by Louise Voss
Focus. Pete would help her.
‘Are you hurt?’
She shook her head as if he could see her. ‘No. I’m in the rose garden. I did something stupid.’
He paused and she knew, with the twin telepathy that occasionally flared between them, that he was momentarily thinking of saying something flippant, something like ‘Did you burn the house down?’
‘I got drunk in Ralph’s office earlier. He was hammered too and he came on to me. We ended up having a quick shag in the bogs…’
If she said it fast enough, perhaps it wouldn’t sound so bad. But she couldn’t keep the shudder out of her voice.
‘Oh, Mez, come on, it’s not ideal, but worse things happen at sea…’
‘It IS worse!’ she wailed. ‘Way worse. Now he’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘I think he’s had a clutcher. We went for a walk afterwards, he showed me inside the ice house – you know, that cellar in the grounds. I’ve never been in there before. I left him there taking photos, but dropped my front-door key. I just went back to get it and … He’s there, dead. He’s either had a heart attack or someone went in and strangled him after I left. He looks all purple and puffy but then he looked like that beforehand, cos he was pissed and anyway, how unlikely is that. I mean, who would strangle him?
She was gabbling.
‘Slow down.’
She took a deep, gasping breath, trying to speak more slowly. ‘He can’t have been strangled, that’s ridiculous. There’s no-one even here apart from security! He must have had a heart attack. I came out of the ice house, walked home, realised I’d dropped my key, went back, and he was lying on the floor. I did CPR on him for ages, but nothing. It must have happened right after I left. I was only gone a few minutes!’
Tears flowed down her cheeks. She couldn’t even remember the last time she cried.
‘But what do I do? I don’t know what to do! I can’t call an ambulance. Nobody must know. What if they think I killed him? I accidentally scratched his face – he sneezed and my ring caught it. The police might think we were fighting!’
‘Mez. You can’t leave him there. Listen, don’t panic. I’ll come and meet you, and we’ll call together. Give me ten minutes. I just need to lock up the workshop. I’ll come on my bike. The van’s being MOT’d.’
Meredith sniffed hard. Perhaps they wouldn’t care about her DNA. No need to be suspicious from a heart attack, surely?
‘The main gates’ll be locked. Come in through the back gate – you know, the one near the orchard that goes to the staff car park? Code’s 4989.’
‘Right. Sit tight and I’ll be there ASAP.’
‘Thanks. I’ll be at home. Love you.’
He was gone.
Meredith had been waiting for him to command her to call the emergency services, do the sensible thing – and he hadn’t. Without her explaining, he understood why she was ringing him instead of 999.
She sniffed and dragged the back of her hand under her nose, concentrating on getting her breathing back to normal. She hoped – always hoped – that she was as precious to Pete as he was to her. She knew she must be fairly precious. Pete had moved from Salisbury to live near her ten years ago.
By the time she had hauled herself off the bench, across the vegetable patch and in through her front gate, she had made a decision: when Pete arrived, she would call the police.
6
Graeme
‘You stink,’ Catherine says, wrinkling her nose as he walks into the visitors’ lounge.
She’s in a bad mood – again. That’s the fourth day in a row now, Graeme notes. Maybe she’s going through the change. Although to be fair she’d always been moody. Just his luck, to have spent most of his miserable life in love with a moody cow.
He didn’t usually think like this, but he was tired and stressed, and worried by the way she constantly badgered him.
‘Been working on the van,’ Graeme says. ‘It broke down yesterday, and I couldn’t afford to take it to the garage. Had to mend it, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to come in today.’
He pauses, waiting for Catherine to ask, but she doesn’t.
‘I fixed it! Myself. Just with a YouTube video. You can look up how to do anything on there, it’s wicked.’
‘It’s wicked’, mimics Catherine. ‘What are you, twelve?’
Graeme drops his head. Sometimes Catherine’s so mean that he wonders why he bothers. He could just walk out of here and never come back, but the thought of that fills him with such panic that he feels his legs begin to jiggle and his hands tremble.
Catherine is all he has. Catherine is family, friends, partner, wife (maybe, one day, when they’re both free). Catherine is his world, and there is just no point to anything without her.
Graeme remembers the first incredible months when fate shoved them onto the same path, when they both arrived at Rampton around the same time. Decades ago, back when they were both young and Catherine had been beautiful. Before the weight had piled on them both, the gradual build-up of excess institutional carbs and the refined sugar that were one of the few pleasures in that place. At least Graeme had managed to convert his into muscle now he was out. But he had never managed to convert his love for her into anything else, a fact about which he often felt depressed.
Cheap chocolate and mutual masturbation were all they’d managed. Graeme recalled the sour but thrilling taste of Catherine’s tongue in his mouth, the feel of it on his cock. There had been one bush in the grounds that all the security cameras’ angles just missed, and that had been where they had rendezvoused every day, meeting behind it, next to the fence, when they were supposed to be doing their sports sessions. That was many years ago, but you didn’t forget your first sexual experience. He helps keep the memories alive when he’s alone on his single mattress with its yellow-grey sheet.
Clean, ironed, fresh sheets. That’s what they’d have on all the beds in their cottage.
‘It wasn’t that easy,’ he says with eyes downcast, picking at his oil-grimed fingernails. ‘The alternator had gone. I had to reconnect the—’
‘Yeah, yeah, aren’t you clever? Anyway, more to the point…’ Catherine glances towards the guard, but he’s talking to another inmate, so she continues. ‘How’s the plan coming along? Did you get what I told you to get?’
This is the question Graeme has been dreading and one he’s amazed Catherine hasn’t asked sooner. He replies in a low gabble. ‘I’m working on it, babe. I spoke to a bloke down the gym who says he can get one, but that was a month ago, and I ain’t seen him since. You can’t rush these things, he warned me it would be difficult.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Graeme, it’s been months since we first discussed it! I’m going insane in here! Being this good isn’t frickin’ easy.’
‘You’ve been dead good. Ground leave every week for, what, two years now?’
‘No need to patronise me.’
‘I’m not!’
Graeme wasn’t. He was genuinely pleased that Catherine’s behaviour had stabilised enough for her to finally have been moved to the medium-security Ashworth. He secretly hoped it was because Catherine was getting better, rather than the true reason – that it was a means to an end.
Catherine had a plan. She’d had the same plan ever since they’d first met. And every time the plan met a setback – another sentence for another crime committed to add to her now very long list of ABH, GBH, attempted murder – she never, ever associated her own actions with the consequences. Instead, the long, bony finger of her blame stayed pointing at the one oblivious person whose fault she believed it was. All of it.
Sometimes Graeme thought that if someone told Catherine this individual was responsible for world poverty and global warming Catherine would readily believe it … He almost felt sorry for them. Catherine had always made it sound like they were a mixture of Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot and Hitler, all rolled into one.
Although he’d never dare suggest t
hat to Catherine. She’d never speak to him again.
‘So,’ Catherine said impatiently, dropping her voice, ‘let’s have a recap of where we are. Once you’ve got it, we’ll keep the shooter for the final showdown – if you ever finally get your bloody act together and sort it. In the meantime, you’re still doing what I told you to?’
More a statement than a question. He hesitated, and she jumped down his throat: ‘What’s wrong with you! Why aren’t you?’
‘I am! I am, Cath, honest.’ He told her what he’d managed to do just the other day, and was rewarded with a faint smile that lifted the corners of her mouth.
Graeme, however, had been stalling. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to get Catherine out of there – far from it – but there was always the risk that it would all go badly wrong, and instead of getting her out, he would end up back inside himself – for good this time. They wouldn’t let him anywhere near Catherine. Neither of them would ever get the cottage, the dream life.
Graeme took a deep breath. ‘Cath … are you sure it’s worth it? I mean, darlin’, if you keep your head down they might review your case and you can get out legitimately.’
Catherine’s face darkened and her eyes narrowed, reminding Graeme of a glowering cartoon villain. ‘You chickening out on me?’ she demanded. Her voice compressed to a terrifying hiss. ‘Because if you’re not with me … you’re against me.’
She didn’t need to say any more.
‘I’m with you, babe, all the way, I swear. I love you,’ said Graeme, the words falling over themselves as they tumbled out of him. ‘You know I’d do anything for you. Anything!’
‘I know,’ Catherine said, smugly.
7
Pete
Pete was out of breath, having cycled from his workshop to Minstead House at high speed. His shirt was clinging unpleasantly to his chest. The last few hundred metres of the driveway were up a steep hill, and then he had to cycle around to the back entrance and up the rutted gravel pathway that ran along the side of the estate up to Meredith’s cottage.
Propping his bike against the iron railings boxing in her garden, he hung his helmet by its chin strap over one of the handlebars and ran up to hammer on the front door.
‘Mez, it’s me!’
Meredith unlocked the door, shooting back the heavy Victorian bolt to admit him into the gloomy porchway. He put his arms tight around her, resting his chin on top of her head.
‘Why have you bolted the door? You’re not seriously worried that someone’s done this to him? Any guy his age could have a heart attack; it happens all the time.’
She didn’t move except to bury her face further into his chest.
‘At least you know there’s nothing more you could have done. If the CPR didn’t work, an ambulance crew wouldn’t have revived him either.’
They rocked together. ‘I’m sweaty,’ he added, unnecessarily, although he knew she didn’t mind. She always told him she loved his smell: tobacco and sawdust. He was a whole foot taller than her, and she pressed her face into the right side of his chest, where he could feel his heart beat against her ear. Perhaps they had been that way round in the womb.
It gave him a pang of actual, physical pain when he thought about how they had been estranged for more than ten years when they were younger, until the terrible event that at least had the corollary of bringing her back to him.
What a waste. But then, she had behaved like a complete dick. They’d made up for it since. He used to work for film studios, building sets, but when he moved to the area to be nearer Meredith ten years ago, he’d rented a workshop and shop front, and started taking commissions for tables and cabinets made of slabs of cherry or oak, inlaid with mother of pearl in intricate designs.
Last year he’d moved from his tiny cottage into a beautiful Dutch barge that Meredith insisted on buying for him. It was called the Barton Bee and was moored on the River Wey at a marina just on the outskirts of Minstead Village, a mile from Minstead House. Now he saw Meredith several times a week, without fail.
He often wondered if their mutual adoration was the reason they were both over fifty and single. Nobody else was ever good enough.
‘I keep thinking I should’ve run to get the defibrillator, but it was too far away.’ Meredith’s voice was muffled.
She finally pushed herself away from him and stared up into his face. Hers looked ravaged, a sickly greeny-yellow with huge black shadows under her eyes, like she had the worst possible hangover.
‘Maybe we still should,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s not too late. We need to get back there anyway. I’ve decided I’m going to call the police. We’re going to walk back there as if we’re just having an evening stroll, then I’m going to “notice” that the ice house door’s open, go and investigate, scream, alert night security, et cetera, et cetera.’
‘What if they look at the CCTV recordings from earlier and see that you went in together, but you came out alone?’ Pete asked, doubtfully.
Meredith shook her head. ‘There aren’t any cameras in that part of the grounds. I’m sure there aren’t. We came down from his office the back way. He didn’t want the security guys to see us go in to the loo. Or risk doing it in his office, because they sometime pop in for a chat if he’s working late … We’ll just say you came to meet me and we were having a walk because it’s such a nice evening.’
‘OK … but what about when the police find your DNA on him?’
Something else occurred to him, and he grimaced, pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes. ‘Um … did you use a condom?’
Meredith hung her head, shamefaced.
‘Mez! That’s terrible! You should know better.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Listen, you might have sex every other day, but I haven’t done it since Alasdair and I split up, and that was about four years ago! I didn’t even get that far with Gary. And Ralph is – was – a sixty-year-old married man. It certainly wasn’t planned, and I really doubt he’s been putting it about. Risking herpes is the least of my problems. It’s a good thing there’s no condom – less evidence to be found.’
‘Well I’m disappointed in you, sis. And I don’t know what you think I get up to when I’m not with you, because I certainly haven’t been at it every other day for quite some time. Promise me you will be safer in future.’
‘Whatever, Pete. It’s irrelevant anyway, because I am never, ever having sex again, as long as I live.’
They walked in silence back towards the ice house. Pete reached out for her hand, as he occasionally had when they were kids.
As they rounded the corner from the rose garden onto the sweeping back lawns, a cheery voice came out of nowhere, and Pete felt them both jerk with shock, as if there would be two more heart attacks in the grounds that night.
‘’Ello! Evening constitutional, is it?’
The owner of the voice was a portly, elderly man in some kind of dark-green uniform, carrying a huge torch, even though it was still light. He was almost as wide as he was tall, with a flat but bulbous nose that spread halfway across his face, like it was trying to escape.
Meredith dropped Pete’s hand fast, but stayed pressed close to his side, hoping, he could tell, that the man hadn’t noticed.
‘Pete, this is Leonard, our night-security guard,’ she said. ‘Leonard, my twin brother, Pete. You must have just come on duty?’
Pete was impressed at how normal she made her voice sound. But then she always had been good at hiding her real feelings from the rest of the world. Too good, often.
Pete remembered Meredith telling him that Leonard had been wearing out shoe leather in the corridors of Minstead House for almost three decades. He recalled the conversation because he never understood how anyone would want to work nights for more than a couple of weeks, let alone over half his lifetime. Thirty years! Even the thought made him want to punch a wall. But then, now he was meeting the man and seeing the look of placid acceptance in his baggy eyes, it made more sense.
/> ‘Evening, Leonard. Nice to meet you.’
‘I can’t believe you two haven’t met before!’ chirped Meredith as if they were all at a cocktail party.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Leonard said, tipping his cap to Pete, who bared his teeth back at him.
‘Just going for a stroll. Such a lovely evening.’ Pete put his arm around Meredith.
‘Aah, that’s sweet. I hated me sister, personally. She used to give me wedgies and Chinese burns.’
‘Meredith wouldn’t do that,’ Pete said, squeezing her arm. ‘Not unless provoked. Well, nice to meet you, Leonard. Have a good night.’
‘Night, Leonard,’ Meredith added.
It was only when Leonard had waddled off back in the direction of the house that Pete realised Meredith was shaking. She had to lean against him to keep herself upright.
‘I need to sit down,’ she whispered.
‘Stay cool, Mez. You’re doing great.’ Pete took her hand again. ‘It’s good that he saw us. Where is this ice house, then?’
‘Just here, behind these bushes,’ Meredith said, as they reached a bank of flowering rhododendrons.
As they rounded the corner she added, loudly and brightly, presumably in case anybody was in the vicinity to overhear, ‘Oh look! Someone’s left the door unlocked.’
This was crazy, Pete thought. She was acting like she’d killed Ralph. She shouldn’t just ring the police and say she’d found him; she should tell them everything. Be honest.
He was about to tell her this, but she spoke first.
‘I will never forgive myself,’ she said, her voice cracking.
‘Mez. Stop it. It’s not helping.’
‘I slept with my friend’s husband.’
Pete turned and grabbed her hands. He’d already changed his mind about persuading her to ring the police. She was right, it was too risky.
‘Listen to me. We’ve all done stuff we know we shouldn’t have. Don’t beat yourself up about it – at least, not right now. If you want to keep your job, your reputation, and not have Paula hating you forever, you have to stop this. She’s going to need you. Be there for her – that’ll help make it up to her, even if she doesn’t know it.’
