Under the Harrow

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Under the Harrow Page 16

by Flynn Berry


  53

  KEITH KNOWS ABOUT the fight, and he knows Fenno was trained. The simplest explanation for how he knows these things is that she told him. That they had an affair, or a friendship he thought was an affair. The strange thing is, when he came to see me, he acted like the affair proved his innocence. If anything it means the opposite.

  The important thing now is that Keith thinks it’s over for him. He thinks he’s safe. He might think, like I did, that he’s protected from being charged again by a form of double jeopardy. It must be such a sense of relief, after nearly going to prison. He will live the rest of his days a free man. I imagine that on the aqueduct he wants to kneel and kiss the ground. In his house, in the pub, driving the roads. He must be making plans now, with all the years he has, plans to travel, to sleep rough.

  If someone were to threaten all that, there is no telling what he would do. Or, really, there is. He is going to attack me, and it will look unprovoked to everyone except the two of us.

  I want him back with the police. They know how to snare him by letting him mention some detail of the crime—how the dog was tied, where her body was found—that they never told him, or by interviewing him until his account begins to shift and break apart. Even though they didn’t manage it before, they need more time with him.

  The best way to do this is for him to commit another crime. It shouldn’t take very long, someone with a temper like that.

  I’ve never understood why the police don’t use bait more often. When someone started to kill women on a mountain in Wales, the police could have sent hikers down the trails. With teams following them, or with guns. They could be policewomen, not civilians. It wasn’t even a very large mountain, they could have baited every trail. Eight victims, over three months, and the murderer has never been found. Fucking stupid.

  Grievous bodily harm. He’s ready for it, too. He needs to take it out on someone.

  54

  MORETTI GIVES A PRESS conference from a room inside Abingdon station. He asks for anyone who was near the warehouse in Eynsham on Thursday night to make contact with the police. He says that based on early evidence they believe more than one person was responsible for the murders, and he urges anyone with information, however minor, to come forward.

  He’s done with Rachel. It’s over for him, unless another development draws him back.

  A row of detectives sits beside him behind low, angled microphones. While he speaks, the officers stare at the press audience with blank, judging faces, as though waiting for an outburst. Based on the crowns on their epaulets, some of them are his superiors. I recognize the chief constable, seated near the middle of the row with his hands clasped on the table.

  Moretti’s voice is measured and clear. The impression he gives is of someone who is serious and, more than anything, effective.

  55

  “CAN YOU COME TO the station?” asks Moretti the morning after the press conference. Rain falls on the yard behind the Hunters, and the foghorn bellows from the village hall. I remember what Keith said about the police suspecting me, but I don’t believe him. It was a bluff. I’m pleased the detectives haven’t closed the inquiry.

  A constable collects me at a quarter past eight. This time Lewis is also in the interview room. For a moment I think this must mean there is news, but neither of them looks eager. They look exhausted.

  “Why did your last relationship end?” asks Moretti.

  “He was unfaithful.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I found a pair of knickers. I told you already.”

  On the Sunday night of his return from Manchester, I reached into his bag and pulled out a fistful of black silk. I spread them flat on the bed to see the dimensions of the body that wore them. The legs and stomach that the lace edged. I imagined a woman lying on her back, topless, biting her finger and laughing.

  Moretti shows me a photograph of a pair of black silk knickers, with the same faint blue label stitched to the hem.

  “Like these?”

  “Yes.”

  “They have a shop on the Via Cavour in Rome. They don’t distribute abroad.” I’ve stopped breathing. Both detectives watch me. Moretti says, “When did you find out?”

  “Find out what?”

  “That Rachel slept with your boyfriend.”

  “She didn’t. He was in Manchester that weekend.”

  “No, Oxford. He stayed at the George on Prince Street. Rachel met him for dinner and she stayed with him at the hotel.”

  The first kick lands. My body turns numb, as it did on that Sunday night. I’m very aware of my movements, of lifting my hand to straighten my shirt, of how much air I displace in the room, as though everything around me is freezing up. It’s not unpleasant. Lewis watches from across the table. He still hasn’t spoken.

  “How many times?” I ask. My voice telescopes away from me.

  “Once, according to Liam,” says Moretti.

  I startle, as though I have been pushed from behind. “He’s admitted it?”

  “Yes.”

  I look at the photograph and remember placing them on our bed and smoothing the cool silk. Liam was in the shower and I left them like that for him to find.

  “Thank you, Nora. That’s all we need for today.”

  He hasn’t turned off the recorder. I wonder what else he thinks I might say.

  56

  “CAN YOU COME TO Oxford now?” I ask at the first pause in his condolences.

  “I’m at work,” says Liam.

  “I’m sure you can explain. The train’s only an hour, you can be back in London tonight.”

  We arrange to meet at the covered market on the high street. There is a bistro on the second floor. It serves good, rustic French food, though I’m not hungry.

  Moretti might be trying to find a motive for me. He may have ordered the knickers from the shop in Rome, not found a matching pair in Rachel’s dresser. I think I told him the brand name.

  While I wait for Liam, I sort through all the times I saw them together. A few times the two of them went off on their own. But they were always on ordinary, reasonable two-person jobs. They once did the grocery shopping when we stayed in Marlow, or he drove her to collect her car from the repair garage.

  It hurts too much to believe that these expeditions were planned, and eagerly awaited. When they returned, they never seemed tense or guilty.

  Moretti never showed me any proof that Liam was in Oxford and not Manchester. He didn’t say how he knew that Rachel stayed at the hotel.

  Liam arrives. I haven’t seen him in six months. He wears a soft black jumper and he smells the same, a cologne with cedar and musk that I realized was quite popular after we broke up. Who do you wear it for now? I think before I can stop myself.

  “How are you?” he asks.

  I shake my head, and then notice the magazine folded in his briefcase. He was able to read on the trip here, and I hate him for it. The server comes and I order a second Campari and soda. Liam orders a beer. He looks so well.

  “Did you sleep with my sister?”

  Everything around us goes quiet.

  “Yes.”

  I swipe his bottle and it shatters against the wall. The liquid foams and spills along the floor. The two servers, both young women, stop at the far end of the room and stare. I doubt they heard our conversation, but they can imagine it. Both of their faces are creased with sympathy. I push back my chair and hurry down the stairs. Behind me I can hear Liam apologizing, a zip on his case opening as he searches for notes to leave on the table.

  He catches me up in the alley beside the covered market. “It wasn’t planned. We ran into each other on the street and decided to eat together later. I don’t even remember it,” he says. “Neither of us did. It was a mistake.”

  “How much did you drink?”

  “Two bottles of
wine.”

  “Each?” I ask, scrupulous, desperate. If it happened after four bottles of wine, I might be able to forgive them.

  “No, together.”

  We hear footsteps at the far end of the alley and stop speaking. A young woman comes down the cobbles, teetering between us. She has a net bag with vegetables and a bouquet of tulips, and I almost grab her arm and say, Listen to this, listen to what he’s done. She lowers her head demurely as she passes us. Lovers’ quarrel. I wish we were having a row, I wish we were in an alley in London, that there was no reason for us to be in Oxford.

  “But you planned it. You told me you were going to Manchester.”

  “No. I said I was going to a conference. We didn’t talk about where until afterward. When I came back, I said I’d been in Manchester.”

  “Did she ask you to say that?”

  “No.”

  I’m having trouble breathing. I was so sure he would deny it. No, I would tell the detective. You’re wrong. It never happened.

  And if he denied it I would never have to think about Rachel kissing him, about Rachel undressing for him, about the two of them falling asleep together, or about the first time that I saw her afterward and she didn’t tell me. I told her we broke up and she said, “Do you want to come up here for a few days?”

  “Did you fancy her the whole time?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Was she angry with me?”

  “No,” he says. “No, of course not. She hated herself for it.”

  I am crying freely now, stoppering my nose with the back of my hand. He looks down at the cobblestones. We don’t speak, and then I say, “Are you seeing someone?”

  He rubs his hand over his mouth.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Charlotte.”

  I can picture her. Cheerful and good-natured, shining light brown hair. Going to work and meeting her friends, meeting Liam, afterward. If she were here, if she came toward us now, I would hit her. I would want to claw her to pieces.

  She’s waiting for him in London. Tonight or tomorrow night he’ll go to see her. It will be a relief, after this, to be near someone serene and warm. She’ll say, “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  Liam still hasn’t realized my position. He hasn’t considered the danger he’s put me in.

  “I found her.”

  “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”

  “They think I killed her because of this.”

  His throat is flushed red, and it spreads down his chest. “No, that’s not possible. I’ll tell them you didn’t know.”

  I step forward and his arms close around me. His chest lifts and sinks against mine. I remember the room at the top of the Oxo Tower. Elderflower gin and tonics. I’d thought, I didn’t know things could be like this.

  He’s seeing someone. It can’t compare to our first months. Golden brown, lays me down. Even the hotel with Rachel can’t compare.

  Warmth spreads through his body into mine. He’s kissing the top of my head and if I turn my face he will kiss my mouth. He tightens his arms around me. I rest my head between his shoulder and his warm throat and try to ignore the disquiet. It will never be how it was before. This will harm you more, in the end.

  “I have to go,” I say and my voice sounds calm, like I’ve just remembered an appointment.

  “Will you be all right?” he asks, and I realize that he expects me to say yes.

  My voice stays composed as I say good-bye. At the end of the alley, I turn into the crowds on the high street. The loneliness has me by the throat, and I hear Rachel tell me, You’re fine, all you have to do now is get home, all you have to do is get home.

  57

  “BEFORE LEAVING LONDON, you went to a pub on Christchurch Terrace in Chelsea,” says Moretti. As soon as I left Liam, he called me back to the station. I told him again that I hadn’t known about them, but I can’t offer any proof. “How much did you have to drink?”

  “One glass of wine.” I can see the table in front of me, as if I could go back. The salmon in pastry, the white wine, the cutlery.

  “What about the night of Rachel’s attack in Snaith? How much did you have to drink then?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Half a liter of vodka?” he asks. I tilt my head. “We spoke to Alice. She said the three of you drank quite a lot that night. Does that sound accurate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you angry with Rachel?”

  “No.”

  “You threw a bottle at her face,” he says. Keith must have told him. I wonder if he also told them about Liam, if Rachel confessed to him. “Who was Will Cooke?”

  Fuck, I think, fuck. “A friend of ours. He went to school with us.”

  “Was he your friend or Rachel’s?”

  “Both.”

  “Was he your boyfriend?”

  “For a few months.”

  “Was he ever Rachel’s boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “That isn’t what Alice told us.”

  “They had sex a few times.”

  “Was your fight at the party about Will Cooke?”

  “No, that wasn’t a problem. Did Alice tell you she also slept with Will? We were teenagers, it meant nothing.”

  When we met, I liked Moretti because I like Italy. How stupid, but it disarmed me. A Scottish accent and Italian appearance. I had an image of him. Drinking an espresso and reading the paper. He has heavy eyelids and I thought that meant he was tortured by his cases and the things he learned in his work. He told me his grandparents owned a bergamot grove in Calabria.

  I didn’t try to resist. I was so happy that he and Lewis were nothing like the detectives in Snaith. I don’t know why he became a policeman. I don’t know what he has done in his career, and I don’t know if he believes me.

  “When did you stop taking Wellbutrin?”

  “October.”

  “Have you had any withdrawal symptoms?”

  “No.”

  “Has it been difficult to resume daily life without the medication?”

  “No.”

  “How many weeks passed between when you stopped the medication and Rachel’s death?”

  “Five. I don’t understand why that’s relevant. It’s not an antipsychotic.”

  “What would it mean if it were an antipsychotic?”

  “Then going off it might make me violent or unstable.”

  “And that would mean?”

  “That I should be a suspect.”

  He smiles again. Then he stands and opens the door for me to go. He’s not arresting me. I wonder which pieces are still missing, or if it’s only the knife.

  I stop in the doorway, close to him. “Rachel had defensive wounds. If I did it, I would have had scratches or bruises.”

  “Did you?” he asks.

  I laugh. “You saw me. You know I didn’t.”

  He shrugs, and the hair stands on the back of my neck.

  58

  I DRIVE TO Prince Street. A reconstruction. I can see where they ate dinner. I can ride in one of the lifts, where they probably kissed for the first time, and walk down one of the corridors. Maybe they didn’t make it to the room. Both of them liked sex in public, I know.

  The George Hotel has a gold roof cantilevered above the pavement from metal poles. The carpeted space underneath the roof is bathed in light, and the people under it look vivid and somehow frenetic. The women balancing on spiked heels, the men gesturing with lit phones. Rachel came here in early May, I know now. I imagine her ducking under the canopy, the gold light blazing on her dark head and bare shoulders.

  I push open the revolving doors and cross a lobby with the restaurant and bar at its far end. I imagine Liam climbing down from his stool and opening his arms.

  I s
top, swaying on my feet.

  • • •

  During our argument, I worked out that on the night Liam cheated on me I was at a party in Fulham. Before the party Martha and I went for tapas, peppers in oil and grilled bread and olives. The party was on the roof of a mansion block. There were friends from St. Andrews and I wore a white crocheted dress and felt lucky and contented. On the walk to the party, I sent Liam a message, and he wrote a similar one back. Before my sister arrived, maybe, or while she was in the toilets. He said he missed me.

  I wonder if they longed for each other afterward, and if separately or together they tried to plan a way it could happen again. Liam said neither of them remembered it. I hope that’s true. If she didn’t remember it then she couldn’t have ever been thinking about it when we were together.

  • • •

  She made both of us foolish. We were better than this. We had other concerns. We had bigger fish to fry.

  • • •

  Prince Street ends at the river. I climb down the hill to the towpath and call Martha. “It was Rachel. He cheated on me with Rachel.”

  “Oh, no,” she says, and her voice is gratifyingly horrified. I start to explain that his work trip was to Oxford, not Manchester, but she interrupts me. “My parents want to help. They know a defense barrister in Oxford.”

  “That’s kind of them. If it comes to that—”

  “You need advice now.”

  “Maybe.” The story comes out in a rush, and I realize that since learning the news I have been aching to tell someone. I’ve been framing and reframing it in my mind, and recasting the events of the last six months based around it.

  I start to tell Martha about meeting Liam at the covered market, but she stops me before I’ve finished and says, “Nora, don’t talk to anyone about this. I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because now if I’m ever sworn to oath, and someone asks if you were angry with Rachel I have to say yes.” She sighs. “You would have split up anyway. Please try not to think too much of it. You have other problems now.”

 

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