Home Before Dark (42 page)
Authors: Charles Maclean
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense
An international warrant . . .’
'Sure it is. Under what name? After they fish the girl out
of the river the cops may want to talk to somebody. My guess
is they’ll be looking for the guy who’s been stalking her, who
wouldn’t take no for an answer – your client, Ed Lister.’
'You don’t have to kill her,’ Campbell wheezed. 'Why you
doing this? You got to like the way it feels, is that it? You can’t
even see how fucked up you are, you crazy sick sonofabitch.’
'I stay with the programme, buddy. If that makes me
resolute – a man of courage and independent spirit, you
might say – well, so be it. I may not have a forgiving nature,
but disturbed? Crazy? don’t think so.’
'You’re not really looking for revenge . . . you know it’s
just a fantasy’
'Dish put that one in your head?’ Ward laughed. 'Out of
interest, how did you find me? It wasn’t through my network,
or the website, was it?’
He could think of no good reason to tell him. He wouldn’t
be willing to trade for the information. He just said, 'You
made it too easy.’
He wasn’t ashamed to ask Ward to spare his life, remind
him that he had a family, a wife who loved him, a young
daughter. He could plead for them more easily than himself.
He just knew he’d be wasting his breath.
But he said it anyway. 'Please, I have a family.’
'You weren’t meant to come here, Campbell.’
'I know … I see that now.’
He wasn’t afraid of dying, but the timing . . . Campbell
wanted to explain to someone: look, I think there’s been a
mistake, you got the wrong person, I’m not done with the
world yet. There’s this money I have to find by tomorrow . Ś
oh God.
Ward said, bending over him. 'Campbell, I guess your luck
just ran out. As you know, better than most, there’s not a thing
anyone can do about that.’
The detective struggled and the pressure from the boot
increased.
He lifted an arm to fend off what couldn’t be escaped as
he saw the hammer rise, the blunt ball-peen end coming
down in a flashing arc.
The first hammer blow didn’t kill him.
We walked on a few blocks without saying much. She had
broken away, slipped quickly out of my arms, and now it was
as if the kiss had never happened. The tension was still there,
though, not very far below the surface. I found it difficult to
accept that after tonight we weren’t going to see each other
again.
Maybe that’s why I started talking about Sophie. I just let
go and poured out my heart to Jelena. I told her things that
I’d never said to anybody, not even Laura. We crossed over
to Park Avenue and stopped at a bar in the twenties with
tables outside.
After I’d ordered drinks, I said, 'I’m sorry, that was a real
downer.’
'No, I always wanted you to tell me about her.’
“The last time I was in Florence,’ I said, holding her gaze,
'I lit a candle for Sophie in a church near where she died called Santa Maria del Carmine. Then I wrote our names in the visitors book . . . yours and mine.’
Jelena looked away. 'You must have loved her very much.’
'I don’t know why I did it. I just realised that I missed you.’
'It’s not because I remind you of her, is it?’
'No. You don’t remind me of anyone.’
She didn’t say anything. I heard her stomach rumble. It seemed a curiously intimate and endearing response. Jelena
furrowed both eyebrows. She laughed and a wisp of hair fell across her face.
I said, 'I’m going to arrange things so that we can be together.’
'We can’t be together, so don’t talk foolishness.’
There was a silence that lasted several seconds.
'How about another drink?’
'You know something?’ Jelena said. 'It isn’t the difference
in our ages or even the fact that you have another life . . .
it’s because you’re hurt, Ed, you’ve been through the worst
thing that can happen to a person. That’s what separates us.
Around you I feel I don’t even exist.’
When she said that it felt like she was surrendering herself.
66
Aiming for the temple where Campbell’s hair grew unusually
thick, Ward struck lightly again and again. He didn’t want
blood all over the driveway, and nothing bleeds quite like a
head wound. He kept tapping the same spot until he saw the i
whites of the little Chinese’s eyes craze over as the capillaries’
burst and a red glaze lacquered the corneas. He shone his
key-ring light into a dying pupil and got back his own reflection,
a face peering over the edge of a well.
In the singular way Ward experienced the world there were
no correspondences, no analogies, no metaphor, things
weren’t 'like’ each other – they were each other. He was afraid
that seeing the image of his face in the well might have a
deeper unwished-for meaning. He was afraid it meant some
change in him.
Picking up Campbell’s shattered cell phone, he hurled it
into the bushes.
Then he slid the sticky shaft of the hammer through his
belt, and looped the rope he was carrying under the detective’s
shoulders. Dragging the body back to the house, he had to
stop to retrieve a Nike Air Force trainer he hadn’t noticed
had slipped off one of Campbell’s heels. Rather than attempt
to put the shoe back on, he removed its pair, tied the laces
and slung them both around his neck.
It was a reflection in an untenanted eye . . . not his face at
the bottom of a goddamned well. He banished the image with its hidden potential to dilute his sense of purpose, subvert the course of justice.
Let’s just get the job done.
Ward backed the Buick estate out of the garage and ran it back a short distance past the fork in the driveway. Then
he rolled forward and, taking the rougher track that led around the rear of the property, drove down to the river.
Earlier, when he was scouting for somewhere to bring the girl (in case things didn’t go according to plan), he’d discovered
an old 1930s boathouse on a marshy backwater. The building was overgrown with trees and too dilapidated for what he had in mind, but he could see another use for it now.
He stopped opposite the walkway and cut the engine.
He made no move to get out of the wagon. Just sat and let things settle, hands at ten to two on the steering wheel, staring out at nothing. The far side of the boathouse he could hear the river go by in a silver rush.
Find that one a little tougher than the others, Wardo? With the young wife and kid down in Florida? This isn’t the time for vegrets. We’re falling behind schedule.
He wasn’t meant to be here that was all.
There was always a risk that Campbell would find Grace’s body before the Caanan sheriff’s department got a patrol car
out to the house, but his turning up at La Rochelle had
caught him off guard. He had no regrets about what he’d
done. The detective might have been more useful to him
alive, as a witness turned against his client; on the other hand,
his murder would be seen now as Ed Lister’s work.
The taste lingered, acrid as asparagus water, a blue-green
triangle with spike-sharp corners. Was that how Campbell
found him? Had he revealed some aspect of his synaesfhesia
online? If there’d been more time, he’d have got it out of the
little slope exactly how he traced him to Skylands. He wasn’t
too worried about the police. That was just desperation talk.
It niggled him, though, that he could have let something
slip.
His fingernails splayed on the wheel were giving him harsh,
disapproving looks. So now what’s your problem? Ward resented
their smug critical personalities.
He opened the Buick’s tail-gate and pulled Campbell out
onto the dirt track. The ground was softer here. Ward had
put on an old pair of deck shoes he’d found in the house
belonging to Ed Lister; they pinched a little, but at least he
didn’t have to worry about footprints. He dragged the detective’s
body across the planked walkway to the boathouse. A
derelict wooden structure with a swayback roof and gaping
holes in its walls where sections of the clapboard siding had
collapsed, it leaned alarmingly out of true.
You know, before she came out to the house, Grace had her
hair done at First Impressions, finest salon in Norfolk, specially
for you . . . her little Ernie.
Spare me the violins. I was there, remember? Told her how
nice she looked – she appreciated the fact someone had
noticed.
The door had settled on its hinges. Ward had to shoulder
it open, then pull the body after him. Inside, the blackness
seemed at first impenetrable; he stood still for a moment,
getting used to the dark and the brackish smell, listening to
the hollow, restless slapping of confined water against the
piers.
He could just make out the outline of an opening the far end.
Ward heaved on the rope. He heard the joists groan and
felt the floor shift under his feet. He’d gone far enough. Not
trusting the wooden platform to support their combined
weight, he decided against his plan of dumping Campbell in
one of the boat slips. He left the body where it lay, head
propped against a fallen beam, staring out through the framed
inlet at open river. .
He wasn’t sorry to get back to the station-wagon.
'I have to go into New York,’ he told Alice Fielding after
they’d eaten. 'I’ll take the Buick, if it’s okay with you.’ He’d
found some soup in the refrigerator – Jesusita’s home-made
gazpacho – which he’d poured into bowls and brought
through to the lounge on a tray with Ritz crackers and the
open bottle of Chardonnay.
'You look nice, dear,’ she said, as if she was his mother.
He’d cleaned up and was wearing one of Ed’s old suits,
which he’d borrowed from the closet in the guest room. He’d
helped himself to a shirt and tie too.
'I have a date with a beautiful girl. I’m going to show her
the town, then I thought maybe I’d bring her back out here
to the Rock.’
'There was a man earlier asking for you. What kept you
so long?’
'I’m sorry,’ he hesitated. 'We caught up with each other in
the end.’
She nodded. 'Does this beautiful girl have a name?’ 'Jelena.’
- 'You know what you’re doing isn’t right, Eddie. One of the
back.
He strode over and put a hand on the receiver. She looked
up at him with bewildered eyes while he waited for the ringing
to stop. When it did, she said, 'You’re not really Eddie, are
you?’
Ward smiled. 'What makes you say that?’
'You think I don’t know?’
She lay back in her rattan recliner and closed her eyes.
T think you may be a little confused that’s all.’
'Yes, possibly.’ She gave a sigh. 'You’re very alike.’
He watched her nod off, then after a few moments startle
awake as if alarmed by her own involuntary absence. He
hadn’t decided yet what to do about Alice.
A perfect edge does not reflect light.
Ward held the curved blade of the mezzaluna up to the
fluorescent strip above the workbench. He tilted it back and
forth and saw how the polished arc scintillated. Like any new
knife it had come out of the box factory-sharp, which for his
purposes was nowhere near sharp enough.
With a felt-tip pen he drew a quarter-inch black sttipe
along the blade’s convex edge, then clamped the mezzaluna
in the bench vice. Holding the steel in both hands at a twenty
degree angle and using a circular motion, he worked methodically
from one end of the crescent blade to the other, keeping
the angle of his stroke constant by watching the ink dwindle
evenly up to the edge. Once the ink was rubbed away, he
turned the blade around in the vice and repeated the process
on the other side. Then he concentrated on smoothing the
cutting edge . . .
You know better than to interrupt when I’m busy.
I realise this may not be the best time to bring it up, Ernie,
but memory reconciliation is something we really need to address.
Memory reconciliation? What are you, my head doctor
now?
The butcher’s steel, bonded with a fine diamond abrasive,
both sharpened and honed at the same time. As the edge
became thinner, he could see it bend away from the steel
leaving a long metal feather. It was a sign he was getting
close. He flattened the angle of the steel to about ten degrees
and, using a lighter down-stroke, removed the burr. When
he was satisfied it was smooth as he could possibly get it,
Ward held the blade up again to the fluorescent strip, looking
for reflections from the edge.
This time there were none.
He slipped the plastic sleeve back onto the blade, wrapped
the mezzaluna in a cloth and placed it in his rucksack. He
was all set. With the pack slung over one shoulder, he hit the
door-closer switch and walked out of the garage to the parked
station-wagon. The sweet night scent of nicotiana plants growing
around the porch swarmed up his nostrils. He touched
the car door-handle and the contact sparked off a highresolution
memory of the parlour at Skylands.
He saw Grace sit slightly forward in the armchair to keep
her candy-floss hair-do from flattening against the dusty
headrest as he walked up behind her. Grace telling him, her
Lil’Ernie, that he didn’t need to worry, his secret would
always be safe with her. Well, it would now . . . whatever 'his
secret’ was.
You shoulda let her finish, buddy. You shoulda let her finish.
You shoulda …
Should I? Ward stood motionless, staring out across the
river towards Wave Hill. In the distance he could see the cable
lights of the George Washington Bridge glinting through the
tops of the trees. He looked at his watch: 11.42.They’d have
left the restaurant by now. He wasn’t counting on them going
on somewhere else before returning to her place, but it would
help if they took their time.
He couldn’t imagine Ed inviting her back to the Carlyle.
He glanced up at the house. The old lady’s bedroom was
dark. He’d reminded Alice before they said goodnight to
be sure to take her sleeping pills. She was on two 2mg tabs
of Lunesta – he’d checked the prescription notes on the
label – which was a strong enough dose to put out Mike
Tyson’s lights. In the morning, all she’d remember would
be that her grandson-in-law came to supper, then drove
into town, saying he’d be returning later with some girl.
Her last words to him were, 'I promise I won’t tell, Eddie.
Not a soul.’
If she got things muddled, her wires a little crossed, Ward
thought, as he swung the Buick around and headed down
the driveway, it couldn’t do much harm.