Killing Me Softly

Thirty-nine

WPC Mayer looked about sixteen. She had bobbed brown hair and a round, slightly spotty face. I sat in the back of the car – a plain blue one, not the police car I’d been expecting – and looked at the back of her plump neck above her crisp white collar. It looked stiff to me, disapproving, and her listless handshake and brief, shallow glance had seemed indifferent.

She made no effort to talk to me, except to tell me at the start of the journey to fasten my seat-belt, please, and I was grateful for that. I leaned against the cool plastic and stared at the London traffic outside, seeing almost nothing. It was a bright morning, and the light gave me a headache, but when I closed my eyes it was no better, for then images chased across the lids. Particularly Adam’s face, my last sight of him. My whole body felt sore and hollow. It was as if I could feel all the different bits of me: my heart, my guts, my lungs, my aching kidneys, the blood coursing round me, my ringing head.

Every so often, WPC Mayer’s radio would crackle into life and she would speak into the car, a strange formulaic kind of language about rendezvous and times of arrival. Outside this car was ordinary real life – people going about their daily business, irritated, bored, contented, indifferent, excited, tired. Thinking about their work, or what to cook for supper, or what their daughter had said at breakfast that morning, or thinking of the boy they fancied, or how their hair needed cutting or how their back ached. It was hard to imagine I had ever been there, in that life. Dimly, as in a dream half forgotten, I remembered evenings in the Vine with the Crew. What had we talked about, night after night, as if time didn’t matter, as if we had all the time in the world? Had I been happy then? I didn’t know any more. I could barely recall Jake’s face now, or not Jake’s face when I was living with him, not his lover’s face, not the way he had looked at me when we lay in bed together. Adam’s face got in the way, his gazing eyes. How he had pushed his way between me and the world, blotting out my view so that all I could see was him.

I had been Alice-with-Jake, then Alice-with-Adam. Now I was just Alice. Alice alone. No one to tell me how I looked or ask me how I felt. No one to make plans with or test thoughts against or be protected by or lose myself in. If I survived this, I would be alone. I looked down at my hands, lying inert on my lap. I listened to my breathing, steady and quiet. Maybe I wouldn’t survive. Before Adam, I had never been too scared of death, mainly because death had always seemed far off, happening to some comfy white-haired old woman whom I couldn’t connect with myself. Who would miss me, I wondered. Well, my parents would miss me, of course. My friends? In a way – but for them I had already gone missing when I walked out on Jake and the old life. They would shake their heads over me as over a curiosity. ‘Poor thing,’ they would say. Adam would miss me, though; yes, Adam would miss me. He would weep for me, genuine tears of grief . He would always remember me and he would always mourn me. How strange that was. I almost smiled.

I took the photograph out of my pocket again and stared at it. There I was, so happy at the miracle of my new life that I looked like a madwoman. There was a hawthorn bush behind me, and grass and sky, but that was all. What if I couldn’t remember? I tried to recall the route from the church but as I did so a sense of utter blankness came over me. I couldn’t even visualize the church itself. I tried to stop myself thinking about it, as if by doing so I might drive away the last shreds of memory. I looked at the photograph again and I heard my own voice: ‘For ever,’ I had said. For ever. What had Adam said back? I couldn’t think about that, but I remembered that he had cried. I had felt his tears on my cheek. For a moment, I nearly cried myself, sitting in that chilly police car, on my way to find out if I was going to win or be defeated by him, live or be destroyed by him. Adam was my enemy now but he had loved me, whatever that meant. I had loved him, too. For one disastrous moment, I wanted to tell WPC Mayer to turn round and go home; it was all a terrible mistake, a mad aberration.

I shook myself and looked out of the window again, away from the photograph. We were off the motorway now, and driving through a little grey village. I remembered nothing of this journey. Oh, God, maybe nothing would come back to me at all. WPC Mayer’s neck was unyielding. I closed my eyes once more. I felt so frightened that I was almost calm with it, sickly calm; frozen calm. My spine felt thin and brittle when I shifted in the seat; my fingers were cold and stiff.

‘Here we are.’

The car drew up at St Eadmund’s church, a stocky grey building. A notice outside announced proudly that the foundations of the church were more than a thousand years old. With a surge of relief, I remembered it. But this was where the test began. WPC Mayer got out of the car and opened the door for me. I got out and then saw that three people were waiting for us. Another woman, a bit older than Mayer, wearing slacks and a thick sheepskin jacket, and two men in yellow jackets, like the jackets that construction workers often wear. They were carrying spades. My knees felt wobbly, but I tried to walk briskly, as if I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

They hardly looked at me as we approached. The two men were talking to each other. They glanced up at me then resumed their conversation. The woman stepped forward and introduced herself as Detective Constable Paget, took Mayer by the elbow and steered her away from me.

‘We should be finished with this in a couple of hours,’ I heard her say. So no one believed me at all. I looked down at my feet. I was wearing inappropriate ankle boots with heels, hopeless for walking over moorland and through muddy fields. I knew which direction we were going to set off in. I was just going to continue walking up the road, past the church. That much was easy. It was what happened next that was the problem. I caught the two men staring over at me, but when I stared back at them their glances fell away, as if they were embarrassed by me. The madwoman. I pushed my hair behind my ears and did up the top button of my jacket.

The two women returned, looking purposeful.

‘Right, Mrs Tallis,’ said the detective, nodding at me. ‘If you’d like to show us the way, then.’

My throat felt as if there was some obstruction in it. I started to walk along the lane. One foot in front of another, clip clop along the silent lane. Childhood surged back on me in a rhyme: ‘Left, left, had a good home and I left. Right, right, it serves you jolly well right.’ WDC Paget walked beside me and the other three fell behind a little way. I couldn’t make out what they were saying to each other, but every so often I could hear one of them laugh. My legs felt heavy, like lead. The road stretched out in front of me, on and on, featureless. Was this my last walk?

‘How far is it from here?’ asked WDC Paget.

I had no idea. But round a bend, the road forked and I saw a war monument with a chipped stone eagle on the top.

‘This is it,’ I said, trying not to sound relieved. ‘This is where we came.’

WDC Paget must have heard the surprise in my voice for she cast me a quizzical glance.

‘Right, here,’ I said, for although I had not remembered the monument, now that we were here it came clearly back to me.

I led them along the narrow lane, which was more like a track. My legs felt lighter now. My body was showing me the way to go. Somewhere along here there would be a path. I looked anxiously from left to right and kept stopping to peer into the undergrowth, in case it had become overgrown by weeds since I was last here. I could sense the growing impatience of the group. Once, I saw WPC Mayer exchange a look with one of the diggers – a thin young man with a long, lumpy neck – and shrug.

‘It’s somewhere near here,’ I said.

A few minutes later I said, ‘We must have gone past it.’ We stood in the middle of the lane while I dithered, and then WD C Paget said, quite kindly, ‘I think there’s a turning up ahead. Shall we just go and look at that?’

It was the path. I almost hugged her in gratitude then set off, at a shambling trot, with the police coming after me. Bushes snagged at us, brambles whipped at our legs, but I didn’t mind. This was where we had come. This time I didn’t hesitate, but turned off the path into the trees, for I had seen a silver birch that I recognized, white and straight among the beech trees. We scrambled up a slope. When Adam and I had come here, he had held my hand and helped me through the slippery fallen leaves. We came upon a crowd of daffodils and I heard WPC Mayer exclaim in pleasure, as if we were out on a country walk.

We reached the top of the slope, the trees cleared and we were out in what was almost moorland. As if he were beside me I heard Adam’s voice reaching me from the past: ‘A patch of grass that’s off a path that’s off a track that’s off a road.’

Now, suddenly, I didn’t know where to go. There had been a hawthorn bush, but I couldn’t see it from where I stood. I took a few uncertain steps, then stopped and gazed around me hopelessly. WD C Paget came up beside me and said nothing, just waited. I took the photograph out of my pocket. ‘This is what we are looking for.’

‘A bush.’ Her voice was expressionless but her glance was not. There were bushes all around us.

I shut my eyes and tried to think myself back. And then I remembered. ‘Look with my eyes,’ he had said. And we had gazed down on the church beneath us, and the fields. ‘Look with my eyes.’

It was as if I was truly looking with his eyes, following in his footsteps. I stumbled, almost ran, along the patch of moorland, and there, in the break in the trees, I could see down to where we had come from. There was St Eadmund’s, with the two cars parked beside it. There was the table of green fields. And here was the hawthorn bush. I stood in front of it, as I had stood then. I stood on the spongy earth and prayed that the body of a young woman was lying underneath me.

‘Here,’ I said to WDC Paget. ‘Here. Dig here.’

She beckoned over the men with their spades and repeated what I had said: ‘Dig here.’

I stepped away from where I was standing and they started to dig. The ground was stony and it was obviously hard work. Soon I could see beads of sweat standing out on their foreheads. I tried to breathe evenly. With each strike of the spade, I waited for something to appear. Nothing. They dug until there was a sizeable hole. Nothing. Eventually they stopped and looked atWDC Paget, who looked at me.

‘It’s there,’ I said. ‘I know it’s there. Wait.’

Again, I closed my eyes and tried to remember. I took out the photograph and stared at the bush.

‘Tell me exactly where to stand,’ I said to WD C Paget, thrust the photo into her hand and positioned myself by the bush.

She looked at me wearily then shrugged. I stood just as I had stood for Adam, and stared at her as if she were about to take my photograph herself. She stared back through narrowed eyes.

‘Forward a bit,’ she said.

I stepped forward.

‘That’s it.’

‘Dig here,’ I said to the men.

Again they started to shift the earth. We waited in silence, the dull thump of the spade, the laboured breathing of the working men. Nothing. There was nothing, just coarse reddish earth and little stones.

Again they stopped and looked at me. ‘Please,’ I said, and my voice came out hoarse. ‘Please dig a bit more.’ I turned to WDC Paget and put my hand on her sleeve. ‘Please,’ I said.

She frowned in deep thought before speaking. ‘We could spend a week up here digging. We’ve dug where you said and we’ve found nothing. It’s time to call a halt.’

‘Please,’ I said. My voice was cracked. ‘Please.’ I was begging for my life.

WDC Paget gave a deep sigh. ‘All right,’ she said. She looked at her watch. ‘Twenty minutes and that’s that.’

She made a gesture and the men moved across with an array of sarcastic grunts and expressions. I moved away and sat down. I looked into the valley. Grasses were rippling in the wind like the sea.

Suddenly, behind me, I heard a murmur. I ran across. The men had stopped digging and were on their knees by the hole, clearing earth with their hands. I crouched down beside them. The earth was suddenly darker here and I saw a hand, just its bones, protrude, as if it were beckoning us.

‘It’s her!’ I cried. ‘It’s Adele! Do you see? Oh, do you see?’ and I started scrabbling away myself, tearing at the soil, though I could hardly see myself. I wanted to hold the bones, cradle them, put my hands around the head, which was beginning to appear, a ghastly grinning skull, poke my fingers through the empty eyes.

‘Don’t touch,’ said WDC Paget, and hauled me back.

‘But I must!’ I howled. ‘It’s her. I was right. It’s her.’ It was going to be me, I wanted to say. If we hadn’t found her it would have been me.

‘It’s evidence, Mrs Tallis,’ she said sternly.

‘It’s Adele,’ I said again. ‘It’s Adele, and Adam murdered her.’

‘We have no idea who it is,’ she said. ‘Tests will have to be carried out, identifications.’

I looked down at the arm, hand, head poking out from the soil. All the tension went out of me and I felt utterly weary, utterly sad.

‘Poor thing,’ I said. ‘Poor woman. Oh dear. Oh, dear God, oh, Christ.’

WDC Paget handed me a large tissue, and I realized I was crying.

‘There’s something round the neck, Detective,’ said the thin digger.

I put my hand to my own neck.

He held up a blackened wire. ‘It’s a necklace, I think.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, he gave it to her.’

They all turned and looked at me, and this time they were looking at me attentively.

‘Here.’ I took off my necklace, silver and gleaming, and laid it by its blackened counterpart. ‘Adam gave me this, it was a token of his love for me, his undying love.’ I fingered the silver spiral. ‘This will be on hers too.’

‘She’s right,’ said WDC Paget. The other spiral was black and clotted with earth, but it was unmistakable. There was a long silence. They all looked at me and I looked at the hole where her body lay.

‘What did you say her name was?’ asked WDC Paget at last.

‘Adele Blanchard.’ I gulped. ‘She was Adam’s lover. And I think…’ I started to cry again, but this time I wasn’t crying for me, but for her and for Tara and for Françoise. ‘I think she was a very nice woman. A lovely young woman. Oh, sorry, I’m so, so sorry.’ I put my face into my muddy hands, blindfolding myself, and tears seeped through my fingers.

WPC Mayer put her arm around my shoulder. ‘We’ll take you home.’

But where was my home now?

Detective Inspector Byrne and one of his female officers insisted on accompanying me to the flat, although I told them Adam wouldn’t be there and I was only going to pick up my clothes and leave. They said that they had to check the flat anyway, although they had already tried to ring there. They had to try to find Mr Tallis.

I didn’t know where I was going to go, although I didn’t tell them that. Later there would be statements to make, forms to sign in triplicate, solicitors to see. Later, I would have to face up to my past and confront my future, try to climb out of the ghastly wreckage of my life. Not now, though. Now I was just inching along numbly, trying to put words in the right order until I was left on my own somewhere, to sleep. I was so tired I thought I could go to sleep standing up.

Detective Inspector Byrne steered me up the stairs to the flat. The door hung uselessly on its hinges, where Adam had broken it down. My knees buckled, but Byrne held my elbow and we walked in, followed by his officer.

‘I can’t,’ I said, stopping abruptly in the hall. ‘I can’t. I can’t go in here. I can’t. I can’t. I just can’t.’

‘You don’t have to,’ he said. He turned to the woman. ‘Pick up some clean clothes for her, will you?’

‘My bag,’ I said. ‘I only need my bag, really. My money’s in there. I don’t want anything else.’

‘And her bag.’

‘It’s in the living room,’ I said. I thought I was going to throw up.

‘Have you got family you can go to?’ he asked me, as we waited.

‘I don’t know,’ I said feebly.

‘Can I have a word with you, sir?’ It was the woman officer, with a grave face. Something had happened.

‘What… ?’

‘Sir.’

I knew then. It was knowledge that went through me like a ripple of pure sensation.

Before they could stop me I had run through into the living room. My beautiful Adam was there, turning ever so slowly on the rope. I saw that he had used a length of climbing rope. Yellow climbing rope. A chair lay on its side. His feet were bare. I touched the mutilated foot very gently, then I kissed it, as I had done that first time. He was quite cold. He was wearing his old jeans and a faded T-shirt. I looked up at his puffy, ruined face.

‘You would have killed me,’ I said, staring up at him.

‘Miss Loudon,’ said Byrne at my side.

‘He would have killed me,’ I said to him, without taking my gaze away from Adam, my dearest love. ‘He would have done.’

‘Miss Loudon, come away now. It’s over.’

Adam had left a note. It wasn’t a confession, really, nor a self-explanation. It was a love letter. ‘My Alice,’ he had written, ‘To see you was to adore you. You were my best and my last love. I am sorry it had to end. For ever would have been too short a time.’