The Lake of Darkness (8 page)

Finn turned right at the next turning into Shirlock Road and came out into Savernake Road by the great porridge-coloured pile of All Hallows’ Church. Anne Blake had just reached the corner of Modena Gardens and Savernake Road and was now crossing the road towards the footbridge. Finn parked the van among all the other parked cars and vans. The snow had changed to a thin sleety rain.

It was very dark, though not yet half-past five. Finn supposed that Anne Blake had gone to call on some friend who lived on the other side of the railway line in Nassington Road maybe or Parliament Hill. She wouldn’t go shopping that way. Besides, the carrier had looked full. He debated whether to go back into the house in her absence. She would very likely be absent for a couple of hours.

He wondered if she had had her bath. There had been quite enough time for her to have had it, but would she go
out into the cold immediately after having had it? She might intend to have it immediately she got in. It would only take him a few minutes, say ten, to reconnect those plugs. But if she had already had her bath he might find himself stuck up there in the loft all night.

Perhaps a dozen people, coming singly or in pairs, had appeared from the approach to the footbridge while he sat there. Its only use really was to take one on to the Heath or into those streets to the east of South End Road. No one living here would use Hampstead Heath Station when Gospel Oak was just as near. She hadn’t gone to the station.

At last Finn got out of the van, crossed the road and let himself once more into the house in Modena Road. The rain had begun lashing down by the time he got there. He went upstairs without turning any lights on, and at the top, he entered Anne Blake’s flat in darkness. A street lamp lit the living room and so, with a richer orange glow, did the gas fire which she had left on. She wouldn’t have done that, Finn thought, if she had intended to be out for long.

He went into the bathroom and ran his hand along the inside of the bath. It was wet and so was one of the towels that hung on the chromium towel rail. There was no point in his remaining. He padded softly, although there was no one to hear him, across to the bedroom window. The rain was now coming down in the kind of deluge that no one would venture out in unless he had to. Finn had to. He opened one of the doors of Anne Blake’s wardrobe. Inside, among her clothes, were two or three garments still sheathed in the thin polythene covers in which they had come back from the dry-cleaners. Finn selected one of these, slipped it off the hanger and the long black evening dress it covered, and pulled it over his head, splitting its sides open a little way down for his arms to go through. It made a kind of protective tunic, impervious and transparent

The rain began to let up a little as he came up to Savernake Road. There was no one about. He felt drawn by the
Heath, by its wide green emptiness, and he walked up the steps and on to the footbridge. A single lamp, raised up high, illumined the bridge, but you couldn’t see the railway line, the walls were built up too high for that. To prevent suicides, thought Finn. He gazed across the smooth slope of Parliament Hill Fields to Highgate on the horizon, the emerald domes of St. Joseph’s gleaming colourless and pearly against a sky which the glow of London made velvety and reddish. The backs of the houses in Tanza Road were as if punctured all over with lights, but the glittering screen of rain prevented much of that light from being shed on the path. It seemed to Finn that the whole area to the left of the footbridge and immediately above the railway embankment was extraordinarily dark. He could barely see where the turf ended and Nassington Road began.

He came down the steps on the Parliament Hill side of the bridge. A train rattled underneath as he passed. The rain was running in streams down his plastic covering, though now it was lightening again, setting in evidently for a night of torrents with short drizzly remissions. In the dark hollow where the path ran under trees to link with the end of Nassington Road, Finn picked his way between the puddles. Now he could see why it was so dark. The lamp at the end of Nassington Road had gone out or never come on.

Finn liked the solitude and the silence. The train and its noise had long gone down the deep cutting to Gospel Oak. No one was venturing out into the rain. A strange tall figure in a shining glassy robe, Finn stood under the trees viewing the grey and rain-washed plain, feeling one with the elements, a man of power, a conqueror.

Someone was coming down Nassington Road, he could just hear the footfalls, though they were deadened by the wetness of the pavement. He stepped a little aside, behind the trunk of a tree. He could see her clearly now, passing under the last lighted lamp, the pagoda umbrella up, the carrier in her other hand empty or nearly so. She had
waited to leave for home until the rain lifted a little. He could tell she was nervous because the lamp was out. She looked to the left past where he was standing and to the right, towards the bridge, and then she came on into the lake of darkness.

Finn no more intended to move forward and strike than he had intended to move forward and strike Queenie. It happened, that was all. It happened without his volition or his desire in the same way perhaps as the stone had moved and the pictures fallen. At one moment he was standing, watching with those night-seeing eyes of his, at the next the hammer was in his hand and he had fallen upon her. Queenie had made terrible sounds. Anne Blake made none but a throaty gasp, falling forward from the knees as he struck her again and again, now using the wide, flat side of the hammer.

In the dark he couldn’t tell which of that dark fluid that spread everywhere was water and which blood. He pulled her away from the path and round the side of the nearest tree. There was no pulse, she was dead. Already she had passed into the unknown and was in possession of what was beyond. He almost envied her.

There was no Lena this time to come in and witness what he had done. He must keep this from Lena, wash himself clean of all the blood that so terrified her, deny her newspapers. Finn picked up Anne Blake’s umbrella and furled it. He felt inside the carrier and found there a small suede handbag in which he found twenty-six pounds in notes, a cheque-book, and two credit cards. He took these and the money with him.

In the light on the bridge he could tell blood from water by running his fingers down his body and then holding up his hands. The lamplight robbed everything of colour, but the fluid was dark that ran from his hands. Someone was coming from the Parliament Hill side. Whoever it was had passed Anne Blake’s body. Finn took refuge at the foot of
the switchback slope that was designed for those who didn’t want to or couldn’t use stairs. Footsteps passed across the bridge and went on towards Savernake Road. The rain had returned now to all the force of its former intensity. Finn stepped out into it and let it wash him clean.

He also washed the hammer in the rain. Once back in the van, he stripped off his plastic tunic and rolled it up into a ball. Underneath he was perfectly clean and fairly dry. He replaced his hammer in the tool box and fastened the lid. The gas fire would still be on in Anne Blake’s flat, might very likely remain on all night, but it wouldn’t burn the house down.

The problem was to get rid of the contents of the handbag, particularly the cheque-book and the credit cards. Finn drove home. It was still only seven, the rain falling steadily as if, having at last found a satisfactory rhythm, it meant to stick to it. Because of the rain he put the van away in the garage he rented in Somerset Grove, an old coach-house with bits of rotting harness still hanging on the walls.

With Lena was Mrs. Gogarty, the friend who had predicted for Finn a violent death in old age. The two of them were intent upon the pendulum. A white-and-pink baby’s shawl with a scalloped edge had been thrown over the birdcage. Mrs. Gogarty was as fat as Lena was thin, with abundant hair dyed a stormy dark red.

“Well, well,” said Finn, “you
are
cosy. Can I have a lend of a pair of scissors?”

Lena, looking in the mauve dress and yards of stole like the appropriate one of the Three Fates, handed him the Woolworth scissors with which she picked and snipped at her daily finds.

“He’s a lovely boy, your boy,” said Mrs. Gogarty, who made this remark every time the three of them met. “The picture of devotion.”

Finn managed to palm his mother’s reading glasses off the top of a chest of drawers where they nestled among some half-burnt candles and incense sticks and pieces of abalone shell. He went down to his own room where he cut up the notes and the cheque-book and the credit cards into very small pieces. The tin from which he had eaten pineapple chunks at lunchtime was now quite dry inside. Finn put the pieces of paper and card into the empty tin and applied a match. It took several more matches to get it going and keep it going, but at last Anne Blake’s twenty-six pounds and her Westminster Bank cheque-book were reduced to a fine black ash. The American Express and Access cards were less destructible, but they too went black and emitted a strong chemical smell.

Re-entering his mother’s room, Finn dropped the glasses and trod on them. This made Mrs. Gogarty scream out and jump up and down, jerking her arms, which was what she did whenever anything the slightest bit untoward happened. Lena was too much occupied in calming her down to say anything about the glasses; she diverted her with the pendulum as one diverts a child with a rattle.

Finn promised to get the glasses repaired as soon as he could. He would go into the optician’s first thing tomorrow, he said. In the meantime, had she noticed the rain coming in over her gas stove? Better put a bowl there, and the first moment he got he’d, be out on that roof.

“Devotion itself,” gasped Mrs. Gogarty.

The pendulum rotated, widdershins and swiftly.

The snow, which had been falling for most of the afternoon, had changed to rain when Martin drove across the Archway Road and began searching for a place to park. Southwood Lane was hopeless and so was the narrow congested curve of Hillside Gardens. He finally left the car in one of the roads up behind Highgate Police Station and walked back to the crossroads, wondering if he might be too late to catch Bloomers open, although it was only ten to six.

During the week-end he had asked himself several times why he should bother to call at the shop when he was sure it must have been the Bhavnani family who had sent those flowers. Anyway, did it matter particularly who had sent them? Of course, if he knew, he could write a note of thanks or phone. Dr. Ghopal had phoned the office during the afternoon to say that the great heart specialist was prepared to operate in the week immediately preceding Christmas. No further time should be wasted when a condition like Suma’s was in question. Would Martin buy the air tickets himself and arrange a hotel for Mrs. Bhavnani? Martin had agreed to do this, but he had felt unable to make enquiries about the flowers, especially as he was going to see the pretty dark-haired girl that evening.

He saw her when he was still on the other side of the road, outside the post office. She was taking in boxes of cut flowers and poinsettias in pots from the pavement. He waited for the lights to change and then crossed the street. The shop, which was very small, had a red bulb in one of
its hanging lights, and the orangey glow, the mass of fresh damp glistening foliage, the red-velvet long-leaved poinsettias, gave to the place a festive air, Christmasy, almost exciting. It was dark and bleak outside. The shop was alight with reds and yellows and jungle greens, and the girl stood in the middle of it, smiling, her arms full of carnations.

“Oh, I was so sure you wouldn’t come!”

She checked herself, seeming a little embarrassed. The colour in her cheeks had deepened. It was as if-he couldn’t help feeling this-she had actually looked forward to his coming and had then resigned herself to-disappointment? She turned away and began putting the carnations in water. He said in a voice he recognised as typically his, a hearty voice he disliked,

“Did you happen to find out who was the kind person who sent my bouquet?”

It was a little while before she turned round. “There, that’s all done.” She wiped her hands on the brown-and-white-checked apron she wore. “No, I’m awfully afraid we couldn’t. You see, the person who came in didn’t give her name. She just wrote that card and paid for the flowers.”

“You wouldn’t know if it was an old woman or a young one, I suppose, or if she was-well, white or Indian or what?”

“I’m afraid not. I didn’t see her, you see. I
am
so sorry.” She took off her apron, went into the little room at the back and reappeared wearing a red-and-blue-striped coat with a hood. “If you’re worrying about thanking them,” she said, “I’m sure you needn’t. After all, the flowers were to thank
you
, weren’t they? For something you’d, done. You can’t keep on thanking people for thanking you backwards and forwards, the next thing would be they’d, have to thank you for your thank-you letter.” She added, the pink once again bright in her cheeks, “Of course, it’s nothing to do with me. I don’t mean to interfere.”

“No, you’re quite right.” He went on quickly, “If you’re
going to close the shop now-I mean, if you’re leaving, can I give you a lift anywhere? I have my car.”

“Well, you can. Oh,
would
you? But you’re going home and I have to go to Hampstead. I always go to see my friend in Hampstead on Monday evenings, and you’ve no idea how awful it is getting from here to Hampstead if you haven’t got a car. You have to go on the 210 bus, and they either don’t come at all or they hunt in packs.”

Martin laughed. “I’ll go and get the car and pick you up in five minutes.” To make it as fast as that he had to run. When he pulled up at the lights she was waiting, scanning the street, looking lost.

“You’re very very kind,” she said.

“Not at all. I’m glad I happened to mention it.” He was already aware that she was the kind of girl who makes a man feel manly, protective, endowed with virile power. Sitting beside him, she smelt of the flowers she had been with all day. She pushed back her hood and felt in her hair to release some slide or comb which held it confined, and the dark silky mass fell down over her shoulders like a cape.