By the end of August, six weeks later, the long, hot summer had finally died.
‘Never a good idea to run away,’ Donald said to Rachel. ‘But I can see why you did.’
‘I didn’t run, I drove, Don. And I made it easy. I left my phone. I let you know where I was.’
‘Very useful it was too. You know what, Rachel? I think you were thinking like a man. It’s this awful control and time management thing blokes have. If they’ve done all that could possibly be done in the circumstances, and nobody needs them at the moment, they tend to fuck off. I used to do it with my wife, before she told me what I was doing. What could I do about her giving birth, for instance? Sweet nothing. I went to the pub. You’ve lost a bit of weight.’
‘Did I ever tell you, Don, that the one thing I loathe and despise is someone telling me they know what I think. Or they think they know what I think.’
He was very cheerful indeed today, at his most irritating. So he should be, he thought to himself, for being someone who had redeemed a failing career by solving a murder or three by complete accident. On the back of other tragedies, for sure, but never mind that for a minute.
They had advanced, in the first few hours, only as far as her preferring him to anyone else, and how had he done that? Her dad liked him, and he liked her dad. One look at a dad like that, and you knew what she was about. Smashing kitchen he had. Donald became her interrogator of choice, the only one she would talk to, and she had, in police speak, been very helpful.
‘My daughter,’ Donald said, ‘wants to be an accountant. Get rid of the going-nowhere job. Will you talk to her?’
‘She’s only twenty. Tell her she needs her head examining. Tell her to go and see the world. And tell me what’s going on.’
It was he who found her, not Carl, and it was he she would rather have round her shambolic, searched-from-top-to-bottom flat. Such a haul, they had, but only from the one room, which was good for her, not so good from the point of view of anyone else who would have preferred the murders to be a conspiracy with two glamorous dykes in the frame rather than a single oddball divorcee who hated her husband so much she went into training to kill him. Donald would have liked to have told her quite how much he had deflected away from her, but he did not have the heart, and besides, she already knew.
‘Nice flowers,’ he said.
She shuddered. She was good at that. She could shudder from her heels to her head, like a dog fresh out of a pond, sorry, perhaps better not add that to the list of things he admired her for at that point. He and his wife had a dog once. It died. He would get another.
‘No charges,’ he said.
In Ivy’s room there was a bag. In Ivy’s bag there was a garrotte and rope, a scalpel fit for an assassin or a barber, and on Ivy’s scant supply of clothes an interesting selection of DNA. Then, courtesy of Rachel, there was the Plonker, and what he had seen, namely Ivy, testing her skill and nerve in the back of an ambulance. Then there was Blaker, currently safe and spinning his own story. Not a cat in hell’s chance of him being a reliable witness, or a witness at all.
‘It’s all terrorism now,’ Donald said kindly. ‘We bury what else we can. So’s we can pretend to cope. Things change.’
‘No charges?’ She looked relieved. ‘Really? No charges?’
‘Nope. Use your brain. Ernest Wiseman is a bit doolally, but not all the time, prognosis not good. When he’s up, he’s up, when he’s down, he’s down. Then when he’s halfway up, he falls all the way down. Such as, the pigs wouldn’t have eaten you, but then they would, then they wouldn’t, that kind of thing. He’s never going to be fit to stand trial or give evidence. Grace is a different ball game. She changes her tune all the time. Grace is totting up all the angles, fighting to survive. There’s nothing she won’t say or do.’
‘And?’
He counted on luck as he recited.
‘Grace said, at first, that you were implicated. That you set out to get the judge to a place where they could do their business, and you knew all about it. Just as you knew all about the other murders. Stop, don’t wave at me like that, I know, I know, I know.’
She was smoking for England. They both were. The smell of nicotine was well absorbed by flowers. Lots of flowers.
‘I got sacked, you know,’ she said. ‘Two weeks off work, whistle-blower to boot, you get sacked. It’s pretty easy when you don’t fight. And you know? I don’t give a shit.’
‘That’s good. Always another job for someone like you. Sandra …’ He stopped in confusion. He had just spoken his wife’s name. ‘Sorry, that just slipped out.’
‘You mean, your wife would say it doesn’t matter, and she’d be right. And I do understand why you do it.’
‘No you don’t. And when you say you understand, you should swallow the words. It’s as offensive to me as me telling you what you think. Sorry about that. And don’t go thinking you understand Carl, either. Not unless you try.’
‘Point taken. I understand that my own tragedies in all of this are very small ones in comparison to those of everyone else. I am not related to anyone who was killed on Ivy’s practice run. I am not dead or disfigured. My losses are minimal; I must think of others. That’s the lucky story of my life. Tell me again why no one will be charged with anything.’
‘Because it’s better that way, although hardly justice. No charges unless you insist, and if you did, Grace is the only one in the frame, and she will pour shit all over you. And Carl. She’d say you knew all along, and someone will believe her. Beautiful accountant implicated in murder conspiracy. It’ll do as much for your career as it will for the judge. Lovely media coverage. And again, there is this little matter of a lack of evidence. It’s always the same when the prime mover dies.’
‘Ah, I see you’ve been taking advice from Judge Schneider. An in-house expert on what’ll work in front of a jury. How unusual. The victim as expert.’
She knew she sounded bitter. It was the aftermath of two weeks’ solid crying. The crying had started as soon as her father had told her how he knew that Ivy had taken his inhaler and his pills, but had not wanted to tell her for fear of causing further offence. That he had known instinctively that Ivy was dangerous, but didn’t know how to say. The pathos of that made her cry, and she had not been able to stop. She had grown to appreciate the safety of that little house in Luton, where the floorboards did not creak and the windows stayed closed.
‘Grace not being charged with conspiracy to murder is, I admit, an absolute disgrace. But where’s the evidence? And consider the spin she could put on it. How does it look? She’s cunning as a cartload of monkeys, determined not to be parted from her husband. She is, for the sake of the defence argument, completely under the thumb of her psychotic daughter, who began on her homicidal track a long time ago. Ivy killed the pets before she was ten. Ivy’s instincts were always there. She killed what she considered to be superfluous, just as Ernest taught her, because he hated to do it. Grace will say there was never any real intention to drown Carl. It was a game. Ivy wanted to make him suffer his daughter’s fate, almost, but not quite, and then they would haul him back safely. Ernest, poor soul, got it all wrong. He wasn’t told to bring the rifle. He was suddenly, irrationally devastated by the recent news of his daughter’s infidelity, and went back into the past. At one point Ernest said he was trying to kill the swan, because it was going for Ivy. At another point he was defending Carl, like he defended him once before. Either way, it was spontaneous. It was a World War Two rifle, carefully preserved, and he hadn’t shot a rifle in years. It was an accident he hit her at all, let alone with both barrels.’
‘He must have known how to shoot once. He shot Ivy as soon as she was a clear target. As soon as she moved away from Carl.’
‘I know,’ Donald said. ‘I saw. But then again, I might not have seen right.’
‘And what about Grace locking me into the pig barn?’
‘Ah well, the only witness to that apart from you was Ivy, and Ivy is dead. And you yourself washed away all the traces.’
‘I’ve been scrubbing myself every day, twice a day, ever since. Please tell me there isn’t a trace, and I’ll make some more tea.’
Tea, the panacea for all ills. Donald liked his with two sugars.
‘You were very brave,’ he said.
‘I don’t think so. I did everything wrong. And then Carl was early.’
She liked Donald. He was easy to be with. He never once suggested that she had been a fool; he apologised for suspecting her, but added that it was just as well he had, otherwise he would not have arrived at all, to protect the judge from a pair of harpies. Nor did he say that he thought the end result was all that bad. One way or another, Ivy had to die before she killed anyone else, and it was fitting that she died where she did.
‘Ivy told Grace about the other murders, and why. The man in the office, for practice. The man in the ambulance to see if she had the nerve. The man in the theatre queue, ditto. These poor people’s families have to know the miserable nature of the motive. Practice.’
Rachel nodded. Another reminder that other people’s tragedies made her own seem small.
‘And the young man who drowned? The paying guest?’
‘I don’t know. But it wasn’t Ivy who left the pub with him, it was Grace. They were supposed to be going swimming.’
She was crying again.
‘You couldn’t have prevented any of it,’ he said.
‘She wanted me to stop her. I didn’t stop her. I just wish you could have seen what she could be like. She was beautiful. She made life glow.’
‘I know,’ Donald said. ‘Carl told me.’
There was a pause.
‘Without a trial, Sam Schneider is better off. That’s Carl’s problem at the moment. It’s bad enough having to tell your son that his mother was a serial killer; it would be worse if it featured in the news over several weeks. Oh, and yes, your dad isn’t your dad.’
‘Oh, poor Sam. How on earth do you react to that?’
‘Interestingly. He said he’s always known about his parentage, he’d known it from looking in the mirror, and anyway, Ivy had told him. After Cassie died, she told him, another sort of punishment. Sam says he knew exactly who his father was, and it was and is Carl in every way that matters, and he doesn’t want another. And he doesn’t think he’s inherited much of his mother, because he hates the countryside and couldn’t kill a fly. The irony is that he’ll probably inherit a bloody farm some day. That’s what’s in Ernest’s will, anyway.’
It was the first time he had seen her smile.
‘And that’s where you can help. Sam says talking to you would help. Someone who knew her. Knew the other side of her. Someone who can give the bigger picture, the other side of her. The good things, the life-enhancing things. The reliable worker, the missing bits from the picture. Will you do it?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re worth a lot, both of them.’
‘Grace used to hum this song in the kitchen. I can remember a verse. She stepped away from me, and she moved through the fair. And fondly I watched her move here and move there, And she made her way homeward with one star awake, As the swan in the evening moves over the lake.’
‘Called “The Bard of Avalon”, wherever that is,’ Donald said. ‘I’d stop humming it, I would if I were you. It’s like all those anonymous dirges, they end badly. Last night I dreamt my lost love came in, So softly she entered, her feet made no din. Life’s a bitch if you don’t take your chances. That kind of thing.’
‘Donald, I don’t know what I’d have done without you. I think you’re the nicest man I’ve ever met, because I can tell you anything. You know what I’m really suffering from?’
‘The grief of the abused?’
‘Yes, and the conscience of the person who should have seen it all coming. I saw her naked, I saw what she was like. I’ll always wonder if she selected me. If she cleaned my office and my desk, and found me that way. Doesn’t matter. I know I’ll survive, because I can’t regret that year of Ivy. I’d like to undo what she did, but I don’t want not to have known her. I don’t want to go back and forget that. I don’t want to forget all she taught me, the world she opened up. I don’t want to give back the knowledge and the curiosity, and the way of looking at things. And I don’t want to give up trusting people. That, above all. I want to be able to say I’ll take that leap of faith, because it’s worth it, even if you fail. You have to take the risk, you’ve got to give. But I’m jealous. She was all charisma to my lack of it. And Carl, well, Carl … I can just see him, cradling her in the water. He still loves her. Anyone would. Ivy won in the end, you see. Ivy and Grace, they won. They got him back.’
Donald sat back and lit the last cigarette. He was trying to consider very carefully what to say, and it really was a bit tricky. A test of skills. Ah yes, no doubt the judge had wanted to touch her, one last time. Witnessed by the swans, he had kissed her forehead and murmured he was sorry. Like Donald had with his wife, without witnesses. Since when did loving one woman stop you loving another? Don’t argue with ghosts, live with them. Think of what it was like to clear up after the war. He shook his head. He felt better for shaving off his disguise of a moustache. It made his face even more ordinary and guileless.
‘I don’t think that had much to do with love, you know. He was on his last legs himself, but I had the distinct impression he was trying to reassure himself that she was really dead. That’s what that was about. And I couldn’t get her out by myself. And he did come to see you when you were out of it, you know. And there’s all these flowers. You’re on his mind.’
Her smile widened into a brief laugh.
‘How useful to be able to lie,’ she said. ‘Will I ever learn?’
‘Take your chances,’ he said. ‘Good men are hard to find. I know one when I see one. He really wants to see you. But there’s a lot going on there, aside from Sam. Same things as you. Regret, shame, feeling foolish. Failing to see what he should have seen. Worried to death about you. Also that ego thing. Not exactly looking his best when you saw him last, was he? Has to be fucking rescued by a woman, when he’s stinking with whisky himself. You know what that does for a man? And at least,’ he added, ‘you don’t get a pig in a poke – sorry I said that, but you know the history – which is more than you usually get. Better watch it, though. He knows fuckall about women, always the same when the mothers die young. At least my wife stayed the course. And he’s seen you in the raw.’
It was not in the best possible taste. He sighed as he left her. That was what being a friend was about. He could have been in with a chance himself. We men, he told his daughter, we’re just calculating animals. You want to watch out for us. We need looking after a helluva lot more than you.
They met in St James’s Park. The end of summer, recovery time, everything beginning to go back into the ground and change colour. The calm lake mirroring luxurious browns and yellows and greens, the view different and better for the shrinking foliage. Nature tamed beyond danger into harmony, and an early autumn sun, placid, beyond burning the skin. People getting on with it. Everything around them was taking the risk of dying, in order to come back and live again. Ivy had loved beauty as well as ugliness. God rot you and God save you, Ivy. May you not be in hell.
She might never be the first in anyone’s life. Second or third would do.
His quiet footsteps came to the bench beside her. He took her cold hand and kissed it.
‘I would like it very much,’ Carl said, ‘if you would teach me how to swim.’