Claustrophobia (23 page)

‘Pen, I believe it was an accident. I don't know why I believe it, after all these months of lies.
Lies
, my God! It may be that I don't know you at all as I thought I did. But I do know you're not a murderer.'

He stopped, closed his eyes, then opened them again.

‘Having said that, I can't see anyone else believing it. The way it all stacks up.'

‘I'll have to go to the police,' Pen said. ‘Even if I have to tell them about – about the affair … Derrick, I can say it was self-defence, it really was.'

Derrick shook his head slowly from side to side in a way that unnerved her completely.

‘Pen, do you not understand they will look into everything? It's not that simple. If you go to the police, you have to accept you will be arrested and charged, and it doesn't look good. At the very least, you'll end up having our baby behind bars.' He hugged her absently, stroking her stomach. ‘If baby even survives.'

‘Don't say that.'

‘We have to face facts. Even if you pleaded – I don't know – temporary insanity or something, which is what I think it must have been – God knows what you'd get.'

He held her tighter and kissed her.

‘I can't believe you would let things get so out of hand. Why didn't you talk to me?'

Pen shrugged, teary. ‘When I found that letter …'

‘I'd forgotten all about that stupid letter! Christ, Pen!'

‘But you kept it.'

‘Yeah, maybe – but only to remind myself how idiotic, how obsessed I'd been. Lost track of it years ago. Barely gave it another thought. That was another life.'

‘Another life,' Pen thought. You could run through so many and they wouldn't go away, but you couldn't get them back. Not one of them. A paradox.
The presence of the observer alters the nature of the observed. You can't step into the same river twice.
Her tired head was milling with maxims.

‘I couldn't talk to you,' Pen said. ‘I was afraid.'

Derrick shook his head. ‘Well, there's much more to be afraid of now.'

‘Don't!' She clutched at him.

‘If you'd asked me, I could have told you all about it. The Kathleen I knew wasn't remotely like – like
that
woman.'

‘I don't understand. It
had
to be her.' A chill descended through Pen's limbs. ‘I have killed a woman, and not even the woman I thought she was.'

‘Well, it's not. And in any case it was her married name, Nancarrow. And she was much older. Pen, I was in a bad way back then, I didn't know whether I was coming or going.'

‘I thought you loved me. I believed you,' Pen said.

‘But I did! I always have. I knew it in my bones when we met. I just – had a lot to work through. You should have trusted me.' Derrick ran his fingers through his hair, pulling at the ends in agitation.

‘You've made a terrible mistake, Pen. But
that
mistake is beside the point, God knows. Even if it
had
been the same woman … What did you think you were doing?'

He was almost in tears now, but he wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.

‘And I don't believe this lesbian thing, either,' he said. ‘I'm not a bigot, or a prude, but you've never shown any inclination that way. You've always been –
normal
with me! I think you just got led – led astray, up the garden path, whatever.'

Pen did not contradict him. She no longer knew what was true.
Normal
, she whispered bitterly to herself.

‘What am I going to do?'

‘You mean, what are
we
going to do.' Derrick took a deep breath and stretched back his shoulders, as if testing his strength. ‘We're in this together, Pen. We always
have
been, even if you didn't fully understand that. Wait here.'

He went outside and after some time reappeared with a roughly folded tarpaulin that must have been in the shed.

‘First we're going to move the body somewhere out of sight,' he said, ‘and then we'll work out a plan.'

The body
. It was already a
body
, not Kathleen.

Derrick wrapped the body swiftly and dragged it up the steps, across the living room and into the study, then shut the concertina door.

16

Cover of darkness would mean a long wait, since the sun wasn't setting till quite late now. But they could see no other way. Derrick said it would take two of them to lift the body into the back of the Volvo (Pen thought bitterly, ‘Pregnant women are not supposed to lift things') and two to take it out at the other end.

The other end
was still a matter to be settled.

Then there was the question of the silver Corolla. Dumping it somewhere would only draw attention.

‘I assume you've been to this woman's house,' Derrick said, neutrally.

‘Yes, but …'

‘Just wait. I think the best thing is to take her car back to her house. Nobody has any reason at this stage to think she's
missing, do they? If I drive down separately in the Volvo … I can pick you up afterwards. At night, nobody's going to notice who parks the car, especially if it's a woman as usual. Whereas they'll soon notice if the car doesn't come home at all. Yes, I think that's the way to do it.'

He was talking as much to himself as to Pen, who let everything wash over her with an irresistible force.

‘You'll have to wear gloves when you drive,' he said. ‘No doubt your fingerprints will be all over things at her house, but that's not a problem in the way the car might be. You've never been fingerprinted for anything, have you?'

‘No,' Pen said. Schools in the last few years had discussed fingerprinting for using the library or office equipment, but thank goodness Boys' College had never agreed with it. All the things you had to think of …

‘Now, go and take a shower,' Derrick said. ‘You're going to feel very tired by the time this night is over, and you'll need all your strength. I'll make dinner.'

Pen winced. ‘I don't think I can eat.'

‘Rubbish – you have to. You can't just think of yourself now – food is vital for the baby. Just do as I say, and I'll take care of it.'

It was appalling how much better she felt after the shower. She even washed her hair.

She dressed in a clean pair of navy cotton jeans and a black shirt, as Derrick directed. Blending in with the coming darkness, like a puppeteer. It would be a starry night – but would there be a moon?

Derrick had swiftly grilled lentil burgers and opened a can of veg ravioli.

‘It's a bit of a mishmash but it will do,' he said. ‘Get that into you … Then as soon as it's dark, we get the car thing out of the way first, because that's the most visible. Otherwise, someone will spot it in our drive eventually. Besides, we'll need to get the Volvo up close to the house – afterwards.'

Pen shuddered.
Afterwards
was the worst bit.

Derrick leaned forward and covered her hands with his. ‘Darling, try deep breathing. You've got to drive a fair way, and without drawing any attention. Don't be tempted to speed.'

‘I never speed,' Pen said.

Derrick smiled. ‘That's my girl. And we keep our phones off. Don't even try to leave voicemail unless something goes entirely wrong, okay? We have to be intelligent about this.'

He cleared away the plates and filled the sink.

‘I'll just knock these off and then we'll get going. I'll wait for you at the corner, that big rose garden on the highway.
Bon courage
!' he said.

Afterwards, Derrick pulled the Volvo back into the drive and parked as near the glass sliding door as he could. He drew a deep breath and looked at Pen.

‘Halfway there,' he said. ‘But at the risk of making a bad pun, we're not quite out of the woods yet.'

There was a near-hysterical edge to his voice that made Pen swallow hard. She thought, ‘Derrick's as mad as I am. To crack jokes at a time like this.'

The hour's drive to return the Corolla, though it had gone smoothly, was enough time alone to give her pause. On the drive back, ensconced together, they had argued, with great civility under the circumstances, about where Kathleen should be buried. The thick bush of the national park would
be ideal, but the ground up here in the hills was too hard at this time of year, even using a mattock.

They would have to go further afield. Derrick knew of a plantation – ‘an alien forest,' Pen thought – in sandier ground. They would need spades and torches.
Pinus pinaster
,
Pinus radiata
– she remembered learning about them in Year Five. Importance to the economy. Everything was in there, stored in her memory – that was the horrible thing. The boys at school had yelled
Penis! Penis radiata!

‘I'm going out to the shed,' Derrick whispered now. ‘Wait for me inside.'

Pen crept into the house and kept the lights low, more for her own sake than from any fear of being seen. She couldn't bear the idea of anything stark, true, bright just now. Muted and blurred meant it was all unreal. She sat on the sofa with her back turned to the study, as if it could be willed out of existence, a collapsed space, like a black hole.

The phone began to ring. Derrick entered hastily.

‘At this hour!'

‘Don't pick up,' Pen said. ‘Let it go to voicemail.'

He let the phone ring out, then dialled up to hear the recording.

‘Christ,' he said, pressing down on the cradle. ‘Pen, I have to deal with this.'

It was Peter and Uwe, the exchange boys. Their flight had been turned back – some kind of fault with the plane – and delayed till the following day, so they were stuck at the airport. They'd been trying Derrick's mobile and the landline all evening.

Pen started laughing in disbelief.

‘Can't they go back to the host families, just for tonight? I thought airlines gave you a motel room when there was trouble. We can't put them up here. For God's sake, Derrick.'

‘I don't know about the motels. There was only one host family, and they've gone east for Christmas – left this morning – that's why I took the boys down.'

‘There must be someone else who can take them. We don't have time for this,' Pen said. ‘We've got to
move
.'

Derrick shot a glance at the study. ‘I know. But this could work
for
us, you know. In case we ever need an alibi. We let them bunk down here, we wait till they're asleep, then we slip out. We'd be back before morning.'

‘Leave them alone in the house!'

‘They're not babies, Pen. And it's better than being alone at the airport all night.'

‘But if they heard – or saw something.'

‘We'll be careful. We have to be careful anyway.'

‘It's crazy.' Pen covered her face with her hands. ‘Absolutely crazy. And what kind of alibi could they give, once they're back in Germany?'

‘You never know what will happen further down the track. Anyway, if I don't at least ring them back, we won't have any sort of alibi – it will look as if we were out all night. You have to think forward, look back from the future, as it were.'

‘As it were,' Pen repeated.

Derrick rang and arranged to collect the boys as soon as he could.

First it was a matter of getting the body through the lounge room and out the sliding door, into the shed.

‘Are you sure there's enough room in there?' Pen said.

Derrick looked at her impatiently. ‘I know what my shed can hold.'

The study's new concertina door ran smoothly to one side. The swaddled tarpaulin bundle was hardening; nothing like a person. That would make it difficult to get into the car later, of course. Derrick planned to take out one side of the back seat if he could.

They lumbered through lounge and kitchen, jolting at a huge clatter as they crossed the threshold. Pen swung her head around in the dark.

One of Kathleen's shoes had dropped onto the tiles.

Pen stared.

Derrick hissed, ‘Pick it up, don't leave it there.'

The shoe that had tripped her. That bore the familiar shape of her foot which Pen had even kissed. She felt the old frisson of desire and disgust. She thought of a fairytale in those books Derrick brought home from school, the Cinderella that Germans called Aschenputtel. It had a terrible refrain you didn't find in English versions …
Rucke di guck, Rucke di guck, Blut ist im Schuck.
Turn back and look, turn back and look, there's blood in the shoe. The shoe is too tight, the bride is not right …

A wave of nausea nearly knocked her to the floor.

‘Pen, we have to hurry.'

‘Do I
have
to come?'

Derrick looked at her sternly. ‘Some might say, if you've made the bed you have to lie in it,' he said.

Pen thought of her mother.
Why should you get off scot-free?

‘You have to pull your weight,' Derrick said. ‘Literally. Now let's get this thing in the shed.'

Thing.
When the body was safely stowed, Derrick cleaned himself up briskly, and instructed Pen.

‘Put your dressing gown on over your clothes. Everything as normal as possible, okay? They're good kids, these two – nothing to worry about. I'll make them Milo or something and they can go straight to bed. You pull out the sleeping bags from the storeroom. I'll be back as soon as I can.'

Pen did as she was told, and set out mugs and a plate of fruit mince pies in case they were hungry.

She picked up Kathleen's handbag. Derrick of course would insist on getting rid of it. It felt warm and malleable and smelled of Kathleen. Pen stuffed it into the bedroom wardrobe. It could wait.

Then she sat on the sofa. It was too warm for the dressing gown, and she pulled continually at the neck of her shirt for air.