Gently Where She Lay

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Are you prepared to face it?’

  He gave a gentle nod. ‘Actually, it won’t be so bad as you’re suggesting, because neither you nor the press dare take chances. There’s no evidence in either case except your hearsay account of our conversation. And remember, I have money behind me. I’m not a safe man to take risks with.’

  ‘But money won’t buy off the police.’

  ‘What can they do, without evidence?’

  ‘There’s manor law.’

  He made a face. ‘Honestly, can you see that working in Wolmering? In the first place, Eyke won’t want to believe my story. He’d prefer to think I’d pulled a fast one, to save the Major. If you believe it, that will do for Eyke, and he’ll be grateful to me ever after. Am I wrong?’

  I swallowed more bitter coffee. ‘Yet perhaps there’s one thing you’ve overlooked.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you’ll have to live with it. With the knowledge that you’re a killer.’

  He was silent awhile, his eyes large. Then he looked up at me, suddenly.

  ‘But am I really a killer – is that what happened here? I don’t think I shall ever believe it.’

  ‘She died at your hands.’

  ‘She died – yes. But were the hands that killed her mine? I had no intention of it, no awareness. I seemed only a bemused and helpless robot.’

  ‘Are you suggesting she willed it?’

  ‘Would that be impossible?’

  ‘It would make no defence at law.’

  ‘But it makes sense here. Perhaps the only sense.’

  ‘Then that’s the sense you’ll have to live with.’

  He sank his head again, slow and heavy. I placed my cup on the tray.

  ‘Where’s your phone?’

  ‘In the back lobby.’

  He didn’t stir as I went out.

  When Eyke and Campsey arrived, I left. It was still wanting an hour to midnight. The streets were vacant: Wolmering streets, where scarcely a car passed in five minutes. The lighthouse was beaming its double flash indifferently over the sea and the town, probing unshuttered, uncurtained windows: among them the window of a bedroom at Seacrest.

  And it was over. Of that I was sure. Eyke would find nothing he could use at Reymerston’s house. He wouldn’t look very hard either, and perhaps neither would I, in his place. Over: she had wanted death: had been such a one as we take from the river. Had wanted it and sought it after her fashion. Found it: her only success.

  And the blame? Who could one blame? The feckless mother in a Brummagem tenement? Guilty of the vicious outrage of a slap that froze the heart of the little girl? Where did it begin? What was the turningpoint? Who had given her the final push? Making of her at last the heavy-eyed woman courting, willing her quick release?

  Perhaps nobody: no blame. Nothing you could really pin on anybody. No proof. No material proof. Or none the sea couldn’t hold.

  I crossed the street near the Pelican and found Selly there, on the watch for me. I could have pushed past him and gone on in, but somehow that wasn’t my mood. Not my mood: instead, I waited for him; I could see sweet anger in his face. We met in the shadow by the stationer’s shop, the shop that was displaying Reymerston’s pictures. His voice was low and choking with anger.

  ‘You stupid so-and-so’s – you’ve let him go!’

  ‘Do you mean Major Rede?’

  ‘You know I do! He was on the bloody hook, and you’ve let him go.’

  ‘The Major has finished helping our enquiries.’

  ‘Finished my arse! You were set to nail him.’

  ‘We are satisfied he has no connection with the crime.’

  ‘You shit. You bloody know he did it.’

  He pushed his face up to mine, eyes big, the whites gleaming. I held still, watching him. I saw the change in his expression.

  ‘There’s someone else – is that it?’

  ‘We have received certain information.’

  ‘Shit on that! Have you arrested him?’

  I shook my head. ‘And we’re probably not going to.’

  ‘You’re not going to!’

  ‘It is very unlikely. We have no evidence to bring a case. But you can be satisfied that we know the identity of the person who killed your wife.’

  ‘You mean you know – and you’re doing eff-all?’

  ‘We are not in a position to bring a case.’

  ‘You bloody prat! Who is he?’

  ‘That is a confidential matter.’

  For a second or so I thought he wouldn’t rise to it. He stood glaring at me with baffled venom. But I needn’t have worried. He grabbed me suddenly by the lapels and backed me violently into the shop-doorway.

  ‘You bastard, you are going to tell me!’

  It was the moment I had been dreaming of. When he went down he lay quite motionless, except his mouth was working, as though tasting the blood. I wiped my hands and glanced around me. Nobody in the streets to see it. Not that I cared. I waited till he moved, then went my way into the Pelican.