Beautiful Losers: A Novel of Suspense (28 page)

seventy-two

They let me go.
I'd no idea why. After the grilling, I thought they'd detain me. Perhaps it was a case of too much circumstantial evidence, not enough of the hard stuff. I said nothing on the way home and was glad when Fiona left.

By the time I got back, the post had arrived. At a glance I could tell there were a number of sympathy cards and put them to one side to be opened later.

I made strong coffee and took it into the dining area, an alcove off the kitchen separated by an ornate and battered Chinese screen. It was dark and quiet inside. The view from the single low window extended to the thick leafy smudge of trees on the opposite side of the narrow road. One of Chris's favourite places, he would often hive himself off there to mark papers.

Setting the coffee down, I went into my study, found a note pad and pen, and returned.

The police had two theories: I had fabricated the stalker story and killed Chris, or Chris was my stalker and I'd found out and killed him.
Lose-lose
.

If the police couldn't be precise about time of death, the bucket incident was no longer a
deal-breaker
. Was it possible that he'd stalked before? Surely, the police would have checked.

Our separate lifestyle gave Chris the perfect opportunity to hound me, but what about the logistics? I was sure the timing was off. Chris simply couldn't have been responsible for all those incidents, not without exhausting himself or clocking up enormous mileage on the car. With a jolt, I remembered that he'd got rid of the old one to buy the Alfa. He'd made a joke of it. Maybe it was to cover his tracks. Then again, maybe he'd used the Triumph.

Back to square one.

I tore off a sheet of paper and started another. It still didn't answer the question: who had murdered Chris?
Most murderers are people we know
. And the people Chris knew were my friends. I couldn't imagine any of them killing him. Not like that. Not by stoving his head in. Not by fire. So what about people at work? There was Andy (absurd idea), Pat Emerson (hardly), other teachers (professional jealousy, perhaps?), or what about
pissed-off
parents, pathological pupils? No, no, no.

The call to the school office was the last official sign of Chris alive. Some time during the next twelve hours, he was killed. But what happened in between?

I tried to put myself in his shoes. Maybe he felt conflicted, regretting his choice to stay, sad even at Carolla leaving. It would explain his constant need to check his phone for messages. So what would he do? Go for a walk, wander down to the beach, get some sea air in his lungs, feel the wind in his hair. Along the way he meets someone.

No, that wouldn't work for one very simple reason, I realised. There were literally scores of people crawling the lanes in high summer. He would have been seen and, more importantly, whoever was with him would have been seen, too.

A pain gnawed at my right eye. I got up, rolled my shoulders to break the accumulated tension in the muscles, stretched my arms above my head, and caught sight of something askew on top of the dresser. Pulling out a chair, I stood on it and reached down for a
spiral-bound
photograph album. A little scuffed, clearly handled by unseen hands, my name was written in capitals on the front in Chris's writing. Below, a photograph of me aged about three. I had a crooked goofy grin and a cute look on my face that proclaimed I was not camera shy. I marvelled at the perfect skin, plump and smooth, and felt an intense pang of loss.

I flipped the front cover, the page faintly creased, presumably by a crime scene officer. Then my jaw slackened, eyes widening at a photograph of myself holding hands with a young and pretty woman. I'd never seen it before, and God alone knew how Chris had got hold of it, but I recognised from the set of the eyes and mouth that the young woman was my mother.

Dropping down into the nearest chair, I ran my fingers over the print, riveted by the story unfolding in front of me. I turned the pages. Pictures of me
gap-toothed
with Guy and Luke scoffing, ice cream with our father on holiday in Bournemouth, school photos where I looked sullen and afraid, a birthday party in a garden at Claire's mum's, me on a pony, me proudly wearing a gown and hat, holding my degree. There was even the photograph that I made Chris promise to destroy with a
Sorry!
scrawled next to it. On the very last page there was … nothing. I stared at the empty space for ages, my heart leaping with hope. If I'd stumbled across a scrapbook
of crude and jumbled images, Darke's theory would be conclusive, but this book, this wonderful gift, was hardly the work of a man who hated and wanted to control me. This was the work of a man who had loved me, who wanted to say that he was sorry, that he'd been a fool, that in the end, even after temptation and struggle, he'd chosen me.

I was glad.

I went back to the beginning of the album and journeyed through my life story for a second time. As I came to the final, empty page, I realised what was missing: the day on the beach when I'd stretched out on the rocks and felt radiantly happy. Chris never had the opportunity to process the print because his life was taken. Its absence held a clue.

Without considering the time, I called my big brother. I should have called him and told him absolutely everything before.

seventy-three

I drove up the
motorway half expecting a police car to scream up behind, siren wailing. Nerves shredded, I'd had the mental equivalent of a smack round the head.

According to Luke, Chris had phoned two months previously and told him about his novel idea for my birthday.

“I'd clean forgotten about it when you called,” Luke said. “I guess I was too shocked. I thought the
break-up
was a blip and that he'd come back.”

If only. “So when did you send him the photographs?”

“Must have been a week after that. He phoned to thank me. He was really made up by them.”

The same time he was supposed to be stalking me.

I switched into the
faster-moving
outer lane and arrived back at the flat in Cheltenham around half past five. Up the stairs, boldly unlocking the door, I scoured the carpeted floor for a note or an envelope, ears straining for the beep of the answering service. Nothing.

Into the sitting room, I expected to find something amiss. I sniffed the air. No foul smell. No unusual fragrance. No graffiti or writing on the wall. The kitchen told the same story. I peered inside the fridge, opened the cupboards and, finally, retrieved the notebook I'd kept on Simon's orders. Flicking through the entries revealed nothing I didn't already know.

I checked the bedroom and bathroom. Only when I was really, really certain did I slump into the nearest chair.

Whoever was stalking had stopped. I'd waited and waited for such a moment, longed for it, but now that it had, I felt a stab of cruel disappointment. If I went to the police with my latest finding, I knew what they would say: that the album was an elaborate subterfuge, that Chris was my stalker after all. With his death, his stalking activities were finally over.

Lids heavy, I closed my eyes. Drifting, it was like looking into polluted seawater. The
oil-stained
surface ripples. You think you see something. Extinct marine life, maybe. Something floats to the surface and then, whatever it is, dead fish or gull, it falls away, lost in the murky depths.

Robert Fallon had talked of a critical period when the ante was upped. Chris's murder fitted the pattern. It marked the beginning of the endgame.

My eyes opened and fell on the painting. There are three: stalker, love object, rival. Two men. One woman. Both want her. So one destroys the other. Then what? Game over. Winner takes all. Except, he doesn't. He can't, I realised with shock. That's not what he wants. His goal is annihilation. Hers. He wants to crush her. He wants to reduce her to a nothing. So he leaves her out in the cold. He
frames
her. He lets her take the rap for a crime he committed. Destruction complete.

I waited, hoping the phone would ring, but it didn't. Five minutes later, I switched off the light and fled.

seventy-four

“Look, it's not really
a good time,” Claire said. “I'm taking the kids out for the day, picnics to pack, you know how it is.”

Oh yes, I was rude to your husband and now I'm a murder suspect. I know exactly how it is. I know precisely how I came across: mouthy, manic, neurotic, and uptight. How long would it take for the local gossip machine to swing into action, I wondered?

“It won't take long.” I smiled, praying the warmth of my voice would transmit down the line. “Could you give me Gavin Chadwick's number?”

“God, are you sure that's a good idea?”

“I haven't had a better one,” I answered truthfully. If his lawyerly expertise was as robust as his debating skills, he no longer seemed like a rubbish bloke to have onside. His warning of the perils of lack of representation, so far, had rung true.

“Are you all right, Kim?” The tone was exploratory, reminding me of the many times Claire had asked the same question after one of my frequent and distressing trips to hospital, prior to my return to boarding school, or when another of my father's women breezed in and took over.

“Yes.” The answer had been my default position for as far back as I could remember. “I'm fine.”

“Sounds as though you're in a rather a mess,” Gavin said, in answer to my request. “I was going to dig up the garden—not that I've a clue what I'm doing. Lottie's the one with the green fingers. I'm the hired hand. Better come over right away.”

I drove to Harbertonford, a village near Totnes prone to flooding in winter. Following Gavin's precise instructions, I turned left towards Fine Pine and followed the road back round for a quarter of a mile through leafy countryside, eventually turning off down a lane no wider than a dirt track.

Badgers Leap
was the kind of place you only stumbled across. A long, low traditional Devon longhouse, it sprawled out in the countryside like a lion in high grass.

I turned into the driveway and got out, my entrance marked by an inquisitive look from a boy of about fourteen years of age. He was tall and thin and wore spectacles.

His skin had an adolescent crop of spots. He looked deeply serious.

“You must be Milton.”

“My friends call me Milt,” he said, scrutinising me.

“Is your dad about?”

Milton nodded, the serious look remaining. “Pa's in the study. Do you want coffee or anything? Mum's out but my sister's pretty good in the kitchen.”

I laughed. “It's a bit sexist, isn't it?”

“S'pose,” he agreed without humour. “If you follow me, I'll show you the way.”

We passed through a long maze of rooms interconnected by narrow corridors. It was dark, cool and warrenlike. Although the sun was up and shining brightly, it only seemed to penetrate so far. With its
wood-burning
stoves and small rooms, Badgers Leap was more of a winter retreat.

The study was an impressively sized room with a large,
leather-topped
desk,
ladder-backed
chairs, and
floor-to
-ceiling bookcases containing thick,
intimidating-looking
tomes. On a side table rested a decanter and several glasses.
Silver-framed
photographs of Lottie and the children adorned one wall.

Gavin Chadwick greeted me in full European style. In his
open-necked
striped shirt and
chocolate-brown
trousers, he looked less lawyer and more landowner.

He invited me to take a seat. “I'm terribly sorry to hear the news about Chris. We both are. Must have been a tremendous shock.” He sat down behind the desk and rested his hands on the leather.

I could take a verbal detour. I could tell him my story from beginning to end. I could hope that he would see the terrible predicament I was in by osmosis. Why mess about?

“The police are looking for a motive for Chris's death. I fit the bill.”

Chadwick picked up a
gold-plated
fountain pen, unscrewed the top, and leant forward. “You'd better tell me everything.” A hint of a smile played on his lips at the prospect of a shared joke. “Communication is the key, isn't that right, Kim?”

Chadwick's smile had long disappeared. “A pity you didn't think to bring me in sooner.”

“I thought it would look like an admission of guilt.”

He shook his head in disbelief and made another note. “Have the police had the results back from the search?”

“If they have, they haven't informed me. Does it make a difference?”

“It depends whether Chris was killed at the cottage, or not.”

My blood froze. “He was killed in his car.”

“Did the police state that?”

“Well, no. It's what I assumed.” Chadwick's expression remained grave. “If he was,” I said, “it looks bad for me, doesn't it?”

“Not necessarily,” Chadwick said, a bit too airily, I thought. “Forensics may shine a new light on an enquiry, but it has to be a part of the process.”

“But my DNA will be all over the place.”

“True, but they're looking for solid evidence, causal links. If they find blood in the cottage, they'll have to first establish whether it belongs to Chris. If that's the case, the cottage will become a crime scene and …”

“I'll be in the police station and interviewed as their prime suspect.”

Chadwick held my gaze, unflinching. “Yes.”

“Meanwhile the murderer goes free.”

He didn't say anything, gave me a searching look. “Tell me about the stalker again.”

I ran through the lot,
blow-by
-blow, including my own shabby part in following Kyle Stannard.

He frowned. “Not very smart.”

I agreed.

“And the police are convinced Chris was your stalker?” he said.

“Or I fabricated the whole thing.”

“And the letters on your computer?”

“I can prove that I was in Cheltenham when they were written.”

“That's a start,” Chadwick said crisply. “And you're not being stalked anymore?”

Embarrassed, I dropped my gaze to my hands. “I know how it looks.”

Chadwick tapped the side of his nose with the pen. “Setting aside the identity of the stalker, what do
you
think happened to Chris?”

“I genuinely don't have a clue about the chain of events, but I'm sure my stalker and his murderer are one and the same.”

He nodded silently. For the first time I felt as if someone was actively considering my theory. It felt good.

“The police appear to believe that Chris was killed on the same day you returned to Cheltenham, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Reason?”

“Blowflies and maggots—forensics.”

“Which can be open to interpretation in cases of decomposition.” He nodded for me to continue.

“Someone stoved his head in with a heavy instrument, a hammer
odds-on
favourite.”

Chadwick's eyes fastened on me. “Did they tell you that?”

“I think so. Yes, I'm sure they did.”

“Which part of the head?”

“I don't know. Does it matter?”

“Rather. Was he sneaked up from behind or was it a
full-frontal
assault?”

He meant was it male or female, I thought. If it were full on, Chris would have defence injuries, and bits of the murderer's DNA would be underneath his fingernails. I felt a rush of euphoria as if, after struggling for days, I'd found a piece of jigsaw that fitted into one of the numerous pieces of sky. “If full on, it couldn't possibly be me.”

“But if the reverse were true …” He floated the question. It hung in the air like a kite on the breeze. Was this the point, I thought, where a lawyer entertains ideas about his client's guilt in spite of knowing that he has to defend him? My newfound confidence evaporated.

“Then a woman could have carried it out,” I admitted.

Chadwick got up, walked over to a window obscured from light. “You say you had a puncture that morning. Did anyone see you pulled over?”

“I was so busy struggling with the
wheel-nuts
I didn't notice.”

“Pity.” He drew breath in through his nose and let out a long sigh. “As I see things,” he said, at last, “the evidence so far is circumstantial. There is no smoking gun. One of the easiest traps detectives can fall into is developing a theory about what happened and forcing the facts to fit. A lot depends on what, or if, they find conclusive evidence at the cottage. As far as the police are concerned, you had the motivation. Hell hath no fury, et cetera.”

“So even if Chris wasn't the stalker, I'm still in the frame?”

He turned sharply towards me. “You're still convinced of Chris's innocence?”

I bent down, pulled the photo album from my bag, and handed it to him. “Does that look like a man
hell-bent
on destroying me?”