Pleasure and a Calling

by Phil Hogan

  I accept your point in mitigation that William may have been affected badly by the death of his father last year, but his behaviour is nevertheless worrying. William’s scrapbooks containing information and defamatory comments on other boys are especially disturbing.

  You say he has opted not to continue his education but has taken a post with a respectable family firm. In this I wish him well and hope that his experiences have, in some way, taught him good lessons for the future.

  Yours sincerely,

  E. H. Akers

  Headmaster

  Again, a postscript had been appended in an angry scrawl of red biro: ‘Ask him about his PSYCHIATRIC REPORT’.

  ‘Should I ask you about your psychiatric report?’ said Monks.

  ‘Actually, that’s my aunt, not my mother—’

  ‘If we could stick to the subject in hand.’

  ‘I really have no idea who you’re talking about. This is obviously some kind of mischief-making – and a libel!’

  ‘Who would want to make mischief for you, Mr Heming?’

  ‘My cousin, I imagine. She is deranged, I’m afraid. And resents my success. And, frankly, all this is such a long time ago. It’s hard to remember the person I was then, let alone answer for him. Who could? And as you see, the offences were minor. Stealing football programmes and sweets from boys’ rooms? OK, you have me!’

  ‘They say old habits die hard, sir.’

  ‘Or sometimes they just die. Have you no youthful indiscretions in your closet, Detective Sergeant Monks? As Mr Akers says here, we must move on.’

  ‘How did your father die, Mr Heming?’

  ‘What? He died in a boating accident. In Norfolk.’

  ‘And you were …’

  ‘At school. In Yorkshire. I was traumatized. That’s why I had to have counselling. I imagine that’s what my cousin is raving about.’

  Monks pondered, or pretended to ponder, then gave the eye to Roberts, who left the room. I checked the time, fearful that the more I looked at my watch the longer Monks would keep me here, wearing me down, waiting for me to trip myself up with a lie. I sensed something was building. They hadn’t finished with me. Abigail would be home in half an hour.

  Another ten minutes passed.

  I didn’t even have my car.

  Monks said nothing. He just waited.

  If they did break into the riverside apartment (and were they even allowed to do that without arresting me for something?) and find it empty they would then surely return to the other flat, rightly assuming it was mine after all. And then …

  The door opened and Roberts returned. He was carrying something in a plastic bag. Monks opened it and with exaggerated care laid its contents on the table in front of me.

  ‘Do these look familiar?’

  Both men scrutinized me as my hand went to my pocket, and I felt my throat suddenly dry up.

  ‘Opera glasses,’ I managed to say.

  ‘Are they yours?’ Monks clasped his hands in front of his face and looked over them at me, eyebrows raised.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘They were recovered from the vehicle owned by Douglas Sharp. The new owner of the car discovered them when he tried to open the tool compartment. Wedged into a crevice, he said. Imagine that.’

  Roberts, arms folded, allowed himself the faintest smile. ‘Mrs Sharp tells us you were using a small pair of binoculars in her house?’

  ‘It’s possible. I use them for checking roofs and gutters, that sort of thing. I suppose you’ve checked them for fingerprints,’ I said.

  He gazed at me.

  ‘I’m guessing you didn’t find mine.’

  Neither of them spoke.

  ‘Otherwise, wouldn’t you just clap me in irons right now?’

  ‘Are they your binoculars, Mr Heming?’

  ‘Do you think I might have a glass of water?’

  ‘Please answer the question, Mr Heming. Are these your binoculars?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Because mine are here.’ I took them out of my pocket and laid them alongside the evidence. ‘Similar enough, you might say, but not identical. I’ve had these beauties for years.’

  Monks inspected them and handed them to Roberts, who turned them over, as if looking for something that would tell him what to say next.

  I looked at my watch. ‘If there’s nothing else, I am quite busy.’

  I ran. I ran as I had never run before. Fine leather-soled English brogues are not running shoes. They pounded the pavement in front of me as if they were separate entities that the rest of me was pursuing. Bemused pedestrians stepped out of my way. I escaped the town centre, down an alley, skirting the backs of the buildings. Abigail would surely be unlocking her bike by now, before heading through the park and on to the river path. From where I was, I calculated, it would be quicker to stick to the main road, the route Abigail herself took when returning from her run, ending with the hill and the crossroads with the baker and the newsagent I had spoken to. I was already out of breath. I had to hope she would be held up – by a colleague, or a flat tyre. I could hear the distant music of the funfair in the park. The park would be full of children. That would delay her. Still I ran. It had to be a mile at least, perhaps two. On I ran, though it was hopeless. I clenched my teeth and ran, past the filling station, past the Wellington, then past the familiar streets and houses above to my left that looked down on the woodland that banked up from the river and the park. Under my breath I named each street in turn until I could run no further. I had to stop. And when I did, and looked back, I saw a bus rounding the bend. I set off running again. I could see the stop, a hundred yards ahead. I sensed the bus rapidly gaining on me and I put out my hand to wave it down. It rumbled past then I saw its indicator slowly flash, before it heaved into the bay.

  I clambered aboard.

  ‘Nice day for a bit of exercise,’ the driver chirruped.

  I could barely speak. ‘Fount Hill,’ I panted, and offered him a handful of change. ‘Thank you. Saved my life.’

  But had he? It was twenty past. I looked ahead now, watched the bus eating up the road, readied myself to jump off again. The door hissed and swung open. Now I was loping past the newsagent, across the road in the face of oncoming traffic. I looked for her bike chained to the railings. It wasn’t there. I reached the house and leapt up the steps to the blue door, fumbling for the key. And now I saw her, back down the road, a figure in red. There she was, surfacing, steadying her bike, watching the cars to her left, her foot on the pedal. If she looked at this moment, she would see me. I unlocked the door and closed it behind me. Sharp’s key was on the mat. I snatched it up and dropped hers to replace it.

  There was still time. If I wanted to I could simply open the door and put on a surprised smile – explain that the prospective buyers had arrived later than arranged and had just left. I waited, deciding, my nerves electrified. Two, three weeks before I would have found myself dashing up the two flights of stairs to the attic, curling up in my den of furniture and silently relishing her arrival, eyes closed in anticipation, ears alert for the key, her first movements and murmurs. But that was over. I had dodged a bullet today and anything seemed possible – but not that.

  I hated her for it. I hated her for drawing me into this quicksand, away from my life and place and purpose and duty, for giving me something precious and then luring me close and seizing it back.

  But of course it was not over. I still breathed. And there would be the Perettis of this world to set my heart beating anew. They flickered in my mind as the time ticked down, as the exquisite heat of imminent discovery rose with the scrape and clatter of bicycle against railing, Abigail’s flat tread on the steps. In seconds the key would turn …

  And then I fled, withholding – deferring – the aching pleasure of the moment, as I had in other houses on other occasions, holding it within myself as a memento of this perilous day, out of the back door, through the garden and breathlessly, thrillingly, into
the lane behind and away.

  THE MASK IS CRITICAL. I bought it from an online hardware superstore, who had it delivered to my office the next day. Zoe signed for it. It is not very attractive. If you opened your eyes and found me leaning over you wearing this mask, you would have a fit. But the instructions say that it will give me fifteen minutes, which will be enough. As promised, the mask was ‘Quick and Easy to Don’, bright orange in colour, and sure enough a nose clip or mouthpiece was not required. It has not impaired my hearing, though there is not a great deal to listen to at this hour. If I cocked an ear, I might catch the sound of a cat in the yard. If I heard anything else stirring I would start to worry.

  I am sorry it has come to this. But it is inevitable. The role of the next victim is ever to clean up after the last. I hope I have drawn a line under things now, and that quiet will follow and torment cease.

  IF ISOBEL THOUGHT I would not take the trouble to find out where she lived and then get in my car and drive a hundred miles to see it for myself, she didn’t know me very well. The colour understandably drained from her face when she opened the door.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said, stepping back.

  ‘What do I want? Didn’t you write telling me of your distressed circumstances? Well, here I am.’

  ‘Elizabeth will be back from school soon.’

  ‘Excellent. How is Elizabeth?’

  Her eyes flicked to someone or something behind me. A neighbour taking an interest. I smiled at Isobel. After some hesitation, she let me in. The cottage smelled of damp. The furniture – a sofa, an upright piano, a long sideboard and drinks cabinet and a hideous blue stone vase, all recognizable from Aunt Lillian’s house – was too big for the lightless front room with its low sloping ceiling and pinched leaded windows. Even on this fine spring day it felt cold.

  ‘It’s freezing in winter,’ she said, reading my thoughts.

  ‘That’s the wind from the Siberian steppe. It sweeps right across the flatness of the terrain.’

  ‘I know,’ she snapped.

  She didn’t offer me tea and biscuits. I sat while she remained standing, her arms folded. I found the resumption of hostilities reassuring. In a way it made things easier. From time to time she peered out of the window, as if the neighbour was still nearby and in sight.

  I began by asking what she hoped to achieve by furnishing murder detectives with details of my youthful misdemeanours. ‘I was ten, for goodness’ sake,’ I pointed out. ‘I was troubled.’

  ‘You were seventeen when you were expelled from school. You attacked another pupil. He lost an eye. Imagine if the police knew that.’

  ‘That’s not true. It was nowhere near his eye.’

  She shook her head, and gazed out, showing me Aunt Lillian’s profile, her disapproving, downturned mouth. ‘Anyway the psychiatrist said you were disturbed, not troubled.’

  ‘What psychiatrist?’

  ‘The one my mother made you see after you left school. I do know.’

  ‘I’ve moved on, like everyone else. I’m a respected estate agent. You could damage my reputation spreading gossip about me. You think because my sign was outside the house where a man was found dead that I had something to do with it? That’s madness. At one time or another, my name is on every single street in town. I can see your mother has poisoned your mind against me.’

  ‘I know what I know,’ she said. ‘And what you don’t know is how much my mother protected you back then, and more than once. The council would have locked you in a home and your father would have let them.’

  ‘Your mother stole her sister’s husband. Her dying sister. Her dying sister who was having a baby.’

  Isobel shook her head and gave a snort. ‘And what did you do?’

  She turned to face the window again. A wave of anger surged through me. I could seize that hideous blue stone vase and stove her head in with it. But now the front door opened and slammed.

  A voice called out, ‘Hi, it’s me.’

  I left cousin Isobel’s far from happy, but with things settled, or at least with an enforced sort of peace in place. Something had been achieved; something bad had been lanced. It was still light when I set off back. There was no one around, and no traffic for the first mile, which took me from this hamlet she’d had to move to with its down-at-heel cottages, village school and abandoned pub to the A11 and westward to home. I was still angry. Some of the things she had said defied belief, though when pressed for corroborative detail – with Elizabeth in her room, starting her homework with a glass of milk and a biscuit – she’d proved maddeningly persuasive. She’d finally evoked the great name of Marrineau.

  ‘He came here, you know,’ she said.

  ‘Marrineau? Here?’

  ‘To my mother’s. I was there when he arrived. It was one Sunday. He’d finished at university and had come from Cambridge. He was weird, if you want the truth. He said he had come to forgive but also to be forgiven, or some nonsense like that. He wanted your address, but my mother wouldn’t let him have it. He said he understood and respected that. His parents were wrong, he said, to have had you expelled.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘He said all sorts of things. He said he’d wanted to be a sportsman but had now found his true vocation, meaning God, as it turned out. He was going to be a priest or a vicar.’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘He sent a card to my mother, a year or two later, to say where he was. The card came to me eventually.’

  ‘Have you been talking to him? About what happened?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe you don’t believe in forgiveness.’

  But maybe she did. I wondered why she hadn’t troubled the police with the story of Marrineau.

  She was silent for a time, watching me like a cornered animal. Then, abruptly, she said, ‘What do you expect? You’re swimming in success with your bloody business and money and we’ve got nothing. And we took you in. Your father was a mess. And you ate up our energy and time. My mother stuck her neck out for you. And that child …’ She paused. ‘I suffered too, you know. I never saw my father at all. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. And now look at me!’

  ‘Did my father kill himself?’

  ‘I’ve really no idea. You gave him enough reason to.’

  I went for my pocket and she flinched, her eyes defiant.

  I smiled at her attempt to provoke me. I told her she could have the money – that I would have given it to her anyway. I unfolded the banker’s draft and handed it to her. I said there would be one like it for her every month. Suddenly she was in tears. She wouldn’t look at me. Just turned her back and wept. We didn’t speak again. Perhaps we never will.

  I rang the office from a service area when I got close to town. Wendy assured me that no one had called and no one had left a message. I picked up a takeaway sandwich and coffee and drove on. I arrived back at my flat just after six. The fairground lights were blazing on the Common and music was pumping into the air. I parked the car. Groups of schoolchildren were making their way up the hill, eating candyfloss. I paused on the step to my flat. Call it sixth sense – or just hard-earned intuition – but I knew, even before I’d pushed open the door and ventured in, that someone was already there.

  ‘SURPRISE!’ ZOE WAS SITTING on the arm of my couch, short skirt, her legs crossed. Her eyes were shining. She was smiling. Was she drunk? One glance told me she had already made herself too much at home to ignore.

  ‘Good God, Zoe, what on earth do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I love your keys,’ she said. ‘I love them. I hope you don’t still use them all. I know how you do it. I’ve seen you. I’ve watched you getting them cut. How do you think I got in here? It took me ages to work things out but I’ve learned from the master.’ She beamed at me. ‘You’re naughty. A naughty magpie. You have my jewelled mirror from Thailand. How did you get it? From my flat, of course. So here I am, getting yo
u back. That’s fair.’

  Behind her, my collection drawers were safe and locked. But some files were out, along with scattered photographs and rough notes I hadn’t written up. My innards were churning.

  ‘Listen, Zoe—’

  ‘No-no-no-no-no-no-no, it’s fine, it’s fine,’ she was saying.

  I now saw that she was wearing Sharp’s watch.

  ‘Yes – and you have Douglas’s watch too!’ she said. ‘Poor Douglas. But didn’t you say to those policemen that you’d never set eyes on him?’

  ‘Douglas?’ I said.

  She gave me a knowing look. ‘Ha … Mr Sharp, of course. Don’t worry. I won’t tell them. It will be our secret.’

  ‘What? Why do you think it’s Mr Sharp’s watch?’

  ‘Because I bought it for him, of course! I wish I hadn’t. He was bad news, though I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.’ She looked round in sudden puzzlement. ‘This is weird. Why don’t you have a bed?’

  ‘You bought it for him? You knew him?’

  ‘Ah, I can see what you’re doing. You’re being all, what is it … chivalrous. Oh, Mr Heming, you were right there – in the office when we came in. He kissed me right in front of the window. You saw us.’

  ‘Who? When?’

  ‘Ages ago. Last year. And then you followed us to the bowling alley. Did you think I didn’t see you? You’re so sweet, but aren’t you in big trouble? What happened, Mr Heming? No, let me tell you.’

  Clearly she was raving. Except … except that it was true. I had followed her once. Maybe once or twice, with a man. Certainly no more than three times. Back to her place. Last year, maybe the year before. That was Sharp? Could it have been?

  ‘Wait,’ Zoe said. She was at the table and turning my laptop towards me. ‘You can try to deny it, but look – it’s right here on your memory stick. You filmed it at Warninck’s on one of their authors’ nights. Here’s Douglas, here’s me. And some of our book group. And here’s his wife, who he’d forgotten to mention he hadn’t left after all. And a bit later on is some other poor woman he leapt on the minute I’d dumped him, who was no doubt soon at it with him in the back of that huge car he has, in the woods. Oh he loves that. In the car. They were together in the restaurant. Did you really think I cared about him? Is that what you were thinking when you sat us right across the room from him and that poor mousy woman from the library, the two lovebirds sitting there like a couple of teenagers? Were you trying to rub my nose into it? I forgive you, of course. I know you were trying to avenge me. Or you thought I loved him. Or something. Seriously, if you were jealous of him, no need. He made a fool of me. He was despicable. But I never loved him. It was always, always you.’