“Thank you, Geoffrey,” said Catherine, deadpan. “I’d never heard that one before.”
“Surely you’d both agree that Jim requires looking into,” saidMargaret. “I mean, an ex-criminal, who was seen arguing with the victim a couple of nights before the murder.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to question him,” said Geoffrey. “He plays croquet most mornings. We could approach him then, although I do insist on taking the lead.”
“We can’t do it tomorrow morning. We’re busy.” Catherine sat back. Time to give them her news. She surprised herself with how excited she was. “I still keep in touch with a few old colleagues and, well, I managed to get us tickets to Desmond’s autopsy.”
Margaret clapped her hands together and let out a yelp of delight. “Oh, come on, let’s have dessert to celebrate!”
Fourteen
It was afew seconds before Carol remembered she wasn’t waking up in a cell. The light shone into her room, not in vertical lines but horizontal. Blinds, not bars. There was no smell of piss and bleach. No fluorescent strip lighting. The city traffic sounded like peaceful ocean waves.
Half-awake, she saw Desmond’s lifeless body on the ground, his face oddly peaceful. That imprint, a neat circle, on his forehead. Was she remembering it right? Still in bed, she rolled herself into the position in which they’d found him. Strange for her, as a perpetrator, to momentarily occupy the role of victim. Desmond was lying on his left side. Carol put her hand to her head,hishead in her imagination. The wound she’d seen was on the right side of the forehead.
Now Carol changed parts. She got onto all fours in her bed, and held an invisible weapon over her head. She was back in the role she was born to play. She pictured Desmond’s helpless body below her, right where she had been, and slowly landed herpretend blows. They were landing on the left side of his forehead. She, a right-hander, was hitting theleftside of his forehead. Now she changed hands, passing her imaginary weapon between them. She held up the weapon again, but now in her left hand. It felt wrong. Her blows came down with no force and no accuracy. It was icky. Just a switch of the hands had turned her from accomplished assassin to a toddler with a hammer.
The wound was on the right side of Desmond’s forehead. The murderer was left-handed.
She chose to skip coffee downstairs and opted for a cup of Kenco instant on her balcony. The grass was green, the sun shone bright, her time was her own. All those years in prison and the world had been out here, happily carrying on without her.
Before Carol was locked up, she had loved a morning walk in Burgess Park, South London, especially in summer. People on their way to work, joggers, alkies, and schoolkids sharing the same space. In London, you were never more than a few feet from a millionaire and a crackhead. In the case of some rock stars, you could find both housed in the same person.
One morning, Carol had seen a man kick his dog, hard, teeth clenched, like he meant it. It had stopped her in her tracks. She had enough distance and he was in such a puce-faced rage that she was able to stand and watch him. It was hard to tell his age. He’d clearly abused his own body but sadly not as much as he had his dog’s. The bald thug had bent over and shouted at his bulldog, then punched it in the face.
Did she regret killing him?
Nope.
He had deserved it.
This was when she had had her sandwich business. She had driven around in a van, delivering egg-and-cress and ham-and-cheese to the city’s offices. Back then, if you worked in London, the sandwiches came to you. Now, these days, you had to make your own way to the sandwiches and pay six pounds to Pret A Manger for the privilege.
If she had to pinpoint the one change in London since she had been imprisoned that had struck her most, it would have to be Pret A Manger. A business that had not existed before now occupied every third building. If Pret A Mangers continued to pop up at the same rate, it was surely only a matter of time before Prets started to appear on people’s bodies, like tumors. Expectant mothers would have their twelve-week scans, only to be told they were gestating a new branch.
When she followed the man out of the park and saw he was headed in the direction of her van, the opportunity was too good not to take. By the time he was beside her vehicle, she’d caught up with him and was able to appeal to him in the way all men of his type could be appealed to. By asking for his expertise.
“Excuse me. I think the refrigerator in my van might be broken. I’m hopeless with that sort of thing. Could you take a look?”
He couldn’t resist, and within a few seconds he was scratching his head and letting out theatrical sighs as she opened the back doors.
“Let’s have a look, shall we?” he had said, clambering into the back, into what was about to become both the worst and the final day of his life.
Carol, standing behind him, had stabbed him in the leg with her right hand, expertly puncturing his femoral artery. As she hadsuspected it might, rather than attacking her, his dog had jumped into the van and attacked her sandwiches with gusto. Then she had locked the van doors.
That had been a pleasant few hours for Carol, driving around London, listening to Simon Bates on Radio 1 and the screams of a man bleeding to death while the dog he’d abused enjoyed a delicious feast. You haven’t truly heard “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” until it’s been accompanied by the diminishing gurgles of an evil man. Not Simon Bates, of course: the thug in the back of Carol’s van.
Once he was dead, she’d got to a pay phone and let her customers know she’d have to let them down that day. After a detour to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, where she dropped off the world’s most well-fed rescue dog, she’d treated herself to lunch in an East End café, before heading out to Epping Forest and waiting for the right time to bury the bastard.
A good day. One of her last for some time.
But here she was at Sheldon Oaks, with many more good days in front of her.
Hopefully.
Carol noticed the croquet players heading out to the lawn, like they did most mornings. It occurred to her that she was starting to take these mornings for granted, which was something she couldn’t afford to do. People were chasing her, people who thought she’d murdered someone, people who could put her back behind bars. Geoffrey, the ex-detective: What if he got the bit between his teeth and decided to relive his youth, send her down for his One Last Case? He certainly hadn’t been backward in coming forward when it had come to accusing her in front of everyone the night before.
She had to clear her name, or these few weeks of peace would prove to be nothing but a brief interval from a life spent in prison.
