The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime, Volume 8

I

“Don’t try to find me,” the note began. It was written on the back of a postcard. “Believe me, it’s best this way. Things aren’t working, David, and they haven’t been for a long time. I’m sorry, but we both know it’s true. I love you. But it’s over. Shell.”

On the kitchen wall, the clock still ticked, and outside the window, one of the slats in the fence still hung loose, and the fence remained discoloured where ivy had been peeled from it during the garden makeover two weeks previously. The marks where it had clung still resembled railway lines as seen on a map. If you could take a snapshot of that moment, nothing would have changed. But she was gone.

“And this card was on the kitchen table.”

“As I’ve already told you, yes.”

“And there’s no sign of a break-in, no disturbance, no—”

“I’ve told you that too. There’s no sign of anything. She’s just disappeared. Everything else is the same as always.”

“Well. You say disappeared. But she’s fairly clearly left of her own accord, wouldn’t you say?”

“No. I wouldn’t say that at all.”

“Be that as it may, sir, that’s what the situation suggests. Now, if there were no note I’d be suggesting you call her friends, check with colleagues, maybe even try the hospitals just in case. But where there’s a note explaining that she’s gone of her own free will, all I can advise is that you wait and see.”

“Wait and see? That’s what you’re telling me? I should wait and see?”

“I’ve no doubt your wife will be in touch shortly, sir. These things always look different in the plain light of day.”

“Is there someone else I can talk to? A detective? Somebody?”

“They’d tell you exactly what I’m telling you, sir. That ninety-nine point nine per cent of these cases are exactly what they appear to be. And if your wife decides to leave you, there’s not a lot the police can do about it.”

“But what if she’s the point one per cent? What happens then?”

“The chances of that are a billion to one, sir. Now, what I suggest you do is go home and get some rest. Maybe call into the pub. Shame not to take advantage, eh?”

He was on the other side of a counter, in no position to deliver a nudge in the ribs. But that’s what his expression suggested. Old lady drops out of the picture? Have yourself a little time out.

“You haven’t listened to a word, have you? My wife has been abducted. Is that so difficult to understand?”

He bristled. “She left a note, sir. That seems clear enough to me. Wrote and signed it.”

“But that’s exactly the problem,” I explained for the fourth time. “My wife’s name isn’t Shell. My wife — Michelle — she’d never sign herself Shell. She hated the name. She hated it.”

In the end I left the station empty-handed. If I wanted to speak to a detective, I’d have to make an appointment. And it would be best to leave this for forty-eight hours, the desk sergeant said. That seemed to be the window through which missing persons peered. Forty-eight hours. Not that my wife could be classed a missing person. She had left of her own accord, and nothing could convince him otherwise.

There’d be a phone call, he said. Possibly a letter. He managed to refrain from asserting that he’d put good money on it, but it was a close-run thing.

His unspoken suggestion that I spend the evening in the pub I ignored, just as he’d ignored the evidence of the false signature. Back home, I wandered from room to room, looking for signs of disturbance that might have escaped me earlier — anything I could carry back to the station to cast in his smug stupid face. But there was nothing. In fact, everything I found, he’d doubtless cite as proof of his view of events.

The suitcase, for example. The black suitcase was in the hall where I’d left it on getting home. I’d been away at a conference. But the other suitcase, the red one, was missing from its berth in the stair-cupboard, and in the wardrobe and the chests of drawers were unaccustomed gaps. I have never been the world’s most observant husband. Some of my wife’s dresses I have confidently claimed never to have seen before, only to be told that that’s what she’d been wearing when I proposed, or that I’d bought it for her last Christmas. But even I recognized a space when I saw one, and these gaps spoke of recent disinterment. Someone had been through Michelle’s private places, harvesting articles I couldn’t picture but knew were there no longer. There were underlinings everywhere. The bathroom cabinet contained absences, and there was no novel on the floor on Michelle’s side of the bed. Some of her jewellery was gone. The locket, though, was where it ought to be. She had far from taken everything — that would have entailed removal lorries and lawyerly negotiation — but it seemed as if a particular version of events were establishing itself.

But I didn’t believe Michelle had been responsible for any of this. There are things we simply know; non-demonstrable things; events or facts at a tangent from the available evidence. Not everything is susceptible to interrogation. This wasn’t about appearances. It was about knowledge. Experience.

Let me tell you something about Michelle: she knows words. She makes puns the way other people pass remarks upon the weather. I remember once we were talking about retirement fantasies: where we’d go, what we’d do, places we’d see. Before long I was conjuring Technicolor futures, painting the most elaborate visions in the air, and she chided me for going over the top. I still remember the excuse I offered. “Once you start daydreaming,” I told her, “it’s hard to stop.”

“That’s the thing about castles in Spain,” she said. “They’re very moreish.”

Moreish. Moorish. You see? She was always playing with words. She accorded them due deference. She recognized their weight.

And she’d no more sign herself Shell than she’d misplace an apostrophe.

When I eventually went to bed, I lay the whole night on my side of the mattress, as if rolling on to Michelle’s side would be to take up room she’d soon need; space which, if unavailable on her return, would cause her to disappear again.

II

The mattress is no more than three inches thick, laid flat on the concrete floor. There is a chemical toilet in the opposite corner. The only light spills in from a barred window nine foot or so above her head. This window is about the size of eight bricks laid side by side, and contains no glass: air must come through it, sound drift out. But here on floor level she feels no draught, and outside there is no one to hear any noise she might make.

But he will find her.

She is confident he will find her.

Eventually.

III

Forty-eight hours later, I was back in the police station.

Much of the intervening period had been spent on the telephone, speaking to an increasingly wide circle of friends, which at its outer reaches included people I’d never met. Colleagues of Michelle’s; old university accomplices; even schoolmates — the responses I culled varied from sympathy to amusement, but in each I heard that chasm that lies between horror and delight; the German feeling you get when bad things happen to other people.

At its narrower reach, the circle included family. Michelle had one parent living, her mother, currently residing in a care home. I’m not sure why I say “currently”. There’s little chance of her future involving alternative accommodation. But she’s beyond the reach of polite conversation, let alone urgency, and it was Michelle’s sister — her only sibling — that I spoke to instead.

“And she hasn’t been in touch?”

“No, David.”

“But you’d tell me if she had?”

Her pause told its own story.

“Elizabeth?”

“I would reassure you that nothing bad had happened to her,” she said. “As I’m sure it hasn’t.”

“Can I speak to her?”

“She’s not here, David.”

“No, it certainly sounds like it. Just put her on, Elizabeth.”

She hung up at that point. I called back. Her husband answered. We exchanged words.

Shortly after that, I began drinking in earnest.

Thursday evening was the forty-eight-hour mark. I was not at my best. I was, though, back at the police station, talking to a detective.

“So your wife hasn’t been in touch, Mr Wallace?”

I bit back various answers. No sarcasm; no fury. Just answer the question. Answer the question.

“Not a word. Not since this.”

At some point I had found a polythene envelope in a desk drawer; one of those plastic flippancies for keeping documents pristine. Michelle’s card tucked inside, it lay on the table between us. Face down, which is to say, message-side up.

“And there’s been no word from anyone else?”

“I’ve called everyone I can think of,” I said.

This wasn’t quite true.

“You have my sympathy, Mr Wallace. I know how difficult this must be.”

She — the detective — was young, blonde, jacketless, with a crisp white shirt, and hair bunched into the shortest of tails. She wore no make-up. I have no idea whether this is a service regulation. And I couldn’t remember her name, though she’d introduced herself at the start of our conversation. Interview, I should probably call it. I’m good with names, but this woman’s had swum out of my head as soon as it was spoken. Then again, I had distractions. My wife was missing.

“Can we talk about background details?”

“Whatever will help.”

“What about your finances? Do you and your wife keep a joint account?”

“We have a joint savings account, yes.”

“And has that been touched at all?”

“We keep our current accounts separate.” It was important to spell out the details. One might prove crucial. “I pay a standing order into her account on the fifteenth, and she deals with the bills from that. Most of them. The mortgage and council tax are mine. She pays the phone and the gas and electricity.” I came to a halt. For some reason, I couldn’t remember which of us paid the water rates.

“And your savings account, Mr Wallace,” she reminded me, quite gently. “Has that been touched at all?”

I said, “Well, yes. Yes, it probably has.”

“Emptied?” she asked.

“No,” I told her. “Quite the opposite. Well, not the opposite. That would be doubling it, wouldn’t it? Or something.” Rambling, I knew. I took a breath. “Half of our savings have been withdrawn,” I told her.

“Half?”

“Precisely half,” I said. “To the penny.”

She made a note on the pad in front of her.

“But don’t you see?” I told her. “If they’d taken it all, that would have alerted me, alerted you, to the fact that there’s funny business going on.”

“They?” she asked.

“Whoever’s taken her,” I said. “She hasn’t just left. She can’t have.”

“People do leave, Mr Wallace. I’m sorry, but they do. What is it your wife does? She works, is that right?”

“She’s a librarian.”

“Whereabouts? Here in town?”

“Just down the road, yes.”

“And you’ve spoken to her colleagues? Have they... shed any light on your wife’s departure?”

“Disappearance.”

She nodded: not agreeing. But allowing my alternative term the way you might allow a child to have his way on an unimportant matter, on which he was nevertheless mistaken.

I said: “She handed in her notice.”

“I see.”

You had to hand it to her. There was no inflection on this.

“And when did she do that, do you know?”

“A few days ago,” I said. Suddenly I felt very tired. “On Monday.”

“While you were away.”

“That’s right.”

“Didn’t she have notice to serve? Under the terms of her contract?”

“Yes. But she told them that she had personal reasons for needing to leave right away. But...” I could hear my voice trailing away. There was another but; there’d always be a but, but I couldn’t for the life of me work out what this particular one might be.

“Mr Wallace.”

I nodded, tiredly.

“I’m not sure we can take this matter further.” She corrected herself. “We the police, I mean. It doesn’t seem like a matter for us. I’m very sorry.”

“What about the handwriting?” I asked.

She looked down at exhibit one, which just now seemed all that remained of my wife.

“It’s a postcard,” I explained. I was half sure I’d told her this already, but so many facts were drifting loose from their moorings that it was important to nail some down. “It didn’t come through the post. It’s just a card we both liked. It’s been on our fridge a long time. Years, even. Stuck there with a magnet.”

In a few moments more, I might have begun to describe the magnet it was stuck with.

“And you recognize it?”

“The card?”

“The handwriting, Mr Wallace.”

“Well, it looks like hers. But then it would, wouldn’t it? If someone was trying to make it look like Michelle’s?”

“I’m not sure that impersonating handwriting is as easy as all that. If it looks like your wife’s, well...” She glanced down at whatever note she’d been making, and didn’t finish.

“But the name! I keep telling you, Michelle wouldn’t call herself Shell. It’s—” I had to stop at this point. It’s the last thing she would do was what I didn’t say.

“Mr Wallace. Sometimes, when people want a new life for themselves, they find a new name to go with it. Do you see? By calling herself Shell, she’s making a break with the past.”

“That’s an interesting point — I’ve forgotten your name. Whatever. It’s an interesting point. But not as important as handwriting analysis. Maybe, once that’s been done, we can discuss your psychological insight.”

She sighed. “Handwriting analysis is an expensive business, sir. We’re not in the habit of diverting police resources to non-criminal matters.”

“But this is a criminal matter. That’s precisely what I’m trying to get across. My wife has been abducted.”

I might have saved my breath.

“When your wife’s worked out her new place in the world, I’m sure she’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, do you have a friend you can stay with? Someone to talk things over with?”

“You won’t have the card analysed,” I informed her. We both already knew this. That’s why I didn’t make it a question.

“There’s nothing to stop you having it done privately,” she said.

“And if I’m right? When I’m right? Will you listen to me then?”

“If you can provide credible evidence that the note’s a forgery, then we’d certainly want to hear about it,” she said.

It was as if we’d sat next to each other at a dinner party, and I’d described a trip I was planning.

Well, if you have a good time, I’d certainly like to hear about it.

The kind of thing you say when you’re certain you’ll never meet again.

IV

I’ve read books where they say things like I took an indefinite leave of absence. Do you have a job like that? Does anyone you know have a job like that? By Friday, my phone was ringing off the hook. Was I sick? Had I forgotten the appropriate channels for alerting HR to health issues? I spat, fumed and mentally consigned HR to hell, but once I’d raged my hour I bit the bullet and saw my GP, who listened sympathetically while my story squirmed out, then signed me off work for the month. I returned home and delivered the news to the fools in HR. Then I fished out Yellow Pages and looked for handwriting experts.

Here’s another. Have you ever tried looking for a handwriting expert in Yellow Pages?

Nothing under handwriting. Calligraphy offers sign-writers and commercial artists. And—

And that’s all I came up with.

I sat next to the phone for a while, useless directory in my hands. What other guise might a handwriting expert adopt? I couldn’t imagine. I failed to deduce.

In the end, I looked up Detective Agencies instead.

You’re probably thinking that was the thing to do. That once the professional arrived on the scene I’d fade into the background where I belonged, while some hard-bitten but soft-centred ex-cop with an alcohol problem and an interestingly named cat reravelled my life for £250 a day plus expenses. But it was just another trip to Dolphin Junction. I gave my story twice, once over the phone and once in person to an acne-scratched twentysomething who couldn’t get his digital recorder to work and forgot — thank God — to take the postcard when he left. I didn’t hear from him again. He probably lost my address. And if he couldn’t find me, missing persons were definitely out of his league.

Anyway. I went back to the police.

V

This time, it was a man. A thin, dark-featured man whose tie featured small dancing elephants, a detail which stuck with me a long time afterwards. He was a detective sergeant, so at least I was being shuffled upwards, rather than down. His name was Martin Dampner, and I wasn’t a stranger to him.

“We’ve met before, Mr Wallace. You probably don’t remember.”

“I do,” I told him. “I think I do. When Jane was killed.”

It would have had to be then. When else had I been in a police station?

“That’s right. I sat in on the interview. Don’t think I said anything. I was a DC then. A Detective Constable.”

“It was a long time ago,” I said.

He digested that, perhaps examining it for hidden barbs. But I hadn’t meant anything special. It had been twelve years ago. If that was a long time to rise from DC to DS, that was his problem.

He said, “It was a bad business.”

“So is this.”

“Of course,” he said.

We were in an office which might have been his or just one he was using for our conversation. I’ve no idea whether Detective Sergeants get their own office. My impression was that life was open-plan at that rank.

“How are you?” he now asked.

This stumped me.

“What do you mean?”

He settled into the chair his side of the desk. “How are you feeling? Are you eating properly? Drinking too much? Getting to work okay?”

I said, “My GP signed me off.”

“Sensible. Good move.”

“Can we talk about my missing wife?”

“We can. We can.” He put his hands behind his neck, and stared at me for what felt a long while. I was starting to quite seriously wonder if he were mad. Then he said, “I’ve looked at the notes DC Peterson made. She seems convinced your wife left of her own accord.”

“Well it’s nice to know she’s formed an opinion. That didn’t take much effort on her part, did it?”

“You’re underestimating my colleague. She followed some matters up after speaking to you. Did you know that?”

I didn’t. And had more important subjects to raise: “Did she explain about the name? The name the note was signed with?”

“Shell, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“For Michelle.”

“My wife never called herself that. Never would. She hated it.”

“I got that much. But if you don’t mind my saying so, Mr Wallace, that’s a pretty flimsy base on which to assume — what is it you’re assuming? Abduction?”

“Abduction. Kidnapping. Whatever you call it when someone is taken against their will and the police won’t do a bloody thing about it!”

I was shaking suddenly. How did that happen? For days I’d been calm and reasonably controlled, and now this supercilious cop was undoing all that work. Did he have any idea what I was going through? These days of not knowing; these endless nights of staring at the ceiling? And then, just when it felt the dark would never end, light pulling its second-storey job; bringing definition to the furniture, and returning all the spooky shapes to their everyday functional presences. With this came not fresh hope. Just an awareness that things weren’t over yet.

Days of this. More than a week now. How much longer?

“Let’s calm down,” he suggested.

“Why,” I asked, pulling myself together, “did you agree to see me? If you’ve made up your mind nothing’s wrong?”

“We serve the public,” he said.

I didn’t have an answer to that.

“My colleague, DC Peterson. She did some follow-up after you spoke.” Martin Dampner pushed his chair back, to allow himself room to uncross his legs, then cross them the other way. “She went to the library where Mrs Wallace worked. Spoke to the librarian.”

“And?”

Though I knew what was coming.

“When your wife handed her resignation in, she was perfectly in control. She handed her letter over, discussed its ramifications. Refused to be swayed. There was no coercion. Nobody waiting outside. No whispered messages for help.”

“And I’m sure you’ve drawn all the conclusions you need from that.”

He steamrollered on. “She also went, DC Peterson, to your building society. Where she didn’t just ask questions. She saw the tape.”

I closed my eyes.

“They record everything on CCTV. You probably know that already. DC Peterson watched footage of Mrs Wallace withdrawing money, having a brief chat with the cashier — who has no memory of their conversation, other than that it probably involved the weather or holidays — and leaving. On her own. Uncoerced.”

It was like pursuing an argument with a filing cabinet. I stood.

“Mr Wallace, I am sorry. But you need to hear this.”

“Which is why you agreed to see me. Right?”

“Also, I was wondering if you’d had a handwriting test done.”

I stared.

“Have you?”

“No. No, I haven’t.”

“And does that mean you’re now convinced it is her writing? Or so convinced it isn’t that mere proof isn’t likely to sway you?”

“It means, Sergeant, that I haven’t yet found anywhere that’ll do the job for me.” I didn’t want to tell him about the spotty private eye. I already knew that was a road heading nowhere. “And I don’t suppose you’re about to tell me you’ve had a change of heart? And will do it yourselves?”

He was shaking his head before I’d finished. “Mr Wallace. Believe me, I’m sorry for what you’re going through. I’ve been there myself, and there aren’t many I’d wish it on. But the facts as we understand them leave little room for doubt. Your wife quit her job, withdrew half your savings, and left a note saying she was leaving. All of which suggests that wherever Mrs Wallace is, she’s there of her own accord.”

“My wife’s name is not Shell,” I said.

He handed me a piece of paper with a phone number on it.“They’re pretty good. They won’t rip you off. Take another sample of Mrs Wallace’s writing with you. Well, you’d probably worked that out for yourself.”

I should have thanked him, I suppose. But what I really felt like was a specimen; as if his whole purpose in seeing me had been to study what my life looked like. So I just shovelled the paper into a pocket, and stood.

“You’ve aged well,” he said. “If you don’t mind my saying.”

“I’m surprised you’ve not made Inspector yet,” was the best I could manage in reply.

Back home, I sat at the kitchen table and rang the number Martin Dampner had given me. The woman who answered explained what I could expect from her firm’s services: a definitive statement as to whether the handwriting matched a sample I knew was the subject’s. There was no chance of error. She might have been talking of DNA. She might have been talking of a lot of things, actually, because I stopped listening for a bit. When I tuned back in, she was telling me that they could also produce a psychometric evaluation of the subject. I wasn’t thinking of offering the subject a job, I almost said, but didn’t. If they couldn’t work that out from the postcard, they weren’t much use to anyone.

There was a notepad on the window ledge, as ever. I scribbled down the address she gave me. And then, before anything could prevent my doing so, I transferred my scribble to an envelope, found a stamp, and went out and popped my wife’s last words in the post.

VI

She does not have much spatial awareness — few women do, many men say — but sees no reason to doubt the information she has been given: that this room measures 24 foot by 18, with a ceiling some 20 foot high. It is a cellar, or part of a cellar. The handkerchief of light way over her head is the only part of the room set above ground level. Built into a hillside, see? he’d told her. Yes. She saw.

Apart from herself and the mattress and a thick rough blanket, and the chemical toilet in the corner, this room holds three articles: a plastic beaker three inches deep; a plastic fork five inches long; and a stainless steel tin-opener.

And then there is the second room, and all that it contains.

VII

Had I been asked, during the days following, what I imagined had happened to Michelle, I would have been unable to give an answer. It wasn’t that there was any great dearth of fates to choose from. Open any newspaper. Turn to any channel. But it was as if my imagination — so reliably lurid in other matters — had discreetly changed the locks on this particular chamber, deeming it better, or safer, if I not only did not know what had occurred, but was barred from inventing a version of my own. I can see Michelle in our kitchen last week — of course I can. Just as I can see no trace of her here today, or in any other of her domestic haunts. But what happened to merge the former state into the latter remains white noise. Who stood by while she wrote that note and packed a case? What thrill of inspiration moved her to sign herself Shell? And in quitting her job, in withdrawing half our savings, what threat kept her obedient; made her perform these tasks unassisted?

And underneath all this a treacherous riptide that tugged with subtly increasing force. What if all this was as it seemed? What if she’d left of her own free will?

Things aren’t working, David, and they haven’t been for a long time. I’m sorry, but we both know it’s true.

That’s what her note had said. But that’s true of any marriage. All have their highs and lows, and some years fray just as others swell.

These past few years, you could describe as frayed. We’d had fraught times before — the seven-year itch, of course. A phrase doesn’t get to be cliché just by being a classic movie title. If ever the wheels were to come off, that would have been the time. But we survived, and it bonded us more securely. I truly believe that. And if these past few years had been less than joyful, that was just another dip in a long journey — we’ve been married nineteen years, for goodness’ sake. You could look on this period as one of adjustment; a changing of gear as the view ahead narrows to one of quieter, calmer waters; of a long road dipping into a valley, with fewer turnings available on either side.

But maybe Michelle had other views. Maybe she thought this her last chance to get out.

Once, years ago, a train we were on came to a halt somewhere between Slough and Reading, for one of those unexplained reasons that are the motivating force behind the English railway network. Nearby was a scatter of gravel, a telephone pole, a wire fence and a battleship-grey junction box. Beyond this, a desultory field offered itself for inspection. On the near side of the fence, a wooden sign declared this to be Dolphin Junction.

“Dolphin Junction,” Michelle said. “If you heard the name, you’d summon up a picture easily enough, wouldn’t you? But it wouldn’t look like this.”

Afterwards, it became part of our private language. A trip to Dolphin Junction meant something had turned out disappointing, or less than expected. It meant things had not been as advertised. That anytime soon would be a good moment to turn back, or peel away.

And maybe that was it, when all was said and done. Maybe Michelle, during one of these dips in our journey, caught a glimpse of uninspiring fields ahead, and realized we were headed for Dolphin Junction. Would it have taken more than that? I didn’t know any more. I didn’t know what had happened. All I knew, deep in the gut, was that all wasn’t, in fact, said and done.

Because she had signed her name Shell. Michelle had done that? She’d have been as likely to roll herself in feathers and go dancing down the street.

She just wouldn’t.

A few days later the card came back. Until I heard the thump on the doormat I hadn’t been aware of how keenly I’d been awaiting it, but in that instant everything else vanished like yesterday’s weather. And then, as I went to collect it, a second thing happened. The doorbell rang.

She’s back, was my first thought. Swiftly followed by my second, which was — what, she’s lost her keys?

Padded envelope in hand, I opened the door.

Standing there was Dennis Farlowe.

There are languages, I know, that thrive on compound construction; that from the building blocks of everyday vocabulary cobble together one-time-only adjectives, or bespoke nouns for special circumstances. Legolanguages, Michelle would say. Perhaps one of them includes a word that captures my relationship with Dennis Farlowe: a former close friend who long ago accused me of the rape and murder of his wife; who could manage only the most tortured of apologies on being found wrong; who subsequently moved abroad for a decade, remarried, divorced; and who ultimately returned here a year or so ago, upon which we achieved a tenuous rapprochement, like that of a long-separated couple who remember the good times, without being desperate to relive them.

“David,” he said.

“Dennis.”

“I’m sorry about—” He grimaced and made a hand gesture. Male semaphore. For those moments when speech proves embarrassing.

We went into the kitchen. It’s odd how swiftly an absence can make itself felt in a room. Even had Dennis not already heard the news, it wouldn’t have cost him more than a moment’s intuition to discern a problem.

“Good of you to come,” I said.

Which it probably was, I thought — or he probably thought it was. Truth was, he was the last man I wanted to see. Apart from anything else, the envelope was burning my fingers.

But he had his own agenda. “You should have called.”

“Yes. Well. I would have done.” Leaving open the circumstances this action would have required, I put the kettle on instead. “Coffee?”

“Tea, if you’ve got it.”

“I think we run to tea.”

That pronoun slipped out.

It was history, obviously, that had prevented me from phoning Dennis Farlowe; had kept him the missing degree in the circle I’d rung round. Some of this history was the old kind, and some of it newer. I poured him a cup of tea, wondering as I did so how many gallons of the stuff — and of coffee, beer, wine, spirits; even water — we’d drunk in each other’s company. Not an immeasurable amount, I suppose. Few things, in truth, are. But decanted into plastic containers, it might have looked like a lifetime’s supply.

“Milk?” he asked.

I pointed at the fridge.

He fixed his tea to his liking, and sat.

Twelve years ago, Jane Farlowe was found raped and murdered in a small untidy wood on the far side of the allotments bordering our local park. The year before, Jane, Dennis, Michelle and I had holidayed together in Corfu. There are photographs: the four of us around a café table or on a clifftop bench. It doesn’t matter where you are, there’s always someone will work your camera for you. Jane and Michelle wear dark glasses in the photos. Dennis and I don’t. I’ve no idea why.

After Jane’s death, I was interviewed by the police, of course. Along with around eighty-four other people, in that first wave. I’ve no idea whether this is a lot, in the context. Jane had, I’d guess, the usual number of friends, and she certainly had the usual number of strangers. I would have been interviewed even if Dennis hadn’t made his feelings known.

Long time ago. Now, he said: “Has she been in touch?”

“No,” I said.

“It’s just a matter of time, David.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Everyone wishes you well, David. Nobody’s... gloating.”

“Why on earth would anyone do that?”

“No reason. Stupid word. I just meant — you know how it is. There’s always a thrill when bad things happen to people you like. But there’s none of that going on.”

I was about as convinced of this as I was that Dennis Farlowe was the community’s spokesperson.

But I was no doubt doing him a disservice. We had a complicated past. We’ve probably grown used to shielding our motives from each other. And more than once in the past year, I’ve come home to find him seated where he is now; Michelle where I am. And I’ve had the impression, on those occasions, that there was nothing unusual about them. That there’d been other times when I didn’t come home to find them there, but still: that’s where they’d been. In my absence.

That’s what I meant by newer history.

He said, “David. Do you mind if I make an observation?”

“Have you ever noticed,” I said, “that when people say that, it would take a crowbar and a gag to prevent them?”

“You’re a mess.”

“Thank you. Fashion advice. It’s what I need right now.”

“I’m talking hygiene. You want to grow a beard, it’s your funeral. But you should change your clothes, and you should — you really should — take a shower.”

“Right.”

“Or possibly two.”

“Am I offending you?” I asked him. “Should I leave?”

“I’m trying to help. That’s all.”

“Did you know this was going to happen?”

“Michelle leaving?”

“Well yes, I–Christ, what did you think I meant? That we’d have tea this morning?”

He said, “I didn’t know, no.”

“Would you have told me if you did?”

“No,” he said. “Probably not.”

“Great. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m her friend too, David.”

“Don’t think I’m not aware of that.”

He let that hang unanswered.

We drank tea. There were questions I wanted to ask him, but answers I didn’t want to hear.

At length he said, “Did she leave a note?”

“Did the grapevine not supply that detail?”

“David—”

“Yes. Yes, she left a note.”

Which was in a padded envelope, on the counter next to the kettle.

And I couldn’t wait a moment longer. It didn’t matter that Dennis was here; nor that I already knew in my bones what the experts would have decreed. I stood, collected the envelope, and tore its mouth open. Dennis watched without apparent surprise as I poured on to the table the postcard, still in its transparent wrapper; the letter I’d supplied as a sample of Michelle’s hand, and another letter, this one typed, formal, beyond contradiction.

Confirm that this is... no room for doubt... invoice under separate cover.

I crumpled it, and dropped it on the floor.

“Bad news?” Dennis asked after a while.

“No more than expected.”

He waited, but I was in no mood to enlighten him. I could see him looking at the postcard — which had fallen picture-side up — but he made no move for it. I wondered what I’d have done if he had. What I’d have said if he asked to read it.

At length, he told me: “I’m going away for a while.”

I nodded, as if it mattered.

“I’ve a new mobile. I’ll leave you the number.” He reached for the writing tablet on the sill, and scrawled something on it. “If she calls, if you hear anything — you’ll let me know, David?”

He tore the uppermost leaf from the pad, and pushed it towards me.

“David?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”

He let himself out. I remained where I was. Something had shifted, and I knew precisely what. It was like the turning of the tide. With an almanac and a watch, I’ve always assumed, you can time the event to the second. But you can’t see it happen. You can only wait until it becomes beyond dispute; until that whole vast sprawl of water, covering most of the globe, has flexed its will, and you know that what you’ve been looking at has indisputably changed direction.

With a notepad available on the windowsill, Michelle had chosen to unclip a postcard from the door of the fridge, and leave her message on its yellowing back.

Flipping it over, I looked at its long-familiar picture for what felt like the first time.

VIII

The doorway into the second room is precisely that: a doorway. There is no door. Nor even the hint of a door, in fact; no hinges on the jamb; no screwholes where hinges might have swung. It’s just an oblong space in the wall. The ghost of stone. She steps through it.

This is a smaller room. As wide, but half as long as the other. In a previous life of this building — before it succumbed to the fate all buildings secretly ache for, and became a ruin, scribbled on by weeds and tangled brambles — this would have been a secondary storeroom; only accessible via its larger twin, which itself can only be entered by use of a ladder dropped through the trap in its roof. Hard to say what might have been stored here. Wine? Grain? Maybe cheese and butter. There’s no knowing. The room’s history has been wiped clean.

And in its place, new boundaries:

To her left, a wall of tin. To her right, a screen of plastic.

IX

The Yard of Ale was one of those theme pubs whose theme is itself: a 400-year-old wooden-beamed structure on a crossroads outside Church Stretton, it was plaqued and horse-brassed within an inch of Disneyland. There wasn’t a corner that didn’t boast an elderly piece of blacksmith’s equipment with the sharp bits removed, or something somebody found in a derelict dairy, and thought would look nice scrubbed up and put next to a window. The whole place reeked of an ersatz authenticity; of a past replicated only in its most appealing particulars, and these then polished until you could see the present’s reflection in it, looking much the same as it always did, but wearing a Jane Austen bonnet.

Michelle and I had stayed there four years ago. It was spring, and we’d wanted a break involving long fresh days on high empty ground, and slow quiet evenings eating twice as much as necessary. An internet search produced the Yard of Ale, and for all my dismissive comments, it fitted the bill. Post-breakfast, we hiked for miles on the Long Mynd; counted off the Stiperstones and scaled the Devil’s Chair. In hidden valleys we found the remnants of abandoned mines, and sheep turned up everywhere, constantly surprised. And in the evenings we ate three-course meals, and drank supermarket wine at restaurant prices. The bed was the right degree of firm, and the shower’s water-pressure splendid. Everyone was polite. As we checked out Michelle picked up one of the hotel’s self-promoting postcards, and when we got home she clipped it to the fridge door, where it had remained ever since.

I set off about thirty minutes after Dennis had left.

The rain began before I’d been on the road an hour. It had been raining for days in the south-west; there’d been weather warnings on the news, and a number of rivers had broken banks. I had not paid attention: weather was a background babble. But when I was stopped by a policeman on a minor road on the Shropshire border, and advised to take a detour which would cost a couple of hours — and offered no guarantee of a passable road at the end of it — it became clear that my plan, if you could call it that, wanted rethinking.

“You’re sure I can’t get through this way?”

“If your vehicle’s maybe amphibious. I wouldn’t try it myself. Sir.”

Sir was an afterthought. He’d drawn back as I’d wound down the window to answer him, as if rain were preferable to the fug of unwashed body in my car.

I said, “I need somewhere to stay.”

He gave me directions to a couple of places, a few miles down the road.

The first, a B&B, had a room. There’d been cancellations, the man who checked me in said. Rain was sheeting down, and the phone had been ringing all morning. He’d gone from fully booked to empty without lifting a finger. But there’d be more in my situation; folk who couldn’t get where they were headed, and needed a bed for the night. It was still early, but he seemed confident there’d be little travelling on the local roads today.

“I was headed for Church Stretton,” I said.

“You’ll maybe have better luck tomorrow.”

He seemed less worried than the policeman by my unwashed state. On the other hand, the smell of dog possibly masked my odour. The room was clean though. I could look down from its window on to a rain-washed street, and on light puddling the pavements outside the off-licence opposite. When I turned on the TV, I found footage of people sitting on rooftops while water swirled round their houses. I switched it off again. I had my own troubles.

I lay on the bed, fully clothed. If it weren’t for the rain, where would I be now? Arriving at the Yard of Ale, armed with enquiries. I had a photograph — that was about it, as far as packing had gone — and I’d be waving it at somebody. It wasn’t the best picture of Michelle ever taken (she’d be the first to point out that it made her nose look big) but it was accurate. In some lights, her nose does look big. If Michelle had been there, the photo would be recognized. Unless she’d gone out of her way to change her appearance — but what sense would that make? She’d left me a clue. If she hadn’t wanted me to follow, why would she have done that?

Always supposing it really was a clue.

Perhaps the rain was a blessing. It held off the moment of truth; the last ounce of meaning I could dredge from the note she’d left. The note there was no room for doubt that she’d written.

But had signed Shell. An abbreviation she’d detested. And what was that if not a coded message? It was a cry for help.

And no one was listening but me.

At length, I turned the TV on again. I got lucky with a showing of Bringing Up Baby, and when that was finished I swam across the road to the shiny off-licence, and collected a bottle of Scotch. Back indoors, before broaching it, I belatedly took Dennis Farlowe’s advice and stood under the shower for twenty minutes, using up both small bottles of complimentary gel. There were no razors. But the mirror suggested I’d crossed the line between being unshaven and having a beard.

And then I lay back on the bed, and drank the scotch.

Alcohol never helps. Well, alcohol always helps, but when there are things you need to keep at bay, alcohol never helps. Dennis Farlowe’s appearance had disturbed me. Dennis’s appearances inevitably did, though on most occasions I could mask the visible symptoms: could smile, give a cheery hello; ask him how things were going while I manoeuvred my way into my own kitchen; stood behind my own wife; put my hand on her shoulder, still smiling. All that newer history I mentioned. The history in which Michelle and Dennis had re-established the relationship we’d once all enjoyed, before the older history had smashed it all to pieces.

That history didn’t end with Dennis’s wife’s murder. Ten days after Jane Farlowe’s body was found a second victim came to light, in a town some distance from ours. I was at a conference at the time — that phase of business life was already in full swing — so didn’t see the local press reports until they were old news. Wounds on the body indicated that the same man was responsible for both murders. You could sense our local tabloid’s frustration at the vagueness of this detail, as if it had hot gossip up its sleeve it was bound not to share. Gossip relating to the nature of those wounds.

“Have you spoken to Dennis?” were my first words to Michelle on reading this.

“I tried calling him.”

“But he wouldn’t talk?”

“He wouldn’t answer.”

He would have been in shock, of course. Just a week and a half since his own wife’s body had been found: did this make it worse for him? To understand that his wife’s end was sealed by random encounter, not precise obsession? Because there was surely — can I say this? — something of a compliment buried in the murder of one’s wife, if it was intended. If it didn’t turn out that the murder was just one of those things; a passing accident that might have happened to anyone’s wife, had they been in the wrong place at the right time.

The random nature of the murders was confirmed with the discovery of a third body: a little later, a little further away.

I poured more scotch. Switched the TV on. Switched it off. It was suppertime, but I didn’t want to eat. Nothing was happening outside. The rain had eased off, and I could see the puddles dancing under the streetlights’ glare.

In the gap between the discovery of the first two bodies — Jane and the second woman, whose name I’ve forgotten — Dennis Farlowe had suggested that I was the man responsible. That I was a rapist and murderer. We had been friends for years, but in his grief he found it possible to say this: You wanted her. You always wanted her. The police would have interviewed me anyway — as they did all Jane’s male friends — but Dennis’s words no doubt interested them. Though they subsequently had to spread their net wider, with the second death; and wider still with the third... A local murder became a two-county hunt, but the man responsible was never caught, though he stopped after the third death. Not long after that, Dennis moved abroad.

He returned to England years later, a quieter, more intense man. Our friendship could never be what it was, but Michelle had done all she could. Jane was gone, she told me (I didn’t need reminding). Dennis’s life had been shattered; his attempt to rebuild it with a second marriage had failed too. With Michelle, he seemed to rediscover something of his old self, but between the two of us were barriers which could never fall, for all our apparent resolve to leave the past behind.

And it occurred to me that Dennis’s old accusation — You always wanted her — could as justly be levelled at him. Wasn’t his relationship with Michelle a little too close? How often had he dropped round in my absence; little visits I never heard about? Some evenings I’d find small evidences littered about: too many coffee cups draining on the board; a dab of aftershave in the air. But it’s easy to paint pictures like that when the canvas has been destroyed. And doesn’t this sort of tension often arise, when couples are close friends?

Not that Dennis was part of a pair any more, of course. And who could tell what effect a violent uncoupling like his might have had?

These thoughts chased me into sleep.

Where dreams were whisky-coloured, and stale as prison air.

X

She puts her hand to the wall of plastic. It gives, slightly; she has touched it at a gap between two of the objects it shields. An image startles her, of an alien egg-sac pulsing beneath her palm, about to spawn. But this is not an egg-sac; nor a wall; it is, rather, dozens upon dozens of two-litre bottles of mineral water, plastic-wrapped in batches of six, the wrapper stretched tight across the gaps between the bottles. That’s what her palm lit on: a plastic-shrouded gap between bottles.

And opposite, the wall of tin; hundreds upon hundreds of cans of food. If they reach seven foot deep — which they might, if this room’s as wide as the one adjoining — and reach ten foot in height, which they seem to, then...

But the number outreaches her ability to compute. Thousands, for sure. Possibly tens of thousands.

Put another way, a lifetime’s supply.

XI

Next morning the rain had ceased, and though roads remained down all over Shropshire — and in neighbouring counties, marooned villagers waved at helicopters from the roofs of submerged cottages — it was possible to be on the move. But there were no shortcuts. Nor even reliable long cuts: twice I had to turn back at dips in B-roads, where the off-run from waterlogged fields had conjured lagoons. In one sat an abandoned van, rust-red water as high as its door handle. I reversed to the nearest junction, and consulted my map. I should have brought a thick fat marker pen. Instead of marking possible routes, I could have deleted impossible ones.

But if progress was slow, it was at least progress. At last I reached the car park of the Yard of Ale, not much more than some poorly tarmacked waste ground opposite the pub. Three other cars were there. I’m not good on cars. I’ve been known to walk past my own while trying to remember where it was. But for some reason, one of those vehicles struck a chord, and instead of heading over the road, I sat for a while, trying to work out why.

There was nobody around. A stiff breeze ruffled the nearby hedge. The more I looked at the car, the more it troubled me. It was the configuration of the windscreen, I decided. But how? One windscreen was much the same as another... At last I got out and approached the offending vehicle, and halfway there, the penny dropped. A parking permit on the driver’s side was almost identical to one on my own windscreen. Same town, different area. This was Dennis Farlowe’s car.

The breeze continued to ruffle the hedge. After another moment or two, I got back into my car and drove away.

XII

It was dark when I returned. The intervening hours, I’d spent in Church Stretton; partly sitting in a coffee bar, trying to make sense of events; the rest in one of the town’s several camping shops. I’d intended to buy binoculars, but ended up with a small fortune’s worth of equipment: the ’nocs, but also a torch, a waterproof jacket, a baseball cap, a new rucksack — with no real idea of what I was doing, I had a clear sense of needing to be prepared. I bought a knife, too. The instructions (knives come with instructions: can you believe it?) indicated the efficient angle for sawing through rope.

I believe in coincidence — if they didn’t happen, we wouldn’t need a word for them. But there’s a limit to everything, and coincidence’s limit fell far short of Dennis Farlowe’s presence. He’d looked at Michelle’s postcard, hadn’t he? At the picture side, with the pub’s name on. How long would it take to Google it?

Another possibility was that he already knew where it was; had already intended to come here. Which opened up various avenues, all reaching into the dark.

Whatever the truth of it, if not for the weather, I’d have been here first.

This time I drove straight past the pub and parked in a layby half a mile down the road, then walked back to the Yard, weaving a path with my new finger-sized torch. There was little traffic. When I reached the car park, my watch read 6.15. Dennis’s car was still there.

For four-and-a-half hours I waited in the cold. Lurked is probably the word. Behind its thick velvety curtains the Yard was lit like a spacecraft, yellow spears of light piercing the darkness at odd angles. I could picture Dennis in the restaurant, enjoying a bowl of thick soup, or pork medallions with caramelized vegetables. Memories of my own last meal were too distant to summon. When I could stand it no longer — and was certain he was holed up for the night — I trudged back to my car and drove to a petrol station, where I ate a microwaved pasty. Then I returned to my layby, crawled into the back seat, and tried to get some sleep.

But first I rang the Yard of Ale, and asked to speak to Mrs Farlowe. There was a puzzled moment while it was established that there was a Mr Farlowe in residence, but no Mrs. It must have been the inverse of a familiar sort of conversation, if you worked at a hotel desk. I hung up.

Sleep was a long time coming.

It was light by seven, but looked set to be a grey day. I drove back to the pub and a little beyond, hoping to find a vantage point from which I could keep an eye on Dennis’s car. But nowhere answered, the best I could manage being another layby. If Dennis passed, I’d see him. But if he headed another way, he’d be history before I knew it.

I sat. I watched. I’d have listened to the radio, but didn’t want to drain the battery. All I had to occupy me was the road, and the cars that used it. My biggest worry was the possibility that he’d drive past without my recognizing the car, and my next biggest that he’d see me first. There was a third, a godless mixture of the two, in which Dennis saw me without my seeing him: this further confusing a situation which already threatened to leave me at a waterlogged junction, rust-red water lapping at my throat. Is it any wonder I fell asleep? Or at least into that half-waking state where nightmares march in without bothering to knock, and set up their stalls in your hallway. There were more prison visions. Stone walls and tiny barred windows. I came back with a start, the taste of corned beef in my mouth, and a car heading past, Dennis at its wheel. In the same alarmed movement that had brought me out of sleep I turned the ignition, and drove after him.

I’d never tailed anyone before. When you get down to it, hardly anyone’s ever tailed anyone before, and few of us have been tailed. It sounds more difficult than it is. If you’re not expecting it, you’re not likely to notice. I followed Dennis from as far behind as I could manage without losing track, once or twice allowing another car to come between us. This led to anxious minutes — he might turn off; I could end up following a stranger — but at the same time had a relieving effect, as if the intermission wiped the slate clean, leaving my own car fresh and new in his rearview mirror when I took up position again.

But it turned out I couldn’t follow and pay attention to roadsigns at the same time. I’ve no idea where we were when he pulled in at one of those gravelled parking spots below the Long Mynd, leaving me to drive past then stop on the verge a hundred yards on. I grabbed my equipment — the new rucksack holding the waterproof, the torch, the binoculars, the knife — and hurried back.

It was midweek, and there was little evidence of other hikers. Besides Dennis’s, two other cars sat sulking; the rest was empty space, evenly distributed round a large puddle. The surrounding hills looked heavy with rain, and the clouds promised more.

On the far side was a footpath, which would wind up on to the Mynd. That was clearly where he’d gone.

Stopping by the puddle, I pulled the black waterproof from the rucksack; tugged the cap over my eyes. From the puddle’s wavery surface, a bearded stranger peered back. Far behind him, grey skies rolled over themselves.

The footpath dipped through a patch of woodland before setting its sights on the skyline. Just rounding a bend way ahead was Dennis. He wore a waterproof too: a bright red thumbprint on the hillside. If he’d wanted me to be following, he couldn’t have made it easier.

XIII

Twenty minutes later, I’d revised that. He could have made it easier. He could have slowed down a little.

To any other watcher, it might have seemed odd. Here was a man on a hike, on a midweek morning — what was his hurry? Dennis moved like a man trying to set a record. But I wasn’t any other watcher, and his speed only confirmed what I already knew: that this was no hike. Dennis wasn’t interested in exercise or views. He had a specific destination in mind. He’d always known where he was going.

I couldn’t tell whether his thighs ached, or his lungs burnt like mine, but I hoped so.

The red jacket bobbed in and out of view. I knew every disappearance was temporary; no way could a red jacket weave itself out of sight forever. But it also seemed that Dennis wasn’t heading for the top. Every time the footpath threatened to broach the summit, he found another that dipped again, and some of them couldn’t entirely be called footpaths. We broached hollows where newly formed ponds had to be jumped, and gaps where I couldn’t trust my feet. I needed both hands on the nearest surface: rock, tree limb, clump of weed. More than once, a fallen tree blocked the way. At the second I was forced to crawl under its trunk, and an absent-minded branch scratched me as I passed, leaving blood on my cheek.

From the heavy grey clouds, which seemed closer with every minute, I felt the first fat splatter of rain at three o’clock.

I’m not sure why I’d chosen that moment to check my watch. Nor whether I was surprised or not. It can’t have been later than ten when we started, though even that was a guess — what I really felt was that I’d never been anywhere else, doing anything else; that all the existence I could remember had been spent in just this manner: following a man in a bright red jacket through an alien landscape. But I do know that two things followed immediately upon my establishing what time it was.

The first was that I realized I was overpoweringly, ravenously hungry.

The second was that I looked up, and Dennis was nowhere in sight.

For some moments I stood still. I was possessed by the same understanding that can fall on a sudden awakening: that if I remain acutely still, refusing to accept the abrupt banishment from sleep, I can slip back, and be welcomed open-armed by the same waiting dream. It never works. It never works. It didn’t work then. When I allowed myself to breathe again, I was exactly where I’d been. The only living thing in sight, nature apart, was a worm at my foot.

I took two steps forward, emerging from a canopy of trees. The ground sucked at my feet, and the rain picked up a steadier rhythm.

In the past hundred yards, the terrain had changed. Not four steps ahead, the path widened: I was near the bottom of one of the many troughs Dennis had led me through. Against the hillside rising steeply up to meet the falling rain was sketched the brick outline of what I assumed was a worked-out mine — Michelle and I had seen others like it on our holiday. On the opposite side, the incline was less steep, though you’d have needed hands and feet to scale it. Had Dennis gone that way, he’d have been pinned like a butterfly on a board. And as for directly ahead—

Directly ahead, the valley came to a dead end. The incline to my right became steeper on its passage round this horseshoe shape, and the cliffside in front of me was obscured by a rustic tangle of misshapen trees and unruly bushes. With no sign of Dennis, unless — and there it was: a ribbon of red flapped behind a bush, then merged again with the brown grey and green. A strap from a jacket, nipped by a gust of wind. The rain was coming down harder, as loud as it was wet, and Dennis must have thought this the right place to take shelter... Had Dennis really thought that, though? Or had Dennis just had enough of playing cat-and-mouse?

Hard to say when the game began. When I set off after him on the footpath? When his car passed mine in the layby near the Yard of Ale? Or further back, even; back in my kitchen, with Michelle’s postcard in front of him, and an unused notepad next to the phone? He might have picked up on that clue. Dennis wasn’t a fool. No one could call him a fool.

In fact, now I thought about it, you could almost say he’d drawn it to my attention.

Which might have been the moment to pause. I could have stood in the rain a little longer, my cap soaking to a cardboard mess as memory made itself heard: He reached behind him for the writing tablet on the sill, and scrawled something on it... tore the uppermost leaf from the pad, and pushed it towards me. Was there more to it than that? If Dennis wanted me here, that was a point in favour of being anywhere else. I could have turned and retraced that long long ramble. Reached my car, eventually, and got in it, and driven away.

But I didn’t. Momentum carried me forward. Only my cap stayed behind; plucked from my head by a delinquent branch just as I reached the bush I was after: surprise! Dennis’s jacket hung like a scarecrow, flapping in the wind. What a foolish thing. The man must be getting wet.

Something stung my neck, and if it had been a mosquito, it would have been the biggest bastard this side of the equator. But it wasn’t a mosquito.

Brown grey and green. Green grey and brown. Grey brown and

I’d forgotten what the third colour was even as it rushed up to meet me.

XIV

“Do you remember?” he asks.

Well of course I do. Of course I do.

“Do you remember we used to be friends?”

It was long ago. But I remember that too.

I’ll never know what Dennis Farlowe injected me with. Something they use to pacify cows with, probably: it acted instantly, despite not being scientifically applied. He must have stepped from behind and just shoved the damn thing into my neck. I lie now on a three-inch mattress on a concrete floor. The only light spills from a barred window nine foot or so above Dennis’s head. There is a strange object behind him. It reaches into the dark. My rucksack, with all it contains — the knife, especially — is nowhere.

Vision swims in and out of focus. I feel heavy all over, and everything aches.

I say, “Where is she?”

“She’s dead.”

And with that, something falls away, as if a circle I never wanted completed has just swum into existence, conjured from the ripples of a long-ago splash.

“But then, you already know that. You killed her.”

I try to speak. It doesn’t come out right. I swallow. Try again. “That’s your plan?”

He cocks his head to one side.

“To make out I did it? To kill her, and make out—”

But that same head shakes in denial.

“I think,” he says, “we need to clarify some issues.”

It is only now that I realize what that strange object behind Dennis is. It is a ladder. There is no door into this room; there is only a ladder out of it. This reaches up to a trap in the ceiling.

And at almost the same time I realize that the room is part of a pair; that the shadow against one wall is actually a space leading somewhere else. And that somebody is hovering on that threshold.

“I don’t mean your wife,” Dennis goes on. “I mean mine.”

The somebody walks forward.

Michelle says, “I found the locket.”

XV

At last she nods. All this is fine. Barring one small detail.

“We need to unwrap these bottles,” she says to Dennis Farlowe.

“Because?”

“So he can’t stack them. Build himself a staircase.”

She looks up at the barred window, about the size of eight bricks laid side by side, containing no glass.

“You think he can squeeze through that?”

“We’re leaving him a tin-opener. He might hack a bigger hole.”

“He wants to treat that thing with care. If he doesn’t want to starve to death.” But he concedes that she has a point. “You’re right, though. We’ll unwrap them.”

In fact, she does this after he leaves. Leaves to return home; to find out what David’s up to. To give him a nudge in the direction of the postcard.

Some things are best not left to chance.

XVI

“I believed you,” she says. “For so long, I believed you. I mean, I always knew you had a thing for Jane — I’d have had to be blind not to — but I honestly, truly didn’t think you’d killed her. Raped and killed her.”

I so much want to reply to this, to deliver a devastating refutation, but what can I say? What can I say? That I never wanted it to happen? That would sound lame, in the circumstances. Of course I never wanted it to happen. Look where it’s left me.

“But then I found her locket, where you’d kept it all these years. Behind that tile in the bathroom. Dear god, I thought. What’s this? What’s this?”

Jane and I had grown close, and that’s the truth of it. But there are missteps in any relationship, and it’s possible that I misread certain signs. But I never wanted any of it to happen. Or have I already said that?

“But Dennis recognized it.”

And there you go. What precisely is going on with you and Dennis, I want to ask. Am I supposed to lie here while she reveals how close they’ve become? But lie here is all I can do. My limbs are like tree trunks. There is an itch at my neck, where Dennis stuck me with his needle.

“And those other women,” she continues. “The way you made it look random — the way you killed them to make it look random. How can you live with yourself, David? How could I have lived with you? You know what everyone thinks when this happens. They always think the same thing — that she must have known. They’ll think I must have known.”

So it’s all about you, I want to tell her. But don’t.

“You told me you were at a conference.”

Well, I could hardly tell you where I really was, I want to explain. I was doing it for us, can’t you see that? To take Jane’s story and put it at a remove, so we could continue with our lives. Besides, I was at a conference. Or registered at one, anyway; was there enough to make my presence felt. It passed muster, didn’t it? Or it did until Dennis came back, and poured poison in your ear.

Did you really just find the locket, Michelle? Or did you go looking for it? It was the one keepsake I allowed myself. Everything else, all those events of twelve years ago — my seven-year itch — they happened to somebody else. Or might as well have done.

And I thought things were okay again. That’s why I came looking for you. I didn’t think your disappearance had anything to do with all that. All that was over long ago. And you said you loved me — in your note, you said I love you. Or was that just part of your trap?

And now Dennis says, “She’s right, you know. All this will reflect on her. It always does. And that’s not right. You destroyed my life, you ended Jane’s. You killed those other poor women. You can’t destroy Michelle’s, too. We won’t let you.”

At last I find my voice again. “You’re going to kill me.”

“No,” Dennis says. “We’re going to leave you alone.”

And very soon afterwards, that’s exactly what they do.

I sometimes wonder whether anyone is looking for me, but not for very long. They’ll have parked my car far away, near an unpredictable body of water; the kind which rarely returns its victims. Besides, everyone I spoke to thought Michelle had disappeared of her own accord — only I believed otherwise; only I attached weight to the clue so carefully left me. I remember the conversation with her sister, and it occurs to me that of course Michelle had spoken to her — of course Elizabeth knew Michelle was fine. She had promised not to breathe a word to me, that was all. Just one more thing to be produced in evidence when Michelle returns, and I do not.

She hadn’t known I’d take it so hard, she’ll say.

I never imagined he’d take his own life—

Meanwhile, I have drunk one hundred and three two-litre bottles of water; eaten eighty-nine tins of tuna fish, forty-seven of baked beans, ninety-four of corned beef. There are many hundreds left. Possibly thousands. I do not have the will to count them.

I already know there’s a lifetime’s supply.