The Insect Farm (26 page)

After our meal, Roger took his new specimens and set off for the insect farm. I was content for him to do so in order that I could clear out as many of the other thoughts which were crowding into my head and make my plans. Tomorrow I would be returning to the police station to renew my report that Harriet was missing; but what else would a husband in my circumstances be doing?

My phone call to the house in Newcastle had yielded only monosyllabic responses indicating ignorance of anything helpful, other than that there was no sign of Harriet. Her holdall seemed to be missing, but no one there appeared to know or to care when she had left or how long she had been gone. I decided to call again, but this time the phone in Newcastle was not answered. It was the end of term, and I guessed that the house was empty.

I wondered if there was evidence in Newcastle of Harriet’s relationship with Brendan, and now, for the first time, I also wondered if Martin and Jed knew of it. If it eventually became known that she had been betraying me, this could be seen as a motive for her murder. Certainly, it had led to her death at my hands. That said, I was as sure as I could be that no one other than Roger knew that I had any inkling of her infidelity, and I felt reasonably confident that I could act the part of an amazed cuckolded husband if it became necessary.

My main objective had to be to stay above suspicion. I knew that the moment a serious investigation started I would have little or no chance of remaining safe. Though I had done my best to clear up in the house – I had washed the paintwork thoroughly, thrown out and burnt the rug, laundered the towels – there were bound to be minute traces of blood or of the violence in the flat. I also did not think it likely, unless they started a serious investigation, that the police would find out about the existence of the insect farm. However, if they did, I would be under arrest within minutes.

It was clear that all my efforts must be focused on evading any question falling upon me, and so I needed to do everything I could to ensure that all my actions were those of a husband whose wife had gone missing, and who had not the smallest idea about how or why it had happened.

As I thought more about it, I thanked my stars that I had managed to remain quiet in those last few weeks about what Roger had told me. If I had raised the matter on the phone with Harriet, Brendan would then have known of my suspicions, and I would have had an obvious reason to be angry with her. As it was, so far as I could tell, no one other than Roger knew. I very much doubted whether he, even under questioning, would reveal what he had told me. Any pressure would be more likely to make him close down rather than be forthcoming, and even if he were I reckoned I could shrug it off as a misunderstanding which I had taken very lightly.

Roger returned home on schedule at around 8 p.m., and I asked him if he had been able to house his new insects as he had wanted to.

“Yes,” he said happily, “I think they will be right at home.” Then he seemed anxious to get off to bed.

I began to think more about Brendan; about how he had found it necessary to lie about the last time he had seen Harriet, and about the complications of his affair with her. They provided a possible opportunity. At 9 p.m. that evening the phone rang, and I thought I knew who it would be. I had prepared my lines and was ready.

“It’s Brendan. I was calling to see if you have heard anything from Harriet.”

“Oh, Brendan, it’s you,” I said quickly. “I’d hoped it was Harriet. Bugger. You just got my hopes up. No, I haven’t heard anything at all. I don’t know what to do. I went in to see the police, but they said they wouldn’t be interested until she has been missing for twenty-four hours, so I have to go back there tomorrow. I don’t know who else to call. I’m at my wits’ end. No use in calling her parents – they’re still in Singapore, and I’d only scare them half to death. I wondered if there were any other friends you could think of who might know something? Anyone else we can ask?”

“I’ve spoken to Laura, who is one of the girls who shares the house with her in Newcastle,” he said. “I tracked her down at her parents’ house in Sevenoaks. She didn’t have much idea, but said she thought she was due to come down today.”

“What about any of the other girls in the house? Or maybe other friends she might have that I don’t know about?”

“There are two girls other than Laura, but she’s not especially friendly with them. And apart from Jed and Martin, I honestly don’t think there is anyone else she is close to.”

I remained silent for a moment, as though considering how to phrase my next thoughts.

“Brendan,” I said, “I’m not sure quite how I should ask this, and I wouldn’t put you on the spot if it wasn’t so serious. However, obviously my mind is roaming over every
possibility.” I hesitated again. “Would you be able to tell me if she was seeing someone else?”

“What do you mean?” Was there a trace of alarm in his voice, or was I mistaken?

“I have no reason to think this, and ordinarily it’s the last thing I would imagine. Harriet is as loyal as anyone could ever be. But she’s missing, for God’s sake, and the police are bound to ask me. Is there any possibility that she could have gone off with someone else? I mean, with another bloke?”

Neither of us spoke for what seemed a long time, and I thought that perhaps the call had been cut off. Then I could hear breathing and realized that what I was hearing was the sound of a guilty man panicking. “Brendan? Are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m still here. It’s just that I was shocked by what you said. No.” He was stuttering and stammering like a schoolboy caught stealing apples. “Of course not. I can say that for sure. I would know. There is no one else. She only has any interest in you.”

“But how can you be so sure? She probably wouldn’t have confided in any of you guys, would she?” Was I enjoying myself? I hope that I could not be said to have been enjoying anything so soon after the tragedy with Harriet. On the other hand, the idea of torturing Brendan, this bloke whose infidelity and deception with Harriet had indirectly led to her death, had its own appeal.

“Trust me, Jonathan,” he said, “I would know. One way and another the four of us spend quite a lot of time together,
practising and performing. If she had had another man, we would have known. Take it from me that whatever the answer turns out to be, that won’t be it.”

“Well,” I said, “you do sound very sure. It’s just that the police are bound to ask me, or maybe I’ve been watching too many detective series on the telly. Anyway, I can’t think of anything else to do, other than to wait to see if she calls or turns up. If she hasn’t done so tomorrow, I’ll go back to the police at King’s Cross. I guess they will want to speak to you, as you seem to have been the last person to have seen her. Do you want to hurry things up by coming with me?”

We agreed to wait to see what the morning brought and decide tomorrow if he should come with me to see the police. I, of course, knew what the morning would bring and went to bed that night, totally exhausted, but completely unable to sleep for more than five minutes together.

Chapter Twenty

I kept wondering whether and when Roger would ask about Harriet. On one hand, I was mightily relieved that he clearly was not at all traumatized by anything he might have seen or heard on Tuesday night. On the other hand, it was unusual that he had not seemed interested in when we might see her, nor had he shown much of anything when I told him that I didn’t know where she was. But that was Roger. Even after all these years of knowing him, indeed, of never having known any life without him, I still was unable to read with any reliability what was going on in his head.

It would have been useful for me to have had some idea of what Roger might say if and when anyone asked him, but I remained certain that the longer it was before that happened the better it would be. With any luck there would seem to the police to be no reason to ask Roger anything, and if ever anyone thought there was, his thoughts would be confused by the passage of time.

After dropping Roger off at the bus on that Friday morning, I decided to go back to the insect farm for one further look around before returning to the police station. It was the location of my most likely vulnerability, and I knew that
the current situation could only be temporary, until I could think of a better idea.

I had the keys to the outside gate and to the shed in my pocket, and so went straight there from the bus and looked around carefully to check that there was no one in the area when I let myself through the locked gates. Not that I was not a familiar sight on the allotments, but now I was thinking about how any of my actions now would square with those of an increasingly distraught husband of a missing wife. I let myself into the shed and closed the door behind me before turning on the lights. Half a dozen fluorescent bulbs flickered to life, each one a few seconds apart, and my eyes began to adjust. My plan was to see if I could stand back and look at the contents of the shed as a newcomer might who had no idea what to expect. Where would your eyes go? Would it be obvious to any suspicious person where they needed to start looking? Put another way: was there any way to persuade myself that, if the police asked me to show them this place, they would not be taking me out in handcuffs?

Standing back and viewing the insect farm for the first time, you had the impression of a big area full of rows of tanks, crates, boxes and equipment. It was amazing how Roger had grown and developed this project since he began with that first tiny converted aquarium all those years ago. I thought back to that very first day when I had been trying to get his attention because I was just back from my camping holiday, and all Roger could think about was his new universe. I began
to walk slowly along the sides of the tanks, one stacked upon another in racks, each one housing within it its own differentiated environment and civilization; each containing its own little ecosystem, its own unique version of paradise. In some there appeared to be little more than a muddy sludge pressing against the glass wall, broken up only by the odd cavern and twig. In these it seemed that there was little if anything to be seen. In others though, it was much easier to make out an environment and a pattern of behaviour, and in these cases it was possible to begin to see how and why the hobby was such a fascinating one for Roger.

I was in a kind of trance as I walked around the perimeter of what seemed destined to be Harriet’s mausoleum, struggling to adjust the focal length of my eyes in an effort to identify and study the creatures that lived in the half-light. I found myself leaning against one of the tanks stacked at head height, and was pressing the side of my face against the glass. There was condensation on the inside, and I had to move my head to try to get a clearer view inside it. The tank was laid out with coloured gravel in the bottom, with an arrangement of twigs and small branches bridging the gaps between rocks of different shapes and sizes.

At first it seemed that the tank was empty of animate life. All I could make out was a few green leaves and some pools of water resting in the hollows of the stones. I looked harder and strained my eyes in the gloom, and only after a minute or two did I begin to discern the shapes of the ants, which I
could now see advancing up and down the branches. Once they came into focus, it quickly became hard to believe that they had not been obvious from the start. First I could see dozens, and then gradually I could make out what must have been hundreds of them, apparently organized into their brigades and battalions and armies, marching across the twigs and branches, and all heading with uncompromising determination in the footsteps of their comrades. Round and round they went, back and forth, in an apparently endless stream of motion. There they were, going about their business, evidently entirely in command of their world.

If it could be possible to ask them, undoubtedly they would say that they had all the answers. They were the most intelligent and advanced creatures in their world. They knew it all, and what they didn’t know for sure they had very plausible theories about. They could chart the extent of their universe. They had understood and had dominated their environment. They looked up, and they could see everything to the limit of their understanding, and when they looked up, they saw no God. They felt self-contained, no doubt self-satisfied, entirely in charge.

I stood up and struggled to regain my composure. All the while as I glanced around, I had tried to prevent my gaze from going directly to the large oblong box tucked away below the far stack of shelves, with the mesh over the top of it. But of course I could not unknow what I knew, and my eyes were drawn irresistibly in that direction. Once it came
into my sight I could look nowhere else, and it was obvious to me that this was the first place anyone searching for a dead body would look. I had to conclude that the only possibility of not being caught was to prevent the police from learning about the insect farm. If they did learn of it, I would have to try to deter them from taking an interest. Once an enquiring officer was inside this building, my chance of evading detection and arrest would be zero.

I felt a sudden pain in my stomach from hunger and I glanced around for a final time before locking the door. I queued at a sandwich shop next to the Underground station. The idea of eating in the street was always frowned upon in my family, and it was one of the liberating things about being an orphan that I felt no fear of being caught by my mother cramming food into my mouth as I walked along. Even so, I could hear her displeasure. What would she be thinking if she knew about what was really going on with me now? Perhaps she did know. I felt a further huge wave of nausea as the idea struck me, and I had to stand to one side of the pavement for several moments to collect myself. If there was any way that my mother or father knew what was happening to me, I decided that they would also understand my current actions. Their first concern now, I felt certain, would be for Roger, and that was my first concern as well. I took a little comfort from the idea.