Cooee (29 page)

I rang three agents the next morning and chose the one I thought the sharpest and least scrupulous. You could see from the glitter in his eyes how much he wanted the property, how far he'd go to get it and to sell it for a top price. He wouldn't even have to lie. He didn't know about the back garden and what lay in it.

‘I want to move fast,' I said, and he nodded ecstatically.

The house was clean already, but I got cleaners in. I got gardeners in, too, and I rented a huge skip and spent two or three days manically tossing out as much as I could.

I spent five solid days driving around looking at units and houses nearer to Kate and Gavin and eventually found one I liked enough to imagine myself living there. I put a deposit on it and told my agent that I wanted Rain sold within a month. As it turned out he managed it in ten days.

Then there was the gun to dispose of. It was easy, in fact. I took Borrow for a long walk, one night. It was dark and chilly; I wore a parka. In its deep left pocket was the gun, with a heavy axehead (I'd found it in the garage; I don't know where it came from), swathed tightly together in an old rag. It knocked against my thigh as I walked.

Borrow was excited: for some reason he loves walking at night and at first he tended to caper slightly, puppylike, displaying his pleasure in the unexpected treat. It was a long walk, though — nearly two miles, down to the river — and he settled eventually, padding beside me contentedly.

When we arrived at the bridge, I threw the awful package over. It splashed, but nobody was there to hear it. Cars spurted back and forth; a tram rumbled past. No other pedestrians were around. It was so dark that I couldn't see down into the water. I turned and headed home, faintly surprised that it had been so easy. A criminal life appeared less demanding than I had always believed.

Then there was the car. The silver Audi, his pride and joy, which had stayed in the garage since his death. It was the third silver Audi he'd had since I'd known him, his third pride and joy.

For Max, a new car had been like a new suit — perhaps even a new shirt. He had liked the luxury of new cars but the reliability of what he knew, the comfort of what he was accustomed to. He'd been happy with a silver Audi (well, why wouldn't he have been?) and that was what he'd continued to buy. I imagine the salesmen at the Audi dealer knew him well.

I couldn't throw the car in the river. The registration papers were in the folder in Max's study. It was Max's, not mine. I couldn't sell it. I didn't want to drive it.

If Colin came back, if anyone else came, could I give away the car, use it as a bribe? No: that wasn't a good idea. It was too much: it would make them suspicious. More suspicious. I imagined the scene: Colin sliding into the house again, refusing to go until I told him where Max was. Or Matty. Or Martin. Whoever.
I don't know
, I'd say.
I don't know, but here: take his very expensive car. Will that do?

No. That wouldn't look good.

I had keys, of course: each of us had owned a set of keys, although I had my own car and had rarely driven the Audi. I should have got rid of it somehow at the very beginning, I thought. I hadn't been thinking properly, not to do that. But then, of course, nobody knew that I hadn't. Nobody had seen inside the garage. The natural thing for Max to do would be to drive away in his car, and I could still make it look as if that's what had happened.

So I drove the car out the next Friday evening, when the shops were open late, and headed for somewhere a long way away. I'd decided a big shopping centre would be best. I'd gone through the glove box and removed anything that would provide easy identification. Not that it would matter in the long run, of course; the registration would identify the car and its owner. But I figured the more time I gave myself the better it would be.

I parked the beautiful silver thing in a multi-storey car park in a shopping centre on the city fringe. I'd never been there before, and I didn't plan to return. I lowered a back window a tiny bit, placed the key in the glove box, patted the Audi on its sleek and bulbous bonnet and caught a bus back into the city.

So that was the end of the car, I thought. For the time being, at least.

These decisions, these actions, gave me a new sense of control, a sense that I had some sort of power over what was happening to my life. Until now I had felt perilously like one of the crude cartoon characters in the computer games of the time — dashing hither and yon, avoiding random assaults from traffic, buckets of water, arrows and boulders. Dominic had a game like that: he was remarkably good at it. With Dominic at the joystick the round-headed man had a genuine chance. I didn't know how much chance I had: I seemed to live with a permanently breathless feeling that a boulder was about to drop on me and shatter me.

Part Four

And the boulder did drop, one day. The sharp-eyed real-estate agent had sold Rain, but I was still living there. I was about to leave: I think the move was scheduled for two or three days distant, and I had started to congratulate myself on evading the buckets of water and the arrows. Colin had never reappeared. Nobody else had descended on me. It seemed I was safe.

I was drinking black coffee before going to work, glancing around me at the denuded, too-clean kitchen and wondering how I would adapt again to an ordinary, little kitchen — without a long sweep of polished granite bench, without dozens of smooth capacious cupboards, without a vast walk-in pantry — when the knock rattled the front door. A purposeful, deliberate knock, a knock that meant business.

This time, it was a policeman. I knew he was a policeman because he was in uniform. I thought I would have preferred a gangster.

He was a middle-aged, thickset man with short spatulate fingers and pale eyes. He didn't look friendly. He flashed his ID at me. I tried to look nonchalant and slightly surprised. I raised my eyebrows in what I hoped was an approximation of a kind of lazy detachment, and unlocked and opened the security door. I always kept it locked, now.

‘Frank Pritchard,' he said. ‘Inspector Frank Pritchard. Mrs Knight? Mrs Isabel Knight?'

‘I don't use that name,' I said.

‘You're married to Maximilian Knight?'

‘Yes,' I said, with a
so-what-if-I-am?
inflection. ‘But my name is Weaving.'

‘Could I have ten minutes of your time, Ms Weaving?'

There wasn't much point in saying no. And I was impressed by the carefully enunciated ‘Ms'. Most policemen, I felt, wouldn't have been up to it: they would have messed around with Mrs and Miss and finished up mumbling something that could have been anything.

I led him into the lounge and saw him glancing around with what struck me as disproportionate interest. I gestured vaguely at the sweep of cream leather and he sat down. Some people felt overpowered by all the leather and perched on the edge of the seats. Inspector Pritchard wasn't. He sat firmly foursquare, and gave me his full and undivided attention. I reciprocated.

‘Mr Knight's not in?' he said.

‘Mr Knight hasn't been in for some time.'

‘He no longer lives here, ma'am?'

‘That's correct.'

‘Might I ask on what date he moved from this residence?'

He really did talk like that. And he really did have a notebook, too, and a pencil.

‘I don't remember the exact date,' I lied. ‘It must be six or seven months ago.'

‘You're not expecting him back?'

‘I'm not.'

‘Do you have a forwarding address?'

‘I don't.'

‘A contact number?'

‘No, I don't. Look, what's this all about?' I injected mild irritation into my voice.

‘We're conducting an investigation,' said Inspector Pritchard, examining the end of his pencil.

‘Into what?'

‘Into the whereabouts and activities of Mr Knight.'

‘I know nothing about either.'

‘Forgive me, ma'am, but if you're married to Mr Knight I think you must have some knowledge of Mr Knight's activities.'

‘I don't regard myself as married to him any more.'

‘Do you mind explaining that to me, ma'am? Are you divorced?'

‘Separated.'

‘Since what date, may I ask?'

‘I'm not sure that it's any of your business.'

‘You'll let me be the judge of that, perhaps.'

‘Well, perhaps I won't,' I said, thinking that perhaps it was time I started to show a bit of temper. He wasn't being rude or unpleasant, but he had control and he wasn't about to relinquish it. But if I was too subservient, if I tried to mollify him, wouldn't that make him think I was hiding something? On the other hand, I didn't want to get him offside.

‘You'd be well advised to cooperate, ma'am.'

Nowadays it's quite common to call women
ma'am
. Those infuriating people who ring you up and want your money call you
ma'am
; so do people behind counters, and ticket inspectors, parking officials, people like that. In those days it wasn't so usual. It made me feel uncomfortable, as if he was jeering at me up his navy serge sleeve.

‘I don't understand,' I said, assuming the tone of someone who was trying to be reasonable against mounting odds. ‘I don't see why you're conducting an investigation. Why won't you tell me? If my husband had done something wrong, something criminal, don't you think I'd know about it?'

‘Yes. Yes, I'm thinking you would know about it. So why don't you tell me what you do know, Ms Weaving?'

‘Like what?'

‘Like what does your husband do?'

I stared at him. Anxiety sprang a level or two and bloomed into panic.

‘What is it, ma'am?'

‘I'm wondering if I should get a lawyer.'

‘If you want to get in a lawyer, Ms Weaving, you're entitled to. At any point. But I'm only asking about Mr Knight's occupation, after all. I'm laying no charges. I'm not thinking I'm going to arrest you. I'm not even necessarily thinking I'm going to arrest Mr Knight, when I find him. I'm not thinking of laying charges, at present. I'm gathering information, you see. It's a friendly chat. You'd be ill-advised, I'm thinking, to call in a lawyer on the basis of me asking you for a friendly chat.'

‘Well,' I said, uncertainly.

He waited.

‘What do you want to know?'

‘Principally, I want to know how I can contact Mr Knight.'

‘I can't tell you that.'

‘No idea at all, ma'am?'

‘Honestly. None.'

‘No leads, no possibilities, no friends he might be staying with?'

I shook my head. ‘I just don't know. I swear I'm telling you the truth. My husband — my ex-husband I think of him as — didn't have many friends. I didn't know them, anyway.'

‘How long were you married, ma'am?'

‘Nearly five years.'

‘You were married for five years and you don't know any of his friends?'

‘Well, I didn't. It may sound odd. But he was a solitary sort of man.'

‘Business associates?'

‘I never met them.'

‘What does he do, ma'am?'

‘He had … business interests,' I said, desperately. ‘He owned things and he rented them out and he bought things and sold them. He was a consultant. He advised people about investments and ... and things like that.'

‘Ma'am, are you aware that you're speaking in the past tense?'

‘It
is
past, for me,' I said, kicking myself. ‘I suppose he still does all of those things, but I don't have anything to do with him any longer, so I think of it all in the past tense.'

‘When did you divorce Mr Knight, ma'am?'

‘I'm not divorced. We're separated. I told you that.'

‘Are you expecting a divorce?'

It was a funny question, when you thought about it. Not that I was grinning.

‘Yes. I suppose so. I don't know.'

‘So how did he come to leave?'

‘We had a quarrel.'

‘A quarrel.'

‘That's what I said, yes. It was a very significant quarrel. We'd been unhappy for some time,' I said, improvising frenetically. ‘It was just … the last straw.'

‘And he left?'

‘Yes, he left.'

‘He just walked out the door?'

‘No. He packed. He packed lots of things. And he left.'

‘And you've heard nothing since?'

‘Nothing at all.'

‘Forgive me, ma'am,' he said, with a sudden unexpected gentleness, ‘but that's hardly likely, is it? I'm thinking, a man isn't going to walk out of your life as quickly and easily as that, is he? There must be things you have in common, things that needed to be worked out between you both. Money, financial arrangements, so forth.'