The Yeare's Midnight (7 page)

He tried to rationalize his feelings. He felt a degree of guilt, even shame that he had fallen so far; that he doubted his own wife’s word. However, he felt impelled by the inherent justice of his cause. This would settle the facts of the matter. The rest was about conscience and he knew he could handle that. The cab’s lights glowed ahead of him. He kept a reasonable distance but was not uncomfortable. He knew Julia wouldn’t be expecting a tail.

The cab turned towards New Bolden town centre; Underwood knew that the cinema was in Argyll Street. There was a one-way system so they would have to turn left at the end. On cue, the cab indicated and swung into the line of traffic. Underwood held back; two cars behind them. Eventually the cinema loomed brightly ahead and the cab pulled up in front of the foyer. Underwood quickly veered into a side road. He pulled up with a decent view of the entrance to the cinema. Julia climbed out of the cab and rushed inside. Underwood sat back in his seat, suddenly aware that his shirt was soaked with sweat. So she had been telling the truth. His heart sank slightly. He was uncertain whether to feel ashamed or relieved, both or neither.

He started the engine and was about to drive off when Julia emerged from the front of the cinema and jumped back into the cab. The car promptly leapt out in to the traffic and drove off.
Underwood was shocked. He began to feel sick and flattened the accelerator, breaking into the stream of cars to a raucous cacophony of hoots and shrieking tyres. He closed on the minicab. The driver had moved into the right-hand lane of the dual carriageway. Underwood’s mind was working rapidly, trying to calculate possible destinations and explanations. Maybe Julia’s sister hadn’t turned up and she was going to collect her. But Sarah lived at the southern end of town and they were heading north-east. What was up there? Nothing, really. It was a wealthy residential area: detached houses and Land Rover Freelanders.

The traffic melted away as the two cars left the centre of town. Underwood was careful to hold back. Wide leafy avenues replaced the dual carriageways and Underwood realized that they were only a mile or two from Fawley Woods. He thought of Lucy Harrington: torn up on a mortuary slab. He should be hunting her killer, not checking up on his wife.

Fuck
Julia
for
making
me
do
this:
creeping
about,
degrading
myself.
She
has
hammered
me
into
something
pathetic.

The cab pulled up about one hundred metres ahead. Underwood stopped outside a large mock-Tudor house. It was tasteless in its mockery. The double garage smirked at him. He watched his wife step out of the cab. She paid the driver and then, without waiting for change, scrunched up the expensive-looking gravel driveway. This time, the cab drove away.

Underwood stepped out of his car and walked briskly up the other side of the street. He was careful to stay in darkness all the way. The trees provided a shadowy camouflage against the street lights. He stopped opposite the house in time to see Julia ring the doorbell. Underwood’s chest was burning but he dared not cough. Instead, he stared in morbid fascination. The door opened. A man appeared. He quickly stooped to gather Julia in a vast hug and drew her inside. The door shut. Underwood was horrified, his darkest fears confirmed. Should he confront them, knock on the door and demand to see his wife? Was she in danger? Would he have to fight for her? Could he be bothered to fight for someone who clearly no longer loved him? No. There were other ways. At least he had the advantage now. The
endgame was truly under way. He stepped out of the shadows and crossed the road. There was a blue BMW in the driveway. He took out his notebook and wrote down the registration.

A light came on upstairs. Underwood started and was sick into the road as terrible imaginings flooded his mind. When he thought that they might overwhelm him, he coughed the bile from his throat and headed back to his car. Why couldn’t he cry? He felt that he should. He now knew for sure that his marriage was over. That the years he and Julia had shared had been utterly meaningless. All he felt was emptiness and a hot spark of rage. Underwood unlocked his car and climbed inside. He stared into the rear-view mirror.

Lucy Harrington’s mutilated face gaped back at him.

At roughly the same moment, Dexter turned along Fawley Close and parked. Three of the four cottages had their lights on. Only Lucy Harrington’s remained shrouded in darkness. The police cordon was still in place around the house, which had been locked and sealed.

Dexter had no plans to go inside. Her mind had been working overtime since Jensen had showed them the newspaper article that had given general details of where Lucy Harrington lived. As Underwood had said, there were two roads in the area that fitted the information given by the article: Sherling Drive and Fawley Close. Dexter tried to imagine herself in the killer’s position. ‘I have rough information about where my target lives but nothing specific. I know she lives in one of two roads but I need to find out which road and then which house. Lucy Harrington is not in the phone book.’ Dexter looked again at the map. Sherling Drive had two entrances and ten houses. Fawley Close had only one entrance and four cottages. ‘I have a fifty-fifty chance but one road is much easier to watch than the other. I would choose Fawley Close first because if she lived
there I could find her quickly. If she didn’t, I could rapidly eliminate the four houses.’

The logic was compelling and, on a whim, Dexter had driven to Lucy Harrington’s house. It was getting late. There were no street lights and she had only the lights from the houses and her torch to guide her. She started at the front door of the cottage and looked across the entrance to the cul-de-sac at the woodland beyond. ‘If I was watching this road,’ she thought, ‘where would I hide? I need a good view in both directions, I need to be able to see the front doors of all four houses.’ She walked out onto the roadway. She stood at the centre of the rough semicircle formed by the four houses, directly facing Hartfield Road and the woods beyond it. ‘Our man knows the woods.’ She remembered – she was a little afraid now – that serial killers often returned to the scene of the crime to relive the fantasy. The trees looked vast and ominous. Woods had always made her uneasy. Still, in for a penny …

She crossed Hartfield Road and stood at the fencing that marked the edge of the woods. There was a stile leading to a public footpath about fifty yards down to the right. She discounted the area next to it. The killer would have wanted to steer clear of that. She looked to her left. The hedgerow was pretty dense but he could have crawled in anywhere. She climbed over the fence. The cold mud squished over her work shoes.

‘Bollocks.’

She cursed the countryside for the thousandth time and looked at the entrance to Fawley Close. She suddenly felt vulnerable with the vast black expanse of woodland behind her. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.

Dexter had had a nightmare when she’d been a child and it had stayed with her. She was running in a field that had become a wood. The woods became darker and darker as she ran further in. The trees were high, so high she couldn’t see the tops. The bark was rotting and twisted. The woods became an abomination. Insects snapped at her feet, the ground became gluey and she couldn’t run. Then she heard it. A terrible noise behind her: pushing trees aside, screaming and grunting. She dared not look round but she could feel her pursuer closing in. She threw herself
at a tree and began to climb as fast as she could. The branches and bark splintered in her hands and she slipped as she scrambled upwards. The thing was behind her, snapping at her ankles – she could feel its breath against her skin. Then, as she finally reached the top of the tree, she looked down to see the hellish creature below her – and she fell. Smashing through the branches, rushing ever faster towards the ground.

Then she had woken up.

She was wide awake now, though. Dexter shone her torch around her. Nothing. From where she was standing she could see only two of the cottages. That was no good. She moved carefully along the line of the fence, stumbling slightly on the uneven ground. A third cottage came into view. She pushed back a sapling branch and sidestepped a tree stump. Finally, the dark shadow of Lucy Harrington’s home appeared.

It seemed as good a place to hide as any. Dexter shone her torch at the ground. Twigs, leaves, mud. Ahead of her and slightly to the right was a small clump of hedgerow, pressed up against the wooden fencing. Some of the branches had been broken away and lay on top of the mud. She moved towards them.

A large beech tree loomed above her, a thick root clawing into the soil next to the hedgerow. She leaned against the tree. The bark was damp and rough. It felt cold and dirty against her skin. Dexter looked more closely at the root. It was twisted and pock-marked with age. Rainwater had pooled darkly at a point where the root divided in two. She flashed the torch at it; there were tiny black leaves floating on the surface. She picked one up. It was a flower petal.

Dexter remembered that Underwood had found and bagged a flower petal at the back door of the cottage. Was it coincidence? Had the killer left the petals behind him? As far as she could see there were no flowers in the area around the tree stump. She doubted whether the petals could have been blown there: the base of the tree was sheltered, surrounded by other trees and hedgerow. She withdrew an evidence bag from her pocket and carefully dropped the flower petals inside. It was something.

The cold and blackness was getting to her; she felt the trees
closing around her. She remembered her nightmare. Time to go. Dexter had a hard rational brain and didn’t scare easily but she was starting to feel increasingly tense. She stumbled along the line of the fence as quickly as she could and crossed the road to her car. She had scared herself but felt exhilarated. Fear can come as a rush. She checked the back seat of the car for madmen before she drove off.

It took her ten minutes to get to the station. There would be no one in the crime room now. Dexter bounded up the stairs. She would compare the flower petals she had collected with the one Underwood had found. What if they matched? What did that prove? That the killer liked flowers? The thought seemed ridiculous. She opened the door of the crime room and retrieved Underwood’s evidence bag from a locker at the back of the room. She dropped the two bags on her desk and flicked on her desk light. Using the tweezers she kept in her top drawer she withdrew a petal from each bag. They were the same. Or, at least, they were the same colour. Purple. She knew that they probably wouldn’t be able to get a print from either sample but she felt a flash of triumph. If the killer had left the petals behind, he hadn’t expected them to be found. He had made a mistake.

Satisfied, she rebagged the evidence, sealed it back in the secure locker and left the room. She locked the door behind her and headed along the corridor. There was a light on in Underwood’s office. The door was slightly ajar and she looked through. Underwood was asleep. He was leaning forward onto his desk, his head resting on his arms. Dexter hesitated, deciding whether or not she should wake him. It was past ten. ‘Guv …’ she said softly. No response. Dexter watched him for a second. Her boss was breathing heavily, his breath rasping against his ribcage. She would leave him alone. Underwood twitched slightly: maybe he was having a dream. Dexter hoped it was a happy one.

The room was warm and sumptuously furnished. Julia Underwood sat with a glass of South African Sauvignon in her hand. It had been intended to steady her nerves but had made her feel worse. The music wasn’t helping either. Chopin’s Nocturnes were her favourite and she guessed Paul had chosen the CD deliberately. She recognized Opus 15 No. 1 in F major. Moravec’s piano work was exquisite; the notes seemed to drop through time like tears onto ivory. Ravel had famously described the Nocturnes as ‘deeply felt poems of despair’. Tonight, as they wrenched at her, she truly understood why.

Where
does
the
pain
come
from?
Regret?
Anger?
Disappoint
ment?
The
things
we
have
done.
The
things
we
will
never
do.
The
people
we
leave
behind.
The
people
we
bring
with
us.
The
things
we
have
said.
The
things
we
bury
inside.
The
hurt
we
make
for
others.
The
hurt
they
make
for
us.
The
weakening
of
our
bodies.
The
strengthening
of
our
prejudices.
Living
up
to
our
expectations.
Living
down
our
failures.
And
Time.
Julia knew that for sure.
The
time
we
have
wasted
and
the
time
that
we
have
yet
to
destroy.
Was she saving her future or destroying it absolutely? She kept biting down on the thought like an angry fish that had taken the bait and the hook kept driving deeper into her brain.

She was having an affair; she was one of those women you read about in the problem pages of magazines whose misfortune you smirked at. She knew that her husband suspected something was wrong. Despite his failings – his insensitivity, his pigheadedness, his carelessness with himself and others – she knew you could only fool John Underwood for some of the time.