Killing Me Softly

by Nicci French

  ‘Alice,’ she said. ‘We’re here to help you. It’ll be all right.’ She nodded at Adam then addressed Byrne. ‘Are you the officer of record?’

  He looked puzzled. ‘I’m the one to talk to,’ he said warily.

  Deborah spoke in a calm, soothing voice as if Byrne, too, were one of her patients. ‘I’m a general practitioner and under section four of the Mental Health Act of nineteen eighty-three I am making an emergency application to take charge of Alice Loudon. After discussion with her husband, Mr Tallis here, I am convinced that she urgently needs hospital admission and assessment for her own safety.’

  ‘Are you sectioning me?’ I asked.

  Deborah looked down, almost shiftily, at a notebook she held in her hand. ‘It’s not really that. You mustn’t think of it like that. We only want what’s best.’

  I looked at Adam. He had a soft, almost loving expression. ‘My darling Alice,’ was all he said.

  Byrne looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s all a bit far-fetched but…’ he said.

  ‘It’s a medical call,’ said Deborah firmly. ‘In any case, that’s for the psychiatric assessment. Meanwhile, I ask for Alice Loudon to be released into the care of her husband.’

  Adam put out his hand and touched my cheek, so tenderly. ‘Sweetest love,’ he said. I looked up at him. His blue eyes shone down at me, like the sky. His long hair looked windswept. His mouth was slightly open, as if he were about to speak or to kiss me. I put my hand up and touched the necklace he had given me, long ago in the first days of our love. It was as if there was nobody in the room except me and him, everything else was just blur and noise. Maybe I had been wrong about it all. Suddenly the temptation seemed irresistible just to give myself up to these people and be cared for, people who really loved me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I heard myself say, in a feeble voice.

  Adam bent down and took me in his arms. I smelt his sweat, felt the roughness of his cheek against mine.

  ‘Love’s a funny business,’ I said. ‘How can you kill someone you love?’

  ‘Alice, my darling,’ he said, soft against my ear, hand on my hair, ‘didn’t I promise that I would always look after you? For ever and ever.’

  He held me close and it felt wonderful. For ever and ever. That was the way I had thought it was going to be. Maybe it could still be like that. Maybe we could turn the clock back, pretend he had never killed people and I had never known. I felt tears running down my face. A promise to look after me for ever and ever. A moment and a promise. Where had I heard those words? There was something in my mind, blurred and indistinct, and then it took shape and I saw it. I stepped back, out of Adam’s arms, and I looked clearly at Adam’s face.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  I looked round. Byrne, Deborah and Adam were looking puzzled. Did they think now that I had really and finally gone over the edge? I didn’t mind. I was in control again, my mind clear. It wasn’t me that was mad.

  ‘I know where Adam put her. I know where Adam buried Adele Blanchard.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Byrne.

  I looked at Adam and he looked back steadily, unwavering. Then I fumbled in my coat and found my purse. I opened it and pulled out a season ticket, receipts, some foreign currency, and there it was: me, photographed by Adam at the moment he asked me to marry him. I handed the photograph to Byrne, who took it and looked at it with a puzzled expression.

  ‘Careful with that,’ I said. ‘It’s the only copy. Adele’s buried there.’

  I looked round at Adam. He didn’t look away, even then, but I knew he was thinking. This was his genius, making calculations in a crisis. What was he planning inside that beautiful head?

  Byrne turned away from me and showed the photograph to Adam. ‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Where is it?’

  Adam gave a baffled, sympathetic smile. ‘I don’t know exactly,’ he said. ‘It was just on a walk somewhere.’ He turned his gaze back to me.

  At that moment I knew that I was right.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t just a walk somewhere. Adam took me there to this special spot. He had been let down before, he told me. But now in that special place he wanted to ask me to marry him. A moment and a promise. We vowed to be faithful to each other over the dead body of Adele Blanchard.’

  ‘Adele Blanchard?’ said Adam. ‘Who’s she?’ He looked at me very closely. I could feel his eyes on mine trying to assess what I knew. ‘This is crazy. I don’t remember where we were on that walk. And you. You don’t remember either, do you, darling? You slept all the way up in the car. You don’t know where it is.’

  I looked at the photograph with a sudden lurch of horror. He was right. I didn’t. I looked at the grass, so green, tantalizingly graspable and so far away. Adele, where are you? Where is your betrayed, broken, lost body? And then I had it. Here I am. Here I am.

  ‘St Eadmund’s,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Byrne and Adam, at the same time.

  ‘St Eadmund’s with an A. Adele Blanchard taught at St Eadmund’s primary school near Corrick, and the church of St Eadmund’s is there as well. Take me to the church of St Eadmund’s and I’ll take you to this spot.’

  Byrne looked from me to Adam and then back again. He didn’t know what to do but he was wavering. I took a step closer to Adam so that our faces were almost touching. I looked into his clear, blue eyes. There wasn’t the smallest flicker of disquiet. He was magnificent. Perhaps for the first moment I had a clear sense of this man on a mountain, saving a life or taking it away. I raised my right hand and touched his cheek as he had touched mine. He flinched very slightly. I had to say something to him. Whatever happened, I would never have another chance.

  ‘I understand that you killed Adele and Françoise because, in some terrible way, you loved them. And I suppose that Tara was threatening you. Had her sister told her something? Did she know? Or suspect? But what about the others? Pete. Carrie. Tomas. Alexis. When you went back up the mountain, did you actually push Françoise over the edge? Did somebody see you? Was it just convenient?’ I waited. There was no response. ‘You’ll never say, will you? You won’t give lesser mortals the satisfaction.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Adam said. ‘Alice needs help. I can legally take custody of her.’

  ‘You’ve got to take note of this,’ I said to Byrne. ‘I’ve reported the existence of a murdered body. I’ve identified the location. You are obliged to investigate.’

  Byrne looked between us. Then his face relaxed into a sardonic smile. He sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. Then he looked over at Adam. ‘Don’t worry, sir. We’ll take good care of your wife.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said to Adam. ‘Goodbye, Adam.’

  He smiled at me, a smile of such sweetness that he looked like a little boy, full of terrifying hope. But he didn’t say anything, just looked at me as I walked away, and I didn’t look back.

  Thirty-nine

  WPC Mayer looked about sixteen. She had bobbed brown hair and a round, slightly spotty face. I sat in the back of the car – a plain blue one, not the police car I’d been expecting – and looked at the back of her plump neck above her crisp white collar. It looked stiff to me, disapproving, and her listless handshake and brief, shallow glance had seemed indifferent.

  She made no effort to talk to me, except to tell me at the start of the journey to fasten my seat-belt, please, and I was grateful for that. I leaned against the cool plastic and stared at the London traffic outside, seeing almost nothing. It was a bright morning, and the light gave me a headache, but when I closed my eyes it was no better, for then images chased across the lids. Particularly Adam’s face, my last sight of him. My whole body felt sore and hollow. It was as if I could feel all the different bits of me: my heart, my guts, my lungs, my aching kidneys, the blood coursing round me, my ringing head.

  Every so often, WPC Mayer’s radio would crackle into life and she would speak into the car, a strange formulaic kind of language about rendezvous and times of ar
rival. Outside this car was ordinary real life – people going about their daily business, irritated, bored, contented, indifferent, excited, tired. Thinking about their work, or what to cook for supper, or what their daughter had said at breakfast that morning, or thinking of the boy they fancied, or how their hair needed cutting or how their back ached. It was hard to imagine I had ever been there, in that life. Dimly, as in a dream half forgotten, I remembered evenings in the Vine with the Crew. What had we talked about, night after night, as if time didn’t matter, as if we had all the time in the world? Had I been happy then? I didn’t know any more. I could barely recall Jake’s face now, or not Jake’s face when I was living with him, not his lover’s face, not the way he had looked at me when we lay in bed together. Adam’s face got in the way, his gazing eyes. How he had pushed his way between me and the world, blotting out my view so that all I could see was him.

  I had been Alice-with-Jake, then Alice-with-Adam. Now I was just Alice. Alice alone. No one to tell me how I looked or ask me how I felt. No one to make plans with or test thoughts against or be protected by or lose myself in. If I survived this, I would be alone. I looked down at my hands, lying inert on my lap. I listened to my breathing, steady and quiet. Maybe I wouldn’t survive. Before Adam, I had never been too scared of death, mainly because death had always seemed far off, happening to some comfy white-haired old woman whom I couldn’t connect with myself. Who would miss me, I wondered. Well, my parents would miss me, of course. My friends? In a way – but for them I had already gone missing when I walked out on Jake and the old life. They would shake their heads over me as over a curiosity. ‘Poor thing,’ they would say. Adam would miss me, though; yes, Adam would miss me. He would weep for me, genuine tears of grief . He would always remember me and he would always mourn me. How strange that was. I almost smiled.

  I took the photograph out of my pocket again and stared at it. There I was, so happy at the miracle of my new life that I looked like a madwoman. There was a hawthorn bush behind me, and grass and sky, but that was all. What if I couldn’t remember? I tried to recall the route from the church but as I did so a sense of utter blankness came over me. I couldn’t even visualize the church itself. I tried to stop myself thinking about it, as if by doing so I might drive away the last shreds of memory. I looked at the photograph again and I heard my own voice: ‘For ever,’ I had said. For ever. What had Adam said back? I couldn’t think about that, but I remembered that he had cried. I had felt his tears on my cheek. For a moment, I nearly cried myself, sitting in that chilly police car, on my way to find out if I was going to win or be defeated by him, live or be destroyed by him. Adam was my enemy now but he had loved me, whatever that meant. I had loved him, too. For one disastrous moment, I wanted to tell WPC Mayer to turn round and go home; it was all a terrible mistake, a mad aberration.

  I shook myself and looked out of the window again, away from the photograph. We were off the motorway now, and driving through a little grey village. I remembered nothing of this journey. Oh, God, maybe nothing would come back to me at all. WPC Mayer’s neck was unyielding. I closed my eyes once more. I felt so frightened that I was almost calm with it, sickly calm; frozen calm. My spine felt thin and brittle when I shifted in the seat; my fingers were cold and stiff.

  ‘Here we are.’

  The car drew up at St Eadmund’s church, a stocky grey building. A notice outside announced proudly that the foundations of the church were more than a thousand years old. With a surge of relief, I remembered it. But this was where the test began. WPC Mayer got out of the car and opened the door for me. I got out and then saw that three people were waiting for us. Another woman, a bit older than Mayer, wearing slacks and a thick sheepskin jacket, and two men in yellow jackets, like the jackets that construction workers often wear. They were carrying spades. My knees felt wobbly, but I tried to walk briskly, as if I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

  They hardly looked at me as we approached. The two men were talking to each other. They glanced up at me then resumed their conversation. The woman stepped forward and introduced herself as Detective Constable Paget, took Mayer by the elbow and steered her away from me.

  ‘We should be finished with this in a couple of hours,’ I heard her say. So no one believed me at all. I looked down at my feet. I was wearing inappropriate ankle boots with heels, hopeless for walking over moorland and through muddy fields. I knew which direction we were going to set off in. I was just going to continue walking up the road, past the church. That much was easy. It was what happened next that was the problem. I caught the two men staring over at me, but when I stared back at them their glances fell away, as if they were embarrassed by me. The madwoman. I pushed my hair behind my ears and did up the top button of my jacket.

  The two women returned, looking purposeful.

  ‘Right, Mrs Tallis,’ said the detective, nodding at me. ‘If you’d like to show us the way, then.’

  My throat felt as if there was some obstruction in it. I started to walk along the lane. One foot in front of another, clip clop along the silent lane. Childhood surged back on me in a rhyme: ‘Left, left, had a good home and I left. Right, right, it serves you jolly well right.’ WDC Paget walked beside me and the other three fell behind a little way. I couldn’t make out what they were saying to each other, but every so often I could hear one of them laugh. My legs felt heavy, like lead. The road stretched out in front of me, on and on, featureless. Was this my last walk?

  ‘How far is it from here?’ asked WDC Paget.

  I had no idea. But round a bend, the road forked and I saw a war monument with a chipped stone eagle on the top.

  ‘This is it,’ I said, trying not to sound relieved. ‘This is where we came.’

  WDC Paget must have heard the surprise in my voice for she cast me a quizzical glance.

  ‘Right, here,’ I said, for although I had not remembered the monument, now that we were here it came clearly back to me.

  I led them along the narrow lane, which was more like a track. My legs felt lighter now. My body was showing me the way to go. Somewhere along here there would be a path. I looked anxiously from left to right and kept stopping to peer into the undergrowth, in case it had become overgrown by weeds since I was last here. I could sense the growing impatience of the group. Once, I saw WPC Mayer exchange a look with one of the diggers – a thin young man with a long, lumpy neck – and shrug.

  ‘It’s somewhere near here,’ I said.

  A few minutes later I said, ‘We must have gone past it.’ We stood in the middle of the lane while I dithered, and then WD C Paget said, quite kindly, ‘I think there’s a turning up ahead. Shall we just go and look at that?’

  It was the path. I almost hugged her in gratitude then set off, at a shambling trot, with the police coming after me. Bushes snagged at us, brambles whipped at our legs, but I didn’t mind. This was where we had come. This time I didn’t hesitate, but turned off the path into the trees, for I had seen a silver birch that I recognized, white and straight among the beech trees. We scrambled up a slope. When Adam and I had come here, he had held my hand and helped me through the slippery fallen leaves. We came upon a crowd of daffodils and I heard WPC Mayer exclaim in pleasure, as if we were out on a country walk.

  We reached the top of the slope, the trees cleared and we were out in what was almost moorland. As if he were beside me I heard Adam’s voice reaching me from the past: ‘A patch of grass that’s off a path that’s off a track that’s off a road.’

  Now, suddenly, I didn’t know where to go. There had been a hawthorn bush, but I couldn’t see it from where I stood. I took a few uncertain steps, then stopped and gazed around me hopelessly. WD C Paget came up beside me and said nothing, just waited. I took the photograph out of my pocket. ‘This is what we are looking for.’

  ‘A bush.’ Her voice was expressionless but her glance was not. There were bushes all around us.

  I shut my eyes and tried to think myself back. And then I remem
bered. ‘Look with my eyes,’ he had said. And we had gazed down on the church beneath us, and the fields. ‘Look with my eyes.’

  It was as if I was truly looking with his eyes, following in his footsteps. I stumbled, almost ran, along the patch of moorland, and there, in the break in the trees, I could see down to where we had come from. There was St Eadmund’s, with the two cars parked beside it. There was the table of green fields. And here was the hawthorn bush. I stood in front of it, as I had stood then. I stood on the spongy earth and prayed that the body of a young woman was lying underneath me.

  ‘Here,’ I said to WDC Paget. ‘Here. Dig here.’

  She beckoned over the men with their spades and repeated what I had said: ‘Dig here.’

  I stepped away from where I was standing and they started to dig. The ground was stony and it was obviously hard work. Soon I could see beads of sweat standing out on their foreheads. I tried to breathe evenly. With each strike of the spade, I waited for something to appear. Nothing. They dug until there was a sizeable hole. Nothing. Eventually they stopped and looked atWDC Paget, who looked at me.

  ‘It’s there,’ I said. ‘I know it’s there. Wait.’

  Again, I closed my eyes and tried to remember. I took out the photograph and stared at the bush.

  ‘Tell me exactly where to stand,’ I said to WD C Paget, thrust the photo into her hand and positioned myself by the bush.

  She looked at me wearily then shrugged. I stood just as I had stood for Adam, and stared at her as if she were about to take my photograph herself. She stared back through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Forward a bit,’ she said.

  I stepped forward.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Dig here,’ I said to the men.

  Again they started to shift the earth. We waited in silence, the dull thump of the spade, the laboured breathing of the working men. Nothing. There was nothing, just coarse reddish earth and little stones.

  Again they stopped and looked at me. ‘Please,’ I said, and my voice came out hoarse. ‘Please dig a bit more.’ I turned to WDC Paget and put my hand on her sleeve. ‘Please,’ I said.