One of the many false starts in my life was when I tried to take up golf. My father considered golf, like the Daily Telegraph and Bell’s whisky, to be one of the essential elements of civilized male society. As in the palaeolithic era, learning to swing a club was a rite of passage. To me it was just a game, and a singularly boring one, just the sort of thing a bunch of old buffers like my dad would go in for. The last straw was the way the coach kept on about ‘working on your follow-through’. Once the ball’s gone it’s gone, I thought. How you swing your club through the air afterwards can’t make a damn bit of difference to where it ends up.
So I thought at fifteen. Now, at forty-something, I finally understood what my old golf coach meant, and as a result the following Sunday was very far from a day of rest for me. I didn’t get home until almost 2 o’clock that morning, by which time I was too exhausted to do more than verify that the tape I had taken from Clive’s house was indeed the one containing Karen’s incriminating call, and then erase it. There was a message for me on my own machine, but I felt unable to cope with any more news, either good or bad, and went straight to bed. It took true grit to set the alarm clock for 7 o’clock, but I didn’t want to botch my follow-through.
The first thing I did on awakening was return the various household items I had used to their place, having first carefully cleaned them. I devoted especial care to removing all traces of the red mud from the Wellingtons Garcia had worn at the quarry. Then it was time to take out the rubbish. I packed all the plastic sheeting, the gloves, the sponge-bag and the used packing tape into a large dustbin-liner, put it in the BMW and drove around until I found a house where building work was being done, and dumped the sack in the skip outside. Then I proceeded to the car-wash at Wolvercote roundabout, where the BMW was mechanically sluiced, mopped, hosed, scrubbed, waxed, rubbed and blown dry. Thanks to Clive’s incontinence the boot stank like a public lavatory, so I bought a litre of motor oil from the garage and poured most of the contents over the carpeting. Then I cross-threaded the cap so that it wouldn’t close properly, and tossed the container in.
Back home I phoned Karen’s mum in Liverpool. Old Elsie and I had never got on. She disapproved of her daughter’s hasty remarriage, and still more of her choice of partner. Oddly enough, Elsie was the only one with the courage to come out and speak the truth, which was that Karen should have ‘stuck to someone of her own sort’. This was a remarkable intuition. Dennis Parsons and I were not born that far apart on the social ladder, and by the time he had gone up in the world and I had gone down, the difference was as subtle, if as definitive, as that between Bordeaux and Cotes de Bordeaux. But such distinctions are second nature to women of Elsie Braithwaite’s generation. She spotted immediately that Dennis, for all his glam, was ‘Karen’s sort’, while for all my grot, I was not. Our Elsie was also a member of a fundamentalist sect which believes that making a phone call on the Sabbath constitutes an infringement of the Fourth Commandment, so I got doubly short shrift. No, I certainly couldn’t speak to Karen. Karen wasn’t there, and Elsie didn’t know what on earth had possessed me to think that she was. I made my apologies and hung up.
The action of replacing the phone triggered one of those abdominal depth-charges which are nature’s way of telling you that you’ve cocked up. Phones, the fatal row with Karen, my call to Alison, our luncheon date! While I was cavorting up the motorway in hot pursuit of Garcia, Alison would have been sitting in the restaurant where I’d arranged to meet her, glancing repeatedly at her watch while the waitresses and other customers tittered amongst themselves and whispered ‘She’s been stood up!’ No woman would easily forget or forgive such a slight, least of all Alison Kraemer. Once the facts of the case came to light, my whereabouts on the Saturday in question were bound to be a critical issue. If Alison were to inform the police that I had not only unaccountably failed to show up, but hadn’t even phoned to explain or apologize, my position would become awkward in the extreme.
I took a deep breath and called her number. The phone was answered by young Rebecca.
‘Can I speak to your mother, please?’
‘Who’s speaking?’
I hesitated.
‘Thomas Carter. It’s about the madrigal group.’
‘Hi, Tom! You sound a bit strange.’
‘I’ve got a cold. Is your mom there?’
‘She’s gone to Dorset. Grandfather’s been taken poorly.’
‘Oh I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do? She hasn’t left you there alone, has she?’
‘No, Alex and I are staying with friends. I just came over to practise. Mum will be ringing tonight. Can I give her a message?’
‘No, no, don’t bother her. It’s not urgent.’
As I hung up, I recalled the winking light on the answering machine the night before and spent five frantic minutes searching for the tape, which I had removed in order to erase the one I had taken from Clive’s.
‘I’m sorry not to reach you in person,’ said Alison’s voice, ‘but I’m forced to concede that these machines do have their uses after all, and I suppose in the circumstances it’s safe enough to leave a message.’
It took me a moment to realize that the circumstances she was referring to were Karen’s supposed trip to her mother’s. Already I was having a hard time remembering who knew which part of what story.
‘I won’t be able to make lunch today after all. My father has had a stroke, so I have to go down there and organize things. I’ll be in touch as soon as possible.’
I capered round the living room like a manic morris dancer. With luck like this, how could I lose? I snatched up the phone again and called the police. Not 999, just the number in the book. After all, this wasn’t an emergency, I told the woman who answered, at least I didn’t think so. It was probably nothing at all, in fact, there was most likely some perfectly obvious and innocent explanation, only I was just a bit worried because, well, the fact of the matter was that my wife seemed to have disappeared.
On Monday I took the portable generator back to the hire shop in High Wycombe. When I got home, the police were waiting for me in an unmarked Ford Sierra. There were two of them, a tall sturdy bearded fellow and a shorter, slighter man with the studiously glum expression of a school prefect. I’ve forgotten their names. Let’s call them Tom and Dick. Tom, the bearded one, approached me as I parked the BMW, introduced himself and his colleague, and asked if they could come in for a moment.
‘Perhaps it would be better if you sat down, sir,’ he suggested once we were inside. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got some rather bad news.’
I lowered myself into a chair. Dick appeared to engross himself in a study of the Parsons’ record collection while Tom recited his piece as though reading it from an autocue.
‘Powys police have recovered a body which they believe to be that of your wife, sir. We would like you to accompany us to Wales with a view to identifying the remains.’
‘Dead? How?’
‘The body was recovered from a reservoir, we understand.’
‘But that’s ridiculous! Kay’s an excellent swimmer. She teaches it! She’s got certificates, cups …’
Tom looked at Dick, who stuck his tongue between his upper lip and teeth and sucked hard. He was clearly longing to make some crack about it being hard to swim with a concrete post tied to your back.
We reached Llandrindod Wells, the county town, early that evening. Tom and Dick maintained a discreet silence throughout the drive, like undertaker’s assistants. Left to my own devices in the back seat, I reviewed the story I had prepared, searching for loopholes and finding none. After some backchat on the two-way radio we were met by a local police car which escorted us to the hospital where the body had been taken. I was then conducted to the mortuary chapel, where a small group of men were standing around a plinth supporting a polythene-wrapped package. One of them introduced himself as the Home Office pathologist and explained that in order to preserve continuity of evidence it was necessary for me to identify the body before they could proceed.
Two of the others undid the tape binding the package together and carefully parted the flaps so as to allow me a glimpse of the face. It was not a pretty sight. They say that in the first week of a diet you’re just shedding water, and spending thirty-six hours in a reservoir obviously has the opposite effect. Karen looked all puffy and pouchy and wrinkled, as though she’d been on a steroid treatment that had gone terribly wrong. They’d positioned me on the left side, so that the injury to the temple was invisible. Nor could I see the concrete post, though its bulk was evident, or the tow-rope binding her to it. It was all very discreet.
I nodded numbly.
‘It’s my wife.’
The two men immediately set about sealing up the package again. Poor Karen! For the past three days she’d been out of one plastic bag and into another like a bit of left-over food at the bottom of the fridge.
Tom and Dick escorted me back to the Sierra, where we were joined by a Welsh detective I shall call Harry. He was a soft, secretive man with mottled skin, and reminded me irresistibly of a toad.
‘First left at the lights, lads,’ he told the others. ‘There’s Sal’s cafe burned out since she left the deep-fryer on all night and now it’s going to be a Wimpy. Just up here on the right, past the antique shop. Couple from London bought it last year, ever so nice but I can’t see how they’ll make a go of it with the prices they charge.’
At local police headquarters Tom and Dick went off to the canteen while Harry led me into a bare room rather like an old-fashioned doctor’s surgery. I sat in the patient’s chair and Harry went off in search of someone called Dai. He offered to fetch me something to eat, but I declined, feeling that a man who had just viewed his wife’s corpse shouldn’t have an appetite. Dai turned out to be a bluff, cheery man with a red face, like a reporter for the local farmers’ gazette. He sat down beside Harry on the other side of the desk, opened a large notebook and licked his pencil as though it were a lollipop.
‘We just want to get your side of the story,’ Harry explained, ‘for the record.’
I repeated the account of events I had given the police the day before. Karen had told me that she was going to spend the weekend in Liverpool with her mother. On Saturday morning I had driven her to Oxford station and seen her off on the train. I then returned home and spent the day alone. When I phoned Liverpool the next morning, my mother-in-law told me that Karen was not there, and that she had not been expecting her.
‘Why did you phone then?’ asked Harry casually.
‘I noticed an announcement in the Sunday paper about a concert I particularly wanted to go to. It would have meant I wouldn’t be home when Kay got back, so I wanted to check that she had her keys and so on.’
Harry nodded while his colleague busily scribbled away in shorthand.
‘So you took your wife to the station on Saturday morning at about nine thirty, and phoned her mother at about the same time on Sunday. And in between?’
‘I didn’t see her.’
‘What about other people?’
‘I was at home all day, apart from going for a walk in the late afternoon.’
‘You were on your own the whole time, then?’
‘Well there were other people out on Port Meadow, of course, but no one I recognized.’
‘No one came to the house or spoke to you on the phone?’
‘No.’
Harry nodded.
‘Only we’ve got to ask, see, because of this alleged kidnapping.’
‘You think someone kidnapped Karen?’
‘No, no. We’ve got a man here, see, Phillips is the name, claims to have been locked in the boot of a car and turned loose in the mountains round this way on Saturday night.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘Well, you see, he says you did it.’
I pshawed. You don’t often get a chance to pshaw these days, and I made the most of it.
‘That’s preposterous! I don’t even know any Mr … Just a minute. What did you say his name was?’
‘Phillips.’
‘Not Clive Phillips?’
Harry’s face lit up, as though all our problems were now solved.
‘Ah, you know him!’
‘Clive? Of course we do! Karen’s first husband was his accountant. They were quite close. Actually we haven’t seen much of him since our marriage. I particularly didn’t care for his manner with Karen.’
‘How was that, then?’
‘Well, it’s hard to describe. He had a way of treating her as though she were still single.’
Harry took out a packet of Silk Cut.
‘Smoke?’
‘I don’t, thanks. Perhaps it would have been different if we’d had children. Without them it’s all a bit theoretical, isn’t it? Not that Karen seemed to mind, about Clive I mean. But I found it all in rather poor taste.’
‘Kiddies are a blessing in disguise all right,’ Harry agreed.
‘Karen said she didn’t want them. It was out of the question of course, with my vasectomy.’
The beauty of the dead, I was beginning to realize, is that you cannot just speak ill of them, you can say what the hell you like without the slightest fear of contradiction.
‘If only we could have had a family,’ I went on. ‘At least there would be something of her left behind …’
I broke down. Mugs of tea and packets of biscuits were produced. I gradually pulled myself together.
‘Where exactly was she found?’ I asked Harry.
‘Up Rhayader way.’
‘Rhayader? That’s odd.’
He looked at me expectantly.
‘Oh, it’s just a coincidence, but we stayed there once, you see. At the Elan Valley Lodge. Last September, it was, just before we got engaged. Lovely spot. I’ll always remember the walks we took together …’
Out came the hankie again. While my head was lowered, I tried to think if there was anything else I wanted the police to know. They could surely be trusted to discover that Karen and Clive had been booked into the same hotel the previous weekend, and that the deposit had been secured on one of her credit cards. I couldn’t think of any way to communicate the fact of Karen’s interesting condition, but that would presumably come to light during the post-mortem that was currently in progress. I had mentioned my vasectomy, so once they found out that Karen had been pregnant, it was going to be a clear case of cherchez l’homme. They wouldn’t have far to look.
‘Right, that’ll do for now,’ Harry told me. ‘I wonder where those two lads from Kidlington have got to. You’re not planning on leaving the Oxford area, I take it? Only we may need to get in touch again, see. It’s a pity no one saw you that Saturday. Someone you know, I mean. Someone who could …’
The words ‘… provide you with a much-needed alibi, failing which you are liable to find yourself in dead lumber with regard to this one, John’ hung almost visibly in the air.
I once lived in a flat whose previous tenant kept an incontinent dog. The Parsonage stank of its former owners in much the same way as that flat did of dog piss, and eventually I could stand it no longer. I knew that clearing out my late wife’s possessions so soon after her death wasn’t the coolest possible thing to do, but I hadn’t gone to all that effort just to end up entombed in a perpetual monument to the Parsons’ trashy lifestyle. I needed open vistas and unfettered horizons. So the following Monday, a week after my return trip to Wales, I gathered some of the most offensive items together and took them to a charity shop in Summertown.
There was still no clear indication of the line the police were taking with regard to Karen’s death. I had heard nothing from either Kidlington or Llandrindod Wells, and the newspaper reports were sketchy in the extreme. An inquest was opened on the Thursday following my trip to Wales, and promptly adjourned to allow the police to pursue their investigations. But beyond the fact that they were treating the case as one of murder and that a senior officer had been brought in to ‘head up’ the inquiry, little detail emerged.
I had phoned Alison several times during this period, but luckily she was still away tending her aged relative. Until I knew which way the police were going to jump I wanted to keep my options open. The less I told Alison about what had happened, the easier it would be to change my story later if the need arose.
I was in the shower, scouring away the smell of the charity shop with a Badedas body rub, when the doorbell chimed. It’s just like the ads say, I thought, things happen. But when I went to the door in a terrytowel bathrobe, I found not a blonde astride a white steed, but Harry.
‘All right?’ he said.
I assumed this meant ‘Are you coming quietly or do I have to use the cuffs?’
‘I’ll just get dressed,’ I said.
‘Fair enough. Only it won’t take a moment.’
His tone seemed to suggest that he wasn’t there to arrest me. ‘All right?’ I belatedly remembered, was simply the Welsh for ‘How are you?’
‘I’m just down this way to tie up a few of the loose ends,’ he went on, ‘so I thought I’d drop by and put you in the picture. We haven’t given it to the media yet, but now we’ve got the confession it’s all over bar the shouting.’
‘Come in,’ I said.
Still feeling shocked, I poured myself a whisky. Harry accepted a bottle of beer.
‘It was finding the spare tyre in that quarry that did it,’ he explained. ‘Up until then he’d denied everything, but when we showed him the telex from Kidlington he broke down. “I suppose I must have done it,” he said. Near to tears he was. It’s a great relief, you know, getting it off your chest.’
‘Yes, it must be.’
For a moment I found myself wondering if Clive really had murdered Karen. Not only did the police think so, but so did Clive himself, apparently. Well, he should know, shouldn’t he? It was difficult to say what had really happened. My own memories remained clear enough but they were no longer attached to that invisible but solid backing by which we distinguish fact from fancy. They were floating free, just another version of events, perfectly possible, although not quite as plausible as the official account.
Harry now claimed that Clive’s kidnapping story had never been taken seriously. That wasn’t the impression I had received when he questioned me in Llandrindod Wells, but I didn’t say anything. At some point in that last week, a policy shift had taken place which effectively ruled me out of contention as a suspect. At the time, of course, I had no way of knowing what had caused this. Nor did I care. If Harry wanted to rewrite history in the light of this new approach, I certainly wasn’t going to embarrass him by pointing out the inconsistencies.
There was one more role I had to play, however, namely the distraught widower who having barely recovered from the shock of his wife’s tragic death now learns that she was murdered by a family friend with whom she had been carrying on a clandestine love affair and by whom she was pregnant at the time of her death. I think we can dispense with a blow-by-blow account of this, the predictable emotions (disbelief turning to indignation and disgust), the predictable lines (‘Do you mean to tell me, Inspector …’). It was a lousy part and I did it justice with a lousy performance. It didn’t matter. Now Clive had confessed his guilt, my act of innocence could be as amateurish as I liked. The critics had gone home, the reviews were in. I was a smash. Clive had bombed.
It was very satisfying to learn that all the clues I’d left had been painstakingly uncovered. Karen’s suitcase and handbag had been recovered from the reservoir, revealing both the victim’s identity and the fact that she had a single ticket to Banbury rather than a return to Liverpool. Forensic analysis revealed traces of fibres from her clothing in the boot of Clive’s car. Paint scrapings from the Lotus confirmed that it had been on the bridge from which the body had been dumped and also at the quarry from which the concrete post had been taken, and where the spare wheel had been abandoned in order to make room for the body of Clive’s murdered mistress.
‘But why did he kill her, Inspector? In God’s name, why?’
‘Apparently they’d planned to go away together for the weekend. That much he admitted right from the start. He didn’t know about her being in the family way, he says. She was only a couple of months pregnant, so most likely she’d been saving the news up till they were alone together. But somehow she blurted it out right away, and he took it badly. Words turned to blows, and …’
I shook my head.
‘I suppose I should hate him, but I just can’t. All I feel is this tremendous pity for both of them. Do you think that very wrong of me?’
Harry smiled a long, wan, lingering smile, expressive of his familiarity with every freak and foible of human nature. He waggled his glass from side to side.
‘You wouldn’t ever have another of these, would you?’
The mills of British justice grind so slowly that the trial did not take place until almost a year later, but since it represented the conclusion to the events I have just described it seems appropriate to include it here. The digression will be a brief one. When Regina v. Clive Phillips finally reached the courts, it was no contest. Regina cleaned up in straight sets. She hardly dropped a point. Clive was totally outclassed.
Considered as a spectator sport, the trial actually had more in common with cricket than with tennis: long stretches of appalling tedium which so numb the mind that you miss the occasional rare moments of interest. The proceedings invariably started late and were continually being adjourned on some pretext or other. I spent much of my time with Karen’s brother Jim, a car salesman from Southampton, who was representing the family. Jim’s line on his sister’s death was that it was ‘a shocking thing, quite shocking’. He reiterated this with the forceful delivery of a public bar philosopher delivering his considered opinion on the topic of the day. I gradually gathered that the most shocking thing about it from Jim’s point of view was all the commission he was losing. The reason I cultivated him was that he turned out to be very handy at seeing off the various journalists who pestered me.
Following the news of Clive’s arrest, I had been approached by several tabloids offering considerable sums of money for my ‘story’. To be honest, I was tempted. I mean if we’re talking enterprise culture then dumping Karen, framing Clive and selling the rights for?50,000 is definitely the way to go. Unfortunately I had to decline, as this would have put paid for ever to my chances with Alison. During the trial the reporters took their revenge by continually yapping at my heels, trying to provoke me to some riposte they could quote for free. My strategy was to repeat dully that I had no statement to make, but this was very taxing, and I was grateful for Jim’s intervention. He took a more direct line. ‘Look, piss off! All right? Just piss off!’ This may not sound very clever, but it worked. If I’d said it, they wouldn’t have taken a blind bit of notice, but Jim’s manner carried conviction. The hacks worked for the house journal of British vulgarity; Jim was a majority shareholder. When he told them to piss off, they pissed.
The reason the trial dragged on so long was that at the last minute Clive decided to repudiate his confession and plead not guilty. I had expected the proceedings to be a mere formality in which Clive’s confession would be rubber-stamped and converted into a life sentence, but I now faced the prospect of a Perry Mason courtroom drama in which my appearance in the witness box would be exploited by the defence to highlight my own ambiguous position. A succession of surprise witnesses would then be produced, while clever cross-examination left me impaled on my own contradictions. Clive’s counsel would deftly and authoritatively demonstrate the reversability of every shred of evidence against his client, revealing that warp was in fact woof and vice versa. I would end up breaking down in tears, confessing to everything and begging to be locked up for my own good, while Clive walked free without a stain on his character.
It wasn’t anything like that, of course. True, when I was cross-examined after giving evidence for the prosecution, counsel did touch on the question of what I had done that Saturday after seeing Karen off on the train, but this was the merest professional habit, the result of a lifetime spent sowing doubt in jurors’ minds, for which he was peremptorily called to order after an objection by the prosecution.
Judging by the looks of coherent hatred he lasered across the courtroom at me, Clive must have worked out the truth by now, but it didn’t do him any good. Rather the opposite, in fact. You could tell that prison life didn’t really suit Clive. He looked not just older but also weaker, internally damaged, structurally unsound, as though some vital load-bearing element had collapsed. Not the least part of his torment must have been the discovery that the truth was not a marketable commodity in his current situation. His legal representatives were prepared to reverse the plea, if he insisted, but not on the basis of his having been kidnapped by myself and A. N. Other. The jury would never buy anything as far-fetched as that.
Instead, his counsel opted for damage limitation. He accepted that his client had met Karen off the train at Banbury, that they had set off together in his car, and that Clive had subsequently attempted to dispose of her body in the reservoir. Where he begged to differ from the prosecution was over the question of how she had met her death. To bring in a verdict of murder, he reminded the jury, they would have to be convinced that the evidence proved beyond all reasonable doubt that Clive had assaulted his victim with deadly intent. A pathologist for the defence would testify that the injury from which she died was consistent with those which might be sustained in the course of a road accident, while evidence before the court would show that the near-side wing of the Lotus had been badly damaged, indicating that it had been involved in a serious collision.
In his summing-up, prosecuting counsel treated this argument with the contempt it deserved.
‘It would no doubt be possible to construct an almost infinite number of ingenious scenarios which more or less fit the facts. But if you look at the situation not in the abstract but in the flesh, not as a theoretical problem but as a human reality, taking into account the cold-blooded and methodical manner in which the defendant acted after the victim’s death, then you may well conclude that his original account of the circumstances surrounding that event, as contained in the signed confession which he made to the police, is considerably more plausible than this belated and ignoble attempt to evade responsibility for his loathesome crime.’
They did. Clive got fifteen years and a stern rebuke from the judge for wasting everyone’s time. The police were complimented on their speedy and efficient handling of the case.
Life is polyphonic, narrative monodic, as I had occasion to remark one evening at Alison’s. There were eight of us to dinner, including a local purveyor of up-market crime fiction who monopolized both the wine and the conversation, to say nothing of ogling our hostess in a way I found extremely distasteful. My response was the donnish strategy of rubbishing by implication. To suggest that he was a second-rate writer, although true, would have been unacceptable. To argue that writing fiction is a trivial pursuit of interest only to second-rate minds, precisely because this is evident nonsense, was perfectly legitimate.
To confound the fellow further I illustrated my argument with a musical analogy, asserting that a horizontal medium such as narrative could offer only a faint and passing allusion to, or rather illusion of (appreciative laughter), life’s vertical complexities, like the implied harmonies in Bach’s works for solo violin. Human experience, however, was not a matter of one or two voices but a veritable Spem in alium (ripple of recognition, real or feigned) of whose contrapuntal complexities fiction could never be more than a hollow travesty.
It never occurred to me that the boot would so soon be on the other foot and that I myself would be struggling with the intractable limitations of narrative. For in my attempt to describe fully and clearly the events which followed my discovery of Karen’s body that Friday night I have necessarily omitted everything which did not directly bear on these developments, in particular their effect on my relationship with Alison. Each new detail which emerged — Karen’s violent death, her illicit pregnancy, Clive’s involvement in both — amounted to another brick in the wall which the affair was erecting between us. When such a garish light was being cast on the activities of people close to me, I myself was inevitably lit up in an undesirable way. PLOs (‘persons like ourselves’, known as ‘people like us’ to those who aren’t, quite) instinctively shun anything and anyone which attracts general attention, from star tenors to vogue foods, let alone the subject of lurid articles appearing in the popular press under such headlines as SEX KILLING HUSBAND STERILE, POLICE TOLD.
But once both Karen and Clive had, in their different ways, been buried, the situation changed dramatically. The very factors which had made Alison take her distance from me earlier became a source of allurement once the whole affair was safely relegated to the past. Old scandals are as much a credit to a good family as new ones are an embarrassment. To the public, the dramatic termination of my marriage was a nine days’ wonder, soon forgotten for fresh sensations, but for Alison and me it was a secret we shared, an ordeal we had come through and which brought us closer together, while making it proper for us to be close.
Even so, we were circumspect about it. The public might have forgotten, but our friends hadn’t, and it was their judgement which would ultimately make or break us as a couple. This was not some reckless and torrid romance in which we would live for and through each other, letting the world go wag. We were both too old and wise to have any wish to run off to a desert island together. On the contrary, the basis of our mutual attraction was a feeling that the other was a suitable partner to share the lives we already led. I didn’t want Alison in the abstract, divorced from the rich and varied habitat which sustained her. Nor would she have wished to be wanted in that way. She would have found such adoration meaningless, and slightly disturbing. Our relationship not only had to be blameless, it had to be pronounced such by a jury of our peers. We had to be seen to have behaved correctly.
Our initial encounters were thus fairly furtive affairs, usually taking the form of trips to concerts and plays in London, where we could be reasonably sure of not being seen together by anyone we knew. Occasionally we risked going out to eat locally, and it was in the course of one such evening that our secret was finally revealed when we found ourselves sitting two tables away from a group including Thomas and Lynn Carter.
It was all rather awkward at first, with a good deal of pretending not to pretend not to be looking at each other. Finally Thomas came over and sat down with us. He pointed to Alison’s untouched portion of zuppa inglese.
‘Aren’t you going to eat that?’
‘Well no, actually.’
He seized a spoon and tucked in.
‘Call me Autolycus.’
‘I don’t get it,’ I said.
‘I do,’ sighed Alison. ‘And it’s terrible.’
Thomas fixed me with a merry eye.
‘ “A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles”. I didn’t know you two were seeing each other.’
‘We’re not,’ said Alison. ‘At least, we are, but …’
‘Well we are,’ I said. ‘Aren’t we?’
‘Well it depends what you mean.’
Realizing that he’d put his foot into wet cement, Thomas adroitly changed the subject to some problem involving the next meeting of the madrigal group.
A few days later Alison and I received invitations to dinner at the Carters’ the following weekend. The invitations were separate, but from the moment we arrived it was clear that we’d been invited as a couple. The other guests were a historian from Balliol whose wife sang with the group, and a senior editor at the University Press whose Dutch husband worked at the European nuclear research project near Abingdon. I was flattered by the quality of the company, and still more by the fact that Thomas had not invited any of the folk I’d met through Dennis and Karen. It was as if he wanted to make clear that that phase of my life was now over.
In return for his thoughtfulness I made a special effort to charm the other guests. The Dutch physicist, though a man of few words, was perfectly pleasant, and his wife was warm and witty, with a fund of anecdotes about a dictionary project she was supervising. The problem was the other couple. The wife was the classic North Oxford matriarch, that formidable combination of nag and nanny, like an intellectual Margaret Thatcher. She was undoubtedly the power behind the Chair her husband held, but he was an even thornier proposition. Eccentric as the comparison may appear, Oxford dons always used to remind me of gauchos, proud and touchy, wary and taciturn, their emotions concealed beneath the rigid code of etiquette demanded by a society where everyone carries a knife and is ready to use it at the least provocation. In such company the simplest and most casual remark is apt to draw a challenging glare and a demand to know your sources. It’s wiser not to say how nice the weather’s been, unless you work for the Meteorological Office. Despite your interlocutor’s fame and erudition, you mustn’t expect him to say anything remotely interesting. He has nothing to prove, above all to the likes of you. Don’t make the mistake of asking about his work, either. There are only four people in the world capable of understanding what he does, and he’s no longer speaking to three of them. And don’t for Christ’s sake mention yours, unless you want to be shown to the tradesmen’s entrance.
No, the only safe topic is gardening. Don’t ask why but there it is. You don’t need to know much about it, though a bluffer’s level acquaintance with the local flora won’t come amiss. But all that’s really required is to show interest and throw in the odd phrase like ‘My hydrangeas are very late this year’ or ‘Do you find tea roses take in this sandy soil?’ Not a big effort, then, and one I was quite prepared to make in the interests of cultivating a smooth and personable image. I’m happy to be able to report that it was most effective. One doesn’t expect conversation in England to flow, but this one oozed quite satisfactorily. Within a week Alison and I had been invited to sip sherry in North Oxford and drink gin in Abingdon. We were launched.
Everyone agreed that we were a delightful couple, perfectly attuned in some respects, piquantly complementary in others. If I had been less generous or astute I might have begrudged the time I had spent cultivating the likes of Karen and Dennis Parsons. But I was well aware that I was only regarded as a natural partner for Alison because I had money. Cash alone wouldn’t have made me acceptable, of course, but no charm, wit or patient attention to tedious monologues and appreciative laughter at stale jokes could ever have made up for the lack of it. As it was, the only obstacle to my complete conquest of Alison Kraemer appeared to be the implacable hostility of her daughter. Rebecca had taken against me with the passionate intensity of her age. I was yuck, I was gross, I was everything that was not awesome, radical, trif, wicked, lush and crucial. Alison in turn felt unable, so she claimed, to proceed further until her daughter’s opposition had been overcome. She just couldn’t, not while Rebecca felt the way she did, she just wouldn’t feel right. It never occurred to me to doubt that Alison would have come across if I’d pressed a bit harder, but that was just what I didn’t want to do. I’d done more than my share of pushing and shoving at fortune’s wheel recently. Now it was time to sit back patiently and let events take their course.
Karen’s death had made me a rich man, and after consultations with a financial expert recommended by Thomas I made a number of investments, the results of which astonished me. I’d had no idea until then that you could make more money doing absolutely nothing than you could in even the best-paid job. There was no point in my looking for work, not with the amount I was earning from the money I already had. Nevertheless I needed a cover. When people ask what you do, it’s simply not on, at least in the circles in which Alison and I revolved, to reply, ‘I sit at home in front of the TV while my brokers perform obscenely profitable operations with my accumulated capital.’ To provide myself with an acceptable occupation, I sank?30,000 in an investment which was, in a sense, to prove the most rewarding of all.
Following Clive’s conviction and sentence, the management of his business concerns had passed to his sister, a nurse who had no knowledge of or interest in EFL work. She therefore agreed to a buy-out proposal from a group of teachers at the school, who attempted to run the place as a co-operative. This lasted less than six months. What the teachers hadn’t realized was that the secret of the school’s success had not been their professional excellence but Clive’s unscrupulous and ruthless management, which they were neither willing nor able to emulate. That’s where I came in.
Buying a controlling interest in the OILC afforded me the greatest possible satisfaction. Besides giving me a colourable occupation — I appointed myself to the position of Director, while leaving the actual day-to-day running of the place to a salaried subordinate — it completed my revenge for the insults and injuries I had sustained in the past. Clive might have had my wife, but I had his school. I knew this would hurt him far more than Karen’s infidelity had hurt me. Everything he had lied and cheated and scrounged and gouged to create had been handed to me on a plate, as one more item in my varied and lucrative portfolio.
I soon turned the fortunes of the school around again by applying the methods I had learned the hard way from Clive himself. I offered the teachers a 25 per cent cut in wages and a one-year contract on the previous terms. Those who objected were dismissed. I then flew to Italy and tracked down Clive’s recruitment agent, who had switched to another school when the co-operative refused to pay his cut. In return for a percentage increase and a substantial cash incentive up front he agreed to forsake all others and cleave unto me. After that it was just a matter of finding an anal-obsessive martinet with a sadistic streak to act as administrator, while I swanned in from time to time and played at being busy. I remember my friend Carlos telling me that the difference between North and South Americans is that for the former power means being able to do whatever you want, while for the latter it means being able to prevent others doing what they want. At the time I was too much of a gringo to grasp the attractions of this kind of power, but as I lay back in Clive’s swivel chair, my feet up on Clive’s desk, admiring the view from Clive’s window, I finally understood. It is simply the most exquisite and luxurious sensation that life can afford, the ultimate peak experience.
And I had in fact peaked, although of course I didn’t see it that way. In the two years following my belated conversion to the doctrine of self-help and free enterprise my life had changed out of all recognition. There seemed no reason to suppose that the changes would stop there. On the contrary, I was full of plans and projects of every kind. Alison and I were ineluctably drawing closer together, and our complete union appeared to be just a matter of time. I dreamed of a large gothic revival mansion overlooking the Parks, where Alison would preside with effortless grace over the elaborate rituals of North Oxford social life. At other times I found myself attracted to the idea of a manor house in a Cotswold village, a gem of classic restraint and rustic charm where we would keep dogs and horses. Then there would be long lazy summers at the cottage in the Dordogne, and, once Rebecca was off our hands, impromptu trips to Venice and Vienna, to Mauritius and Morocco.
Nor were these mere idle fantasies. We had the money, we had the freedom, and even more important we had the taste and the style, the breadth of vision, the experience. But they were to count for nothing, and all because of a man named Hugh Starkey.
If a dramatist were to take the liberty of ascribing what Aristotle calls the catastrophe — an apt enough term in this case — to a totally extraneous character who pops up from nowhere towards the end of the last act, he would rightly be ridiculed. Life does it all the time, though. Forget anything I may have said about the reasons for my present circumstances. The disastrous turn which events were about to take was due not to anything I did or failed to do, but to a man I never even met.
In August 1988 a group of masked men ambushed a Securicor van in Wolverhampton, seriously injuring one of the guards. Following a tip-off from an informant, Hugh Starkey was picked up for questioning and later charged. Starkey was a minor-league villain from the Handsworth area of Birmingham with a long and uninspiring record of rubbishy offences like holding up petrol stations, extorting protection money from Asian and Chinese restaurateurs and breaking into bonded warehouses. While in police custody he signed a remarkably full and copious confession, naming the other members of the gang and citing a string of other unsolved crimes for which they were responsible. So forthcoming had he been, in fact, that it was widely assumed he had done a deal with the authorities in return for a reduced sentence. Much to everyone’s surprise, when the case came to court Starkey drew a baker’s dozen just like the men he had informed on.
About two years later, while Clive Phillips was awaiting trial for murder, our Hugh got a break. In the course of inquiries into a string of supermarket holdups, Greater Manchester police discovered incontrovertible evidence that on the day the Securicor van had been attacked Starkey had been on their patch, taking part in an abortive attempt to rob a Gateway supermarket in Salford. Security cameras mounted over the entrance had videoed him and two other men as they fled. This didn’t do much to improve Hugh Starkey’s image as an upstanding member of the community, but it was extremely embarrassing for the police force which had charged him with the Wolverhampton job. The Home Secretary ordered an inquiry, which discovered among other things that a number of passages had been inserted into Starkey’s confession after it had been signed. Disciplinary proceedings were brought against various senior officers, including a certain Chief Inspector Manningtree, who had transferred from the squad six months after Starkey’s arrest because his wife was ill and wanted to return to her native Wales. When the police in Rhayader discovered that they had a full-scale murder hunt on their hands, they asked headquarters to send up someone with the necessary experience to handle the case, and who better than a man who had served for five years in a big city Serious Crimes Squad?
When these facts came to light, Clive’s solicitor was engaged in the thankless task of preparing to lodge an appeal against his client’s conviction. In the absence of any new evidence or witnesses he knew this was a total waste of time. Clive stoutly maintained that he had signed a limited confession under duress, and that this had subsequently been doctored to include statements he had never made. Until now his solicitor had never believed this himself, let alone felt that there was the slightest chance of getting anyone else to do so. The Hugh Starkey scandal changed all that. Within weeks a lively media campaign was underway. The quality papers ran thoughtful, heart-searching articles expressing grave and widespread anxieties concerning the present system of policing, while the tabloids slammed and blasted their readers into a state of outraged moral indignation. From one end of the land to the other, the air was redolent with the stink of bent filth.
The first I knew of all this was during one of my occasional walkabouts at the school. Keep everyone on their toes was the idea. I knew it was no use trying to treat the staff as responsible adults. They wouldn’t be working for me if they were. In the teachers’ room I noticed an article pinned to the notice-board with three large felt-tipped exclamation marks beside it. It had been cut out of one of the local free papers. The headline read RESERVOIR VICTIM’S FIRST HUSBAND ALSO DIED MYSTERIOUSLY.
With the help of large photographs of Karen, Dennis, the house in Ramillies Drive, the Elan Valley and the Cherwell boathouse, the ‘exclusive’ article covered a two-page spread. ‘Our own reporter’ first summarized the events leading up to Clive’s conviction and then the ‘recent developments which have created demands for the case to be reopened’. But most of the article was devoted to what was termed ‘an astonishing oversight’ by the police, namely their failure to note the ‘disturbing parallels’ between the circumstances of Karen’s death and that of her first husband, ‘local Chartered Accountant and Rotary Club stalwart Dennis Parsons’.
Since these parallels amounted to no more than the banal coincidence that both Karen and Dennis had ended up in the water, one was initially left with the impression that the article was a feeble attempt to fake a sensational breakthrough where none existed. But the facts as printed were so scanty in relation to the claims being made that another solution eventually forced itself on this reader at least. The ‘disturbing parallel’ was not the one which the reporter described, but one which he could not mention for fear of legal action: my involvement in both deaths. My name was mentioned only once — in the caption beneath the photo of the house, where I was identified as the present owner of a property ‘marked by death’ — but my absence hovered over the whole article like a malign spirit.
I have no doubt whatever that this piece was ghost-written by ‘our own reporter’ to a scenario supplied by Clive through his solicitor. The rag in which it appeared was after all an advertising medium, for sale by the column, page or spread. Clive’s advertisement merely took a rather unusual form, that’s all. There was no follow-up in the legitimate press, and I forgot all about the incident until a few weeks later, when my answering machine recorded a call from a Chief Inspector Moss, or some such name.
It was a grey, gloomy day with a bitterly cold easterly wind which had brought the pavement out in grease spots. I had been out for a walk along the canal, and I got home feeling depressed and bewildered, full of disgust for myself and others. In this state of mind the message from the police seemed less alarming than it might otherwise have done. If I had been enjoying the fruits of my crimes more, I might have felt guiltier about them. As it was, I was so miserable that I might as well have been innocent. I called back and made an appointment to see Moss the following morning.
I left the BMW at a cash-and-flash car park and walked to St Aldate’s police station, where I was led upstairs to an interview room on the second floor. A paunchy, balding bloke in his mid-fifties sat doing a crossword puzzle. As I entered, he started whistling a phrase which I recognized with some surprise as the Fate motif from Wagner’s Ring cycle. On the desk in front of him lay a number of folders bulging with typed papers.
Moss stared at me for some time as though considering how best to proceed.
‘Several months ago, Clive Reginald Phillips was tried and convicted for the murder of your wife,’ he finally said. ‘Due to various irregularities in the investigative procedure which have recently come to light, that conviction has been ruled unsafe and is about to be set aside.’
I started gasping, as though I’d just run all the way from North Oxford.
‘This will entail various practical consequences,’ Moss went on gloomily. ‘One, of course, is that Phillips will be released from prison.’
‘But he murdered my wife!’
‘I wouldn’t go around saying things like that if I were you, sir. You could find yourself facing charges for criminal libel.’
‘It’s enough to make you despair of British justice!’ I cried, writhing about tormentedly in my chair.
‘Another consequence is that the file on the case will have to be re-examined. Since the Force originally concerned is now the subject of disciplinary action, we in the Thames Valley Police have been asked to take on the task of reviewing the evidence and deciding what further action, if any, to recommend.
He lifted a file from the desk.
‘I have to say that one or two items here appear to corroborate the version of events which Mr Phillips gave at the outset. For example there’s this florist’s assistant who was collecting a Red Star delivery from Banbury station. He remembers seeing two cars parked in the forecourt, one of them a yellow sports car and the other a, quote, red Alfa Romeo, unquote. He was then shown a photograph of a BMW like the one you drive, and he said yes, that was it, he could tell one of those Alfas anywhere.’
I said nothing.
‘Another witness, who was meeting his aunt off the Oxford train, not only confirmed the presence of this second car, but also identified Clive Phillips from a photograph as one of the two men sitting in it having what he described as “a loud argument”.’
‘But none of this was mentioned at the trial!’
‘Quite so, sir. Transcripts of these interviews were communicated by us to our colleagues in Wales, but in the light of the overwhelming evidence of Phillips’s guilt they apparently didn’t consider them relevant to the investigation.’
The door opened to reveal a WPC pushing a trolley laden with styrofoam mugs of tea and coffee.
‘ “Ye blessed souls, that taste the something something of felicity!” declaimed Moss fruitily. ‘Tea for me, please Fliss, since there’s nothing stronger. How about you, sir?’
‘Coffee,’ I croaked.
‘ “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons …” ’
‘It’s a bit early in the morning for Eliot,’ I snapped.
‘A matter of taste,’ Moss replied, patting the woman constable’s bottom as she left. ‘Personally I have excellent taste in poetry, women, music, beer and crime. And I have to say that this business doesn’t do a thing for me. Ah!’
He swooped down on his newspaper.
‘The solution was staring me in the face all along. Simple, really.’
I’d had enough of this cat-and-mouse game.
‘Excuse me, Inspector, but what exactly was it you wished to speak to me about?’
Moss finished filling in his crossword and sipped his tea noisily.
‘Well, sir, the last thing we want to do is waste a lot of time reinvestigating this case when the identity of the murderer has in fact already been established beyond a reasonable doubt.’
He was inviting me to confess! I felt I was going to faint.
‘I’d like to call my solicitor,’ I muttered.
‘What we must remember,’ Moss told the ceiling, ‘is that just because Phillips is being released, that doesn’t mean he’s innocent.’
I stared at him open-mouthed.
‘It doesn’t?’
‘Of course not. All the review board has said is that he wasn’t given a fair trial. It’s entirely a matter of speculation what the outcome might have been if he had.’
‘But that’s ridiculous! You mean a guilty man could be set free because of some technical detail?’
‘Happens all the time. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about that, but we do try and prevent the innocent being persecuted as a result. Now if the case were to be reopened, it would of course be very distressing for everyone concerned, especially yourself. We fully appreciate that. And that’s why I just wanted to check that you’re absolutely sure there’s no one who could verify that you were in Oxford on the Saturday in question. If there was, you see, then I could virtually guarantee the matter would go no further.’
I finally understood. As far as the police were concerned, the significance of Clive’s release depended on whether or not the investigation was reopened. If it wasn’t, everyone would assume that Clive had been freed on a mere technicality, in which case the slur on the police would also remain purely technical. They’d got the right man, even if they’d used the wrong methods. So the boys in blue were pulling together. All Moss wanted to do was to bury the case discreetly, to write it off as a botched job with no moral opprobrium attached. If he was to do that, he needed me to have an alibi. So why didn’t I do us both a favour and go and get one, eh?
Fair enough, I thought. I can take a hint.
‘Actually, what I told the police earlier was not strictly true,’ I murmured. ‘I did see someone that day, but I didn’t like to mention it because … well, it was a woman.’
Moss nodded sympathetically.
‘To be perfectly honest, I had taken advantage of my wife’s absence to see a dear friend of mine who … There was absolutely nothing between us, but, well, you can imagine how it would have looked at the time.’
‘And the lady’s name, sir?’
‘Kraemer. Alison Kraemer.’
Moss noted it down in the margin of one of the papers.
‘I’ll need to speak to her in the next day or two. It won’t take long, just a formality really. Then we shouldn’t need to bother you again.’
He turned back to his crossword.
‘ “The iceman buyeth not his round.” Five letters starting with a C. A rather over-elaborate clue, I’d say. The trademark of an amateur.’
‘Fine, fine. And you? Really? Good. Super. Listen, I was wondering if we could get together some time soon. There’s something I need to ask you. It’s a bit urgent, actually.’
I was standing in a glass phone booth amid the roar of traffic in the Westgate one-way system. Alison’s voice reached me as though from a great distance. The air was milder there, the vegetation lusher. Somewhere in the background a piano was playing.
‘Can you come to lunch?’
The meal was the same as on the day we first met: omelette, salad, cheese and bread. The food wasn’t quite as good as it had been in France — the best money could buy, rather than just the best — but the real drawback from my point of view was that we were a threesome. It was half-term, and Rebecca was kicking her heels around the house. To try and break the ice which formed whenever she was around, I asked her if she was interested in crossword puzzles.
‘If they’re difficult enough,’ returned the pert gamine.
‘How about this? “The iceman buyeth not his round.” Five letters beginning with a C. I just can’t get it.’
Rebecca wrinkled her nose.
‘The reference to O’Neill is clear enough. Too clear, in fact. Probably a red herring. Oh drat, I shall have to think about it,’ she concluded world-wearily, getting up from the table.
‘Don’t forget your French essay,’ Alison called after her.
‘J’essaierai!’
‘Isn’t she amazing?’ I said with feigned warmth.
Alison smiled deprecatingly.
‘They all are at that age. It’s easy to be amazing. What’s difficult is to settle down to being ordinary. I fancy Rebecca may find that quite a struggle.’
She rose to make coffee.
‘So what was it you wanted to ask me?’
I laughed lightly.
‘It’s a bit of a bore, I’m afraid. The thing is, the police have been in touch. It’s quite incredible. Apparently there was some irregularity in the way the case against Clive Phillips was prepared, and as a result he’s being set free. It’s a total travesty of justice, of course. No one has the slightest doubt about his guilt, but because the correct procedures weren’t observed they have to let him go.’
‘How appalling!’
‘What’s even worse is that the Crown Prosecution Service is considering reopening the case. The police very decently warned me about this in advance, and asked if there was anyone who could vouch for the fact that I was in Oxford on the day Karen disappeared.’
‘To give you an alibi, you mean?’
I laughed.
‘Well I suppose that’s the legal term, but it’s just a formality really. I mean no one’s accusing me of anything, least of all the police. But they’ve got to go through the motions, you see, even though they know perfectly well that Phillips was responsible for Karen’s death.’
Alison brought two miniature Deruta cups brimming with espresso coffee.
‘That’s jolly thoughtful of them,’ she said. ‘But how frightful to think that that man is going to go free. Aren’t you scandalized?’
I sighed deeply and shrugged.
‘He’s not going free. He’s just being released into another prison, the prison of his own conscience. For the rest of his life, he’s going to have to live with the knowledge of what he did.’
Alison nodded.
‘How very true.’
‘As far as I’m concerned, the main thing is to avoid the whole unsavoury business being dredged up yet again. I just want to forgive and forget. That’s why it’s so vital to do what the police suggest and find someone who will verify that I was here.’
She nodded again.
‘Of course. Have you spoken to any of the people you saw that day?’
‘That’s why it’s a bore,’ I sighed. ‘You see, when you cancelled our lunch date, I was so depressed I just couldn’t face doing anything else. I’d really been looking forward to seeing you. In the end I sat at home all day and read, did some cleaning, listened to music, that sort of thing. No one called, no one saw me.’
I marshalled the loose crumbs on the tabletop into a neat line.
‘Actually, I was wondering if perhaps you’d do it.’
Alison sipped the last of her coffee and bent over the cup, studying the swirl of grounds on the glazed ceramic.
‘Do what?’
‘Vouch for me.’
‘Me? I wasn’t even here myself!’
‘What time did you leave?’
‘Well, I suppose I left the house about one thirty or two, but …’
‘That’s good enough. Instead of phoning, let’s say you drove over to tell me in person that you wouldn’t be able to make lunch. We had a brief chat, then you went on to Dorset. It would have been on your way, more or less.’
Alison frowned.
‘But I didn’t.’
‘No, but you might have.’
‘But I didn’t!’
I nodded vigorously, as though we were discussing some abstract issue such as nuclear power or the poll tax.
‘I see your point, Alison, but I wonder if you aren’t being slightly over-literal about this. Why should we have to go through months of grief and disruption just because fate intervened to break our lunch appointment? All the police want is a token statement. You won’t be under oath, no one is going to cross-examine you. You’ll just be confirming what they already know, namely that I was in Oxford that day and therefore can’t have had any hand in what happened in Wales.’
Alison stared at me for longer than I would have believed possible. Time must have got jammed, I thought, or maybe I was suffering a stroke. Then there was a thunder of feet on the stairs, a thrush gave voice outside the window, and Rebecca burst into the room.
‘Crime!’ she cried.
Alison’s face melted back into an expression of maternal warmth. I realized how unnaturally set and strained it had become.
‘What do you mean, dear?’
The solution to that crossword clue. It’s an anagram. The iceman is Mr Ice.’
I forced a congratulatory smile.
‘And “buyeth not his round”?’
‘Crime doesn’t pay.’
As she strode out to the hallway, I felt a shiver of panic, like one who realizes he is the victim of black magic. In the mouth of that unsuspecting child the phrase resounded like the judgement of the Delphic oracle. I knew that nothing would go right for me now.
‘I don’t know what amazes me more,’ Alison said quietly, ‘that you should be prepared to perjure yourself or that you imagined that I would. Evidently we don’t know each other as well as I thought.’
The Perrier had flowed like water during lunch, but we had consumed nothing stronger. When I tried to stand up, though, I staggered like a drunk.
‘Well thanks, Alison. It’s been real. The police will be in touch some time this afternoon or tomorrow, I expect. A Chief Inspector Moss. I’d keep an eye on him if I were you. Just between the two of us, he struck me as a bit of a DOM. Prosing on about female pulchritude with his hands buried deep in his raincoat pockets, that sort of thing. I have a feeling that you’re the sort of woman he might go for in a big way, Alison.’
She stared at me in shock. I had never spoken like this to her before. I had never been flippant, ambiguous or disrespectful. Above all, I had never mentioned the Wonderful World of Sex.
‘I think you’d better leave,’ she said with quiet dignity.
Quiet dignity, like omelette aux fines herbes, was very much Alison’s forte. She did it superbly well.
I walked along the hallway to the front door. The strains of the piano rang out from the living room, where Rebecca was practising. It was the same piece I had heard over the phone, but the effect was quite different now, like a landscape one is leaving for ever.
On the way home I made a detour through the back-streets of East Oxford, just for old times’ sake. I found myself staring out of the window of the BMW with something approaching envy. Yes, there was squalor and despair, but also a range of human contact, a warmth and vivacity quite foreign to the genteel suburbs where I now lived. What violence there was here was only for show, a desperate appeal for help or attention, the uncoordinated flailings of a drunk too far gone to do any damage. But Alison and her kind were kung fu masters, all formal smiles, elaborate politeness and swift, vicious dispatch.
I had thought I was one of them, that was my mistake. I thought my birth and education entitled me to a place among them. I couldn’t have been more wrong. My place was here, among the people I despised. Them I could manipulate, as I had Dennis and Karen. From the moment I tried to move up to Alison’s level I was lost. I’d wanted her because she was the real thing. It had never occurred to me that I was not. But the real thing is not charm and chat but a clinically precise sense of what you can get away with. And that I lacked. Otherwise I would never have made the fatal blunder of trying to seduce Alison morally. I had mistaken her for a jumped-up shopgirl like Karen, to whom the ties of romantic love were sacred and who would sacrifice anything to stand by her man. Karen would have lied to the police for me without a second thought, but to propose it to Alison was as gauche as asking her to give me a blow-job in the Bod.
Yes, if I had been the cold, calculating killer portrayed by the press, I would have stayed well clear of any further entanglements with Ms Kraemer. Even without her support, I had little to fear from the law. It would have taken more than Clive’s word and the lack of an alibi to convict me. If any of the witnesses Moss had mentioned had been able to identify me positively, there could have been no question of keeping the file on the case closed. Even if they had, my chances would have been no worse than even. Not only does the law send innocent men like Clive Phillips and Hugh Starkey to prison, it even more frequently allows the guilty to walk free, particularly if they are white, middle-class, well-heeled and don’t speak with an Irish accent.
But if Alison had been dismayed to find that we didn’t know each other as well as she had thought, the effect on me was no less traumatic. The woman I had idolized for so long, and for whose sake I had run the most terrible risks, had revealed herself to be a shallow, selfish prig. After all these years, Alison Kraemer still thought right and wrong were as clear and unambiguous as right and left. Even a decade of radical and regenerative government hadn’t taught her that her moral code — a ragbag of oddments from religious and philosophical uniforms which no one was prepared to wear entire any more — was as irrelevant to the contemporary world as theories about the great chain of being or the music of the spheres.
Well, the time had come to set her right about this. It was my intellectual duty, as one Oxford man to another, so to speak. It was the least I could do in return for all she had done to me. Mind you, I won’t try and pretend that my motives were wholly altruistic. There was undeniably an element of personal satisfaction involved as well. I wanted to scare the living shit out of the stupid bag, to scar her psyche with scenes of horror she would relive every night until she died.
Perhaps if I’d had time to think it over, cooler counsels might have prevailed. But it so happened that the madrigal group met that very evening, so I could count on Alison’s absence from the house. The children would be there, of course, but I could take care of them. I rounded up some tools and my trusty rubber gloves, and sat sipping a tumbler of The Macallan until it grew dark.
The lane leading to the house was as quiet as an alley in a cemetery. Most women would have been frightened living there by themselves, but Alison Kraemer’s imagination was as well-trained as one of Barbara Woodhouse’s dogs. That could change though, I thought as I flitted across the lawn. That docile and obedient pooch was about to go rabid. A light was on in one of the front bedrooms. Rebecca was still up. When she heard me, she would assume at first that Mumsy had returned earlier than usual from her glees and catches. By the time she realized her mistake, it would be too late.
Don’t worry, it’s not going to get that nasty. Murdering children has never appealed to me any more than the other English national pastimes. All I was planning to do to the kiddies was lock them up somewhere while I got on with my business. I was planning to start with the cat, run it through the Magimix and smear the puree liberally about the walls and furniture. After that I’d improvise. It’s astonishing how much damage you can do once you put your mind to it. I was quite looking forward to it. Let’s face it, there’s a bit of the yob in all of us.
I made my way along the side of the house to the kitchen door. This would be locked and bolted, but the window next to it was forceable. Alison had told me she meant to get a security lock fitted, but I knew hadn’t got round to it. I slipped on my gloves and got to work jemmying the sash. It took longer than I had anticipated, but in the end the catch snapped in two, sending a fragment of cast iron tinkling loudly about the stone floor. I pushed the window up, hoisted myself on to the ledge and crawled through.
The nocturnal silence was promptly shattered by an astonishing crash as a glass bowl I had failed to notice on the draining-board fell to the floor. My muscles locked up in panic, but no one came running or called out. I lowered myself gingerly to the ground, my shoes crunching on the fragments of broken glass. The light switch was by the open doorway leading to the hall. I made my way across the glass-strewn flagstones towards it, my eyes gradually adjusting to the darkness. I was about three feet away from the door, my hand already raised to the switch, when a disembodied limb reached in out of the darkness of the hallway and clicked it on.
All vision went down in a blinding white-out as the fluorescent tube on the ceiling came to life. I blinked frantically, trying to stop my eyes down to a point where I could see what was going on.
The first thing I took in were the feet. They looked absurd, comic-book clodhoppers, all bumps and lumps and knobbly toes. Above them rose hairy legs, the left one bulging with varicose veins. The rest of the body was clad in a pink silk peignoir secured by a belt of the same material in a contrasting shade. A broad, flat, hirsute chest rose from the decolletage, and above it a head I recognized as belonging to Thomas Carter.
‘Let’s just get one thing straight,’ he said. ‘I was with Special Forces out in Nam. There are at least fifteen ways I could kill you with one hand.’
I laughed aloud. He looked utterly ridiculous, standing there in a woman’s pink silk dressing-gown five sizes too small for him, talking tough.
‘Tom? Tom?’ a woman’s voice called from the stairs.
‘I’m OK.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’ll handle it. Go back to bed.’
A series of creaks ascended towards the ceiling.
‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘I’ve suspected for a long time that you and Alison had something going. What I don’t quite see is where I fit into all this. Can’t you keep her satisfied, Carter, even with your big all-American Vietnam vet’s cock?’
There was a blur of movement, and the next thing I knew I was lying crouched on the floor, a piece of broken glass up one nostril and the taste of recycled malt in my mouth.
‘That was what we used to call a SOB,’ I heard a voice remark somewhere in yawing spaces above me. ‘A euphemism that’s also an acronym, we really ate those up. A “soften-up blow”. Very popular in the brig.’
‘I’ve never witnessed such a display of unprovoked, cold-blooded brutality,’ I gasped indignantly, struggling to my knees.
‘Oh but I have! I’ve seen things I couldn’t believe were happening even when I was watching them. And the people who were doing these things were kids I’d grown up with, played ball games with, gone to movies with. A month before they’d have peed their pants at the thought of the cops catching them driving out to the lake with an open six-pack on the back seat. Now they were napalming babies, raping moms, torturing grand-dads, never mind what we used to do to any suspected Vietcong we got our hands on. Ordinary everyday atrocities, committed by ordinary everyday guys who would otherwise have been selling cars or pumping gas or serving hamburgers.’
I stood up, leaning on the Welsh dresser. Alison’s collection of Sabatier cooking knives protruded invitingly from a wooden block just a few feet away.
‘That’s what brought me here,’ Carter went on. ‘When I got back to the States, I found I couldn’t pass a car showroom or a gas station or a burger bar without remembering what I’d seen. I didn’t believe in natural decency any more. I needed a society with a keel, a tradition of culture and civilization strong enough to balance all that. You want to grab one of those knives? Go right ahead. Stick it up your own ass, it’ll save me the trouble.’
I drew my hand back.
‘Of course!’ I cried. ‘I get it! I was the stooge, the decoy! That’s why Alison took me to that restaurant that night, knowing that you and Lynn would be there. And that’s why you invited us both to dinner right afterwards. It was all designed to divert Lynn’s suspicions from you and Alison.’
So potent was Thomas Carter’s aura of moral righteousness that I half-expected him to deny the whole thing and claim that he and Alison were just rehearsing a scene from a bedroom farce for a local amateur dramatic society production. I was really quite shocked when he calmly admitted the whole thing. Yes, he and Alison had been in love for several years, but they had kept it secret so as not to upset the children. Once or twice a month Rebecca and Alex were packed off to sleep over with friends the night the madrigal group met, leaving Thomas and Alison free to ‘make music together’. Just when Lynn had started to become suspicious, I had conveniently appeared on the scene. Alison had taken advantage of my infatuation as a cover behind which she and Thomas could continue their affair in safety.
‘Anyway,’ he concluded, ‘the real question is what we’re going to do about you now, my friend. What the fuck are you doing here anyway?’
‘I was beside myself with frustrated desire. I was going to strip naked, put on that dressing-gown and toss myself off to a cracked seventy-eight of Nellie Melba singing “Come into the Garden, Maude”. Do you ever get urges like that?’
For a moment I thought he was going to hit me again. Then he grinned, showing his bad teeth.
‘Of course I could just call the police and have you charged with breaking and entering.’
‘But you won’t, because then you’d have to explain what you’re doing here at this time of night. Look, why don’t we just pretend this never happened?’
Carter shook his head.
‘You can expose Ally and me any time you want. I can’t risk that.’
‘So what are you going to do, kill me?’
He looked at me for a moment as though considering the idea. It was the first time I had ever been regarded as a potential victim by someone who was capable of making me one. I must say it was very uncomfortable.
Carter’s face suddenly cleared.
‘I know! Alison told me about you asking her to fake an alibi. Well I’ll do the opposite. I’ll contact the cops and tell them that the Saturday your wife disappeared I went round to your house to keep an appointment we’d made, only you weren’t there. I tried several times that afternoon. Your car wasn’t in the garage, so I figured you’d gone out. I even rang later that evening, but there was still no reply.’
I stared at him blankly.
‘If you do that …’
‘Yes?’ he said with menacing emphasis.
I sighed.
‘Then I’m fucked.’
We both burst out laughing.
‘Now get the hell out of here,’ he said, ‘so I can get this goddamn housecoat off.’
I stepped over the broken glass to the back door. As I unbolted the door he added, ‘You know the funny thing? We all liked you. We really did.’
I jumped forward like a parachutist, obliterating myself in the night.
The next day I rang my broker and instructed him to liquidate the bulk of my investments and transfer the funds to an off-shore bank account. I had just hung up when the doorbell rang. A police car was parked outside the house. On the front doorstep stood a bulky, balding man in a heavy overcoat, his back turned to me. It looked like Moss. The doorbell rang again, more insistently. I crouched down behind the sofa. The doorbell rang again and again. Finally he gave up and the car drove away.
I ran upstairs and set about packing. It didn’t take long. I threw a selection of clothes and some toilet accessories into a suitcase, checked I had all the relevant documents, then showered and changed into a sober business suit, Jermyn Street shirt and old college tie. Before leaving, I indulged a long-standing desire to pee on the Parsons’ orange-tawny velveteen sofa. It was extraordinarily satisfying, and I was giggling as I walked out to the BMW.
The last-minute hitch has become such a thriller cliche that I was amazed to reach Heathrow without incident. Traffic on the M25 was even flowing freely, for a wonder. Inside the terminal the information board was fluttering like a flock of nervous pigeons. When it settled I selected a Varig flight to Rio de Janeiro which was leaving in two hours. There was plenty of room in first class, and it was an added luxury to pay with a credit card for which I would never receive a statement.
I put up at a luxury hotel in Copacabana while I made the necessary arrangements to draw on my off-shore bank account, then made my way here. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the recent currency devaluations had made me even wealthier than I had expected. Less than a month after my departure from Ramillies Drive, I moved into a pleasant furnished apartment in the fashionable Buena Vista district.
What a pleasure it was to be back! It was the small things I noticed most, the details I had forgotten. The constant rain of drips in the street from air-conditioning units, the puddles of condensation that form around your bottle of cold beer in the humid heat, the parked car that seems to move all by itself as someone further along bumps the whole row to get out, the streets studded with crown stoppers embedded in the warm asphalt. Above all it was the people, the men very beautiful, the women very handsome, both sexes pulsating with pride and drive and desire. Each moment of every day was a precious token of a way of life which I only now realized how much I had missed. I spent days at a time simply walking the streets or riding the collectivos, immersing myself in the rich and varied scenes on every side. Every night I would seek out the most crowded districts and mingle in the passing throng, exulting in the brutal, explicit, merciless, uncensored scenes I had been reading for too long in the ‘improved’ and improving versions which the English prefer to the original text.
My only regret was that the friends I had been looking forward to seeing again all seemed to have disappeared. I had been away for some time, of course, but it still seemed surprising that the entire group of which Carlos Ventura was the acknowledged leader had totally dispersed. Even many of the places where we used to meet, bars, restaurants and bookshops, had closed down or changed hands. It was almost as if a deliberate attempt had been made to erase all my memories. This absurd notion was strengthened when I bumped into one of my former students who had been on the fringes of the group I’ve just referred to. At first he claimed not to recognize me, so to jog his memory I mentioned a mistake in one of his essays which had become a running joke around the school. It was a piece describing the system of government. Jose had intended to say ‘the council of generals are responsible for running the country’, but instead of ‘running’ he had written ‘ruining’. To my amazement, he now denied any knowledge of this incident, and when I asked what had become of Carlos and the others he replied angrily that he had no idea who I was talking about, and abruptly took his leave.
I was mystified and saddened at first, but I soon convinced myself that it was all for the best. Any attempt to revive old friendships would have been doomed to failure. My circumstances had changed too much. Then I had been a temporary expatriate, a visiting foreigner with no means, no roots, no responsibilities and no future, here today and gone tomorrow. Now I am a man of substance, a permanent resident with long-term plans and investments. I no longer have anything in common with people whose idea of entertainment was an evening of beer, jazz and politics at some doubtful dive which a respectable citizen such as myself would think twice about entering.
I have reached the end of my narrative. Before you retire to consider your verdict, however, I should like to comment briefly on the spirit in which the application before this court has been presented. This country has a long and complex relationship with the United Kingdom, and one to which Her Majesty’s accredited representatives have not scrupled to appeal to in the hopes of influencing your judgement. At the risk of wounding your sensibilities, I would like to dispense with the diplomatic rhetoric for a moment. The fact of the matter is, I’m afraid, that my compatriots think of you, on the rare occasions such as this when they bother to think about you at all, as a bunch of gormless wops hanging about some clearing in the jungle waiting for the man from Del Monte to say yes.
I am not suggesting that the request for extradition should be rejected merely because it is delivered in a spirit of neo-colonialist arrogance rather than as a legal petition from one sovereign state to another. On the contrary, I have every confidence that this court will remain entirely unswayed by such extraneous factors. Its verdict will be delivered after duly weighing the facts, the majority of which are inconclusive and the rest in dispute. The case against me rests not on evidence acceptable to a court of law but on gratuitous moral censure. The British authorities argue that I have showed myself to be a ruthless self-seeker who would stop at nothing to better his social and financial status.
I have no quarrel with this assessment. On the contrary, I am justly proud of the energy and determination I displayed in turning my life around, and I strongly deprecate the attempt to make this the grounds for charging me with two murders which I did not commit. This is a cynical manoeuvre unworthy of the ideals to which the present government is supposedly committed, and to which I endeavoured to dedicate myself. In a free democratic society, law and morality can have nothing whatever to do with each other. The selfish instincts we all harbour in our breasts, and without which a market economy would instantly collapse, are of no concern to the law, which is purely conventional and utilitarian in nature, a highway code designed to minimize the possibility of accidents. It does not ask where you are coming from or where you are going, still less the reason for your journey. Such prying would rightly be regarded as unwarranted ideological interference typical of the now-discredited totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe. As long as you obey the rules of the road, the law has no claim on you.
Now it may be objected that I have not obeyed those rules. This is perfectly true, and I have made no attempt to conceal the fact. On the contrary, I have admitted unlawfully disposing of my wife’s body, conspiring to kidnap and inflict grievous bodily harm on Clive Phillips, and lying to the police and the courts about these and other events. I am even prepared to admit that I may be guilty of involuntary manslaughter, since Karen’s death apparently occurred while she was locked in the boot of the BMW rather than immediately following the accidental blow to her head. Had any of these charges appeared on the extradition warrant, I should have had no option but to plead guilty and let the law take its course.
But they do not, for the simple reason that none of them fall within the terms of the relevant treaty between this country and the United Kingdom. Unable to request my extradition for the crimes I have committed, the British authorities have therefore resorted to fabricating charges in a category which is covered by the treaty, namely murder. The case they have argued before this court is neither more nor less than a blatant piece of expediency designed to obtain my forcible repatriation at any price. The British have no intention of trying me for murder, as they know perfectly well that they would be unable to obtain a conviction. If they get their hands on me, the spurious murder charges will instantly be dropped and replaced by the non-extraditable charges mentioned above. Such a procedure will naturally make a laughing-stock of these proceedings, this court and the republic it represents. It would be impossible to underestimate the extent to which anyone in Britain will care about that. Having served your purpose in this charade, you will be dismissed to go and play in your third-world sandpit until the next time the big boys need you.
I wish to thank the court for having let me make this lengthy statement, and to take this opportunity of acquiescing in advance with its verdict. The deluded humanist I once was would no doubt have drooled and snivelled after the manner of his kind, but I have grown up since then. I know there is no point in sulking because society is unjust, still less in trying to do anything to change it. There is no such thing as society, only individuals engaged in a constant unremitting struggle for personal advantage. There is no such thing as justice, only winners and losers. I have not deserved to lose, but if I do so, it will be without complaint or regret.
10 March
Dear Charles,
Needless to say I understand and share your anger and dismay, but I can assure you that suspicions of slackness this end are completely unjustified. Even H.E., who has taken the dimmest possible view of our hands-on intervention, will confirm that we had been given every reason to suppose that our application would be granted.
As yet I have been unable to ascertain what went wrong. For obvious reasons it would have been injudicious for me to appear in court, but having studied a transcript of the proceedings and assisted at a debriefing of our legal team I can confirm that there were no evidential revelations or technical hitches to justify the judges’ verdict. The accused delivered a rambling apologia for his infamies which made the worst possible impression on the court and everyone concerned assumed that the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
I have contacted the Justice Minister and communicated our displeasure to him in no uncertain terms. He was extremely apologetic, but would say only that the decision had been taken ‘in the interests of national security’. The Generalissimo himself has been uncontactable, and indeed all our normal lines of communication appear to have gone dead. To make matters worse H.E. is gloating no end over our discomfiture. If he tells me one more time that such delicate matters are best left to professional diplomats such as himself I shall scream. Thank goodness the Corporation has agreed to review its decision to broadcast the offending programme. It really would be too bad if we found ourselves thwarted by internal pressure here and were unable to respond in kind in our own backyard.
Yours,
Tim
16 March
Dear Charles,
Many thanks for your cheering news. Loyalty has always been our great strength, and I am glad to hear that in this instance it has prevailed over the understandable desire to find a scapegoat. The whole affair is of course now stale news, but just for the record you may nevertheless be interested to learn the reason for our discomfiture, the more so in that it fully validates your spirited defence of the way the operation was handled.
I was beginning to despair of discovering the truth before we shut up shop here, when I was quite suddenly summoned yesterday to meet a senior official at the Air Ministry. My anonymous informant revealed that the subject of our extradition order had been detained by a unit of Air Force Intelligence concerned with internal security. The activities of these units, whose existence is officially denied, was of course one of the more embarrassing episodes in the television documentary we managed to suppress. Unofficially, they are estimated to have been responsible for the disappearance of over 5,000 people since the present regime seized power two years ago. An operation this size is bound to leave a few rough edges, of course, and the Amnesty mob have been circulating the usual horror stories, but all in all the Generals seem to have run a pretty clean campaign.
During the long and discursive statement he made to the court, the accused mentioned in passing his friendship with a certain Carlos Ventura, whom he knew during his earlier stay here. It was now explained to me that this Ventura, a labour lawyer with suspected guerrilla sympathies, had been one of the most dangerous opponents of the present regime, and that all his former friends and contacts are regarded as valid targets for the counter-insurgency operation already referred to. Air Force Intelligence therefore moved to block the extradition in order to allow them to pursue their own investigation, which they are no doubt even now doing with their customary vigour and thoroughness.
Despite the embarrassment which this affair has caused us, I feel that the economic reprisals which HMG is reportedly considering would be both inopportune and undeserved. I recall Bernard once remarking apropos of the Charter 88 people that you couldn’t make a revolution without smashing a few eggheads. If the Generalissimo and his colleagues have taken him at his word, who are we to criticize them for displaying a degree of realism about which we can only joke?
It will take me a few more days to wrap up things this end so as to leave no loose ends, but I hope to be back in London by the end of next week. I am looking forward eagerly to hearing more about the Dublin assignment. It sounds extremely daring, even by the standards of the house! Do please try and soften up the embassy in advance this time, though. A few discreet hints in advance of my arrival about the possibility of alternative postings in say Baghdad or Beirut might not go amiss.
Yours,
Tim