This Way Out

by Sheila Radley

  ‘For God’s sake look after Mum,’ said Lyn, by way of farewell. Every bit as beautiful as Christine had been at the same age, she was spitting hostility at him: ‘Stop being so bloody selfish, Dad. Try to think about her needs, for a change.’

  Derek flinched, but said nothing. What was the point? Too many angry things had been said already, and no one now believed the truths he told. He stood outside Mrs Collins’s house, watching as Tim drove off in the Sierra, taking Lyn and Richard to catch their respective trains. Christine went with them, venturing out for the first time since her mother’s death. He would have liked to wave to her, but she didn’t look back.

  Hungry at last, he went to the village shop and bought bread rolls, cheese and fruit. The owner and the other customers stopped talking immediately he went in, but Derek was indifferent to the embarrassed silence, the lowered eyes and the covert glances. Enid’s murder was in the past; it was his future with his wife that he was concerned about.

  As he ate his food in Sylvia Collins’s garden, Val the policewoman joined him to report that her colleagues had just finished their work at the Brickyard. They would be moving out that afternoon, and she herself would be leaving too; no doubt, she said, to the Cartwrights’ – not to mention Mrs Collins’s – relief. There was just the formality of Derek’s statement about finding the body to be gone through, if he wouldn’t mind accompanying her to Breckham Market police station. When he’d finished his lunch, of course.

  There was nothing difficult or alarming about making the statement. The police were so very much easier to deal with than his children. He didn’t see either of the detectives but all the uniformed officers were considerate, even about his loss of the dog; having checked that Sam had not yet been found, they discussed with him their press release for the next day’s local paper.

  By the time Val drove him back to Wyveling, Christine had returned. Thankfully, though, Tim had taken his truck and gone. Val collected her toothbrush and sleeping-bag, said her thanks to Mrs Collins, shook him and Christine by the hand and told them that she’d stay in touch. She handed Christine a card with the telephone number of the police station: ‘If there’s anything you want to know, or if you just want to talk, don’t hesitate to give me a ring.’

  Then Derek and his wife were alone together.

  They sat on a wooden bench beside Sylvia Collins’s goldfish pond, Derek at one end, Christine at the other. She stared straight ahead, her face so pale and the skin round her eyes so bruised-looking that he was afraid she was ill.

  ‘Are you in pain, my love?’ he asked, stretching his good hand tentatively towards her. She shook her head. He left his outstretched hand resting hopefully on the bench for a few moments, then cleared his throat and shifted himself to a less suppliant position.

  ‘The police are moving out of the Brickyard this afternoon,’ he said. ‘It’ll be good to have our own home back. Not to move into, I mean,’ he added hastily, observing Christine’s shudder, ‘but it’ll give us a chance to sort ourselves out, won’t it? Change our clothes, sit in our own garden.’

  ‘I can’t go back there,’ she said in a remote voice. ‘Not to live, ever.’

  ‘Of course you can’t, Chrissie, I know that. I never expected you to. We’ll decide what to do when we’ve had a chance to draw breath, but what you need first is to get away for a bit. We’ll have a holiday, shall we?’

  ‘No thank you, Derek.’ She still wouldn’t look at him, let alone call him by his affectionate name, or touch him.

  ‘Would you like to go to Southwold, then? To your mo— To the flat?’

  ‘No.’

  Derek didn’t know what to say next. After a few moments Christine said, ‘I shall go away on my own, as soon as I feel able to drive. I’m still too shaky for that at the moment. I’ll go and stay with Trish.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Trish Wilson. We were at school together, we write every Christmas. She and her husband have a farm in Derbyshire, and I can rent one of the barns they’ve turned into holiday cottages.’

  ‘Derbyshire? But that’s much too far away! Why don’t we rent a cottage nearer Cambridge, so that we can share it – or at least so that I can be with you for as long as possible at weekends.’

  ‘No. I’d rather be alone.’

  A silence fell between them; lengthened, deepened. It seemed particularly cruel that the natural world should be burgeoning into new life all around them – birds bustling in the greening hedges, toads croaking and splashing in the pond – just at the time when their married life was juddering to a stop.

  Derek felt numbed. How could this be happening, when they’d always been such a secure couple? When they’d been through so many trials together? When he loved Christine so much that he was prepared to do anything for her, even to the extent of –

  Well, he wouldn’t think about that. The death of Enid had nothing to do with what was happening between him and Christine. Understandably, she was rejecting him because she thought he had been unfaithful to her. But since he hadn’t (hadn’t ever been, wouldn’t ever be), surely he ought to be able to convince her?

  ‘It isn’t true, Chrissie,’ he said urgently. ‘The family’s got it all wrong. I love you, you know that. I’ve always been faithful to you. I’ve never so much as looked at another woman, and I never will.’

  ‘The children didn’t say anything about it,’ said Christine distantly, ‘though I’m sure they guessed. They didn’t need to say anything. I worked it out for myself on Saturday evening.’

  ‘But I’ve just told you – it’s not true! I swear to you I’ve done nothing wrong. Good God,’ he burst out, ‘do you take me for a liar as well as a lecher!’

  She gave a shrug of indifference. ‘It hardly seems to matter, now.’

  ‘Not matter? What do you mean? Don’t you care whether or not I’ve been faithful to you?’

  ‘I would have cared very much’, she said in a level voice, ‘if it had occurred to me earlier that you hadn’t been. I cared for a time on Saturday evening. But now, quite frankly, it seems to be of very small importance.’

  She stood up. ‘I need some space, Derek. It’s not you that’s the problem, it’s me. I need to think things out on my own. Sylvia has kindly said that I can stay here until I’m fit to drive to Derbyshire – but no doubt you’ll want to go elsewhere straight away.’

  ‘But how long are you going for?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

  Anguished, he stumbled to his feet. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening to us, Chrissie. We’re not going to part company, not after everything we’ve been through together! We’re a couple, we have been since we were teenagers. We’re us, and I won’t let you go.’

  She began to walk away. ‘I’ll send Trish’s address to you at your office before I go,’ she said. Then she paused and glanced back at him: ‘Don’t forget that you’re due at the doctor’s surgery on Friday to have your stitches out.’

  Derek looked dumbly down at his bandaged hand. It seemed to be of no importance at all.

  At the Brickyard, the very young constable was taking a second look at Derek Cartwright’s Sierra before the police moved out.

  ‘What do you make of this, Sergeant Lloyd?’ he called to the detective as she crossed the yard to her own car.

  Hilary joined him under the cart shed. As they examined the marks in the dried mud on the driver’s door of the Sierra, PC Mills told her how Cartwright had explained the scratches away.

  ‘But I’ve been thinking about it,’ he said, ‘and I’m not satisfied that he was telling the truth. Yes, all right, some of the paw prints are clear enough. No doubt they were made when the car was stationary. But look at the angle of these scratches –’

  ‘You’re right, Shaun,’ said the sergeant. ‘Some of them are more horizontal than vertical. And some of them trail away on the back door. It looks as though the car was moving when the dog tried to get in.’

  Shaun Mills
stood up, frowning. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it of Mr Cartwright. He seems such a decent man, not at all the sort to get rid of a poor old dog by dumping it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought it of him either – but you can never tell, can you? If this was what he went to the forest for, then we were probably wrong about the secret love affair. But all I can say is,’ concluded Hilary Lloyd crossly, ‘that if his family has been giving him a hard time over a non-existent affair, then it serves the wretched man right.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Derek was so dazed by what had happened between Christine and himself that it was only when he emerged with a suitcase from the now-deserted Brickyard that he realized he had gone upstairs and done his packing without giving Enid’s murder a thought. And now that it crossed his mind, he felt completely disassociated from it.

  He sat in the Sierra and tried using the gear lever and handbrake with his bandaged hand. Driving to Cambridge was going to be difficult, but not impossible. What did it matter that his hand would hurt? His emotions had already taken a far worse battering.

  He booked in at the same Cambridge hotel he had used on Friday night, then drove round the corner to his office. His colleagues were surprised to see him, because he had telephoned first thing that morning to say that his mother-in-law had suddenly died and he wouldn’t be at work for the next few days. But they were sympathetic and incurious, accepting his explanation that there was nothing he could do at home and he was glad to get away for a bit from the old lady’s friends and relations.

  Fortunately the East Anglian Daily Press, which that morning carried a front-page account of the murder, didn’t circulate as far as Cambridge. Derek expected that the news would reach his colleagues eventually, but he had no intention of telling them. Nor did he say anything about his move to the hotel, partly out of hurt pride and partly because he didn’t want to become the subject of office gossip.

  He had hoped that work would take his mind off his personal problems, but it didn’t. Or, rather, it did every so often; but then the recollection that Christine had rejected him would come springing back, more painful than ever.

  There was no point in continuing to sit in his office staring at his monitor after the rest of the staff had gone home. The trouble was that he didn’t know what else to do. He thought about going to the health club, but he was in no fit state either to swim or to exercise.

  For a time, oblivious of his surroundings, he walked the streets of Cambridge. He stopped at a pub for a drink and something to eat, but the bar was a noisy student haunt and he didn’t feel inclined to linger. Abandoning a sinewy chicken drumstick, he bought a half bottle of Bell’s and retreated to his hotel room.

  The first whisky went straight down, almost unnoticed except for the shudder effect. Clutching the second, he sat on his bed and contemplated the telephone. He always rang Christine when he was away for a night, and he longed to talk to her now. He couldn’t believe that everything wasn’t all right between them, just as it always had been.

  And perhaps it was. Perhaps he’d allowed a mere tiff to balloon to monstrous proportions in his mind. Christine was probably sitting in Sylvia Collins’s house now, waiting anxiously for his call. After all, she’d thought to remind him about having the stitches out of his hand, so there was no doubt that she cared. Perhaps if he opened the conversation as though nothing had happened, the problem would go away.

  He swallowed the second whisky, dialled Mrs Collins’s number, and asked to speak to his wife.

  It seemed to him that several minutes elapsed before Christine came to the telephone. There was a crackle on the line which made it difficult to judge her mood, but her formal ‘Hallo Derek’was not encouraging.

  ‘Hallo Chrissie! How are you, darling?’

  ‘I’m all right, thank you.’

  ‘Good!’ He would never normally pronounce the word so heartily, but anxiety falsified his tone. ‘I had a lot of work to catch up with, or I’d have rung you earlier. I’m staying at the usual hotel near the office. Would you like to make a note of the telephone number, dearest?’ He read it off to her. ‘Got that?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. The line had cleared, and he could tell from her voice that she hadn’t bothered to write the number down.

  ‘Chrissie!’

  Abandoning his casual act he gripped the receiver tightly, with his bandaged as well as his good hand, as though by doing so he could hold on to her. ‘You know I love you. You only, ever and always. Let me drive over now, tonight, and bring you back here. Or anywhere, as long as we’re together. Please.’

  ‘Oh, Derek … Can’t you understand?’ There was a weary sadness in her voice. ‘I’m distressed and confused, and I need to be on my own to try to sort things out. Don’t hassle me, please. Just – good-night.’

  She cut him off. He sat quite still for a few minutes, staring at the receiver he was holding. Then he slammed it down, and grimly set about finishing the remainder of the bottle.

  His secretary had already cancelled his appointments for the rest of the week; just as well, as far as the following day was concerned. Derek woke with a foul taste in his mouth, a sore hand and a pounding hangover. But those were the least of his troubles.

  He made a cup of coffee in his room and stood with it at the window looking out at the Chesterton road and the willows beside the Cam. It was raining again, just as it had been last Saturday morning, before everything started to go wrong. Oh God, if only …

  If only.

  Chrissie. Christine.

  Without her his life was meaningless. He didn’t know what to do with the day that lay ahead, let alone with the week. And as for months and years … the bleakness was terrible to contemplate.

  Wretchedly, he pulled on his clothes and drove out to the health club; somewhere to go on a wet Tuesday morning, that was all.

  He sweated some of the alcohol out of his system in the sauna, took a shower, and then wandered over to the jacuzzi.

  A young couple were just emerging from the bubbling grey water. Glad to be able to have the whirlpool to himself, Derek sat on the underwater seat, leaned back with his arms stretched out along the edge, closed his eyes and hoped that the power jets would pummel his body into temporary oblivion.

  Almost immediately he heard someone else approach. As he moved his long legs, with reluctance, to accommodate the newcomer, he saw through half-open eyes that the masculine body lowering itself into the water opposite him was startlingly simian in appearance: smallish but strongly muscular, and coated with hairs that curled blackly round the edges of the white trunks.

  He widened his eyes. The body was now submerged; only a familiar swarthy head and handsome face showed above the water.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t you, Derek!’ said Hugh Packer. ‘Small world, eh?’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Don’t be like that! This seemed a good place for us to talk, but it’s cost me a packet to get in. I had to book a room in the hotel before they’d let me use the facilities, and buy the swimming gear as well. Still, it’ll be worth it in the end. You’re pleased with the job I did for you, I hope?’

  ‘Pleased.’ Gaping with rage, Derek shipped a mouthful of frothy water. It was the need to cough that initially prevented him from launching himself bodily at the man. After that, it was only the fear of drawing the attention of the club staff that restrained him.

  ‘You bastard, Packer!’ he hissed. ‘You’ve ruined my life because of what you did. I’ve lost my wife. I’ve lost everything else I love and value – my children, my home. And now you have the nerve to ask me if I’m pleased! My God, if we weren’t in public view I’d –’

  Packer was making tutting noises. ‘How very careless of you to lose all that, Derek. But don’t blame me. You should have thought about the consequences before you agreed to the plan, shouldn’t you?’

  Under cover of the bubbles Derek lashed out with one leg, trying to slam his heel against th
e smaller man’s groin. But the water absorbed the force of the blow, and all he managed to do was thump Packer’s thigh. For the first time that morning the man revealed his sharp wolfish grin. It reminded Derek of exactly what Packer had done to Christine’s mother.

  ‘You bloody pervert,’ he said through his teeth. ‘How could you rape a poor defenceless old woman?’

  ‘Interesting you should ask that,’ said Packer in a tone of cheerful detachment. ‘It wasn’t anything I’d intended to do, believe me! It – well, it sort of came over me. Nothing to do with sex, you understand. God, no. That’s what I’ve got a wife for.’

  He paused, with the tip of his tongue protruding slyly from between his red lips. Derek, remembering the big, unhappy, strikingly attractive young woman who was married to the man, spared her a moment’s sympathy.

  ‘As far as I was concerned,’ Packer went on, ‘it was just a spontaneous reaction. Nothing personal at all. I’d never actually despatched anyone before, you see, so there was a great sense of power in knowing that I’d got her life in my hands and I could do whatever I wanted with her. Mind you, she put up a resistance – but that only added a bit of spice to the proceedings.’

  Derek was nauseated. ‘Bastard,’ he spat; ‘you bastard! You promised me you’d do it gently, with a pillow.’

  ‘No I didn’t. That was your idea. I decided it would be in your best interests if I used my hands, because then you wouldn’t have to pretend to be surprised when you found her.’ Packer chuckled. ‘And I was right, wasn’t I? I bet you were so shocked that you fooled everybody. Oh, it really was a brilliant operation, wasn’t it?’