I don’t say which college, because that’s another thing that’s totally unnecessary.
He takes a careful old-person’s step back, so he can examine me more thoroughly.
‘Are you an alumnus yourself?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
He nods, with some satisfaction. ‘I can always tell. St Luke’s leaves its mark on you, whether you want it to or not.’
‘Did you really think you could get away with pretending to be dead forever, Mr Gough?’ I ask.
‘No,’ he replies, ‘but I hoped I could get away with it for long enough – and I have.’
‘What do you mean – you’ve got away with it for long enough?’
Instead of answering, he gestures that I should just follow him.
He walks stiffly – but with assurance – on a crooked path through the gravestones, until we reach one which says:
Martha Tate
1882-1973
She lived a virtuous life, and
is gone to collect her reward.
‘God will forgive her for entering His kingdom with a name which is not her own,’ he says.
‘Her real name was Martha Gough,’ I guess.
‘It was.’ He pauses. ‘A few months before we came out here, Martha felt a lump in her left breast. As it turned out, the tumour was benign, but it got me thinking.’
‘Oh yes,’ I say, noncommittally.
‘I loved the college and I’d dedicated my life to it, but since she didn’t feel about it as I did, it could be said that she’d sacrificed her life to St Luke’s. It had taken me nearly fifty years to reach that realisation, but once I had – once I’d come to understand just how much I loved her – I resigned from the job that had been my raison d’être, and from then on, until she died, devoted my entire life to making my Martha happy.’
I raise my hands in the air and clap them slowly together … once … twice … three times.
I hear the sound being echoed back to me, after it strikes the bleached gravestones.
‘What’s that suppose to mean?’ Gough demands angrily.
‘It means that my bullshit detection meter has just suffered an overload, Mr Gough,’ I tell him.
‘A lady should not talk like that,’ he says sternly.
‘Then maybe it’s just as well I’m not one,’ I counter. ‘Look, Mr Gough, I’m not saying that your wife wasn’t a factor in your decision to resign as head porter, but she came third in your list of reasons – at best.’
‘So what were those first two reasons?’ he asks, his voice suddenly quieter and calmer – his overwhelming emotion, curiosity.
‘The first was that while you still held the power, you wanted to use that power to put a worthy successor in place.’
‘Harold Jenkins is a solid, respectable, hard-working man,’ Gough says gravely. ‘I don’t think he’ll have done as good a job as I did, but then what monarch ever thinks his successor will measure up to him?’
I have thought of him in terms of a monarch myself, but – somehow – hearing the words coming from his own mouth, is a little bit of a shock.
‘Your second reason is that you didn’t know how long your luck was going to hold out. You knew the bodies in the air shaft would be found eventually, and before that happened, you needed to make yourself safe by putting a fair distance between yourself and Oxford – a big enough distance, in fact, for you to be able to fake your own death.’
‘What makes you think I know anything about any bodies hidden in some air shaft, Miss Redhead?’ he asks.
‘Not any bodies – the bodies of Albert Boulting and James Makepeace,’ I say. ‘Not any old air shaft, either, but the one in the cellar under the De Courcey Quad. And as far as your not knowing about them goes – how could you not have known about them, when you placed them in there yourself?’
‘How can you be so sure that it was me who placed them in there?’ he wonders.
We could continue lobbing questions back and forth forever, I suppose, just as if we were a couple of demented tennis players, but it’s really time that someone broke the serve, and I volunteer me.
‘I’ll tell you how I knew it was you who disposed of the bodies, if you’ll tell me how you faked your own death.’
‘All right,’ he agrees. ‘You go first.’
I shake my head. ‘Oh no, no, Mr Gough, the way it works is that you go first.’
‘Don’t you trust me, Miss Redhead?’ he asks – and I’ll swear he sounds just a little hurt.
‘Don’t you trust me?’ I repeat, mockingly. ‘That’s the kind of thing that teenage boys say to teenage girls when they’re trying to talk their way into their knickers.’ I pause, to let that sink in. ‘This is business, Mr Gough.’ I continue. ‘It seems almost like magic to you that I’ve found out some of the things I have, and you won’t be able to rest until you know how I’ve done it. That’s my main bargaining chip in this little negotiation of ours, and once I’ve explained away the magic, I’ll have nothing.’
Actually, I’m bullshitting now, almost as much as he did earlier. The simple truth is that in terms of information, I don’t care which of us talks first, but in terms of the power dynamic that’s building up between us, I need to establish my predominance by making him back down.
Mr Gough thinks it over for a second or two, then slowly nods his head in agreement.
‘It wasn’t hard to die,’ he says. ‘It only took money – and not a lot of that, because, at the time, the island was poor. I put the whole matter in the hands of the local chief of police, who instructed the doctor to make a death certificate and the undertaker to put several sacks of sand into a coffin and then bury the coffin here. Once that was done, the chief got me a fake identity card in the name of Tate. He couldn’t manage a false passport, but, as he pointed out, why would I need one? I haven’t left Majorca since the day I first landed.’
‘Why not register the death with the British Consulate?’
‘My friend, the chief of police, thought that was just one step too far,’ Gough says. ‘The island was his own little kingdom, and he could pretty much control events in any way he wanted to, but bring a foreign government into the picture, and things would start getting very complicated. And why run the risk anyway? It seemed so unnecessary. My death was registered here – who would want to check if it was registered anywhere else?’
‘Me?’ I suggest.
‘Yes, you,’ he agrees. ‘And now it’s your turn. How did you know it was me who walled those two men up?’
‘I know it was you because you used lime mortar,’ I say.
‘What do you mean?’ he asks – but I can tell from the look on his face that he already knows what I’m talking about.
‘Most people would have used Portland cement to wall up the bodies,’ I say. ‘It’s much quicker – always an important factor when you’re dabbling in homicide – and it’s also a lot easier for the layman to use. But its big drawback is that it’s not as kind to the building, because the building needs to shift a little, now and again, and to do that, it needs a mortar which is flexible – which bends to its will, if you like. Lime mortar will do that, but Portland is very rigid, so using Portland is almost like putting someone in a plaster cast, when all they need is an elasticised bandage. You used lime mortar because you loved the college and wanted it to be as comfortable as it possibly could be.’
‘I certainly loved St Luke’s at the time,’ he admits, ‘but time passes and memory fades, and I’m not sure I feel it as intensely as I used to.’
‘But you felt it intensely back then, didn’t you?’
‘Oh yes, I certainly did.’
The conversation has started flowing amiably, but now it really is time to introduce a jarring note.
‘Was it for love of St Luke’s that you killed those two men, Mr Gough?’ I ask.
‘I’ve never killed anybody,’ he says, steadily.
‘Oh, come on!’ I protest.
‘Never!’ he
insists.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you concealed the bodies from the police – which is a serious offence, and could have meant you went to prison – for the benefit of someone else?’
‘Yes. In fact, it was for several “someone elses’ benefits,”’ he says, ‘as well as for the college.’
‘Of course, for the college,’ I say, with a sigh.
‘There’s a nice little bar just the other side of that wall,’ he tells me, pointing with his walking stick. ‘If you’d care to come with me, I’d be more than happy to buy you a coffee.’
The bar Mr Gough leads me to is a low building with thick stone walls. It squats – toad-like – at the edge of the road, just beyond the railway station. It does not look particularly inviting from the outside – the only indications that it even is a bar are a few rusting metal advertisements for beer (‘¡Bebe Estrella!’) and tobacco (‘¡Viva Celtas!’) that have been nailed roughly to the wall – but inside it is pleasantly cool, if smelling slightly of cow shit.
There are four or five customers in the bar, and they all greet Mr Gough like a long-lost brother.
‘Hola, hombre!’
‘Qué pasa, coño?’
And now it’s starting to get scary, because this is not neutral ground that he’s arranged to meet me on – somewhere he can slip away from at a moment’s notice – but his home patch.
This is where he lives, this man who – despite his denials – may well be responsible for three murders! And now I know where he lives! So there are two questions I would very much like to know the answer to – why have I been allowed to find out, and now that I have found out, what plans does he have for me?
Gough leads me to a rough wooden table, and indicates that I should sit down on the bench next to it. When I have done so, he sits down on a bench at the other side of the table.
‘What would you like to drink?’ he asks.
The words that come automatically into my mind are, anything that won’t poison me, but I suspect that would not be well received.
I look across at the barman, who has the kind of lumpy face that would seem more at home in a medieval painting than it does behind a modern bar counter, and say, ‘Could he manage a gin and tonic?’
‘Certainly he can,’ Gough says.
And then he addresses the barman in rapid Spanish, the only two words I can isolate from the stream being Larios and tónica, which may be ingredients, but could also be part of an instruction to the boys to get ready to dump a troublesome redhead into the sea.
‘When I first came here, the Spanish Civil War had already been over for nearly twenty years, but the country was still suffering so much that it might only have finished the day before I arrived,’ he tells me. ‘Everybody was poor – and I mean, desperately poor. I mean famine poor! And then, slowly, we started getting tourists, and a bit of money began to trickle in. Now, most of us are doing quite nicely, thank you.’
I notice how closely he’s identifying with Majorca – and I don’t think he’s just putting it on for my benefit.
‘How do you, personally, manage to keep afloat?’ I ask. ‘I mean, you can’t be living off your pension, can you, because dead men don’t get pensions.’
‘I built up a nice little nest egg when I was working at St Luke’s,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t that the pay was startlingly wonderful, but if you don’t spend much of it – and I didn’t have time to spend much of it, working at the college as I did – it soon builds up.’
‘Even so …’ I say.
‘Even so,’ he agrees, ‘I’d be struggling to get by if it wasn’t for my work as an advisor.’
‘As an advisor?’ I repeat. ‘An advisor on what?’
‘On whatever anyone around here needs advice on,’ Gough says. ‘If you can not only organise a St Luke’s May Ball, but also do it in such a way that the student committee think they’re the ones who have organised it, then advising people here on how to run a small business, or plan a wedding or a first communion party, is an absolute doddle.’
The barman brings the drinks over to our table. In what I’ve learned is the Spanish habit, he does not pour the gin into my glass until I can see him doing it, thus nipping in the bud any unworthy thoughts on my part that he might be fobbing me off with an inferior (and possibly potentially lethal) brand. When he’s served me, he opens a bottle of Veterano, and fills the brandy glass far fuller than the measuring ring running round it indicates that he should fill it.
The commercial part of the process completed, the barman and Gough exchange a few sentences.
‘I’ll need something to weigh her down once we’ve put her in the water,’ Gough says.
‘I can lay my hands on a couple of old tractor wheels that would just do the trick,’ the barman answers.
‘That’ll do nicely,’ Gough agrees.
It’s probably not what they’re saying at all – but I have no way of knowing that for certain.
Does all this sound as if I’m not very worried? Trust me, worried is what I am.
And though I may be describing it in humorous tones, I am really finding it much less than funny.
I think back to what Juan, the trainee lawyer with the big libido, said – ‘I was told only to present the letter to you when I was certain no other person could see me doing it.’
Now why would Gough have told him that?
Simple! If I chose not to bring the letter with me – as I hadn’t – then the police investigating my disappearance would have found it in my room. Then, if they could find a witness who saw Juan handing me the letter, they could tie the disappearance to him, and he could tie the disappearance to Gough – and Gough had taken great pains to make sure the chain didn’t lead back to his front door!
‘I didn’t come here to find my real self, but that’s exactly what happened,’ Gough says, as he takes a swig of his brandy. ‘I became a new man here on the island – a man I never even dreamed existed when I was back in Oxford. I’ve been very happy here, and so was Martha.’
‘Is this new man you’ve become so different to the old man in Oxford that he himself would never have killed and walled up his victims?’ I ask, because there is no point now in pussyfooting now.
Gough smiles, almost indulgently. ‘That really is a very crude trick, you know,’ he says.
‘What is?’
‘The new man I became would not have killed them, but then neither did the old man who I shed like an unwanted skin.’
‘All right,’ I say, ‘maybe the new man wouldn’t have killed them, but would he have walled them up?’
‘I’d like to think he would – because it was always the right thing to do,’ Gough says. ‘But I can’t be certain he would.’
‘So you didn’t kill Albert Boulting and you didn’t kill James Makepeace,’ I say.
‘That’s correct,’ he agrees.
‘But you know who did kill them?’
‘Yes.’
‘And are you willing to tell me about it?’
Mr Gough shrugs.
‘Why not?’
Exactly! Why not?
What does it matter what he tells me when he has no intention of my being around to pass it on to someone else?
FIFTEEN
12 February 1916
With every step he took up the staircase that led to his rooms, Albert Boulting became a little more frightened.
He was being watched – he was sure of it – and, since no watcher ever had a benevolent intent, his wisest course (as he had already told himself a dozen times) was to flee Oxford, without returning to his rooms. Yet, though his fear was turning his stomach to water, his lust was still in control of most of his body, and it was his lust that was imperiously commanding his legs to mount the stairs.
When he reached his own landing, he came to a halt.
It was not too late, he argued.
He could still turn around and walk rapidly away.
But that would mean abandoning his photog
raphs, lovingly collected (and at great expense) over the years. And he knew that without his pictures of sweet little girls gratifying themselves with big men (and sometimes, even, with animals), life would be complete misery.
He knew something was wrong the moment he opened his door and saw that the fire – which, when he had left that morning, had been nothing more than smouldering ashes – was now blazing merrily away in the grate and casting dancing shadows on the wall.
He tried to turn – and found he couldn’t, because both his elbows were suddenly being gripped tightly by strong pairs of hands. And then he felt himself being flung forward into the room, and though he tried to keep his balance, it was an impossible task, and he ended up sprawling on the rug.
From where he had landed, he could see three sets of booted legs – two pairs under his table, and one pair next to it, which, added to the two men who had been hiding on the landing, meant there were five intruders in total.
‘Don’t just lie there like a dog, get up,’ said a voice which managed to simultaneously sound young and yet carry with it ages of despair.
Boulting got to his feet and looked around him. The man standing next to the table was Hector Judd, the ex-soldier with one arm. The other four – the two at the table and the two blocking the doorway – were all wearing the uniforms of second lieutenants.
‘You know who we are, of course,’ said one of the two officers sitting at the table.
As a matter of fact, he did.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you’re all St Luke’s men.’
But by God, how they’d all changed! He remembered them on bright summer days, playing cricket in the University Parks, and accepting either victory or defeat with equanimity, like the sporting gentlemen they were. He remembered them on winter mornings, returning to college just as he was getting up, after a rousing hour rowing on the river. How fresh and young they’d seemed only a year earlier – their bodies glowing with health, their optimism about life’s challenges there in their bright eyes for all to see.
Now, there was barely a trace of the bright young men they had so recently been. Their eyes had become deeper and almost feverish, and their features coarsened. Even their chins had lost their distinctive manliness and determination, and now hung – so it seemed to an increasingly worried Boulting – like great lead weights attempting to drag the rest of their faces into the bottomless pit of hell.
Dry Bones Page 15
