by Nicci French
‘You’re rather late,’ she said.
‘Dentist,’ replied Neve. She put hand to her jaw.
‘Problems with your teeth?’
Neve remembered that she had used the same excuse for a couple of her assignations with Saul. She remembered what Hitching had said about Katie: that she was sure an affair had been continuing.
‘I have,’ she said. Another stupid lie that could be found out.
‘Someone told me that Bernice has been staying with you.’
‘She came round. She didn’t stay.’
‘I didn’t know you knew her.’
‘I don’t really. It was just one of those things.’
Neve heard herself talking, a stream of meaningless words issuing from her mouth. She saw Katie looking at her intently, a little crease between her eyes.
‘I need to get to work,’ she said. ‘Make up for lost time.’
‘How’s that brochure coming on?’
‘Just a few details,’ said Neve. She couldn’t even remember what it was she was supposed to be doing.
‘Bob was asking.’
‘Tell him it’s all good.’
‘Where have you been?’ demanded Tamsin.
‘Dentist.’ Again, she touched her jaw in a weird reflex. Even her fingers were lying, she thought.
‘Again?’
‘Dentist is the adult’s equivalent of the dog ate my homework,’ said Gary. He was wearing a pullover with a zig-zag pattern on it that made Neve’s eyes throb.
‘Bob was looking for you,’ said Tamsin. ‘He wants to know about the brochure.’
‘I know. Where’s Renata?’
‘She rang to say she’s feeling a bit rough and she’s not coming in until this afternoon,’ said Gary. ‘I think she’s still at your house.’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘I’m going to the printers in a few minutes. You and Tamsin will have to hold the fort.’
Neve turned on her computer. She pulled up her work on the brochure for the pharmaceutical conference and stared at it. It was being held over two days and there were eight keynote speakers. She didn’t even know what the difference between a keynote speaker and any old speaker was. There was an image of the face of each of them: two women and six men and they were all smiling and seemed to have very white teeth. Again she touched her jaw. She stared at the words: ‘digital health ecosystem’, ‘genomics’, ‘healthcare big data’, ‘augmented reality in healthcare solutions’ . . . She experimented with the font, returned it to what she’d already selected, changed an awkward line break, sighed heavily.
‘I’m off,’ said Gary, taking his ratty old jacket from the back of the chair.
‘How about lunch,’ said Tamsin as soon as he’d left.
‘It’s a bit early,’ said Neve. ‘I’ve only been here about half an hour. And the brochure’s running out of time.’
‘Yes, but you look a bit peaky. Let’s go to that salad bar.’
Neve had an aubergine and chickpea salad and Tamsin a violently green and gloopy drink made largely of spinach. They sat at a table at the back.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Tamsin.
‘Don’t I seem OK?’
‘You look a bit tired.’
‘The weekend was crazy. I haven’t recovered yet.’
Tamsin nodded. She took a mouthful of her drink and when she next spoke there was a froth of green on her lips.
‘So what’s your secret?’ she asked.
Neve felt a jolt go through her. She made a strange noise.
‘You and Fletcher,’ said Tamsin. ‘The last ones standing.’
‘Oh.’ Neve put the aubergine into her mouth and chewed it very slowly to give herself time. ‘I don’t know,’ she said when she could trust herself to speak. ‘All marriage is hard, isn’t it?’
‘But you two are nice to each other. You don’t put each other down or argue with each other.’
‘We’ve not been perfect,’ said Neve. Then before she lost her nerve, she said, ‘Why did you cover for me?’
‘What?’
‘When you said to Fletcher that I’d been with you last Tuesday evening.’
‘Oh that,’ said Tamsin. ‘I didn’t think you needed an alibi!’ She gave a laugh. ‘But you’re always at everyone’s beck and call. Your last few years, everything with Mabel, with Fletcher, and the boys, and all the changes with work – you must need to be on your own sometimes, not telling everyone where you are and not able to be reached by anyone, answerable to no one.’
‘I do,’ said Neve fervently. ‘I do need that.’
‘So that’s why.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ She finished her green drink. ‘That wasn’t actually very nice.’
‘Healthy though.’
‘I guess.’ She waited a few moments. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Sure.’
‘Did you ever have an affair or anything like that?’
Tamsin looked at her for a moment then she wiped her mouth on the paper napkin.
‘We’ve all done things we wished we hadn’t.’
‘Does that mean yes?’
‘It just means that everyone behaves badly sometimes, me included. Everyone has things in their life they’re ashamed of.’
‘That’s true.’
‘So what are yours?’
Neve made herself laugh. It sounded horribly fake to her.
‘That’s not fair,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t tell me so now I’m not telling you. Anyway,’ she looked at her watch. ‘We should get back. That brochure isn’t going to finish itself.’
Renata came in at two. She was wearing one of Neve’s shirts under one of Neve’s jackets and when they hugged, Neve could smell that she had sprayed herself with Neve’s perfume. Her hair was clean and smelled of Neve’s shampoo and her face looked fresher.
‘It’s amazing the things you can’t do when you only have the use of one hand,’ she said. ‘I have no idea how I’m going to get any work done. Mabel helped me wash. And Will made me brunch.’
‘What?’
‘Poached eggs.’
‘Will?’
‘He’s back,’ said Renata cheerfully. ‘And Jackie’s back. And a friend of Jackie’s, called Frederika I think. Hair in bunches like a ten year old.’
‘At my house?’
‘Yes.’
She felt a bone-crushing weariness. ‘Don’t they have jobs?’
‘They’re going to finish putting up the greenhouse. I think it’s become like a challenge. Although Fletcher says they’ll have to dismantle some of it first because they’ve done it wrong.’
‘My God,’ said Neve. ‘They’re never going to leave.’
‘Do you mind me being there?’
‘Of course not, but you’re my close friend, almost my family. I hardly know these people.’
‘They feel they know you.’ Renata’s tone was dry. ‘They seem thoroughly at home.’
They settled down at their desks. Katie put her head round the door to say that the following afternoon there would be an office meeting for everyone to discuss the changes that would be implemented following Saul’s death. That didn’t sound good. Neve made desultory adjustments to the brochure. She called Gary, who was still with the printers, to find out when she could get a proof if she sent the material to them by close of day. Fragments of her interview with Hitching kept returning to her, though most of it remained an appalling blank.
Looking up, she saw that Renata was sitting with her chin in her uninjured hand, staring towards the smeared window; she didn’t seem able to concentrate on work either. The earrings that Saul had given her were glinting in her lobes.
‘Renata?’
‘Yes?’
‘Where did you say that Saul got your earrings?’
Renata raised a hand and touched one of them.
‘I probably shouldn’t be wearing them. You know the place: Farfelou, in Covent Garden.’
Neve nodded. She was thinking about the present that Saul had ordered for her and had said would arrive in time for her birthday. Could it be from there?
She did a surreptitious search on her computer for the shop and keyed the number on to her mobile. Then she stood up.
‘I’m going to get us all some coffee,’ she said. ‘The usual?’
They nodded and she left their little room, went down the stairs and out on to the pavement, where the drizzle was turning to rain. She rang the number and a man with a French accent answered.
‘I’m ringing on behalf of Saul Stevenson,’ Neve said, trying to adopt a professional tone. ‘I hope you can help me.’
‘Of course.’
‘He ordered some jewellery recently,’ said Neve. ‘It was going to be sent to him. I just wanted to check if it was ready yet.’
‘Wait one moment.’
There was a pause. Neve could hear voices in the background.
‘It’s all done,’ said the man at last.
‘Done?’
‘The engraving, yes.’
‘Oh yes. The engraving,’ said Neve. She took a deep breath. ‘“Neve”, wasn’t it?’
‘No,’ said the voice and she felt a rush of relief. ‘No, it says “Neve Jenny”.’ Her relief instantly evaporated.
‘Of course. Perhaps I could collect it, since I’m in the area.’
‘It has already been sent.’
She swallowed hard and tried to iron out the quaver in her voice. ‘Would that be to Flat Three, Hilhurst Street?’
‘That’s right.’
‘When was it sent?’
‘This morning I believe. So it will arrive very soon. Tomorrow probably. It’s a beautiful piece of work. I hope Mr Stevenson is pleased.’
‘I’m sure he will be,’ said Neve.
She ended the call. A man in a grey-green suit walked towards her. He had dark hair and blue eyes and he was smiling at her. For a moment, it was Saul and joy and relief rose in her like a great bird.
Of course he wasn’t Saul. He was nothing like Saul. And anyway, she had seen Saul dead with his skull caved in and his eyes sightless. She had crouched over his body, searching in his pockets. She stood motionless in the gathering rain, feeling it drip down her neck.
The present was coming. Very soon. ‘Neve Jenny’ engraved on a piece of jewellery, because Jenny kissed me when we met.
She went back into the building and bought three coffees – a flat white, a double espresso and an Americano – and took them back to the office where she sat at her computer and stared at the screen and saw nothing but Hitching’s unsmiling face looking back at her.
Neve went to the Ladies and looked at herself in the mirror: circles of exhaustion under her eyes, a fading bruise on her cheek. She touched it gently. Hitching presumably thought she’d got it from Saul, that they had fought and then she had killed him. Her blood was on the folder. Her photo was in the folder. Who had taken it from the corkboard? When? It must have been recently or she would have noticed the space where it used to be.
She thought back over the last few days, then went back to her desk and tore a piece of paper from her pad. She made another list, this time of all the people who had passed through the house since the death:
Renata
Gary
Tamsin
Bernice
Will
Jackie
Sarah
Louis
She remembered the young man who had been in a struggle with the stuck armchair on the night of Renata’s dreadful party: she couldn’t remember his name so just wrote ‘Mabel’s friend with chair’.
She added Elias and Rory and Connor, though that was clearly ridiculous, then Fletcher and then, with a dragging pen, Mabel. Still Mabel.
Who else? There was Hitching of course – she wrote down his name; then Ingram.
And Charlie had been there – she remembered the look of stony hatred on his face when he came to take Renata away. He would want to kill Saul, or even his own wife – but why her?
She stared at the names until they were like hieroglyphs on the page. One came into focus. She stood up.
‘I’ve got a few things I should do.’
‘Another dentist’s appointment?’ Tamsin grinned.
‘A few tasks.’ Neve made a vague gesture.
As she crossed the office she saw Katie sitting at her desk, in the room next to the empty one where Saul used to sit and which still hadn’t been cleared. Katie stared at her. Even when Neve nodded in greeting, she didn’t smile.
Neve phoned ahead to check and then took the underground to Liverpool Street and caught a train. They went every fifteen minutes. She needed to think but as she looked out of the window she lost herself in the sight of north-east London flashing past her, the office buildings and then the Olympic Park and Hackney Marshes and the reservoirs, all the time snaking backwards and forwards across the Lea River. There were the scrubby, dishevelled edge lands around the North Circular, shopping centres and factories, and then they crossed the M25 and suddenly she was looking at countryside and in what seemed like a few minutes they had arrived at Roydon. She looked at her phone and checked the address. Getting off, she felt like she was in a little country station but was immediately walking through a series of streets that could have been in the suburbs of London. In a way they were. The streets felt deserted. The people who had had breakfast here were in London. They wouldn’t be back until dinner time.
Neve checked her phone again. Yes, this was it. Number Twelve, Malden Road. It was a large, detached house, set back from the road, and shielded by a high thick hedge. She looked around. There were similar houses on both sides of the road. Opposite a man was cutting his own hedge, carefully shaping it with an electric cutter. He was wearing an orange helmet with ear protectors and he didn’t notice her at first. When he did, he switched off his cutter, laid it down and took off his helmet. His florid puffy face was sweating profusely.
‘Are you a journalist?’ he said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I’ve already talked to the police. So I thought you must be a journalist.’
‘I’m a friend of Bernice’s. Bernice Stevenson.’
The man didn’t reply. He wiped his brow with his sleeve. He was breathing heavily.
‘What did the police want to know?’
‘They wanted to know if I saw anyone hanging around the house opposite.’
‘It’s what they say about the countryside, isn’t it?’ said Neve. ‘Everybody notices strangers.’
The man shook his head. ‘It used to be like that. Now there are deliveries all bloody day, even on Sundays. You lose track.’ He frowned. ‘Anyway. What’s it to you?’
‘I just want to reassure Bernice.’
‘She’s got other things to worry about.’
‘Did you know Saul?’
The man shrugged.
‘Only to say hello to. He was never around.’
Neve walked back across the road and knocked at the door of Number Twelve. The door was opened not by Bernice but by a young man, almost a boy. He was very thin and pale with straight dark hair. He was wearing black trousers and a blue tee shirt with wavy orange lines across it. His socks were different colours.
‘Mum,’ he shouted, very loudly and then padded away. Neve stepped into a large entrance hall. Ahead of her was a wide staircase and there were various closed doors. One at the back opened revealing Bernice in dark, well-ironed trousers and a pink ribbed sweater.
‘I thought I’d hear from you,’ she said.
She turned and led Neve through a large sitting room into an equally large kitchen that occupied a conservatory backing on to a sweeping lawn surrounded by rose bushes and trees. Neve walked to the glass wall and looked out.
‘Are they apple trees?’
‘And pear trees and one cherry tree. The birds get all the cherries, though.’
A few minutes later, they were sitting at the w
ooden kitchen table with mugs of coffee. The light through the glass was so bright that Neve wished she’d brought sunglasses.
‘It’s good of you to see me,’ she said.
‘I’ve been to your house, now you’ve come to mine,’ said Bernice. Her glance slid over Neve’s face.
‘I’m sorry about the other evening,’ Neve said.
‘That wasn’t your fault,’ said Bernice. ‘I hope you didn’t come all this way to apologise.’
‘This morning I was interviewed by the police.’
‘Because of the file.’
‘Because of the file.’
‘I read it,’ said Bernice. ‘I probably shouldn’t have. It’s like reading someone’s mail. You shouldn’t do it but it’s hard to resist.’
‘It can’t have been very interesting,’ said Neve, trying to adopt a light tone.
‘I found it quite interesting. You’re eight years younger than me, for one thing. Also, I read Saul’s assessment of you, in his own handwriting. It’s funny, now that he’s dead, it feels completely different reading something he’s written. I pictured him sitting there, thinking what word he should use.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Yours was favourable, by the way. More than favourable. Glowing. I can remember phrases from it: “a valuable asset”, “key member of the team”. He was considering promoting you. I thought you’d like to hear that.’
‘What I really wanted to talk about was it being pushed through your door. Didn’t it seem very odd to you? Someone just coming all the way out to Roydon, just to deliver it. Why not just give it to the police?’
‘All the way out to Roydon,’ said Bernice with a smile. ‘I suppose it does seem as if we’re out in the sticks.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘We’re not so far out. Did you come on the train?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long did it take? Half an hour? Forty minutes?’
‘About that.’
‘Quite. So I should have always known,’ said Bernice. ‘He bought that bloody flat fifteen years ago because he said it would be a good investment and a good place for him to stay when he had to work late, go to functions. Did he really need to buy a flat in Covent Garden when he could get home in less than an hour? I should have known from the start what it was really for.’
‘Did you never stay there?’
