Beneath the Skin (23 page)

“I don’t understand,” I repeated. “This is mad.”

“Mrs. Hintlesham, Jenny . . .”

“Mad,” I repeated. “Mad.”

“His solicitor is fully involved. He will appear at Saint Steven’s Magistrate’s Court tomorrow morning. They will make a bail application. Which will be refused.”

“Who is this woman, anyway? What’s she got to do with Clive? With me and the letters?”

Links looked uneasy. He took a breath and spoke in a slow, patient voice, quietly, even though there was nobody around to hear.

“I can’t tell you in detail,” he said. “But because of the special circumstances I thought I should prepare you. It seems that your husband was having an affair with her. We believe he gave her your locket. Her photograph was among his possessions.”

I remembered the photograph I had seen last night: an eager, laughing face, a glass in her hand lifted in a toast to the future she didn’t have. I gulped, and a wave of nausea swept over me.

“That doesn’t mean he would kill her.”

“Miss Haratounian also received letters like yours. Written by the same person. We believe that your husband threatened her, and then killed her.”

I gazed at him. A jigsaw was beginning to click together, but the picture that emerged made no sense, it was just a scribble of violent images. A bad dream.

“Are you saying that Clive was the person writing those letters to me?”

“All we are saying at the moment is that your husband is charged with the murder of Miss Haratounian.”

“Tell me what you think.”

“Mrs. Hintlesham . . .”

“You must tell me. It doesn’t make any kind of sense.”

Links was silent for some time, visibly trying to make up his mind.

“This is very painful,” he said. “I wish you could be spared it. But it is possible that he wanted to rid himself of this woman, for whatever reason. Then, having done that, it seemed that nobody knew that he had met her. For that reason, if you were . . . well, targeted by the person who did that murder, he wouldn’t be a suspect.” Another long silence. “It’s one way of looking at it,” he said uneasily. “I’m sorry.”

“Could he loathe me that much?”

Links didn’t speak.

“Has he admitted it?”

“He still denies even knowing Miss Haratounian,” Links said dryly. “Which is a bit rich.”

“I want to see him.”

“That’s your right. Are you sure?”

“I want to see him.”

“You don’t believe this, Jenny? Jens. You can’t possibly believe this ludicrous charge?” In his voice I heard a mixture of anger and fear. His face was red and unwashed, his clothes were stained. I gazed at him. My husband. Jowly cheeks, a thickening neck, eyes that were slightly bloodshot.

“Jens,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t I believe it?”

“Jens, it’s me, Clive, your husband. I know things have been shaky recently, but it’s me.”

“Shaky,” I repeated. “Shaky.”

“We’ve been married for fifteen years, Jens. You know me. Tell them it’s ridiculous. I was with you that day. You know I was. Jens.”

A fly settled on his cheek and he brushed it away violently.

“Tell me about Gloria,” I said. “Is it true?”

He flushed and tried to speak and then stopped.

I looked at him, the hairs in his nostrils, the grime of dirt on his neck, the flaky skin by his ears, dandruff in his hair. He looked good only when he was carefully groomed. He wasn’t one of those people, like Stadler, for example, who actually look better after staying up all night. Who could stay up all night and still seem sexy.

“I don’t think there’s anything more to talk about, do you?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

“Good-bye.”

“You’ll see,” he shouted. “You’ll see and then you’ll be sorry. You are making the biggest mistake of your whole stupid, little life.” His fists came down on the table between us, and the moon-faced policeman at the door stood up. “I will make you suffer for it, see if I don’t.”

There was only one police officer outside my house now, and he lay in the car, half asleep behind a paper. Clive’s office looked like a burglar had been in there. The house was a building site of half-finished rooms. The garden was a wasteland; nettles grew in the beds that Francis had prepared for the flowering, sweet-smelling shrubs; the grass was yellow.

I opened a bottle of champagne and drank a glass of it, but it made me feel violently sick. I ought to eat something, but that didn’t seem possible. I wanted Grace Schilling to come in and make me another herb omelette, runny and good. I wanted Josh to call me and say he was coming home.

I sat alone in the kitchen. I was shamed and I was free.

A day of frenetic activity calmed me down. That was what I needed. It stopped me from dwelling on things too much; it muffled the jangling in my head that I couldn’t make go away whatever pills I took for it. The morning was sunny and it hadn’t yet got horribly hot, and as I sat at the kitchen table with Lynne, I felt almost calm. She was wearing her uniform again. There was a feeling of things being over and winding down and farewells. We had worked our way through almost a whole cafetière and I’d made some toast that we both nibbled. Lynne asked if she could smoke and not only did I say she could but I asked for a cigarette myself and went and found a saucer we could use as an ashtray.

My first puff felt sinful, as if I was fourteen years old, and then I felt soothed. Maybe in my new life I’d start smoking again.

“I used to do this to lose weight,” I said. “At least it was a welcome by-product. I gave up when I was pregnant with Josh. My bottom and thighs have never been the same.”

Lynne smiled and shook her head.

“I wish I had your figure,” she said.

I looked at Lynne with a critical eye.

“You wouldn’t like it,” I said. “You haven’t seen it the way I see it.”

We both took puffs from our cigarettes. Mine felt amateurish after all these years. I would need a lot more practice.

“So you’ve been busy?” Lynne asked.

“An awful lot of things need sorting out.”

“When do you leave?”

“I’m flying to Boston this evening.”

“Do the boys know yet?”

I very nearly laughed at this.

“The idea of informing Josh over the phone that his father—well, it didn’t seem such a good idea. No, I’m sure that Dr. Schilling would recommend doing it face-to-face.”

“It’s probably better.”

“And I spent most of the afternoon on the phone to my architect and my various builders and Francis, my brilliant gardener. We’re flying back at the beginning of next week and then we can get going on the house.”

Lynne lit another cigarette and then caught my eye and lit me one.

“Won’t that feel strange?” she said. “Starting all that again?”

“It’s different this time,” I said. “That’s why it took so long on the phone. They’re going to come and patch things up, slap some white paint on the walls, put some shrubs in the garden. Then I’m putting the house on the market.”

Lynne’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Are you sure?” she said.

“What I’d really like is to burn the house down with everything inside it and make a run for it. But selling it will have to do.”

“You’ve only just moved in.”

“I can hardly bear the sight of it. I’ve been unhappy here. I suppose it’s not the house’s fault, but still . . .”

“Have you talked to Dr. Schilling?”

“Why should I talk to her?” I said, a bit belligerently. “Grace Schilling’s job was to use her professional skill to catch the man harassing me. Well, he’s caught.” I stopped myself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. Again.”

“That’s all right.”

“In fact, all in all, this probably hasn’t been the most enjoyable job you’ve ever had to do.”

“Why?”

“Trying to look after a bad-tempered, miserable woman.”

Lynne looked serious.

“You shouldn’t say that. It was awful. We all felt terrible for you. We still do.”

“Still?”

“Look, we’re glad we caught the person who did this. We’re not glad for you that it was Mr. Hintlesham.”

I took some time to reply. I was looking over Lynne’s shoulder at the garden. It was difficult to believe that even Francis could get this into a salable shape within a fortnight. We’d see.

“I just keep remembering details of our marriage and wondering how it could have happened. I know we had difficulties, but I don’t see why he had to hate me so much. What had I done to him, what had that poor girl, Zoe, done except climb into bed with him?” Lynne looked me in the eyes. She didn’t turn away, I’ll say that for her. But she didn’t reply. “And even if he hated me so much, would he have wanted to kill me? And to make me suffer? Well, could he? Say something.”

Lynne looked a bit shifty.

“I’ve got to be careful,” she said. “With the committal hearing and everything. But people do things like that. Mr. Hintlesham had met somebody else. He knew that you wouldn’t give him a divorce.” She gave a shrug. “The last murder I dealt with, a fourteen-year-old boy killed his granny because she wouldn’t lend him the money to buy a lottery ticket. It’s like one of my sergeants used to say: You don’t need qualifications to be a murderer.”

“So he
could
have done it. Do you think he’ll be found guilty?”

Lynne paused before speaking.

“The Crown Prosecution Service say that we’ve got to be confident of a seventy-five percent chance of conviction before we charge anybody. As far as I know, there was no hesitation about charging your husband. We’ve got the clear connection with the dead girl, Zoe, and his attempts to lie about it. There’s the lack of an alibi. His threats against you, his affair and motivation. We’ve got a good case.”

“What if the murder is tried separately?” I asked cautiously.

“No chance,” said Lynne. “The identical notes to the two of you make the cases inseparable.”

“Half the time I think that he’s innocent and will be found guilty. The other half I think he’s guilty and that he’ll go free. He’s clever. He’s a lawyer. I don’t know what to think.”

“He won’t get off,” said Lynne firmly.

We drank up our coffees and finished our cigarettes.

“Have you packed?” she asked.

“That’s on my list,” I said. “I’m only taking a small bag.”

She looked at her watch.

“I think I’d better go,” she said.

“I’ll feel strange being unsupervised,” I said.

“You won’t be entirely unsupervised. We’ll keep an eye.”

I pulled a slightly sarcastic face.

“Does that mean you’re not entirely sure?”

“Just to see you’re all right.”

And she was gone.

I didn’t have lunch. No time. Packing was a little more complicated than I had suggested to Lynne. Normally I’m a world champion at packing exactly the right amount, but I was feeling a bit strange and I felt I was doing everything a little bit slowly, as if I were underwater or on the moon. And even though I was doing things more slowly, I also had to think about them more carefully.

The phone kept ringing, as well. I had rather a long conversation with Clive’s lawyer. It consisted of us slightly dancing around each other. I wasn’t at all clear that we were on the same side, and by the end of it I was wondering whether I oughtn’t to think of getting my own lawyer. Several people rang for Josh: his violin teacher, that fellow Hack from the computer club who said Josh had asked him to drop a game round, and Marcus, one of his friends. And a couple of
my
friends—or Clive’s friends—called who had clearly heard that something funny was going on. In each case I put them off with a series of excuses that didn’t quite amount to bare-faced lies.

With the state I was in, I thought I’d better leave in hugely good time for the plane, so I ordered a cab and ran around the house in a frenzy of closing windows and half-closing curtains. I had phoned Mary. She would come in and switch on lights in the evening. Anyway, what was there to steal? They were welcome to it. One thing more. Long transatlantic flight. Soft shoes. I had a pair of nice blue canvas slip-ons. Where were they? Had I even unpacked them since the move? I remembered. Bedroom cupboard. At the top. I ran upstairs. In the bedroom—
our
bedroom I would once have said—I looked around. I could see nothing I’d forgotten.

There was a knock at the door. I don’t mean the front door. A rap at the bedroom door.

“Mrs. Hintlesham?”

“What?” I said, startled.

A face peered round the door. I was completely baffled for a moment. You know when you see a face completely out of its normal setting. A good-looking young man in jeans and a T-shirt and a black work jacket. Long dark hair. Who was he?

“Hack. What are you—”

“That’s not my real name. That’s just something that impresses the boys.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Morris,” he said. “Morris Burnside.”

“Well, Morris Burnside, I’m in a bit of a rush. I’m off to the airport.”

“The game,” he said, brandishing a gaudy package. “I rang, remember? Sorry, the door was open and I wandered in. I shouted from downstairs.”

“Oh. Well, you’re lucky you caught me. The cab will be here at any moment.”

He was actually panting, as if he’d been running.

“Yes, I’m really glad because . . . It’s not just the game. I saw the evening paper. There’s something in it about your husband being charged.”

“What? Oh, God. I thought that might happen.”

“I’m really sorry, Mrs. Hintlesham. And I know how difficult it will be for Josh.”

“Yes, I know. Hang on, I’m just reaching down these shoes. There.”

“That’s why I wanted to come and see you right away. You see, I’ve been thinking about it, and Mr. Hintlesham couldn’t have done it.”

“That’s very nice of you, er, Morris, but . . .”

I slipped my shoes on. It was almost time to go.

“No, it’s not just that. I know how your husband can prove that he’s innocent.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s absolutely foolproof. When they find your body they’ll know he can’t have done it.”