The Insect Farm (25 page)

“I think we need to inform the police,” I said.

I don’t want to give the impression that I had worked out some sort of masterplan to enable me to get away with killing my wife and was carrying it out step by step. I had not. At this point my mind was still plagued at every moment by nightmare images and by the horror of what I had done. I have seen this sort of thing described as a living hell, and it was something like that. Experienced as though you are an unwilling witness to events over which you have no control; a world in which the bizarre becomes the everyday, the surreal becomes familiar. And in and among all this I felt that I had no choice but to do whatever I could to keep myself safe from the consequences of my actions.

Proscriptions on both murder and adultery are among the most fundamental of human laws; as old as the Ten Commandments themselves, and no doubt older than that. Only a fool would put them on an equivalent level, but nonetheless both Brendan and I had each committed a mortal sin which we were now trying to conceal. While my purpose was simply to appear to know nothing about the disappearance of my wife, his imperatives were far more complex. His instinct to conceal his infidelity was in direct conflict with his concern about her whereabouts, and that was bound to lead him into making mistakes.

The very first questions the police were likely to ask would probably reveal that he had lied about when he had last seen her, and the chances are that his thoughts were going crazy trying to work out the ramifications of whatever he might say. If a few questions from the police revealed that he and she had been lovers, and then she turned up within hours with some innocuous explanation for her absence, their secret would be blown. I cannot know whether or how Harriet had planned to tell me about her love of several different types of music, but whatever her plans were they certainly would not have included a police inquiry.

“Surely there’s no need to alert the authorities just yet,” Brendan said. “I’m sure there must be an obvious explanation we haven’t thought of.”

“What, like she got off at York, went shopping and fell asleep?” I said. Again, I don’t now know if I was getting
agitated for effect, or whether I was just naturally taking to the part of a distraught husband. “People don’t just vanish, Brendan. If, as you say, she left Newcastle on Tuesday, why hasn’t she turned up here?”

He had no answer. His calls to Martin and Jed had revealed nothing new. Neither of them had a clear idea of what her plans had been. They vaguely thought she was travelling down on Tuesday, but had no way to be sure.

“I thought you said she had told the three of you that she was travelling down sooner than her plan? How come you remember that so clearly and they don’t seem to remember it at all?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe they weren’t paying close attention.”

“But you were?”

“Look, Jonathan,” he said, “there’s nothing to be gained right now by going into why I know it. Let’s just accept that I know she left Newcastle on Tuesday. Today is Thursday and she is not here.”

“So you say, Brendan. I hear you. The trains from Newcastle are notoriously useless, but even they don’t take two days to get here. She is my wife and I am worried about her. I am going to the police. You can come with me or not, as you like.”

Chapter Nineteen

Walking along the road towards the police station at King’s Cross, I inhaled as deeply as I could to try to get the oxygen flowing through my body. I was about to take yet another action which would affect the rest of my life. Obviously I had already embarked upon an unstoppable course two days ago in my flat, but until this past hour no one knew that Harriet was missing. What I was about to do would inevitably begin a chain of events over which I could have little if any control. I knew that I had not had time to think things through properly. I also knew that, even if I had the time, I had no experience or knowledge relevant to the concealment of a serious crime. I had no idea then, and have no idea now, if it really is possible to plan and to carry out the murder of another human being and get away with it. But if it is, then surely it would take days or weeks of thought and preparation. No doubt there would be many elements to get right – time, place, method, absence of witnesses among them. The death of Harriet had been unplanned, it had several potential witnesses and many different routes to the truth; but regrettably there was no going back. I had to deal with the situation as it was, and all I wanted to do was to stay out of jail.

The impression that most of us have of the inside of a police station in the 1970s comes from watching cop dramas on the television. We envisage a counter and a friendly bobby drinking tea from an enamel mug. When I went into King’s Cross police station on that Thursday morning in December 1972, I guess I thought I had an idea of what it would be like inside, but found that my expectations were wildly inaccurate.

The station was housed in an old Victorian building right in the heart of the notorious red-light district, and even at that time of day it was full of drunks and prostitutes, all of whom were in various stages of desperation. I waited in a general holding area, looking around me at the collection of sad humanity gathered by whatever circumstances into this thoroughly depressing scene.

I found myself gazing, probably for too long, at a girl who could not have been much older than I was. I realized that I was being rude, but her stare back at me was not defiant or offended. Her drooping eyelids seemed for all the world to be every bit as dead as were Harriet’s lifeless eyes the night before last. There was time for the thought to cause a pang of pain as it flickered across my mind before I could dismiss it, trying once again to focus on what was about to unfold.

The place seemed to be full of cages. Not cages designed to incarcerate prisoners, but apparently to protect the police from the general public. In contrast to my mental image of an open area with a friendly bobby standing on the other
side and writing in a big ledger, what I actually discovered was a series of spaces enclosed by heavy-duty wire mesh, the function of which was to ensure that no one could get within striking distance of an officer. Instantly I felt uncomfortable and out of place, like a civilian in a war zone, and I could see a look of slight surprise on the face of the policeman who peered at me through a hole in the wall. By the time I managed to negotiate my way through the obstacle course which got me to the porthole, the young policeman on the other side of the wall had lost his initial interest and did not even glance up as he asked what he could do for me.

“My wife has gone missing,” I said. It felt like a milestone, and it was one. The start of a process which instantly, now it had begun, was unstoppable. The policeman was still finishing off writing what appeared to be some notes about the last thing he had dealt with, and clearly I did not yet have his full attention. For some reason, just at that moment, Harriet’s last words to me once again came flowing into my head and pulled my concentration away from what I needed to be saying. As though she was tugging at my sleeve.

“
Your first love is the blues. If you could only ever listen to one type of music for the whole of the rest of your life, this would be it. Right? But it isn’t the only type of music you can ever hear, is it? There are other types. Not as fulfilling or transporting or wonderful to you, but still enjoyable for what they are
.”

Involuntarily I heard her words replaying as though spoken by someone standing behind me, and at the same moment I saw Harriet’s lovely face swimming before my eyes. I turned round and saw the young girl with the dead eyes looking at me, and her face began to float in my imagination and merge into Harriet’s. I put out my hand to lean on a small ledge in front of the opening, and I think my sudden precarious state finally caught the attention of the officer.

“Are you all right?” he said. He looked around as if to get a second opinion, but he was alone in his cubicle. He pushed a button on the desk in front of him, and in the distance I heard the sound of a buzzer. Just a second later a door opened and another officer, an older man, came into the public area.

The policeman came over to me and took me by the arm. He turned and guided me back to where he had come from, and I looked up and saw the face of the young girl receding into the distance. The curl of her lip suggested her conclusion that I was just another drunk. Inside the door I was immediately in a long corridor with straight-back chairs to one side, a machine for coffee and another selling crisps and chocolate. It seemed more like an NHS hospital than a police station, and I guessed that it was geared to a lot of people being made to wait for a very long time. The officer guided me to one of the chairs, keeping a firm hold of my elbow until I was safely seated.

He asked if I was all right, and I said that I was, but had just come over a bit dizzy.

“I don’t know if I am making a big fuss about nothing, but my wife seems to be missing. She was due to travel home from Newcastle on the train arriving at 2 p.m. and she wasn’t on it. I wouldn’t worry so much, except that a friend of hers who was on it says she actually left Newcastle on Tuesday, but she hasn’t shown up anywhere.”

It was a big moment for me, but I saw not a flicker of anything from the officer. He seemed to be about fifty years old, and for a moment I thought he reminded me of my dad. He had the same pattern of lines in his face, the same slightly downtrodden expression, maybe careworn from experience.

“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” he said. His response had the air of routine to it – he’d probably spent years of dealing with scores or maybe hundreds of hysterical spouses. “I’m sure there is an innocent explanation.”

He went off to try to find a vacant interview room, but returned after a couple of minutes and said he would be unable to find one free for a quarter of an hour or so. I told him that I was concerned because I had to be at the bus stop to collect my brother at 4.30. I saw the puzzled look and explained.

“My brother has a mental handicap. I am his only carer and I have to be there to collect him from the bus. If I’m not, he’ll be stranded and helpless.”

“Well, how about this then?” said the officer. “Chances are that by the time you get home, your wife will have turned up safely. We don’t start worrying about a missing adult until they have been gone for twenty-four hours anyway, so why
don’t you go and meet your brother, and if your wife hasn’t turned up by tomorrow, come back here and we will see what we can find out. How does that sound?”

It sounded perfectly all right to me. I had achieved my main objective and was very glad to get out of there; a chance to collect my thoughts and maybe to plan ahead.

My next major concern was Roger. I had a little time to spare before I needed to collect him from the bus, so I planned to pop back to the flat to start preparing his meal. As I turned the corner into my road, my heart stopped and so did my legs. A police car was parked at the side of the road, opposite my house, and two uniformed officers were speaking to a builder. One was writing in a notebook. I could hear and feel the blood being pumped through my veins. I had no choice but to go on walking, and I proceeded as slowly as I could without drawing attention, straining my ears to try to tune into the conversation. As I got near I could hear the builder speaking. “…but I haven’t got anywhere else to put it. We’ve got to get rid of the rubbish somehow. No one said we needed permission…” By now I was level with the skip and was able to glance over the edge. It was empty. The original must have been taken away and replaced. I breathed again.

I got to the drop-off point just in time to see the bus arriving, and still had not made up my mind how to handle things when Roger stepped off and fell into line alongside me.

“Have you had a good day, Roger?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said, instantly full of life, “we had modelling and the teacher brought in some clay and I made a rocket ship and Terry made some spacemen and we put them together and she said it was marvellous and they are going to keep it to show at the next open day. What do you think about that?”

As I listened to Roger speak and watched his face, full of enthusiasm and animation, I felt a sudden and entirely unexpected wave of envy flowing through me. Lovely, lovely Roger. He had no worries to speak of at all. He could enjoy whatever was happening right now without the need to think about the past or the future. His life was entirely straightforward and apparently without outside concerns. Roger had no inkling whatever of the mayhem that was likely to unfold around him very soon, and truly seemed to have no memory of any of the events that had made it inevitable. There had been no mention whatsoever of Harriet either yesterday or today so far, and so I decided to play it straight and see what happened.

“I was expecting Harriet to get back from university today. I went to meet the train, but she wasn’t on it.” I half-turned so as to be able to watch Roger’s face very carefully as this information was absorbed. The little frown of confusion was exactly what I would have expected and indicated no special concern. Clearly he had no immediate idea of what could be an explanation. Eventually he shrugged his shoulders and appeared to relax.

“What’s for tea?”

“Well,” I said, “I was expecting Harriet to join us so I have made one of my special chicken casseroles. It’ll be ready to eat by the time we get home.” I thought I would press my luck just a little bit further. “And maybe Harriet will have turned up by then and we can all eat together.”

Roger seemed to like this idea, and within a few minutes we were back at home. Usually any post and packages which had been delivered for anyone in the house were left on a table in the front hallway, and Roger seemed especially delighted to have received one of the little boxes which contained some new specimens.

“I didn’t know you had been expecting anything. Did you send off?” I asked him. He did not respond directly, but asked if he could go down to the insect farm later to house his new arrivals properly. I was happy for him to go on his own, and said that I felt I should wait in the flat just in case there should be any news from Harriet. He appeared to be unconcerned, and his main preoccupation was whether he would be allowed to eat her share of the chicken casserole if she did not turn up.