Next of Kin (34 page)

His clothes were covered in blood.

‘Good God,' he said, teetering slightly, worried that he would fall over. He pulled at his shirt in fright, ripping it open to discover where he had been injured but his skin beneath was perfectly smooth and showed no signs of distress. There was a mirror in the corner and he examined his face in it but, with the exception of dried, streaked daubs of blood on it too, he did not appear to have cut himself. Quickly he realized that the blood was not his own, was merely on his clothes, but the whole thing made no sense and filled him with a sense of dread, a sense that only accumulated as the footsteps began to charge up the stairs outside. Without knowing why, he knew it was important to get into the next room and close that door before the police made it any further.

He turned and lunged for the doorway, stepping outside to see the rest of the unfamiliar flat, and nothing there made any sense. It looked like a place that was normally kept quite well ordered but had recently been unsettled by someone. Bookcases were knocked over, a vase of flowers from a writing bureau had crashed to the floor, leaving the porcelain in shards and the flowers crushed. But all of this was as nothing compared to what lay on the floor between him and the half-open door: the body of a man, his skull crushed, the congealed blood on his forehead turning black and stiff as he lay there, one eye open, staring up at Gareth in horror.

Gareth gripped the doorframe to the bedroom, unable at first to process what he was seeing. The whole thing was like some ghastly, surreal nightmare. An unfamiliar flat, blood everywhere including all over himself, a dead body of a complete stranger at his feet. He narrowed his eyes, unable to look away from the ghastly sight. Blinking suddenly, snapping back into life, he understood the scene that was before him and looked across at the half-open door, his body lunging forwards to kick it shut just as the policemen appeared in the hallway outside. Everyone froze for a moment, staring at each other, before the first policeman kicked the door fully open, sending him tumbling backwards towards the wall behind him, his hands outstretched before him in self-defence, the sight of the corpse on the ground and the bloodied individual shouting at them causing everyone to hesitate now, to stand still and take in the gruesome nature of the scene, before two of the policemen rushed forwards to grab him. With a rare sense of self-preservation he pushed forwards, thinking that if he could only get to the door, and through it and down the stairs and out on to the street—whatever street this might be—then he could run and run before they could identify him, run all the way home, back to Tavistock Square, and crawl into his own comfortable bed in his warm house and wake up in an hour's time, shivering at the memory of the nightmare that had seemed so vivid and real at the time but would already by then be dissolving from his mind.

The policemen caught him as he jumped forwards and he yelled out in fright as they pushed him to the floor. For a moment they lost their footing in the struggle and he landed directly on top of the corpse with his face pressed down only inches away from the horrible gaping hole in the dead man's head and he found his voice then and started screaming, a piercing scream that ran through the house, as the policemen lifted him again and pushed him against the wall and then there was a sensation like the world coming to an end and he sank to his knees as everything went black.

When he came to a little later it didn't take any time for him to remember what had happened. The hangover was still there but was being complemented now by a pounding on the back of his head where one of the policemen's truncheons had connected with him, and he knew that this was no nightmare. That whatever had happened was no dream.

He found himself in the back of a police van now, the type with one barred window on either side, and he stood up and gripped the poles as it pulled away from the kerb. He noticed two things as the van drove away. The first was the man's body, covered now in a sheet, being carried from the house on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance while spectators gathered on the pavement to watch, glancing from the dead body with pity to the young man in the van with disgust and back again. The second was the sign on the corner of the building which told him exactly where he was: Bedford Place.

A key turned now in the lock of his cell and he shunted back on the bed, pushing his back to the wall. The knowledge that no one could come through and injure him here was as nothing compared to the horror of being there in the first place. He had barely been able to speak or comprehend what had happened since he had arrived there.

‘Hello, Bentley,' said the warder, stepping inside with a tray carrying quite a decent breakfast. Ham and eggs. Toast. A pot of tea. Not at all the kind of mush he would have expected to be served from the traditional fictional accounts of prisons he had read. ‘How are you feeling today?'

‘When am I going to see my parents?' asked Gareth. The warder gave a small laugh but he didn't mean it unkindly.

‘Do you know,' he said. ‘It's the funniest thing. I have a son about your age and he gives me a hell of a time, he really does. He never listens to a word I say, and anything I tell him to do he'll go and do the opposite, just to spite me I think. And all you young people are the same, it seems to me. You all want to think you're big men on your own but every one of you that gets into trouble and lands in here with me, you always end up asking the same question:
When am I going to see my parents?
It's nice to know we're good for something anyway.'

Gareth kept his face steady and didn't move from the bed. He didn't want to be looked at or touched or spoken to. He just wanted an answer. The warder sighed.

‘I don't know,' he said finally. ‘I'm sure it's all being arranged through your solicitor.'

‘It's been three days since I've seen them. When are they coming back? I haven't seen anyone since then.'

‘Well that's not true, is it?' said the warder. ‘You've seen the inspector, haven't you? Wasn't he the one who arraigned you?'

‘Arraigned me?'

‘Told you the charges you were facing.'

‘Yes,' said Gareth. ‘He said I murdered someone. Someone I don't even know. Why would I do that?' he asked pleadingly, as if the warder would see the sincerity of his words, realize the terrible mistake that had been made and release him without any further trouble. ‘Why would I kill someone I don't even know?'

‘No point asking me, sunshine,' said the warder with a friendly shrug as he went back to the door. ‘I'm not much more than a glorified waiter around here. Enjoy your breakfast.'

He pulled the door shut and it sealed heavily, like a bank vault, but Gareth found he still couldn't move. He was starving, he hadn't eaten in almost twenty-four hours, and the food both smelled and looked good but it was on the other side of the cell and the idea of stepping off the bed, unravelling himself from his coarse blanket and giving himself up to the room, was impossible for him, as if the floor beneath his feet was shark-infested waters.

What happened to me?
he asked himself, feeling the tears start to build up behind his eyes again and not for the first time over the past six days.
How did I end up in here?

2

WHILE GARETH BENTLEY WAS
staring across his prison cell at his breakfast growing cold, Annie Daly was standing in the kitchen at Leyville preparing an extravagant breakfast with an air of worry and disappointment. Dismissed from her full-time position almost three months earlier after Peter Montignac had died, she had been struggling to make ends meet on the part-time hours that she had been offered ever since. The news that Stella was to marry Raymond Davis and live at Leyville had been very welcome to her as she thought they might go back to needing a full-time cook then, especially when children came, but now that that was no longer a possibility she began to think about whether she would have to leave the house entirely. She was too old, she decided, to start all over again. Too old and too tired.

‘Good morning, Annie,' said Margaret Richmond, entering the kitchen and sniffing the air judgementally as she noticed an unwelcome smell. ‘You weren't smoking a cigarette in here, were you?' she asked.

‘No, Miss Richmond,' said Annie, who had only put her cigarette out a few minutes earlier. ‘That was one of the delivery boys from the village as came up with the groceries. I told him to put it out, of course.'

Margaret nodded, not believing a word of it, but unwilling to engage herself in an argument at this time of the day.

‘There's fresh tea in the pot there if you want some,' said Annie, nodding towards the table and Margaret poured herself a cup and sat down by the bay windows, looking out at the garden.

‘Such a beautiful morning,' she said, lost in thought. The outside world seemed so calm to her in comparison to the things that were going on elsewhere.

‘Will Miss Stella be coming downstairs for her breakfast this morning then?' asked Annie.

‘No, I don't think so, Annie. I'll bring it up to her when it's ready.'

Annie nodded. ‘You know she can't stay locked away up there forever,' she said finally, after considering whether she should say anything or not. ‘It's not healthy for a person. When my George died, I wanted to do the exact same thing but I told myself to snap out of it and get on with life. It's the only thing you can do.'

‘I hardly think the loss of a favourite labrador can compare to losing a fiancé,' said Margaret with a sigh. ‘Particularly when barely three months have gone by since she lost her father. The whole thing's been a terrible shock to her.'

‘Well I'm just saying,' said Annie, a little offended. ‘Mourning's important, of course it is. But she's still young. She'll meet someone better. And I'm sure Mr Davis was a very nice chap, at least he was always polite to me when we met, but I don't hold with a man that takes that much interest in flowers. It can't be healthy, can it?'

Margaret was barely listening but she shrugged her shoulders and looked away in the hope that Annie would stop talking for a moment. She too had often been surprised by Stella's choice of Raymond Davis; not because of his passion for horticulture but because he was never a particularly exciting or spontaneous fellow and that, Margaret had always believed, would have been what Stella looked for in a husband. She had broached the subject once in an indirect way but Stella had rebuked her, saying that Margaret didn't know Raymond like she did, that his decency and kindness were what attracted her to him, and besides hadn't she had enough excitement in love for one lifetime, enough disappointment, a statement that had silenced Margaret on the subject entirely.

She had been the unlucky person who had had to deliver the news of his death to Stella three days earlier. A policeman had phoned from London and told her what had happened and she had to sit down to take it in. The violence of it. The horror. Stella was buying some groceries in the village at the time and could see by Margaret's expression when she returned that something had happened.

‘What is it?' she asked, coming towards her, seeing Margaret standing there pale and wringing her hands as she always did when she had bad news to deliver. ‘Goodness, you're as pale as a ghost, Margaret. What's happened?'

‘You better sit down,' said Margaret, leading her to the table.

‘Just tell me,' said Stella, taking her hands, not wanting to be left in the dark for any longer than was necessary. ‘Something's happened to him, hasn't it?'

Margaret nodded slowly. She had spent the best part of the previous hour trying to find the right words to use at this moment. It was bad enough breaking the news to someone that a loved one had passed away, trying to phrase it so slowly and peacefully that by the time the unhappy truth was revealed the listener might feel that it was a peaceful end. But a situation like this, a murder … there was no good way to phrase it. There were no suitable words at all. The best thing was to stay quiet and let her piece it together for herself.

‘He's dead, isn't he?' asked Stella after a moment, her face a blank.

Margaret nodded again. ‘I'm so sorry, Stella,' she said. ‘There was a phone call. While you were out. The police. It's terrible news.'

Stella looked away and seemed to be struggling with her breath for a moment. As a child she had had a tendency towards asthma but it was an affliction she had grown out of; Margaret hadn't heard her breathing like this since she was very young, and worried for her.

‘Try to stay calm, Stella,' she said, rubbing her back. ‘Breathe slowly.'

Stella's body seemed to crumble where she sat and she buried her face in her hands. ‘But how?' she asked finally, trembling, holding back the tears for now. ‘How did it happen?'

‘They're not sure yet,' said Margaret. ‘They weren't able to tell me very much. I'm afraid you're going to have to be very strong when I tell you.'

Stella looked across again; in her mind she knew she could not afford to fall apart until she had heard all the details. Then and only then could she face her loss. ‘Go on,' she said.

‘I'm afraid…' began Margaret, at a loss as to how to explain such a terrible thing. ‘I have to tell you that he was murdered,' she said.

‘Murdered?' asked Stella, gasping, feeling her stomach turn in revulsion. ‘How? Why? Who did it?'

‘They're very unclear about things right now. It's a bit of a mystery. We'll probably have to go to London to find out more. They were able to contact Owen, thankfully, and—'

‘What?' asked Stella, who had turned away from Margaret as she faced the full horror of what she was saying. ‘What did you just say?'

‘The police,' explained Margaret. ‘They contacted Owen and he identified the body and—'