A Shock to the System (26 page)

After lunch, when they had enjoyed a lot of wine, they returned to the house and lazed on the sitting-room floor with the Sunday papers. By four o'clock they were both asleep.

Graham woke with a start and looked at his watch. 5.52. Twelve hours exactly since he had completed his plan. He rose slowly, stretching his aching limbs. Stella lay splayed against the sofa, breathing evenly. He went into the kitchen to make some tea. While he was waiting for the kettle to boil, he switched on the radio.

It was at the end of the six o'clock news. With the approach of summer, Sunday evening news often listed the leisure disasters of the weekend. Two children drowned in Cornwall. A hang-glider crashed in Sussex.

And a man killed when his boat caught fire at Bosham near Chichester.

Graham Marshall felt dizzy with excitement. His body started to tremble again, but this time with life and power.

He went into the sitting-room and threw himself on top of Stella. His hand tearing away obstructions beneath her skirt, he thrust himself into her. And continued to thrust, with considerable savagery, until their shuddering mutual climax.

There was no other topic of conversation in the Personnel Department the next morning. Robert Benham's death was all over the newspapers. This was not because of his own fame; he may have been a big fish at Crasoco, but for the outside world he signified little. It was his connection with Tara Liston that made him newsworthy, and most of the more popular papers had photographs of her drawn face as she had arrived at Heathrow the previous evening.

The papers, in the knowledge that an inquest was still to come, were appropriately cagey about the causes of death, though one was indiscreet enough to mention a faulty gas appliance. None of them made any suggestion of foul play being suspected, and the word ‘accident' appeared with gratifying regularity.

Graham swelled with pride as he sat over morning coffee in the canteen and listened to the conjecture around him. All the anxieties of the past forty-eight hours had vanished, all the moments when his plan had nearly failed. In retrospect its form was perfect, better even than his disposal of Merrily. He had returned the hire-car on the way into work that morning, dropped his clothes at the cleaners, and felt the satisfaction of a job well completed. The only slight regret came, once again, from the impossibility of sharing his elation, of being commended for his skill. But that was a cross he would have to bear.

A self-appointed expert, who claimed knowledge of comparable accidents, was giving the rest of the canteen the benefit of his conjecture. ‘Oh, it happens quite often, you know. Get a leak in one of the gas pipes or forget to turn the cylinder off and the stuff just dribbles out, very slowly. Well, in an enclosed space, mixed with air, it's, well, it's like a bomb. Get a naked flame near that lot and – woomph!'

‘But why do you reckon Mr. Benham got a naked flame near it?' asked one of the dumber secretaries.

‘Could be anything – starting the outboard, lighting a cigarette, trying to light the stove to make a cup of tea . .

‘But surely,' insisted the secretary, ‘he wouldn't have done that. I mean, he would have smelt the gas, wouldn't he?'

This gave the expert pause. Graham listened with particular interest to how he would explain it away. ‘Well, O.K.,' the man conceded, ‘not lighting the stove. Some other way I suppose it happened.'

‘Anyway, the police'll be able to find out when they examine the boat,' said the secretary, who, Graham began to think, was not as dumb as she appeared.

But her words restored the expert's confidence. ‘Don't you believe it, darling. Won't be hardly anything left for the police to examine. Tell you, those fibreglass boats – go up like Roman candles. Gas explosion like that and she'd burn down to the waterline in a couple of minutes. Then probably the weight of the keel'd take her down to the bottom. Don't think there'll be a lot left of that boat now.' Then he added ghoulishly, ‘Don't think there'll be a lot left of Bob Benham either, come to that.'

‘What, you mean they'll never find the remains?'

‘Oh yes, they'll have found whatever's left. Boat was on its mooring, I gather, so even if it went to the bottom, they'd be able to pick it up at low tide. I just don't think what they find's going to give them much clue as to how it happened.'

This was delivered very wisely and confidently. A few heads nodded in subdued agreement. A few were shaken ruefully at the sadness of life. Graham Marshall glowed.

Later in the morning he received a summons to the office of the Managing Director, David Birdham.

‘You've heard about Robert?' Birdham said, gesturing to a chair.

Graham nodded, ‘A terrible shock.'

‘Hmm. Yes, he could have gone a long way.' With that formal dismissal of the dead man, he moved on. ‘Puts us in a spot in the short term. I know George is nominally still Head of Personnel, but quite honestly, he seems to be losing his marbles.'

Graham would not have dared to venture that opinion himself, but now his senior had said it, felt safe in nodding agreement.

‘Fact is, Personnel's an important department and doesn't run itself. I've seen what's going on and it's clear that Robert was in charge from the moment the appointment was announced. And from what I saw I liked the way he was taking things.'

‘Yes.' Graham spoke without intonation, not daring to hope.

‘Well, now we've lost him, and life has to go on. At the moment I wouldn't trust George to run a white elephant stall at a village fete. Anyway, he's got more or less wall-to-wall cocktail parties for the next fortnight, so he's going to be even less use than usual. What'll happen to him when he finally leaves, God knows. Drink himself to death, I would think. Still, that's not our problem.'

Graham was tempted to say ‘No', but thought it might sound too callous.

David Birdham tapped his desk. ‘What I want you to do, Graham, is run the department during this little interregnum. O.K.? Nothing official. No title, no extra money, I'm afraid. I just want you to keep it going until the board makes another proper appointment.'

Evidently Graham had not managed to keep the disappointment out of his face, because the Managing Director continued, ‘I know it's a lot to ask and I'm aware that this is a difficult time for you after your . . . recent problems. It may also seem that there's not much in it for you, but rest assured it's the sort of thing that won't go unnoticed. I mean, you may know that when the job last came up, more than one of the board preferred you to Benham, but they were overruled. You would certainly be thought a strong candidate next time round.'

Graham nodded. It was all he had wanted to hear. He could do a lot, even in a fortnight, to strengthen his hold on the Department.

‘So will you help us out?' asked David Birdham.

‘Of course.'

‘You'll just retain your Assistant title, but be a . . . rather more forceful assistant.'

Just as I was before Robert Benham's elevation, thought Graham.

‘Very grateful to you, Graham, very grateful. Sort of thing that doesn't get forgotten in a company like this. By the way, though, I'm sure I don't need to say that you may need a touch of the kid gloves with old George. Tact, you know.'

‘I can handle George,' said Graham with a smile.

Stella gave him a puzzled look when he came into her office. Perhaps he had been a little brusque in getting her out of the house the evening before. Or perhaps she was still shocked by the violence of his assault. Still, she had been begging for it all weekend.

He winked, but her reaction remained ambivalent.

‘Thank you very much for the weekend,' he whispered.

‘You really ... I can't tell you how much you helped me.'

She didn't appreciate the irony of his words, and softened. After the hurried parting, all she needed that morning was the reassurance that he was still interested. She looked hopeful, anticipating perhaps some new assignation, so he moved on quickly. ‘Can't talk now. George in?'

She nodded and, without knocking, Graham pushed into the inner office. Once again the old man looked as if he'd been caught playing with himself.

‘Oh, er, Graham, hello. Terrible, this, about Bob, isn't it?'

‘Frightful.'

‘Must be absolutely awful for you in particular.'

Graham looked up in surprise as George expanded his remark. ‘I mean, to have lost Merrily and then, so soon after, to lose such a close colleague ... I mean, you and Bob were chums, weren't you?'

Good God, if George thought that, he really was losing his marbles. Many remarks sprang to Graham's lips, but he contented himself with, ‘It's very sad.

‘Yes, lucky you weren't sailing with him this weekend.'

‘Sure.'

‘Though apparently Terry's all right.'

‘What? Terry? Terry who?' The old boy's mind has really gone.

‘Terry Sworder. Didn't you know? Terry Sworder was staying with Bob this weekend. He went sailing with him.' Graham gaped.

‘Apparently he was in the – what? Dinghy, fender . . . whatever they call it, when the fire started. He was blown free by the blast. Bob wasn't so lucky.'

Graham's throat was dry. He seemed once again to taste salt in his mouth.

‘Wh . . . where's Terry now? Is he in today?'

‘No.'

‘What, in hospital?'

‘No, he wasn't hurt much. Just shock, I think. No, I had a call from him.'

‘Oh yes?'

‘He's with the police.'

‘Why?'

‘Well, he's a witness, Graham. Obviously. He saw exactly what happened.'

He was back to being an amateur. Constantly fear took hold of Graham and shook him. Sweat oozed coldly from his body. He started at every knock on his office door, every ring from the phone, every stranger he met in the corridor. Each one could be the summons, the polite voice of officialdom asking for a few words in connection with the death of Robert Benham. And this time there would be no easy let-off, no grieving widower to be distracted by commiseration. This crime wasn't on Laker's patch, this one, he felt sure, was being investigated by a mind as cold-blooded and as logical as his own.

As he thought of this, he realised what a blazing trail he had left. He had been relying on the assumption of an accident; once the idea of crime had been planted in an investigator's mind, there were any number of pointers that would lead straight back to Graham Marshall.

Suppose his shoes had been washed up. Or the brand-new waders. It wouldn't be hard to trace those back to Farlow's in Pall Mall and, even though he had paid cash, he was sure that his ignorance of technical details, where he was going to fish and so on, had made him memorable to the rather snooty assistant.

Then there were footprints or fingerprints. It was only canteen conjecture that most of
Tara's Dream
had been immolated. Robert might have been killed just by the blast and the fire quickly extinguished. Graham thought uncomfortably of all those shining fibreglass surfaces and bitterly regretted his omission of rubber gloves.

Or the car might have been seen, its number memorised and traced back to the hire firm. Thence to George Brewer and, once he had been eliminated, suspicion could not be long in moving to his assistant.

Then there were the clothes in the skip in Haslemere . . . Everything he thought of had the same effect. It was as if, suspended over his head, was a huge black arrow with the legend ‘HE DID IT'.

The rest of the Monday in the office was excruciating, but even then, through his fear, Graham could see once again how his emotions were misinterpreted. Everyone recognised his state of tension, but everyone put it down to shock at the news of Robert Benham's death. Rather than revulsion, the murderer attracted sympathy.

Things were even worse when he returned home. He was back to the state he had been in after killing the old man. There was no confident glow, no feeling of immunity, of being set above the herd. Graham Marshall felt terrified, and abjectly ashamed of his own incompetence.

He couldn't eat, but managed to drink a lot of whisky. He tried watching television, but nothing could engage his attention for more than a few minutes.

Sleep was as much out of the question as eating, and Graham spent the night in the sitting-room, where Sunday papers were still scattered over the floor. He drank steadily and the whisky aggravated the rancid taste of fear at the back of his mouth.

His thoughts spiralled ever downwards. At one point, for the first time in his life, he contemplated suicide. Death, he knew, had power, and bringing about his own might perhaps be the last expression of that power he could achieve.

But the idea did not stay with him long. He knew he lacked the kind of nerve the act required and, besides, even at this nadir of his hopes, some tiny glimmer remained. His luck had been incredible over the last few months; why shouldn't his ration last just a little longer?

The deepest of his pain came from the knowledge that he was no longer in control of events. Nothing he could do now could either slow down or accelerate the investigation into Benham's death. He could only sit and wait. And go through the motions of as normal a life as possible.

He bathed at about six and put on clean clothes, but the change didn't refresh him. The whisky, of which he had consumed the best part of a bottle, had not made him drunk, but left him with a grinding headache.

He geared himself up to leaving at the normal time for work, and then remembered he had arranged to go in late. The Post Office engineer was coming that morning to make the connections for the Ansaphone in his study.

Now even having the device seemed pointless. He tried to recall in what mood of euphoria he had bought it and realised, with shame, that it had been simply in imitation of Robert Benham. So much of his recent motivation had been to reproduce the lifestyle of his latest victim. In Graham's current state, it all seemed rather petty.