The Company of Fellows

by Dan Holloway

  “Charles didn’t say anything. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have been disgusted, I should have wondered what my husband did, where he went, to know all this, but somehow I didn’t want any questions stopping me hearing what came next. And when I did, it was too late for questions like that.”

  It was Tommy’s turn to put his hand on Jane’s. He knew exactly what it felt like to have to stop yourself asking questions, to make yourself focus only on what came next.

  “After a minute or so Barnard continued. What he was doing for that minute I’ll never know, but I think he was sizing Charles up, wondering how he would react to the conversation being taken one stage further. ‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ he said. “And it’s still not quite as good as it could be. Teeth still poke through and gums, well, they’re bony, slightly too hard. What you need is something more cartilaginous to make it perfect. Cartilaginous but still body temperature on the inside, soft, spongy, but with just enough give.’”

  Tommy felt the kitchen start to swim. Concentrate, he said to himself. Just on the words she’s saying. She did it. Make yourself do it too.

  “‘I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and I’ve worked out exactly what would work.’ He paused again, slightly. He still hadn’t committed himself, wanted to make sure he could I suppose. ‘The crown of baby’s skull, before it fuses, if you could trepan a hole in it just the right size.’ They were silent again for a while. Charles didn’t shout. I couldn’t hear him get up and walk out, or throw things around. Eventually Charles did speak. ‘You’d have to find a way to keep it still but still allow enough room for it to thrash around to mimic the flickering of the tongue.’”

  Tommy and Jane looked at each other without saying anything, holding on to each other’s eyes to protect themselves it seemed from vertigo. Finally, Jane spoke again, softly, no longer in the flat dead tone of recollection. “That isn’t really what I want to tell you, Tommy. I know you know most of it, if not all of it, already. I saw that in your eyes the other day.”

  Tommy found himself flinching his eyes away from her instinctively, as if to preserve his modesty.

  “You’re not the only one with the ability to read people. Remember that, and if I’m right that you did know, remember how good my instinct is when I tell you that whatever you think my husband might have been involved in, he wasn’t.” Jane smiled, “What I want to tell you is what happened after Charles left.”

  Tommy tightened his grip. It was the worst time he could imagine to have to be taking any of this in. And he didn’t know what reserves, if any, he had left to be supportive for Jane. But as he looked at her, and felt her responding to the warmth of his hand, he didn’t feel any need coming from her, only a resolute strength, fixed with a permanence as sure as if it had been set in ambergris.

  “It must have been two or three hours before Barnard came to bed. I don’t know what they talked about, but in that time I could have sat for an hour, thought my options through, left goodbye messages, packed for all of us, and been somewhere along the M40 with the children before he would have known I was gone.”

  Tommy sensed that he knew what she would say next. He thought of himself, just a few days ago, staring at John’s body as it took a beating from the rain.

  “I must have done, of course, because everything that followed for the next twenty years surely needed such an act of will that it must have started with something momentous, some die-shattering, Rubicon-crossing moment, but I don’t think I can recall making a decision at all. I just knew as soon as I closed the door and sat at the dressing table that a choice had been made that I would never go back on, but even then I can’t remember making it for the life of me. Does that sound ridiculous?”

  Tommy knew it wasn’t a question, that no answer he gave would ever make her change her mind. But he also knew that she was right. “That’s the way we make life-changing decisions,” he said. “It’s how we know they’re the really important ones, too important to risk letting ourselves prevaricate and procrastinate over.”

  “Then you will understand why I needed to speak to you. That sometimes the truth is less important than being true to the choices we have made. That sometimes what we can give people by drawing a line under the past and never going back is more real than what we can give them with the truth.”

  Jane looked straight at him. Not pleading. There was no need for her to glance to the left where Tommy knew there were pictures of her children on dresser. Through her gaze he saw eyes looking up from beneath a red fringe, and whether they were Becky’s eyes or those of the poor dead girl in London didn’t matter. He knew exactly what she meant. And he could see in her eyes that she knew he did.

  “Take care, Tommy.” He wondered for a minute if she would kiss him on the cheek, wondered if it would be the first time her lips had touched anyone since her children left home, but instead she held out her hand. He shook it, not knowing what to say. “It’s OK,” She said. “Whatever the choice you’ve made, you’ve got enough strength to see it through.”

  ____

  63

  How is it that people can pretend something like that had just never happened? Tommy wondered. He didn’t know whether to be full of admiration for Jane, or full of pity, but most of all what he felt was incomprehension at the possibility of that kind of sustained act of will. It was what Charles had always chided him for. Couldn’t wait for a rare steak, one of the first things Becky had said to him, and as he shut the door behind him and headed for the Warden’s Lodge he realised that perhaps Charles had been right. He’d always assumed there had to be a happy medium between that and waiting for a lifetime for one moment. But maybe there wasn’t.

  That was, after all, the possibility that had brought him here, wasn’t it? The idea that a person could base their whole lives around a single decision, every day an act of will that would carry them on a path that one day, at just the right time, would lead them to a single moment. A whole career path followed just to be in the right place to carry out a single act. Or a life spent seemingly aimlessly following a spouse.

  Tommy realised that perhaps this is what he had been witnessing in the relationship between the Sansoms, not the revelation of a hidden bond that was always there, but relief that the one obstacle to their happiness had been removed, and now, at last, they could retire and begin their life. And the final peace of mind would come when Harry provided the proof of the kind of monster one of them had slain.

  Time to knock.

  “You do have a home, don’t you, Tommy?” Clarissa said through the open door, almost before he had finished knocking.

  “I wonder sometimes.” He smiled.

  “I’m afraid we’ve finished lunch, but you’re more than welcome to a chocolate pastry.”

  “That sounds just about perfect.”

  Clarissa took him through to the kitchen and slid a flat tray out of one of her many fridges. “Help yourself.” She pushed the tray towards him.

  How clever was she, he wondered? He looked for a hint of eagerness in her eyes as she kept her fingers on the tray but the light was shining from behind her. Was that deliberate? Should he wait for her to have one first? He’d licked the spatula clean earlier but how did he know if this was the same batch? God, he sounded paranoid.

  “Thank you.” He took an enormous bite of heaven and at once he felt the sugar feeding his brain.

  He scanned the kitchen as best he could without her noticing. There was a mobile on the table. Almost certainly hers, he thought. For business probably, a number that was easily traceable. Not the one that had texted him. “They’re incredible.” he said. “I don’t suppose you’ve got some milk to go with it?”

  Clarissa was clearly comfortable enough to turn her back on him. Tommy scanned the room. He couldn’t see anything on the sides; he craned on tiptoe to see the shelves. Clarissa was at the fridge, her back still turned to him. Good, he stood up silently and scanned the topmost shelves quickly. No s
ign of a phone. No books pushed out from the others, all flush to the wall.

  Something wasn’t right. He sat down at once, just as she was closing the door, milk in her hand. She didn’t turn straightaway. What was it? His eyes lingered on her, apron tied behind her back, covering her front but not covering her back, not covering her jeans, not covering the outline of a slim mobile in her back pocket.

  That was the phone. In the instant he clocked it he knew the recognition had been written across his face, but her back was turned long enough for him to bring the shutters down. Time to get out of the kitchen. Time to get away from the knives.

  “There you are, Tommy.” She handed him the milk. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “Is there somewhere we can sit down? I’m exhausted, I’m afraid.”

  “Certainly.” Clarissa pulled a couple of stools out from the large breakfast bar in the centre of the room that was still dusted with flour. She sat at one of them, and pointed him to the other. Not what he meant. He hovered but she stayed glued to the stool, smiling and pointing him to the other.

  He tried to gauge how far she was from the knife block on the side without making it obvious. She must have noticed his eyes, distant. If she didn’t, she couldn’t miss it when they stopped, staring at the bright brushed steel fridge door. That was why she took her time. She’d had a perfect view of him in the door. Had seen everything, including the moment when he registered the phone.

  It was too late for anything else but to front it out.

  “Clarissa.” She looked straight at him, through him he thought.

  “Tommy.” She knows what’s coming.

  “You want me to stop looking for Charles’ killer, don’t you?”

  For a moment she seemed to be sizing up what the question meant, but no longer than that. “Yes.”

  “You’ve been sending me letters, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the phone in your back pocket.”

  Clarissa laughed, the resigned laugh of a chess player down to his last pawn who knows he’s about to make it into a queen.

  “Why?”

  For a second he thought she was weighing up her answer, her eyes raised top left in deliberation. By the time he worked out her eyes were fixed behind him it was too late.

  He heard the ching of a knife pulled from its holder and before he could turn he felt the cold, flat steel on his neck and an arm around his chest.

  “It’s OK, Clarissa.” Hedley’s voice at his ear.

  “No, H.”

  “He’s a good boy. He doesn’t know when to stop digging but I don’t think he’s told anyone. Not his ex the DCI, not his girlfriend the DS. And I’ll bet he hasn’t written anything down. I think he’s the only one who knows. It’s the part of him that never stopped playing the academic jealously guarding his sliver of an idea.”

  “I could pretend that’s not true,” Tommy said, but the blade didn’t flinch. How could he buy time? Come on. You’re stronger than he is. A moment’s distraction and you’re safe. What to do? Come on. Calm. What do they talk about at night? That’s got to be it. Put some kind of doubt between them.

  “Clarissa.” Tommy fixed her in his eyes, and in the spit second’s hesitation he knew the answer.

  “Shut up, Tommy,” Hedley snapped, his arm pulling tighter down on Tommy’s collar-bone.

  “Clarissa, do you know exactly what your husband has done? Did he explain all the detail to you?”

  “Be quiet.” Not a waver in the voice coming from his ear.

  “H, no.” Clarissa glancing behind him, begging.

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “No, H. Charles I can understand. But not Tommy, not like this.”

  “Hedley, how are you going to make this look like an accident?” Feeling all the time with what seemed like nervous spasms of his muscles. Feeling for looseness. Feeling for a hesitation.

  “I don’t have a choice, C.”

  Clarissa flicking her eyes behind him. A moment’s incomprehension as she saw something in Hedley. Her head to one side in anticipation. Waiting for a response. Hedley was going to answer her but he was thinking about what to say. The blade still dull against him but harder to feel, gone warm as his skin in the heat of his fear.

  Tommy jabbed his head back. Crack. No movement from Hedley’s right arm. Tommy ducked under the blade and in a moment he was on top of Hedley, the knife in his hand. “It’s OK, Clarissa. It’s OK, I’m not going to hurt him.”

  “H!” Clarissa rushed. Coming for him. No, coming for Hedley. Throwing herself against him and burying her head in tears in his chest. For a moment Tommy tried to work out what had happened and then he knew what she had seen in her husband’s eyes.

  “You need to talk,” Tommy said, sliding the knife back into the block.

  He helped Clarissa to her feet and checked Hedley over. He’d only caught him on the chin. Tommy pulled him up and sat him on the barstool.

  “Clarissa tried to warn me off, Hedley, because she thought you killed Charles.”

  Sansom held his head, cradling his chin, looking up at his wife in disbelief. “You thought I killed Charles?”

  “She’s only just realised you thought she’d killed Charles.”

  “Why? Why would I kill Charles?” Hedley pleaded.

  “Ever since I met you, you’ve spent your life chasing him,” said Clarissa. “You blamed him for Val’s death and you were going to hound him till he paid.”

  “Yes I wanted him punished for what he’d done. By the police.”

  “Because of what it did to Val,” she said.

  Tommy could almost see the years of bitterness spat out in that one short syllable. It was as though she were trying to exorcise the ghost she thought had come between them all their married life.

  “At first, yes.” Hedley winced as the salt of his tears caught in his wound. “Val thought Carol died because Charles wasn’t there when she was born. She killed herself because she couldn’t cope with a world where someone who cared that little about their child got to be a father. God I blamed Charles. I promised I’d make him pay.”

  Hedley was red with anger, and the suddenly he went completely white, “And then Stephen Knightley came to see me. He’d done something terrible. The kind of thing that you can only do if you tell no-one as long as you live; not even after you’re dead. But he wasn’t strong enough to cope with the corrosive worm eating at him from the inside so he told me.” Hedley stopped for a moment. It was the slightest of pauses, as though he had decided that it was better for Clarissa to have to cope with the truth than for there to be any more secrets. “He told me that he’d told Haydn that Carol was dead, replaced her with an unwanted stillborn from the morgue, and given her to Charles.

  “I had to know what happened to her, so I followed Charles to the continent. I took a post at Tübingen so I could use their links with the Sorbonne to watch him. But he didn’t spend any time in Paris, he spent his time in Spain. I went to Jerez on a number of occasions. He never knew, of course.”

  “When did you know that Carol was still alive? Did you see her?”

  “No. It was more like a steady drip of acid that finally burnt through?”

  “When?” Tommy asked.

  “Shortly after he came back. I saw him in a theatre.”

  “Let me guess,” Tommy said. “The Tempest. A father keeps his daughter prisoner with him on his magical island, far away from the world and its so-called dangers.”

  “No. It was a student production of Alcestis. He was sitting in the audience with Barnard Ellison. It was the look on his face when she offered herself to the gods. It felt like a revelation but it had been building for years.”

  “Alcestis?” Clarissa asked.

  “In the play, Death comes calling for an old man,” Tommy explained. “But his daughter, Alcestis, loves him so much that she offers herself in his place.”

  “I could see in his eyes that Carol was alive and that he
wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to sacrifice her for any of his pleasures.”

  “And you devoted your life to finding out which pleasures they were?” Clarissa said.

  “Yes.”

  “And me?”

  “I fell in love with you, C. I didn’t mean to but I fell in love with you.”

  “But you couldn’t let her know. Not until you found out what happened to Carol.” A choice made once and never reneged on. More lives wrecked by a promise.

  “No.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m released from all the promises of the past, and maybe some day there will be time to think about a future.”

  “I’ll leave you to talk,” Tommy said. “But I need to know, Clarissa, whether you wrote the letters to Charles.”

  “No. God, no. I got the idea after I heard you and Becky talking after the memorial service.”

  Tommy turned to Hedley “You were right,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I saw Harry this morning. Your hunch was right. He had Carol at number 37. She was there until a few months ago.”

  For a second Hedley’s eyes lit up, but Tommy shook his head.

  Hedley had stopped crying. It was as though he had been waiting to punish himself for 18 years. To punish himself that he couldn’t stop Valerie killing herself. And now he knew that Carol had been alive right under his eyes and that he had left it just too late he had the reason he needed to banish himself to his own mental hell. Whether Clarissa would stay long enough to lead him back Tommy couldn’t tell. But she was still sitting at the breakfast bar when he left, and for the moment that was the best that Hedley could hope for.

  ____

  64

  Tommy turned his back on St Saviour’s and headed up Barton Street. He wasn’t shaking or breathing hard, but he knew that he should be. His mind was racing with questions that he couldn’t hope to answer yet, and hadn’t missed a beat. He forced himself to make the conscious choice to shut down for the day, before his body did it for him. The symptoms of depression can be very like those of shock as the body closes off its non-essential circuitry switch by switch until, almost before you notice the darkness coming, the whole organism itself collapses. Tommy had learnt to be aware of every sensation, every neural tic that felt even a little out of the ordinary, and the calm control he felt now was wrong. Wrong in the way that Charles’ otherworldly patience was wrong. And the only weapon that Tommy had left was to pull the trip switch for the night whilst the decision was still his to take.