‘Why Fulham?’ Slider asked.
‘Oh, it was as good a place as anywhere,’ he said listlessly. ‘A man I knew, one of the other drivers, said Remo’s in Fulham paid more than where I was, so I drifted that way. It didn’t matter to me where I lived by then.’
‘You were unhappy,’ Slider suggested.
‘It’s strange,’ Hunter said reflectively. ‘At first I found it exhilarating to be someone else. And being someone like McGuire was such a relief – no one expected anything of him. He had no responsibilities, no standards to live up to, nothing in the world to do beyond turn up at work long enough to earn the cash and not piss off the bosses. I played to my new role. I was dumb but reliable. A loner. A very, very dull person. No hobbies, no habits, no friends. I drove my car, in the evenings I watched telly. At the weekends I got drunk. When I was flush, I went down the betting shop for a flutter on the ponies. When I was broke, I worked overtime. Once I went to the pictures, and bought fish and chips afterwards and ate them out of the paper.’ He paused. ‘I think that was what finished me, that night, going to the pictures on my own.’
‘Finished you?’
‘I ended that night lying on my bed staring at the ceiling and thinking, “What have I done?”’ He lifted haunted eyes, tired to death. ‘You can’t imagine what a life like that is like. The utter pointlessness. The tedium. The loneliness. I’d done the best bit of acting of my life, I was William McGuire, but what was the use? I could never go home again. I could never see my daughter again.’
Now they had come to it, Slider thought. ‘You missed Melanie?’
‘So much,’ he blurted. ‘I can’t tell you. It was like a gnawing in the guts, longing for her; day after day, and it got worse all the time. It was worse than if she’d died, because then I’d know she was beyond reach. But I knew she was there, somewhere, and I could go and find her and see her and talk to her – only I mustn’t, not ever. That’s why I drank so much, to try and keep it at bay. In the end, I lost my job. I went in to work still under the influence and they told me to sling my hook. That was the one thing they couldn’t allow – that and stealing.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I saw an advertisement for an under gardener for the Parks Department in Ruislip, and I thought a change would be good – the outdoor life might soothe me. And the word “Ruislip” reminded me of the Lido. I used to bring Mel and her little friend here when she was a kid, on fine Sundays – cheaper than the seaside. She loved it. They were happy times. I never thought I’d end up living right next to the Lido, but when I said I lived in Fulham, they told me I could have this place, to be on hand. Sometimes there’s emergency work, if a tree blows down or a bank collapses, and I have to turn out. So I moved here. I thought, this time I’ll be happy. I even got myself a dog.’ He looked down at the terrier, which had curled itself up on his lap, as if noticing it for the first time. He caressed its ears, and it waggled its stump tail without waking up.
‘But you weren’t happy,’ Slider said.
He shook his head. ‘Living here only made me think about her more. The longing for my old life was terrible. One day I went to the Natural History Museum, because it was another favourite place of hers when she was a kid. And I saw her.’ He seemed to be staring at his memory now, as if at a movie. ‘It was a long time – eight years – and she’d grown up a lot, but I knew her. I’d have known her in the dark. She was walking away down a corridor. I followed her, just in time to see her go in through a door marked “Private, Staff Only”. She’d used the security keypad by the door, so I knew she must work there. It was a funny thing, just as she was pushing in through the door she paused and looked round, as if she felt me watching her. I jumped back behind a pillar. She didn’t see me. She wouldn’t have known me anyway – I’d grown this beard. But I think somehow she’d felt my presence.
‘After that, I couldn’t keep the feelings down. I was drinking more than ever – weekends only. I didn’t want to lose this job. But it was no good. I had to see her. One evening I waited outside the museum and followed her home.’
‘Did you speak to her?’
‘Not then. It took a lot of nights, standing across the road from her house, watching her go in and out, before I could pluck up the courage. Then one night she came out alone and walked off along the street. She looked so happy and busy, living her life, I followed her, really just to see where she was going, maybe to suck in some of that happiness. I don’t think I meant to speak to her. But when she stopped at the pedestrian lights, waiting to cross the road, I just walked up to her and before I could stop myself, I said, “Melanie?”
‘She looked round. She was scared for a second – there was this bearded old man who knew her name – and then there was a sort of dawning in her face, and she said, “Dad?”’
At that point, he flagged so alarmingly with, Slider supposed, sheer emotional exhaustion that he looked for a moment as though he was having an attack of some sort. He slumped back in the chair, his face drawn and putty-coloured, breathing through his mouth.
‘Take a breather,’ Slider said. ‘Do you want a drink? Is there anything in the house?’
‘No,’ he said, a protest, though a feeble one. ‘I’m not drinking, never again.’
‘Tea, then?’
‘A cup of tea,’ Hunter agreed weakly. He licked his lips. ‘Mouth’s dry.’
Slider got up before Atherton could move. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. The dog lifted its head sharply at the movement. Slider went into the kitchen part, took the kettle to the tap, and leaned against the sink for a moment, his eyes closed. He found his hands were shaking. Emotional draining didn’t only happen to the narrator, he discovered, but to the interlocutor too.
It had been wonderful at first. Of course, she had been shocked at what he had done, and it had taken a lot of explaining before she could accept that he had done it for her and her mother’s own good. Then she had had to tell him about her life, and there were some painful parts to that, too. And her mother’s remarriage, to Ian, who she didn’t like one bit. And Scott, whom she adored: Hunter had had to grit his teeth against the jealousy.
They couldn’t meet very often, because no one could know about him, and the secrecy was wearing on them both. She would meet him somewhere, a café, or just a bench, in her lunchtime usually. Evenings and weekends were difficult. Mostly it was snatched meetings just to catch up, though they talked on the phone when they could. But of course, the problem for any addict is that having a little bit only makes you want more; and he was addicted to Melanie.
He hadn’t meant to ask her for money. But she had been shocked at the way he lived, and how little he earned, and the shabbiness of his clothes. She had given him money, against his protests, the first time, so he could buy himself a new jacket. The next time, he asked her. The strain of the situation meant he was drinking and gambling more at the weekends, and that went through the money more than anything. She didn’t like giving him money just to waste it, but she never refused him.
But then she started urging him to put things right. She wanted him to tell her mother he was alive. It was cruel, she said, to leave her in ignorance. He’d told her that revealing himself would make her a bigamist, and then she’d got angry. He had to do the right thing, she said. He must go to the police and make a clean breast of everything. They couldn’t go on like this.
‘I think in the back of her mind,’ he said sadly, ‘she had the idea that if only I would do that, everything could go back to the way it was. Ian would somehow disappear, I would come home and live with Rachel, and we would be a family again. She was a bright girl, but when it came to that, emotionally she was just five years old. I tried to explain to her how impossible it was, but she persisted with the idea that if only I would confess, everything would be forgiven, just like that.’
And so they came to the Friday night. The tea had been drunk, had revived him a little, but he still looked ghastly. Slider felt exhausted; A
therton looked apprehensive. Only the dog slumbered comfortably on his master’s lap. Hunter stroked it slowly, over and over, as he told the last part of the story.
He had gone for his Friday night drink at the Six Bells. It had been a hard week, he’d had words with his immediate superior, and there had been hints that departmental cuts might lose him his job, despite the fact that there was too much work for the staff they had. He had gone to the pub determined to tie one on, only to discover, before he was drunk enough for oblivion, that he had run out of money. He’d asked for credit – he was in there often enough, for God’s sake – and the barmaid, the snotty one with the voice like a bandsaw, had given him short shrift and long contempt. He was furious and humiliated and wanted nothing more than to get back at her – turn up with enough cash to flash at her to make her sorry she’d been sharp with him.
Outside, he’d rung Melanie. She was out with friends – he could hear the sounds of people having a good time in the background. A wave of self-pity had come over him. He’d told her he was in a bad way for cash and spun her a story which he could hear she didn’t believe, but she’d agreed to meet him at her house with funds as soon as he could get there. And he’d asked her to get him a takeaway as well – he hadn’t eaten since breakfast – and she’d snapped at him. It hadn’t boded well.
When he arrived at her house she’d come down with the carrier bag in her hand, and got in beside him to talk to him. But right away she’d peered at him and sniffed and said he was too drunk to drive home, and insisted on switching places with him and driving him back.
When they reached Reservoir Road she’d driven to the Lido car park and pulled up there ‘so I can talk to you’. It was a long harangue, on much the same lines as before, about him ‘doing the right thing’. She’d been doing some sums while she waited for the Chinese food, and realized how much of her money he had gone through in the last two years. It had to stop, she said.
He’d eaten the food while she talked but he hadn’t enjoyed it, which annoyed him. He tried to tell her all over again how it was impossible for him to go back, and how it wouldn’t help anyway. The harangue had turned into an argument. He’d got out of the car to escape it, but she followed him. He tried to get it through her thick skull that if he went to police it would end up with him and her mother in prison, but she persisted in assuring him that wouldn’t happen.
She got angry with him, about having left her all those years thinking he was dead, about his drinking and his poor little bets on the ponies, called him a coward for not facing his responsibilities, told him if he didn’t put things right she’d stop seeing him.
He got angry too, and accused her of emotional blackmail, and of being a silly, naive little prig.
And in the middle of all the anger, he had grabbed her by the neck and shaken her.
‘Not hard. I didn’t grab her hard. Even losing my temper, I was enough her father to check myself, not to hurt her. But she was shocked. I’d never laid a rough hand on her before. She jerked away from me, just as I let her go. She lost her balance, her foot skidded on the mud, and she went over backwards, hitting her head sharply on the edge of the car roof.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ he said in a faded voice of horror. ‘I would never hurt my little girl. I knelt beside her, slipped my hand under her head, felt the blood. I called her name, and I thought she looked at me, but then she was limp and her eyes weren’t looking anywhere. Just staring. But I never meant to hurt her, I swear to you. If I could have died instead . . .’
‘But you didn’t,’ Slider said.
EIGHTEEN
The Devil Wears Primark
‘That’s a terrible story,’ Joanna said. ‘That’s the worst thing I’ve heard. The poor man.’
Slider had rung her on her mobile to say he didn’t know what time he’d be home, and she had diverted after the concert and come to the station to hear about it first hand. She was sitting on his desk now, still in her long black, a breath of fresh air from the outside world – the real world, if you wanted to look at it that way, in which people lived their lives without ever murdering or being murdered.
Sitting as he was in his normal chair behind the desk, he was looking up at her. He admired her almost painfully. She had just been engaged in something of extraordinary, unimaginable skill – playing the violin before an audience of thousands, recreating great music from tiny, random-looking dots on a page – something so beyond his comprehension that it stood in his mind like a conjuring trick in a child’s: genuine magic. She was a hummingbird, a kingfisher – airborne, delicate, a jewel of brightness and a quicksilver of movement. He was a humble duck, patiently drudging about in the weed.
She was also his wife, which was a pretty damn fine thing, whichever way you looked at it.
‘But,’ she said, ‘if it was an accident, why didn’t he just go straight to the police?’
Atherton, sitting on the cold radiator as usual, answered. ‘Because of this whole identity swap thing. He was afraid it would all come out and he was terrified of going to prison. So he carried her into the woods and laid her half under a bush. He had to make it look as though she’d been concealed, but he wanted her to be found, so he chose a place not far off the path. Then he went home and waited.’
‘It must have been hell,’ Joanna observed.
‘Yes,’ said Atherton, ‘particularly when she wasn’t found. Saturday went past and Sunday went past, and all the usual visitors and dog walkers kept going in there and nothing happened. He didn’t want to be caught, but he couldn’t bear to leave her lying out there any longer. I mean, not just the agonizing suspense, but what with foxes and stoats and such—’
‘Don’t.’ Joanna winced.
‘So on Monday morning he finally broke, and “found” her himself. He was in a terrible state when we interviewed him, but then, finding a dead body is not a nice thing for the ordinary punter, so we didn’t think anything of it. And then, when we didn’t come back for him . . .’
‘I suppose he was on tenterhooks, wondering if, and whether, and when,’ Joanna said thoughtfully. ‘A whole week of it.’
‘Yes, I think he was just glad in the end, when we did come for him, that it was all over.’
‘Hardly that,’ Slider said. They looked at him. ‘Not all over by any means.’
‘Well, no, there’s all the mess to clear up,’ Atherton admitted. ‘And what a mess he’s made of everything! His daughter’s dead. His wife’s marriage is bigamous.’
‘That’s easily remedied, surely? Divorce and remarriage would fix that,’ Joanna suggested.
‘It was still knowing bigamy on her part, which is a crime. Not to mention the insurance fraud. She could do time. And the marriage is ruined anyway. Ian’s not going to want her back. And his life will never be the same, either. He’ll have to change his job – if he can get another one after being a suspect. Though it’s hard to feel sympathy for him, given the Stephanie incident. There’s the child, Bethany – she’s bound to find out everything sooner or later, and it’s not a pretty story. What will that do to her? And then there’s Toby.’
‘Who’s Toby? Joanna asked.
‘Hunter’s dog. It was the one thing he asked as we arrested him – what’s going to happen to Toby?’
‘Well, what does?’
‘A local dog charity took him. We have an arrangement with them for such eventualities. They’ll keep him for a bit, and if Hunter ends up going inside they’ll rehome him. That was the one thing he talked about in the car on the way here. He said, “Toby’ll be dead by the time I get out.” We could have given him – the dog – to Mrs Wiseman-stroke-Hunter – Marty could do with a brother – but with the chance she’ll be going away at Her Majesty’s pleasure as well, we couldn’t risk it.’
Joanna contemplated for a bit. ‘You’re right. It is a mess. What must he be feeling?’
‘At the moment, he just wants to die,’ Atherton said. ‘He’s killed his darling and there�
�s nothing left for him. He’ll have to be put on suicide watch, which is a great nuisance to everybody. Then, of course, there’s William McGuire to consider. We’ll have to try and track down his relatives, if any, and tell them. We haven’t yet checked with MisPer whether he was ever reported missing. If he was, that’ll make it easier.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Just the paperwork of undeading Hunter and redeading McGuire is a nightmare.’
‘And then there’s the case to prepare,’ Slider said. Joanna noticed that he had been curiously silent all through this. Usually the relief of getting to the end of a case made him talkative. But he was sitting with his head bent in a dejected attitude, twirling a pencil round and round in his fingers.
‘But if it was an accident, not murder, what case is there?’ she asked.
‘Failure to notify a death. Interference with a human corpse. Concealing a crime. Impeding a police investigation. Plus the original identity swap fraud, and complicity in insurance fraud,’ Atherton enumerated.
‘If it was an accident,’ Slider said. They both looked at him. ‘We have no evidence about the death. No evidence either for him or against him. No evidence at all.’
‘But – he confessed,’ Joanna said.
‘Confessions can be retracted. We get false confessions all the time. He can go back to saying he only found the body, that it had nothing to do with him. Claim he was upset and didn’t know what he was saying.’
Kill My Darling Page 28
