him. If he suggested something else, I’d know. We stopped at some traffic-lights.
‘There’s a short-cut ahead,’ he said. ‘I’ll direct you.’
‘All right.’
‘Turn left along there.’
I started the car, and as it moved forward, it jerked and stalled.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I haven’t done that since I was seventeen.’
‘I could drive for you,’ he said.
‘I’m fine.’
I drove as if hypnotized, as if someone else was doing the driving and I was just getting a ride and looking around in curiosity. I saw people walking on the pavement and it seemed to me that they were different from me, as if I was a visitor from another world, shortly to depart. I glanced at Joe, who was also glancing around. He rubbed his face. He looked tired. In fact, he looked worn out. Why hadn’t I seen that before? I had been so busy looking in the wrong direction. I wasn’t afraid. I felt a sense of peace. I wanted to know and after that nothing mattered.
‘You just turn left ahead. The second on the left.’
It’s funny. Wherever you are in London, however busy it is, you’re just a minute or two from somewhere desolate and abandoned. One day it’ll all be turned into bijou apartments, but not yet. A left and a right and we were among some abandoned office buildings. I saw a sign, almost eradicated by graffiti, for a carpet factory. There was another warehouse building at the end. And there were no cars in sight, and no pedestrians.
‘Bloody hell,’ Joe said. ‘It’s a cul-de-sac. I got it wrong. You’ll need to turn round. You’d better pull in here.’
‘Some short-cut,’ I said, as I stopped the car.
This was it. This was where it had all been heading. All roads meet here. All stories end here. Now I felt Joe’s hand on the nape of my neck, soft, caressing. ‘This reminds me of Porton Way,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’
‘You know. Where Greg was killed.’
‘I don’t.’
And now I remembered where I’d seen those signatures.
‘I used to play a game when I was little,’ I said. ‘My friend and me, writing each other’s names, copying each other’s signature. You could do a lot with Marjorie Sutton’s signature. I guess she’s not someone who checks her accounts very thoroughly. It was you, wasn’t it?’
Joe looked at me stonily. I could feel his hand, hardly more than his fingertips, brushing the back of my neck.
‘The thing about Milena,’ I said, ‘is she had a nose for weakness, for something she could use. She saw it, picked it up, and when you dropped her for Frances, she used it. No wonder you wanted to clear out my house for me. You needed to find it. You must have been frantic. And when Frances guessed – as she must have done, or why would you have killed her? – was it easier the third time?’
Joe stared at me, but didn’t speak.
‘I just wanted to know,’ I said.
‘So now you do,’ he said quietly.
‘So this is what it’s going to be?’ I said. ‘Poor Ellie. Couldn’t take it. Couldn’t live without her husband. There’s just one thing.’
‘What’s that?’ said Joe.
‘I don’t care,’ I said, and I pushed the accelerator to the floor so that the rubber on the tyres screamed and the car leaped forward. No stalling this time. I heard a shout but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I was in a dream anyway, in the car with this man whom Greg had trusted and loved until he hadn’t trusted him any more. Forty miles an hour. Then fifty. Then sixty. We were running out of road.
I heard a scream and I didn’t know whether it was Joe’s scream of terror or something inside my head or the tyres against the rough road, and I had a moment to remember that this was Gwen’s car I was destroying, and then it wasn’t fast and loud and violent, but slow, silent, peaceful. And it was no longer winter, a day pinched by darkness and ice; it was warm. A summer afternoon, fresh, soft and clean, the kind that’s like a blessing, full of blossom and birdsong. There he was at last – oh, I had waited so long – walking towards me over the grass and such a smile on his face, his dear, familiar face. The smile he gave only to me. How I’ve missed you, I said, I wanted to say. How badly I’ve missed you. And I wanted to say, Have I done well? Do I make you proud? And I love you, how I love you. I will never stop loving you.