Cooee (35 page)

Her hands are twisting, each kneading the other. Tears run down her cheeks. She makes a little moaning sound.

‘Did you not guess at all?' I ask, curious. I've always wondered if someone had guessed. Someone in the family, I mean.

She shakes her head. She's still moaning in that slight, ineffectual way. ‘How could I?' she asks. ‘How could anyone imagine such a thing?'

‘Kate,' I say, urgently, speared by a sudden and dreadful anxiety. ‘You mustn't breathe a word.'

‘Am I likely to? Am I likely to tell anyone this? Oh, my God.'

She's shaking, and rocking backwards and forwards.

I find myself wondering whether it's really so very bad. Of course (well, of
course
) I know murder's a bad thing. And I can see it must be a jolt for her. But it really was more a case of manslaughter than murder (this argument has over the years acquired amplified persuasive value, for me). And it isn't as if I meant to do it. It isn't as if it wasn't an accident. I suppose I've become over time so used to having killed Max, so used to the knowledge of my having killed him, that the act's moral edge has blunted somewhat for me. I can't help feeling Kate is slightly overreacting.

‘What did you do with him?'

‘What did I do?' I don't immediately understand what she means. I've just told her, haven't I? I killed him.

‘With the … with the body?'

‘It was when the swimming pool was being filled in,' I say, watching her to see how she'll take it. ‘Remember? It was all dug out.'

‘So …?'

‘So I took the body out to the garden, at the back, and I hid it at the bottom of the hole where the pool had been. Among the rubble. Before they filled it in.'

‘You carried it out? The body? You were able to carry it?'

‘I used the furniture trolley.'

This circumstantial anecdote is almost too much for her.

‘So Max — Max is buried in the back garden at Rain?'

‘Yes.'

There is a long, long pause while she absorbs this.

‘And now?' she says, finally. ‘Will anything happen because of what Sophie did?'

‘I would imagine so. I would imagine Pritchard will turn up again. At first he was just pestering me because he thought I knew where Max was; he thought I'd lead him to Max. But now he'll be smelling a rat. Oh, he'll be back: don't you worry. He'll be back. Everything was all right, Kate. I had everything all sorted, until Sophie went and wrecked it all.'

‘Everything was all right? You murdered Max, and you're telling me everything was all right?'

‘I didn't murder him,' I hiss at her. ‘I keep telling you: it was an accident.'

She shakes her head again. Her eyes are fixed on some point on the floor, and she's hugging herself in a strange way. She doesn't stay for long, which I suppose is not surprising.

‘I need to get used to this,' she says, her voice breaking. ‘You've got to give me time.' She scurries out the door, dabbing her eyes, giving me a nervous sidelong glance as she goes, as if she thinks I'll take a swipe at her on the way. It's not out of the question.

Well, she was the one who wanted it. She was the one who wanted to come around and have a comprehensive talk about everything. It was her fault, anyway. Well, you could argue that it was her fault. None of it would have happened if she'd stayed out of my husband's bed.

And she's offered no sympathy at all. Nothing like:
Oh, Mum, how awful it must have been for you. Living with that, all these years.
Nothing like that.

I pull myself back, at that point. It might be a little much, to expect Kate to be sympathetic right away. It's been a shock for her, I can see that.

Still. Haven't I been brave, and lonely, too? Aren't I to be pitied?

For a couple of days, nothing happens. I worry about Sophie, but I'm still so angry with her that I think it's better to let the whole thing die down, to wait until I can be calmer about it, to wait until … Until what?

I realise that I've frightened her; I realise, too, that she did, as Kate says, mean well. I resolve to fix things up between us. But not yet. I can't do it yet.

All I can think of is the knock on the door.

It takes three days. And then, in the evening, it comes, and there he is.

‘My God,' I say, trying to sound spontaneous and cheerful and innocent. ‘Inspector Pritchard, as I live and breathe. Where have you sprung from, Frank?'

I've been thinking, thinking, thinking about this.

He grins, a bit foolishly. I've always thought Frank's foolish grin is a deliberate ploy. It's a good one. He indicates his shoulder and the stuff on it in a gesture which at first I don't understand.

‘Superintendent, actually.'

‘Wow,' I say, hoping it doesn't sound perfunctory.

And then, when we've got past the civilities and I'm pouring a cup of tea, he says: ‘You're probably surprised to see me again?'

‘Well. Not entirely. I think you've been talking to my daughter and my granddaughter, haven't you?'

I say this with the utmost composure. The stream of tea from the teapot's spout doesn't so much as quiver.

‘Well,' says Frank. ‘Your granddaughter's been talking to me.'

‘She's such a romantic,' I say, brightly, offering Scotch fingers.

Frank is watching me. He's not going to make it easy. ‘A romantic?'

‘Goodness, yes. Couldn't you tell?'

‘I'm not sure. She seemed a truthful child to me.'

He still has that rather ponderous way of speaking; still surveys his flat fingertips while he chooses his words. But then he looks up, and his eyes search me.

I try to look intelligent and unconcernedly interested. Alert, not anxious.

‘It seems Mr Knight is dead?'

‘Ah,' I say, shaking my head in a manner that implies a world of unspoken stories, unexplored explanations.

‘So Mr Knight's not dead?' asks Frank, politely.

‘You're going to think this is a bit weird, Frank. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you.'

He chuckles, reassuringly. I almost expect him to lean over and pat my knee, so fatherly is he.

‘Try me,' he says. ‘You wouldn't believe the number of weird things I've heard in my time.'

‘Well, Frank. Sophie's very romantic.'

‘You said that, yes.'

‘Kate and I — Kate's Sophie's mother, remember: you once met her here — Kate and I have been a bit worried, you see. Sophie has this tendency to fantasise, and lately she's been getting a bit fixated on Max.'

‘Fixated?' says Frank, interested.

‘Yes. Well, that might not be quite the right word. But for some reason she's been looking at old photographs, and poring over them, and it seems she's created quite a little story for herself, out of Max.'

‘A story. Well, well. Kids!'

I take heart from this. ‘Of course, Max was a handsome man.'

‘A very handsome man,' says Frank, generously.

‘And a bit of an adventurer, I suppose.'

‘Indeed.' Frank's tone is dry.

‘Well, from her point of view, I mean. Of course, she doesn't know the things you've told me. I can't tell her those. But it does seem as if she's been — well, romanticising him. Daydreaming. And Kate and I were both a bit worried about it.'

‘Kate knows about her stepfather's — er — adventuring tendencies?'

Oh, nice one, Frank, I think.

‘Oh, yes. Of course, I've told Kate what he was really like. What he was really doing.'

‘Of course.'

‘Anyway. So I thought, perhaps best to give the whole thing a smart knock on the head. Sophie had been carrying on, saying how he might come back, saying how she was sure we still loved each other. You know what teenage girls are like?'

‘My word, yes,' says Frank.

‘So — I suppose it sounds a bit silly, but honestly we were getting quite concerned — I told her he was dead. Just to put it all to rest, get it all out of her mind. And of course, it might well be true by now anyway.'

‘And the grave …?'

‘The grave?'

‘Your granddaughter — nice little girl, isn't she? — she said you'd visited the grave.'

‘Well. That was a bit of extra information designed to … um … make it all a bit more convincing.'

‘Corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative?' suggests Frank, helpfully.

I'm not sure where Frank is coming from, with this. It rings a bell, but for the moment I can't quite place it and decide to ignore it.

‘I guess so. The point is, we needed to find some strategy to divert her, to stop her carrying on. So we thought the best thing to do was just to say, well, he's gone.'

‘Good thinking.' Then Frank pauses, apparently puzzled. ‘Then why would you have told Sophie not to tell her mother? If you and she had cooked this up between you?'

It's my turn to look puzzled, concealing my anger and panic as best I can. Why in God's name did Sophie have to pass on this sort of minutiae?

‘I told her it was our secret, certainly. But not to tell Kate? No. Sophie's obviously got confused on that one.'

‘Ah,' says Frank, pensive now. ‘Such a smart-seeming kid, too.'

I try not to glare at him. ‘Well, that's how it happened.' It does sound a bit lame.

Frank nods affably. ‘And what do you think?'

I'm at a loss. Think? What am I supposed to be thinking?

‘What I mean is, do you think Mr Knight really is dead?'

‘Well, I guess we have to accept that it's certainly possible.'

‘When we last spoke, you didn't think he was dead. In fact, you were sure he wasn't.'

‘Years have passed, Frank.'

‘During which something has happened to change your mind? I can accept that, but I'd like to know what.' His tone alters. ‘Or perhaps you weren't telling the truth earlier? Perhaps you knew then that he was dead? Perhaps that's something you've known all along?'

This is suddenly more confrontational than I'm expecting. I keep my voice low, reasonable.

‘Frank, it was years ago. I knew nothing then and I know nothing now. But, as time goes by — well, we have to think it's more likely, don't we?'

He is silent, and I think perhaps it's time to bring the battle right up to him.

‘Frank,' I say, hurt. ‘All those years ago, when you came to see me, when I kept telling you I didn't know where Max was and you wouldn't believe me — did you think then I'd had something to do with his disappearing like that?' I pause, then I think it's safe, perhaps advisable, to say the unsayable, to approach the unapproachable. ‘Did you think I'd
killed
Max?'

‘Well, no, actually. We didn't think he was dead, you see. We were thinking, he's gone to ground, and sooner or later he'll pop his head up above the parapets, and then we'll nab him. But he never has, you see. And there was a rather large amount of money he could have got his hands on, without too much trouble at all, and he didn't. And there hasn't been one reliable sighting, here or overseas. Also, some items came to light.'

‘Items?'

‘Items from a suitcase.'

I'd always wondered about that suitcase. I do the baffled look.

‘By the time we got to it, it had been gone through pretty thoroughly and I imagine some of the contents had gone missing. But a few remained, and one of them had Mr Knight's name on it. A medication, it was. But what it looked like to us, you see, was that Mr Knight was still manufacturing his own disappearance, perhaps with a little bit of help from you, not that he
actually
had disappeared.

‘But it didn't make sense, you see. We had it from you that Mr Knight had taken his car, so we couldn't see what he'd be doing leaving a suitcase in a railway station locker. It didn't add up, not really. So at that stage, no, all I thought was that you knew where he was and you weren't talking. I wasn't even sure of that. We had nothing to go on. But I did notice, and I did make a note at the time, that you tended to talk of Mr Knight as if he were in the past. He
was
, not he
is
. He
did
, not he
does
. And I'm puzzled, Mrs Knight. Ms Weaving.'

‘Isabel. You used to call me Isabel, Frank.'

‘Isabel. I'm puzzled, Isabel. You see, I tend to believe that Mr Knight is dead. I tend now to believe that he was dead even when we were looking for him, twelve or so years ago. And now — yes, now I think you knew he was dead. I'm not sure what was happening to you back then. I don't know whether you'd been blackmailed or bribed or bullied. Or none of the above. But I'd certainly like you to tell me.'