The Endings Man (7 page)

Curle started awake in the dark of the night and berated himself for a fool. What in God’s name had he thought he was doing? He’d told them he didn’t know Ali Fleming. He’d claimed to have gone straight home on the Tuesday night after leaving Jonah. They could probably prove that he knew her, probably prove that he hadn’t gone straight home. If they could somehow also prove that he had seen her that night, then he would become the obvious suspect. His quick imagination in half a dozen images had him charged, in the dock, sitting in a prison van on his way to a life sentence. Beyond that, there were images he turned away from; he wasn’t the kind of man who could cope with prison. How could he be anything else but a victim in that environment? If it comes to that, I’ll kill myself, he thought. But even as he thought it, he disbelieved it; he wasn’t the kind of man to commit suicide either. And with that he wondered about the book he might write when he got out of prison. Would you be allowed to write in prison? He didn’t think he would have the strength of character for that. No Jeffrey Archer, he. And he saw himself at the other end of a prison sentence alone in a room, abandoned by everyone, too sunk in depression and self-contempt to do anything but stare at a wall.

Abandoned by Liz. He found that possiblity unbearable.

Meldrum had asked her what time he had arrived home, and she had told him she had no idea since she had been feeling unwell and had taken a sleeping tablet and been asleep by ten o’clock that night. It was the truth, but what good was the truth? Anyway, Meldrum probably thought, a wife’s testimony: she’s lying to protect him. In that case, why not say he’d come home by eleven? Because she didn’t know what it was all about. Because the detectives had taken him by surprise, given him no chance to tell her what to say. Or perhaps, Meldrum might think, because though she didn’t want to condemn him yet she wouldn’t lie for him; in which case claiming to have been asleep would be the easy way out.

He lay listening to her breath sighing, hesitating, starting again, and wondered if she was feigning sleep.

After the policemen had gone, he had lied to her, claiming he’d never heard of the dead woman. What else would he do, after eight years of lying to her about where he’d been and what he’d been doing?

He had shown nothing when the policeman told him Ali was dead. He was sure he had shown nothing. He was sure he had played the part of a man hearing of the death of a stranger.

What would that lack of emotion mean to them if they learned that he had been sleeping with her?

And he hadn’t been hearing about the death of a stranger. He felt the warmth of the woman beside him and thought of that other warmth. Now cold. ‘Murdered,’ Meldrum had said. No details, they never gave details. But when he’d added, ‘No doubt about that,’ his face had seemed even grimmer than before. What had been done to her? His stomach heaved and as he slid, carefully, so carefully, out of the bed, his mouth filled with vomit.

He crossed the floor in the dark, closed the bedroom door softly behind him and made it into the bathroom. Leaning over the basin, he spat and heaved a little, threw cold water up into his face and scrubbed himself dry with a towel. He padded downstairs without putting on the light, guided by a hand trailing down the bannister. In the kitchen, the tiles struck up cold on his bare feet. He took the decanter of whisky from the cupboard, but when he took out the cork the sweet-flavoured smell made him sicken. Instead, he made a mug of instant coffee, took a few sips and emptied the rest into the sink. On impulse, he turned away from the foot of the stairs and went into the room he used as his study. The air felt cold and when he put down the switch the light fell with an effect of desolation on the desk with its blank computer and scatter of scribbled notes.

From the shelf of reference books, he took down
The Oxford History of the Classical World.
He had picked it as unlikely to be taken off the shelf by anyone else. Inside he’d concealed the notes he’d taken at times over the years, late at night, about what she had said or what they had done. Ruffling through the pages, he took out the first notes he came to, scribbled down on leaves torn from a notebook.

‘I’ll tell you a fantasy that works for me. I imagine I’ve married a man from some place far away. It’s maybe a remote farm somewhere in Italy. We live with his mother and his brothers. His mother learns that he hasn’t consummated the marriage and she decides to do something about it. She gets me up on the table on all fours and milks me with her witchy fingers. My husband stands watching helplessly with his big dark eyes. The mother says, “My son’s failure to breed the stupid city whore is about to be remedied.” And she goes
round her sons and strokes their cocks with her scary witchy magic fingers.’

He sat at the desk looking at the page under the circle of the lamp. He had known the woman who thought up that stuff. What kind of woman could think of it? It wasn’t something a man could make up, he thought. Had he really known her? And wondered at last: what kind of man had it been who came home and wrote these things down? Alone in the middle of the night, as he had been when they were first written, the notes began to seem like messages in a language of which he had lost the meaning and the years with Ali like a dream from which, however hard he struggled, there might be no way of wakening.

He opened his eyes reluctantly on another day. And then at evening morning is so far away. Some Irish writer said that. But wasn’t it just as true, at morning evening is so far away? And then at morning evening is so far away. A Scottish writer said that. I said it, Curle thought. The bed was empty. He slid an arm out and the place beside him was cold.

When he made it downstairs, he put on the kettle and found an egg in the fridge. He was putting water in a pan when the kitchen door was pushed open. Water splashed on his arm.

‘Christ, Liz! I nearly jumped out of my skin. What are you doing here?’

‘I ran Kerr to school and came back.’

‘Are you not feeling well?’

‘That’s what I told Donald. I coughed down the phone.’

‘How will they manage without a pharmacist?’

‘He’ll get cover from one of the other shops.’

She sat at the kitchen table and watched as he laid the egg into the pan. Defensively, he drew his dressing gown round him and fastened the belt. Using the palms of his hands, he smoothed down his hair. Without looking round, he asked, ‘Should you be in bed? I’ll bring you up something.’

‘That’s not what I came back for.’

‘I need to shave,’ he said, staring down at the water
bubbling gently round the egg. With his fingertips, he rasped the stubble on his cheek. ‘Not like me to come down without shaving.’

‘We haven’t been happy,’ she said, ‘but it never occurred to me you might have someone else. Not until last night. I feel stupid.’

‘You are being stupid,’ he said. ‘I told you last night. I don’t know the woman. Never heard of her. The police came here because they found she’d made a note of my name and address. Among others, I suppose. They were just being thorough. Maybe she was a fan.’

‘Sit down and talk to me,’ his wife said.

He sat on the other side of the table.

‘Maybe she was going to write a letter,’ he suggested. ‘Remember those crazy letters I got last year?’

‘When they asked me to come back in, you were white as a ghost.’

‘No!’ He was dismayed.

‘Did you go white when they told you she was dead?’

‘I don’t like policemen. Tramping in here. Into my house. A lot of people feel that way.’

‘Don’t insult me. Please.’ She had been watching his face; now she looked down at her hands folded on the table.

Moved by an old sympathy, perhaps by no more than a habit of his body, he put out his hand and covered hers.

She didn’t pull them away, but went on, ‘I must have been very easy to deceive. You would hardly have to make any effort at all. As easy as that. I don’t see how you wouldn’t have come to despise me, even a little bit.’

He knew he should break out in denials, but he couldn’t, so great an effort, it was too much. And so, they sat in silence, until she got up and put off the gas where the egg was knocking in the pan.

Breakfastless, Curle was ready for lunch at the Arts Club. By custom, it was eaten communally at the large table set in the window. There were about a dozen of them that lunchtime, members and guests of members, those he had seen before and unknown faces in more or less equal numbers. The conversation, again by custom, was general around the table.

‘I’ve biked since I was nine or ten,’ announced one of the strangers. ‘But this February, first of the month, I was out and didn’t need gloves. That’s never happened to me before. I’ve never not needed gloves on the first of February, not even in the south of England.’

‘More proof the climate’s changing,’ said another. ‘Not that we need more; the evidence is overwhelming.’

And a third: ‘I heard a scientist from London University on the radio. According to him, they haven’t paid enough attention to sunspots. The mini ice age a couple of hundred years ago was caused by sunspots. They had braziers and dancing on the ice on the Thames.’

‘You can always buy a scientist,’ someone said. ‘Do you know that Exxon has set aside a budget of eighty billion dollars to argue against global warming? Or would it be millions, billions seems too much, doesn’t it?’

‘My daughter graduated from Bristol University last
year. It was held in the Cathedral. There was an address by an ecologist. He told the graduands, you’re the ones who have to change the world. My generation’s failed, he told them. We can’t go on with big cars and all the rest. We’ve got to change our ways.’

‘That would cheer them up.’

‘Youngsters get told that all the time. When I graduated just after the war, the Thirties generation told us the same thing. We failed, you change the world.’

‘Bristol Cathedral? Lovely setting for a graduation.’

‘Absolutely. The Provost welcomed us. Not a word about God. This is the way it used to be, he said, the Cathedral at the service of the community. We’re very glad to see you here. First-class speech.’

‘Know what my son said to me? Turns out his partner doesn’t want to have children. Dad, he said to me, would you mind not being a grandfather? I thought that was sweet.’

And so on.

Curle contributed nothing, keeping his eyes on his plate as he steadily disposed of his stew. Beside him, Jonah Murray was also silent, though giving every appearance of following the conversation with keen interest.

Later, in the bar upstairs, settled in front of a bottle of Sangiovese, he gave a fat chuckle and said, ‘Edinburgh, the city of conversation. Remind you of the great days of the Scottish Enlightenment?’

Curle lifted his head and asked, ‘Sorry?’

‘You haven’t been hearing a word, have you? What the hell’s wrong?’

‘I had—’

‘I can’t hear you.’ Jonah cupped a hand jocularly behind his ear.

‘I had the police at my door last night.’

His friend leaned forward in concern. ‘Not an accident in the car? For God’s sake, don’t tell me anyone was hurt.’

‘They came about this woman.’ He took a deep breath. ‘They came about this woman I knew.’

‘What woman?’

‘I’m sorry to put this on you.’

‘Wait a bit… Is this the woman you’ve been having an affair with?’

Surprise jolted Curle out of his misery. He gaped and asked, ‘You knew?’

‘Suspected.’

‘I have to tell someone. But I can’t imagine how you knew.’

‘How did you imagine you could hide anything in Edinburgh? There’s always somebody who spots something going on. And that somebody never fails to talk to somebody else. The whole town clatters with gossip. You know that.’

‘Haskell?’ Curle asked, saying the first name that came into his head. And as Jonah looked blank, went on, ‘Bobbie Haskell. He was there when we’d a drink on Tuesday – after the National Library reading.’

‘The Velcro man? What has he got to do with it?’

‘You don’t know him?’

‘First time I’d ever clapped eyes on him. Didn’t have much to offer, I thought. Seems as if I was wrong.’

‘He lives in the same building as her.’

‘She has a name?’

‘Ali Fleming.’

Jonah looked intrigued. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell. Not one of the names I’ve put under review the last couple of years. When do I get to meet her? Do I get to meet her?’ He
frowned. ‘Not sure that I should. Not sure that I want to. I have to say I’m very fond of that wife of yours.’

‘Don’t worry about meeting her,’ Curle said. ‘She’s dead.’

Jonah looked more bewildered than shocked. ‘Some kind of car accident? Why would the police come to you?’

‘She was found dead in her flat. Not an accident.’ And before Jonah could get it wrong again, he said almost with impatience. ‘She was murdered. It happened late on Tuesday evening apparently. But she wasn’t found until yesterday.’

‘They don’t suspect you?’

Curle rubbed a hand over his mouth. The thick aftertaste of stew on his palate made him nauseous. ‘They came to see me.’

‘Wait!’ Jonah held up a finger to make his point more emphatically. ‘Tuesday evening! You were with me all the time. At the talk, then we went to the pub. We walked down to Princes Street. And I saw you into the taxi to go home. It’s what they call an alibi. Call yourself a detective novelist? Nothing to worry about.’

Curle took no more than a fraction of a second too long before he nodded, just enough to be too late.

‘You did go home?’ Jonah asked slowly.

There was wine left in the bottle when Jonah got up to go, which was unheard of. To be fair, Curle reflected as he came out of Rutland Square to weave his way along the crowded pavement on the shop side of Princes Street, at least the agent hadn’t pretended to have an urgent appointment. He’d got to his feet, leaned down and squeezed Curle by the shoulder. ‘I’ll love you and leave you,’ he’d said, ‘I need some time by myself to think’.

Curle knew he should go home. He had to honour the contract for the new book and already he was thousands of words behind schedule. He had an image of his study, a quiet room at the back of the house, looking out on to the garden. By contrast, his first book had been handwritten using a succession of cheap biros the summer before he went to university, crouched on a chair in his bedroom, trying to ignore the sounds of his father stumbling about downstairs. Not long after he was married, he’d begun yet another novel, hammering it out on a second-hand typewriter at a makeshift desk in the back room of their rented accommodation. Books that were left unfinished, ones that struggled to the last page, none of them published. Yet Liz had never stopped believing in him. Then Mae had been born and they had been happy. Five minutes earlier, five minutes later, and they might have
gone on being happy. The timing had been precise and the lorry came out of the side street and smashed them across the road. He’d fought his way out of the car and into the back seat where he’d held Mae in his arms as her head fell to one side and the world went silent. The next year Liz went back out to work and his first novel was published and was enough of a success that he left the library and became a full-time writer. A book published at last and now he had a house with a study, the kind of room the boy had dreamed of having, the young man had dreamed of having. He had betrayed them both.

Afraid to go home, he wandered the length of Princes Street and then up the Bridges. He went into a bookshop and left in a panic for fear it was the one where Bobbie Haskell worked. He read the posters outside the Festival Theatre as if studying for an exam, and pacing on desultorily could not remember a word of what he had read. In Melville Drive the sun slanted between the trees and joggers ran with slack fists and swinging arms around the perimeter of the Meadows. By the time he got to Bruntsfield, he was tired and thought about going into the hotel for a coffee and then, for no better reason than that one was pulling up as he arrived at the stop, got on a bus that would take him home.

He sat on the front seat upstairs, watched the light changing on the Pentland Hills as they went up through Morningside and thought how it must be desirable in every city to be on the side that caught the morning sun. Leave the cold side to the poor, which must be why an East Ender from London or Glasgow was prone sooner or later to bore you with hints of hardness. Fuck off and learn to appreciate the sunset, he thought, and kept up the same distracting chatter in his head in place of thought even on
the short walk after he’d left the bus until he was confronted by his own house, cosy as an egg in a nest of similar properties laid by a builder fifty years earlier.

As he pushed open the garden gate, the chatter in his head quietened leaving him with the single thought: I want to be forgiven. More than anything else he wanted to be forgiven.

He went round the side of the house and tried the kitchen door. It was unlocked. Liz must be at home. It was an old point of dispute that she never locked it. He was a compulsive locker of doors. He checked his watch; too early for Kerr to be home from school. He squinted into the empty kitchen and then closed the door softly and went on into the garden. At the corner, he stood motionless watching little birds acrobatically pecking at a container of nuts he’d hung from one of the naked branches of the cherry tree. Abruptly, he swung about, the birds flew off and he went at last into the house.

In the utility room, he kicked off his shoes and put on the slippers he kept in a box under the work surface. Going through into the hall, he hung his coat in the cupboard and had his hand out to open the front-room door when he heard the murmur of a man’s voice.

Brian Todd, his Judas-coloured hair pale in a shaft of winter sun from the window behind him, put down his coffee cup as Curle went in.

‘I’m so glad you’re back before I had to go,’ he said. ‘Your wife was just getting ready to collect your son from school.’

He was on the couch by the window, Liz in one of the easy chairs placed opposite the television.

‘If I don’t go now, I’ll be late,’ she said getting up. She looked down at Todd and said carefully, ‘I’m sure you meant to be helpful.’

Curle followed her into the hall. ‘What the hell is he doing here?’ he whispered.

‘The police have spoken to him too,’ she said in the same guardedly polite tone, like a woman concealing her symptoms from a doctor. Before he could respond, she was gone.

Curle took the seat she’d left. A dozen thoughts went through his mind. At last he said, ‘The school isn’t far away. She’ll be back in twenty minutes.’

‘Does she go for him every day?’

‘There are two main roads.’

‘Oh, yes.’

The questioning note was so faint that it might not have been there at all, yet Curle felt it as a criticism of his son. Yes, there are crossing patrols. Yes, other children come home by themselves. You didn’t lose a child, you bastard.

Stupid to say any of that.

‘I can’t imagine how you found where I lived.’

‘Looked you up in the phone book,’ Todd said.

‘We’re not in the phone book.’

Todd smiled, not at all put out. ‘You’re a public figure,’ he said easily. ‘One of my partners does work for the Arts Council. You were in one or another list of writers.’

‘I still don’t understand…’

‘Why I’m here? Like your wife said, believe it or not, I wanted to see if there was any way I could help.’

‘I don’t need help.’

Todd put his head to the side and studied him thoughtfully.

After this became intolerable, Curle said, ‘My wife tells me the police have been to see you.’

‘Two of them. The one that mattered was called Meldrum. Big chap. Grim face. He looks as if life has
disappointed him.’ He nodded as if pleased with himself. ‘I can see you recognise the description.’

‘What did he want?’

Todd made a face at the stupidity of the question. ‘They wanted to talk about that night in the pub after the National Library do.’

‘What has that got to do with me?’

‘Oh, come off it. It was all about you. They were very particular about when you left. I’m afraid I was rather vague about exactly when that might have been. It’s not the kind of thing you make a note of, not on an evening out.’

‘I still don’t see why you’ve come here.’

‘You have a view of me from school. I think what happened then mattered more to you than to me. I honestly can’t understand why you would still care about it. You’re very successful, a public figure like I said. I’ve read bits about you in the papers. Same thing with me, I’m a successful man. I’m not that boy.’ As he leaned forward his face seemed shiny with sincerity. ‘Believe me, I do want to help.’

Curle felt as if he’d been put in the wrong in some way he couldn’t quite understand. ‘Even so,’ he said, ‘I can’t see how you could.’

‘For one thing, I know what happened that night. If that’s any good to you.’

Curle felt his heart begin to pound. He forced himself to keep still. As he waited for Todd to accuse him of being with her that night – how could he know? who else knew? how could he know? – he grew afraid that the beating of his heart could be heard.

‘Thing is,’ Todd said, ‘they can’t ask questions without giving something away. By the time they’d finished I was sure there had been a murder. It wasn’t hard to check the
papers and decide which one. The bit of luck was that I recognised the byline on the newspaper report as belonging to a client of mine who hadn’t filled in a tax return for five years. He came to me after the Revenue caught up and I got him out of the mess. A phone call and he filled in the blanks – the bits that weren’t in the papers.’ He paused. It was Curle’s chance to say he didn’t want to hear any more, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. Satisfied, Todd went on, ‘She was beaten on the face and body. On the body, she’d been kicked, front and back, breasts and stomach, kicked in the kidneys, stamped on. The worst, though, was her face. Most of the bones in it were broken. With those kinds of injuries, she could have choked on her own blood, had a brain haemorrhage. One of the kicks had ruptured her spleen, she could have died of that. Whoever the killer was, he didn’t leave anything to chance. After the beating, she was choked so hard that her voice box was crushed.’

‘How could you imagine knowing any of that horror would help me?’

He felt an overwhelming desire to vomit. Bad food you could sick out of your system, bad thoughts once they were in there was no way to get rid of them. All the time Todd had been talking, he’d watched each word shaped from his mouth as though hypnotised. Without the intensity of that focus, he would have failed to catch a fleeting compression of the wide narrow lips. He was certain of the movement, but unsure at once of what it might mean, though at first he had thought it could only be the flickering suppression of a smile.

‘Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight,’ Todd said. ‘Knowing someone involved in a murder is a new experience for me.’