Skipper shook his head. ‘I’ll sit for a bit.’
Reggie stood for a long moment, staring at his eggs.
‘Are you going to try again, Skip?’
‘What?’
‘You know what.’
Skipper thought about it hard, then shook his head. ‘Not before I find out what happened to Albert.’
Reggie nodded again, then disappeared, and Skipper heard the TV go on. Canned laughter.
He sat and sipped his tea.
When he’d finished his tea, he just sat.
Looked at the phone. Looked at the card.
Finally he picked up both. He tilted the card to the light and held it at arm’s length.
BIDEFORD POLICE
DCI KIRSTY KING
DS PETER SHAPLAND
01237 908809
Skipper peered at the phone and then hit REDIAL.
There was a brief tone, three rings . . .
And then the speaking clock told him it was twelve thirty-eight precisely.
The Bad Apple
The morning after the fight, Felix knocked on Miss Knott’s door.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. It might have been Christmas nine or ten years ago. Margaret had asked him to take round some mince pies because she’d used an old recipe and made too many for the two of them. Felix remembered he’d protested. Why would Miss Knott want their mince pies? Wouldn’t she have her own mince pies? She wasn’t a charity case! But Margaret had ignored every argument and piled a cake tin full of pies in his arms and bustled him out of the door in the sleet, and – of course – Miss Knott had been very pleased. Felix hadn’t gone in, even though she’d asked him to have a sherry – but he had glimpsed a tree and a hallway festooned with lights and old-fashioned paper chains, of the kind they’d made too, when Jamie was small. They didn’t make them now. Why would they? They only had a tree because Margaret insisted – even though each bauble was a memory of their son. The snowman, the reindeer, the elf. The only chocolate coin Jamie had ever managed not to eat . . .
Miss Knott opened the door with a smile. Then her eyes widened. ‘Oh my goodness! What happened to you?’
Felix touched the lump on his head and reddened. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing.’ But before he could stop her, Miss Knott had him sitting at the kitchen table and was dousing his head with Dettol, while keeping up a running commentary of exactly what was coming next. The Dettol stung like billy-o but she kept dabbing at the cut even after Felix told her he’d washed it (which wasn’t true), and then she covered it with gauze and a big square Elastoplast and it turned out she’d been an A&E nurse, which Felix had never known, but for which he was very grateful.
‘Better?’ asked Miss Knott.
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Felix.
Now she said, ‘Did you get that mark out of your nice jacket?’
Felix was thrown. ‘Mark?’
‘The, um, mascara.’
‘Actually, no,’ he said. ‘It’s quite stubborn.’
In fact the beige jacket had come out of the wash looking just the same as it had going in. He had no idea whether it could be saved.
‘Mustard powder and vinegar,’ said Miss Knott. ‘Make a paste and rub it in before washing. Or bring it round and I’ll see what I can do.’
Felix wasn’t sure about that. He’d always thought of laundry as rather an intimate thing. Certainly too familiar to share with a neighbour.
‘I’ll give it a go, thank you, Miss Knott. Now, in the meantime, I wondered whether I might use your telephone?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Is yours broken?’
‘No,’ said Felix, ‘but I’m in a rather odd situation. I have to call somebody but I don’t want them to know that it’s me who is calling them, so it occurred to me that I might call them from another telephone.’
Felix feared Miss Knott would ask all sorts of awkward questions that he wouldn’t want to answer, but she didn’t ask a single one. Instead she led him through to the front room and patted the back of a big wing chair.
‘You sit yourself down. The phone’s right there. I’ll leave you in peace and make us a nice cup of tea. How do you take it?’
Felix didn’t want a cup of tea, but what could he say? ‘Just a dash of milk, thank you, Miss Knott.’
She left the room and he sat down. The wing chair was remarkably comfortable. There was a little table either side of the chair – one with a lamp and the television remote control on it, and the other with the phone and a little pad, not unlike the one he had in his own hallway, except without the tasselled pencil. Instead there was a cheap biro. There was a paperback book, open and face down, which almost made Felix have palpitations. He always used a bookmark and it pained him to see a book treated so shabbily – even a Clive Cussler. It was lucky that Margaret had respected a book, or it could have been a very rocky fifty years.
From the kitchen he could hear Miss Knott singing. Not loudly or showily, but almost under her breath, and missing a few words and even some notes, as if she were singing to herself. Margaret used to do that sometimes – sing old numbers they’d danced to when they were courting – ‘Bewitched’ or ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. Miss Knott was nothing like the singer that Margaret had been but, still, it was a cheerful sound.
He’d better call before she came back. He patted his pockets and unfolded the paper on which he’d written Amanda’s number.
Felix took a deep breath. He was very nervous. His hand shook so hard that he had to concentrate to dial – carefully, and with much peering. There was a clicky silence before the first ring, during which Felix noticed that Miss Knott had placed the tulip he’d given her in a little crystal bud vase on the windowsill, and that it had opened into a wonderful bloom. It made him feel just a little bit less anxious.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello!’ Felix sat upright in surprise. ‘Amanda?’
‘Yes, hi?’
He was flummoxed. He hadn’t expected her to answer, or to answer so quickly, or to answer to the name Amanda. He should have prepared better. Too late now.
‘Hello,’ he said again.
‘Who is this?’ she said.
‘John,’ he said. ‘From Abbotsham.’
There was a short silence and so he ploughed on. ‘Amanda, I know I told you I would take care of everything, and I will, but before I do, I just wanted to check a few facts with you.’
This time the silence was longer.
‘I . . .’ she said. ‘What do you want? To check?’
Relief swamped Felix. She wasn’t a bad apple! A bad apple would have simply hung up on him. A bad apple wouldn’t have stayed on the line and asked him what he wanted to check. Poor girl was probably set up too!
He spoke quickly and quietly. ‘Well, something rather strange is going on. The police apparently feel that the death we . . . attended . . . was caused deliberately—’
‘Deliberately?’
‘Well, there seem to have been some . . . discrepancies . . . For instance, Mr Cann used oxygen and the police say there was an oxygen tank in the poor man’s room. I don’t recall that being the case at the time, you see, and I wondered whether you did?’
‘No . . . I . . . no.’
‘Oh good!’ he hurried on. ‘And the will and the waiver were next to his bed, weren’t they? I mean, I’m ninety-nine per cent sure they were, but are you ? Because I want to make sure I’m remembering things right, you see? Given my age. Haha!’ He could hear Amanda breathing. ‘I’ve even been thinking of checking with a member of the family . . .’
He let it hang there, inviting her to admit that she had already done that very thing. That, however foolish it seemed, she had met Albert Cann’s son and apologized and that he had explained what had happened and that somehow it wasn’t their fault . . .
She said none of this.
‘You see, Amanda, I’m a little bit concerned because, well, to be honest, this is all starting to feel a little bit like . . . a set-up.’
Felix attempted a chuckle but it was so tight and mirthless that he turned it into a little exercise in throat-clearance.
‘Amanda?’
Silence.
‘Hello?’
Silence.
‘Hello? Amanda?’
She had hung up on him.
Felix put down the phone and dabbed at his brow with a fresh handkerchief, then looked up as Miss Knott came through the doorway with a tray laid for tea. Pot, cups, saucers, milk, biscuits . . .
He felt hot and panicky. He didn’t want to be here. He needed to be somewhere else, somewhere he could think. He hauled himself out of the wing chair to take the tray from Miss Knott, but she was adept and made it to the coffee table with barely a rattle of teaspoons.
He looked at his watch. ‘I can’t be long,’ he said, although he had no idea of what he was going to do after he left, other than panic in his own house.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Now you sit down and I’ll be mother.’
Felix sat and sweated while she fussed with the pot and a sieve, and then poured a cup of tea and handed it to him. It was beautifully red and thin, just the way he liked it.
‘Biscuit?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Biscuit?’
‘Oh. Yes. Sorry, Miss Knott. Miles away.’
They were good biscuits too. From a tin, rather than a packet, and covered in chocolate or bright foil wrap. Felix had to make a huge effort to concentrate on appearing normal, even if inside he was in turmoil. He reached for the least ostentatious of the biscuits.
‘Have one with foil on,’ ordered Miss Knott. ‘It’s such fun to unwrap them.’
Ridiculous, thought Felix, but took a biscuit in purple foil and did rather enjoy unwrapping it – however silly that felt.
Miss Knott cleared her throat. ‘Mr Mabel, I don’t like to pry, but it sounds to me as though you might be in a spot of bother.’
‘No, no, no!’ Felix flushed and spilled a little tea into his saucer. He put down his cup, ashamed of the lie, and quickly amended it to, ‘Well, yes.’
Miss Knott said nothing.
That gave him time to collect his thoughts, smoothing the purple biscuit foil over his knee, taking all the creases out of it with his careful thumb while he wondered what he should tell her and what he should not. Then he got worried about how many lies he could keep straight in his head, and so – finally – he just told her the truth.
Miss Knott didn’t interrupt him. She topped up her cup, and his, and listened until he had brought her right up to date.
‘And this Amanda is the person you’ve just spoken to?’
‘Yes.’
‘The one who hung up the phone?’
‘Yes,’ said Felix.
Miss Knott was silent for so long that Felix started to wish he hadn’t told her. This wasn’t lying low. This was blabbing, pure and simple. He’d exposed himself and the Exiteers. He’d shown himself to be an incompetent at best – a killer at worst. No wonder Miss Knott looked so sombre.
‘I should leave,’ he said, and put his cup back on the tray.
‘Don’t go, Felix,’ said Miss Knott. ‘I’m surprised, that’s all. Who wouldn’t be? To think that all this time you’ve been leading this double life, going into people’s houses in secret, supporting them through their hour of need, destroying the evidence . . . And all at great risk to yourself. So daring! But so kind too . . .’ Miss Knott eyed him appraisingly. ‘I always suspected you had hidden depths.’
‘Did you?’ Felix was surprised because it was certainly more than he ’d ever suspected.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘everybody has hidden depths. Some are just better hidden than others. And deeper.’
‘Well, I appreciate that, Miss Knott, but now I see that I’ve been trying to rectify a situation that is impossible to rectify. Very foolish of me. And cowardly. I should have gone straight to the police, but I delayed – first because of my own panic and then Geoffrey telling me to lie low, and then by thinking that speaking to Amanda might help me untangle things. But now I’ve spoken to her and it hasn’t helped at all, so I must hand myself in.’
‘I don’t see why,’ said Miss Knott, unexpectedly. Again.
‘Because it’s the right thing to do!’
‘Says who?’
Felix was taken aback. ‘Well . . .’ he said, ‘it’s what Margaret would do.’
‘Pfft!’ said Miss Knott with a breezy wave of her orange cream. ‘Margaret was never accused of murder, so who knows what she’d have done?’
Felix wasn’t used to questioning Margaret – or having anybody else question her. This was virgin territory for him, but he could see that Miss Knott had a point.
She went on, ‘The thing is, I’m sure police officers are all very decent and hardworking and they only want to charge the right people. But once somebody confesses to a crime, then I think it’s only natural that they might not have the time or the motivation to go on investigating that crime quite as hard as they should. Or even as hard as you would.’
This was not something that had occurred to Felix.
‘Because, you see, once they’ve got you, they might just stop looking for anyone else.’
Felix nodded slowly.
‘And then this poor old man could be left in terrible danger with nobody to protect him.’
Felix examined his own shiny knuckles while Miss Knott frowned into the biscuit tin as if all the answers were in there, wrapped in coloured foil.
Then she looked up and said firmly, ‘I think you should go back.’
Felix was startled. ‘Go back ?’ he said. ‘To the house?’
‘Yes.’
‘But he’ll kill me!’
‘I’m sure he was just saying that,’ said Miss Knott with a dismissive wave that was becoming a little familiar to Felix. ‘After all, he must have been terrified.’
Felix pointed to his lump. ‘I was terrified!’
‘Oh, but imagine this poor man – what’s his name?’
‘Skipper Cann.’
‘Skipper’s weak and sick and lying in bed, and the man who killed his son suddenly appears in his room. With a stick! He probably thought you’d come to kill him again.’
‘I didn’t go to kill him the first time!’ said Felix, not a little vexed. ‘He was going to kill himself, remember? He wanted to die.’
‘Maybe so,’ said Miss Knott firmly. ‘But nobody wants to be murdered.’
The words hung in the air.
Undeniable.
Felix didn’t care. He folded his arms. He wasn’t going back to Black Lane. He’d done all he could and got nowhere. He’d apologized to Skipper Cann and fixed his fence and shown him the broken stick – and the man had threatened to kill him! As far as he was concerned, he’d done all he safely could to make amends. Margaret would agree with that, he was sure. Miss Knott was too impulsive. Too sentimental. And her expectations of him were completely unrealistic.
‘I’ll go back tomorrow,’ somebody said.
But it was only when Miss Knott looked at Felix with her eyes all proud and shiny that he realized that that somebody must have been him.
The Attic
After supper Felix pulled down the loft ladder in a series of squeaky jerks, and ascended carefully to the attic to look for his old chess set.
He had always enjoyed playing chess. It was his abiding memory of his father. Ambrose Pink had been a taciturn man who smelled of pipe tobacco, and who was more an observer of his children than a father to them. Felix remembered the way he would clamp his pipe in his teeth so that his hands were free to applaud something Felix�
�s sister or brother had achieved. Felix had never done anything to compare, but he and his father had played chess. Mostly on gloomy Sunday afternoons when the only restless sounds were the rain and the tick of the clock. Still, they’d been alone and together, while his spectacular siblings were off somewhere else, doing something that was doubtless more clap-worthy than losing at chess.
Felix had never beaten his father, but he had come close on two occasions. Unacknowledged both times. In the years since his father’s death, Felix had come to understand that the lack of acknowledgement was nothing personal. It mattered not to his father who won. To him, checkmate was merely his cue to sit back in his chair and refill his pipe from a soft leather pouch, while his hunched son examined his king from all angles to make sure it was true.
It always was.
But while they’d played, they’d talked. Not about much. Egypt. Hockey. The best route from Barnstaple to Newton Tracey. Sturmey-Archer gears. Nothing, really.
It didn’t matter: the point was that talking to his father had always seemed easier when it was done across a chequered board . . .
Now Felix had a sense of where the chess set should be and within ten minutes he was sliding open the lid of the little plywood box. Inside were the old wooden Staunton pieces that he had learned on as a boy – smooth with use – and the same ones he’d used to teach Jamie.
Felix was blindsided by nostalgia.
These chessmen had been here for thirty years. Waiting. Undisturbed. Just as Jamie must have put them away the last time they’d played. What had he been? Sixteen? Seventeen maybe? What had they talked about? Nothing, really, but definitely something . . .
Felix touched a pawn, as if the residue of his son might linger there. He held a white knight up to the dim bulb and remembered guiding Jamie’s pudgy hand in an L across the squares as it clutched this very piece.
Accompanied by soft wooden clicks he rummaged through lovely memories, and found a king.
Checkmate.
Sometimes in his voice and sometimes in Jamie’s. Like his father before him, Felix had never let his son win. But unlike his father before him, Jamie had won anyway.
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