Two Wrongs

by Mel McGrath

  She scrolls down, sends her mother a brief goodnight text and, putting her phone back on its charger on the bedside table, changes into her night-time uniform of T-shirt and leggings and slips under the covers, wanting the day to be over, hoping that in sleep what to do with what she knows about Cullen and Ratner will become clearer and she will wake with a course of action in mind. The phone buzzes with another text. From Stavos, this time. No worry. You feel better I hope. A man come to your flat. He wait outside long time.

  Inside her something pings and snaps. She supposes it could have been Luke. Texting back What he look like? She waits, biting her lip, for a response.

  It arrives moments later. I don’t know sweetheart. Stavos not into men :). Tall, thin, not so young. He say he has important message about your flatmate, so I tell him you are at the boat.

  The Dean. She is sure it is him. Why he would be looking for her so soon after their unpleasant encounter at his office she does not know, but there is something ominous about the visit. She could tell the university authorities her suspicions about him, and about Mark Ratner too. The sex for grades, the dismissal of girls who threatened to speak up or wouldn’t toe the line. Her growing conviction that Satnam was involved with the Dean and that he had something on her, something so bad she couldn’t live with it. She could tell them that the Dean had groomed her in order to find out how much she knew about his involvement with Satnam. Cullen and Ratner would cover for each other, as men caught with their pants down so often did, and, she suspected, Madeleine Ince might support them. She’d seen Ince and Cullen laughing together more than once and seeming more than usually familiar. Then again, she could go directly to the police. But who would listen to a geek with a reputation for not quite getting it when it came to human interaction? Who would believe her?

  She goes to the hatch and tests the lock, then checks that the windows are shut and pulls the curtains on the quayside, leaving the lamp on the table in the saloon switched on. A text arrives from Honor to say that she and Alex will be back before long. They’d wanted her to come to dinner with them but she’d needed the time on her own. Plus it felt awkward given how obviously taken with one another they are. Now though she almost wishes she’d tagged along. There’s a feeling of unease, an unsettling. Something seems off. No idea what exactly. Her body trying to tell her something. She checks the hatch lock again, peers out of the windows onto the black water, then closes the curtains and sits nervously playing with her phone and, suddenly remembering her mother’s earlier request, turns on location sharing. Not that she’s going anywhere. She decides, on balance, that it might be easier if she’s already in bed by the time the lovebirds get home. An early night might be all she needs to feel more herself. Checking the logs on the burner she heads for bed once more, undressing this time and pulling on her pyjamas. Within moments she is asleep. When she opens her eyes again the white light of the streetlamps is still blading in from a gap in the curtains. She listens out for a minute or two and, hearing nothing, turns, pulls the duvet over her head but she cannot settle. Her legs keep moving and her head feels awash in white noise. She tries to settle herself with deep breathing but that only seems to make things worse. Her nostrils feel scratchy and her eyes are beginning to sting. Some new knowledge is making its way to her sleepy brain. It takes a second or two to form and then suddenly, whoosh, she is sitting bolt upright, her nose going crazy, a fizzy feeling in her palms which she knows to be adrenaline.

  Somewhere there is smoke.

  A soft thump starts in her right temple and fear rushes in as if on the tide. All around her the air begins to move, an almost imperceptible quiver but growing now and in the darkness she can see something curling up from under the door like a snake. The wood burner, she thinks, feeling panicky all of a sudden. I forgot to close the door to the wood burner. That’s a first, she thinks. Having grown up on a solid fuel heated narrowboat she’s always been particularly vigilant. And hadn’t she spotted a fault in the backplate? It’s because I’ve been so distracted, she thinks, I’m not thinking straight. Leaping from the bed she rushes out into the saloon and stops in her tracks. The door to the wood burner is shut tight. Through the glass she can see the logs smouldering. She takes a deep breath. The burning smell is powerful now. She turns and frantically scopes around the saloon, then moves to the stern, checking the shower room and Honor’s bedroom. It’s only there, turning, that she sees the yellow flicker of light on the black water. The wind blows up, sending a thin veil of ashy smoke across the window. The whole of the engine compartment is on fire.

  Chapter 52

  Honor

  On their way back from the restaurant to the van Alex’s phone rings. He unzips his jacket pocket. They take a few paces together and then he stops dead, his face is ashy, the jawline ticking, the eyes raw, mouth tightly compressed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Honor says, alarmed.

  ‘We have to go back to the boats.’ His face turns to hers but he will not look her in the eye. ‘It’ll be quicker if I drive. I know the shortcuts.’ He holds out a hand. ‘Give me the keys.’

  They are off, at tremendous speed, ducking down a side street and into an area of office buildings. Several times she asks why they are having to rush but he will say only that there’s a possible problem with the boat and that everything is most likely fine and perhaps it might be a good idea to call Nevis, before returning his attention to the road. So Honor calls but gets no response. ‘Probably asleep,’ she says out loud. Alex doesn’t answer. The city, which only a few hours ago seemed small, its outlines visible from the high places, the lights petering out into the darkness of the hills around, has lost its shape and billowed outwards. She wishes she had a giant’s legs and could straddle the roads and the lights and roundabouts and one-way systems.

  At Queen Square she smells it, seeping in through the ventilation system, a spicy, acrid taint on the air, the sky a sinister pinkish hue. There are sirens now too and the whump of a helicopter. Alex is driving round, looking for somewhere to park, finally giving up and pulling the van in beside a parked car. They both leap out and, not stopping to lock up, rush across the wide green space of the square in the direction of Redcliffe Bridge. The smell is terrible, the air scraping at the throat and thick on the lungs. At the top of the bridge there are already police cars stationed and a group of uniformed officers is diverting the traffic, whilst others tape off the area to secure it. At the far, eastern end of the bridge, a police van blocks entry to traffic and there is a line of people strung along the barrier that side whose bodies appear to be turned to the east. Lights are being set up but they’re not on yet. On the inside of the barrier Honor can just see the twirling lights of fire engines. From where she is standing on Welsh Back there is too much billowing smoke to make out the source of the fire but it appears to be somewhere on the water. She thinks of the brazier and the circle of bodies warming themselves beside it. Her head ticking, she surges forward towards the police cordon.

  A policewoman holds out her hands to stop her.

  ‘No one on the bridge, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Is the fire by the tents?’ Honor is bent over, trying to catch her breath.

  ‘I believe it’s on one of the boats.’

  Oh God, Honor thinks, remembering the back panel of the wood stove on the Halcyon Days. Why hadn’t she fixed it?

  ‘We have… We live on one of the narrowboats. My daughter…’

  Alex has caught up now. ‘Is everyone safely on shore?’

  ‘Impossible to say at the moment, sir,’ the policewoman says. Holding up a hand to answer her radio, then turning back to Alex and Honor, she says, ‘I’m sorry, this is an ongoing situation. I’m under instructions to keep everyone here until further notice.’ She leans into her radio again and straightening herself to full height says, ‘The information I’m getting is that the affected boat is called Hal’s Days?’

  ‘Halcyon – that’s ours! That’s our boat. My daughter…!’
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br />   Honor feels herself surge forward and then trip. Alex’s hands are on her, pulling her back.

  ‘Honor, they won’t let you go.’

  She feels herself struggling but it’s hopeless.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he says, talking into her ear. ‘It’s OK. I want you to promise to stay here on the bridge.’

  She pulls away and looks at him. He nods encouragement. He has shed his coat already and is kicking off his shoes. He is going to go off the bridge into the water, she thinks.

  ‘No!’ she says.

  ‘Stay here.’

  The policewoman has seen him. She is heading his way. ‘Sir!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he says, yanking at his shirt. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Alex, no!’

  She can hear the policewoman calling for backup.

  From the water comes a tremendous surge then and a rumble. There is a tremendous pain in her ear followed by a muffled roar. A sickening yellow light fills her field of view and for a moment she cannot breathe. She reaches up and scrabbles to wipe away the searing, sticky hail raining down on her face. She scrambles about for a purchase on something but it is like trying to find a shadow in the dark. Her chest aches now, lungs feel that they might explode. There are no more thoughts. There is nothing.

  Chapter 53

  Cullen

  Cullen has been waiting for this moment. For hours now he has watched the comings and goings on the boat from an abandoned graffiti-strewn shed on the quayside which, judging from the smell, some of the people in the encampment have been using as a toilet. But no matter. He was nauseous anyway. Adrenaline does that to a man.

  Killing Amanda felt nothing like killing Natasha. The Smith girl will be next. Could murder be growing on him?

  He waits for the harbourside to settle into its night-time routine, the gulls sail off to wherever it is they pass the night, the water birds find safe moorings on the pontoons, the brazier at the homeless encampment softens to a glow, the encampment’s inhabitants retreat to their tents to get shelter from the rain.

  It has been years since he has felt this alive. Come to think of it, this is the most alive he has ever felt since he was a child. Which is not to say that his death wish has gone away. On the contrary, it leers over him like a great dark cloud waiting to disgorge its contents. That’s a good part of the feeling of aliveness.

  The only important thing about death, he thinks, is that you have to choose it before it chooses you. The only good death is the one you control. He is not afraid. He believes in the purity of death. The sanctity of release. When his time comes, soon now, he will thumb his nose at life and go gentle into the good night and for a few seconds or microseconds he will be happy.

  A pigeon sails by his little window on the world. The lights have gone out on the Halcyon Days. Nevis is alone. He knows this because he has been watching the boat for hours now and he saw her mother leave. It would have been easier, in a way, to have killed the two of them. But this is better, more exquisite, for what could be more terrible to a mother than the death of her child? To leave this world knowing that he has taken from Honor Smith the two people who truly gave her life meaning. What a sweet sensation that will be!

  It would have been so easy to have satisfied him. He was an easy kid to satisfy. When he was hungry he took a biscuit, when he was tired he went to bed, when he was bored he played computer games. He had wanted love too but Amanda had met his longing with a kind of haughty contempt. The story she’d spun was that she’d adored him up until the point that he had disgraced her, and for years he’d believed her, blamed himself. Only now does he see that this too was one of his mother’s self-serving lies. The focus of her love had always been booze. She’d never really loved him. She’d deprived him of what every child has a right to expect. And so the longing for love twisted and turned inside him like a broken cobweb. When he wanted to love Zoe, to take possession of her, to feel her from the inside out, didn’t he have a right? If she had only said yes to him, he could have taken what he wanted. She could have given it to him and got on with her life. He would soon have tired of her. Instead she denied him and denied him and then set him up to fail. What happened was her fault for refusing, not his for wanting.

  He has no expectations of being reunited with Zoe in death and realises only now that he does not care. It was never Zoe who interested him, only the idea of Zoe, of all the Zoes, the young men and women he met at St Olaf’s and then here at Avon who burst with life, while he, the boy wonder, the genius, felt dead inside. He would put himself in their company only to see something of their light diminished by it. They were the sun and he only ever the shade. They were life – the name ‘Zoe’ literally means life – but the only thing that ever lived in him was death. I see now, he thinks, that I took an ordinary girl and transformed her in my mind into someone magical and special, someone worthy of my obsession. She would be the light to illuminate my darkness. Oh, what a fool I was.

  Still, he doesn’t blame Zoe for his downfall, even though she engineered what had happened, offering to escort him home, allowing him into her room. And yes, he slipped her something in her coffee but he didn’t understand what he was doing, not really. The phial had been given to him by one of the third-year students at the Maths Society party who’d seen how he followed Zoe with his eyes. The student sidled up to him, slid the phial into his pocket, and laughing, said, ‘That one is way above your pay grade, mate. You want some action you’ll need to slip this in her drink.’ He’d winked and put a finger to his lips. Later that evening Cullen noticed him standing with another student, looking at him and laughing. They considered him comical, his love for Zoe a puppyish crush. It made him burn inside, as if someone had made him swallow bleach. Well, he thought, I’ll show them. And what harm had he done really? Zoe couldn’t even recall what had happened. It was Honor who had stirred up the trouble. The jealous bitch. He’d seen the way she looked at Zoe. Why persecute him, a fifteen-year-old boy, who barely knew what sex was, and had never been told that you had to ask someone for it and doesn’t believe that even now. Women are vixens. They never think twice about taking what they want when they want it but bleat like sick lambs as soon as the tables are turned. Zoe caused him pain but it was Honor who ruined him, who turned up at his door and bothered his mother and harangued St Olaf’s until the university had no choice but to ask him to leave. He had been ruined by a single malevolent spirit.

  It’s payback time. Revenge is the only way to close the circle, to leave the world a tidier, more orderly place. To solve the equation of his own misery. It would be too easy to kill Honor. This way is better, more creative. Solving an equation is, after all, as much a demonstration of the beauty of the process as it is about finding the right answer. There would be nothing to stop him sneaking onto the boat and cutting Nevis’s throat. But where would be the skill or the beauty in that? Revenge, he realises, has its own logic. It is very much like mathematics in that regard. No wonder that he finds both magnetic.

  The rain has ceased but the wind is up now and he is suddenly aware of the tap-tapping of the buddleia where it has invaded the roof and reached down into the interior. He staked out this abandoned outbuilding. No time like the present, he thinks. It is dark and there is only the most rudimentary CCTV. Everything on the water is quiet. At the encampment things are livelier since the rain held off. Someone has stuck a few broken pallets in the brazier and a drum circle has started up, enough noise to give him cover. Most of the encampment’s occupants will be drunk, or high on something, he thinks, in any case too dazed to notice what is happening on the water until the smokescreen is up and he and Nevis are long gone.

  He removes from its holding bag his birding rifle and slides out of the shed onto the quayside. Beside him, on the Floating Harbour, the boats perch like sentinels on the water. He makes his way quickly and quietly to Halcyon Days. The blinds are drawn, the lights off. There is a roof light but someone has laid a pile of two-by-fou
rs across, a few pots of creosote lined up beside, from some renovation project, he assumes. All to the good. Creosote will burn up a treat. He hops onto the cratch and under the cover. It takes him less than a minute to reposition the pots in front of the hatch. Once he sets the light, that exit will quickly become a wall of flame. He takes out his lighter, and the remains of his bottle of Macallan. Lowering himself very gently into the transom he waits for the gentle movement of the boat to settle.

  All he has to do now is wait for the smoke to seep into the boat’s interior. When she opens the aft hatch and sees him, he will act the rescuer. If he’s lucky she might fall for that. And if she doesn’t, she will try to get as far away from him as she can. She might race for the bow hatch and, if she does, she will find her exit blocked by flaming paint tins. She might try the skylight but she will not be able to lift the two-by-fours. She might scream for help but she won’t be heard above the din of the drum circle. She might try to hide but before too long the smoke on the boat will flush her out. All he has to do is to show her the rifle. She’s unlikely to fight back; if she does, he’s quite prepared to knock her out.

  He has already determined the back route they will take through an industrial lot and a broken fence to where his car sits waiting. By then the boaters and the people at the encampment will be too distracted by the fire to pay them any mind. With any luck, they will be across the bridge and at the cliff on the other side in twenty minutes. Cullen has marked the spot where Nevis will fall. He will make her remove her shoes and her jacket and leave them stacked tidily by the cliff edge. There will be no skid marks or broken branches or signs of struggle. In a matter of seconds it will all be over. They will think that she set fire to the boat and went to be with Natasha and Jessica. There will be no evidence that her death was anything but one in a regrettable and tragic series of suicides. Honor will find out the truth eventually. And with any luck the truth will kill her. Not quickly and easily, the way Nevis will die, or the way that later he too will leave the world, but slowly and painfully, week by week, year by year until all that is left of her is an agony of regret and guilt. By the time they find Nevis he will have reached St Olaf’s. He will jump from the same bridge as Zoe two decades ago. He will enter the water where she entered it, will feel its cold embrace just as she did. He will rejoice in the brilliance of his revenge. His death will make the papers. Honor will find out, he will make sure of that. He will leave a note and sign himself Christopher Mulholland. He will take Honor’s daughter from her. Honor will never be able to visit the places where her daughter and her best friend died without thinking of him.