Blind Needle (26 page)

There was movement on the stairs. I closed the lid, then stood for a moment staring at it before I finally pressed the catches home. When Diane Locke came in she found me sitting on the settee with a frown on my face.

‘Come on, you'll feel much better in the morning.' She helped me up, her manner brisk, a nurse quite certain she knows what's best for her patient. ‘I've even put a hot-water bottle in.'

As I mounted the stairs, hemmed in by the wall of books, I was still perplexed, and a twinge uneasy too, wondering what could have happened to the black shiny-backed book, conspicuous by its absence from the silk-lined compartment.

She's read it, I thought, and not told me. The sly deceitful calculating bitch has read S –'s diary.

I lay drowsily half-awake in the warm, soft furrow of the bed, not knowing whether I had slept for hours or ten minutes.

Not knowing either what had awakened me. Unless it was the racket the wind was making in the trees, or the brittle staccato peppering of icy rain gusting at the window. Had there been anything else? I seemed to recall the dragging sound of heavy footsteps slowly approaching, though there was nothing now, nothing at all, and in any case I couldn't possibly have heard them above the noise outside.

Stretching out, my feet encountered the hot-water bottle, like the flaccid, cooling, yet still-warm body of a reptile that had recently died, so I knew I had been asleep for at least half-an-hour. But I couldn't work out what had disturbed me.

I switched on the bedside lamp with its tiny pink tasselled shade and the unadorned walls of faded blue patterned wallpaper reared up and sprang at me. A pale disc trembled on the ceiling: the light reflected by the small oval mirror, tilted on its axis, between the varnished posts of the dressing-table. Diane Locke hadn't bothered, or forgotten, to pull the curtains to; the window was a black square dissected by a wooden cross, each separate pane of glass as black and shiny as the cover of the missing diary. Not that it really mattered, I told myself, that she had read it. It didn't matter at all. Nothing mattered now.

I closed my eyes and immediately the sounds started up again. But I couldn't decide whether it was the sultry drumbeat inside my head or
the slow, steady approach of heavy footsteps. Were they inside or outside? Why could I hear them only when I shut out the light?

The house creaked under the onslaught of the wind howling mournfully in the eaves. Behind the sound, or underneath it, the footsteps approached, steady and measured, in no desperate hurry because their destination was fixed and they would arrive all in good time.

I jerked upright and swung my legs out of bed. It was cold but I didn't mind the sudden draught of cold air. I welcomed it. It would keep me awake, and alert. I needed the cold, hard immediacy of the moment to stand as a wall between me and the fear of whatever the unnameable thing was that was approaching with patient, unhurried tread.

My eyes were open now – wide open – I made sure of that, and yet the footsteps came on. They were no longer inside but outside my head. I sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the inky-black window directly in front of me. If the window was real, and the cold air circulating round my legs was real, then the footsteps were real. The house creaked again … or perhaps it was the stairs?

With my breath locked tight in my chest I strained to listen.

No, I wasn't imagining or hallucinating.

I definitely, distinctly heard it.

There it was again. No mistake.

A muffled thudding footfall.

Huddled and shivering, my arms wrapped around my body, I sat on the bed staring into the black window, and heard the stairs creak.

In the black window I saw the door open, and from the dark landing a tall shadowy figure slowly advanced into the light. I tried to stand up, and turn round, and face it, but I hadn't the strength. I sat huddled and waiting, staring at the shape reflected in the black window, and then I heard Diane Locke say, ‘Did you hear it too? There's somebody out there, I'm sure of it.'

Her voice shocked me into convulsive movement. I jerked to my feet like a puppet, and spun round.

‘I've been down to check the kitchen window. There's a faulty catch. But it's all right, it hasn't been tampered with.'

I stared at her, saying nothing.

‘Your light was on, so I thought you must have heard it too.'

I shook my head.

‘Probably just the wind, I expect,' she said.

‘There's nobody there,' I said.

Diane Locke looked at me intently as if trying to read the expression in my eyes, or even to understand what was happening inside my head. As if anyone could! She said, ‘Get back into bed before you catch your death.' And suddenly I realised I was freezing. But instead of getting back into bed I gathered my clothing together and started to get dressed. She watched me get dressed, waiting, it seemed to me, for the right moment to speak. Why was she waiting? What did she have to say to me?

‘There's nobody outside,' I heard myself telling her. I bared my teeth in a smile and tapped my head. ‘In here.'

Diane Locke stood in the doorway, motionless, her face pale and taut, as if she has seen a ghost, or even two.

‘I must have been mistaken,' she said softly.

I couldn't stop smiling at her, now that I'd started; the smile seemed frozen to my face.

‘We all make mistakes,' I said.

‘What you mean,' Diane Locke said, ‘is that I made a mistake about you … isn't that it?'

Before I could stop her she went out of the room, but was back in less than a minute, carrying something. ‘You know that I took this, don't you? But you don't remember what it contains, do you?'

‘Remember?' I heard myself say.

The diary's shiny black cover was like the window's black reflection. But I could never open the shiny black cover; it was too solid and heavy, like a black marble slab covering a tomb. And like a marble slab covering a tomb, something dead lay buried beneath it.

She did something then I least expected: she closed the door. Was it Diane Locke that was trapped, or was it me? It was a clever trick, no doubt, designed to throw me off balance, but it wasn't going to work. Oh yes, I knew all about her clever tricks. She couldn't fool me any more.

‘There's nothing to be afraid of. You've trusted me up to now. There's no reason to stop.'

What did she mean? What did she know that I didn't?

‘You've got it wrong.' I told her. ‘I never trusted you. I've never trusted a woman in my life. Never.'

‘You told me about Smith's diary and what he wrote in it. You remember that? How he planned and schemed to get rid of his wife, and how he finally did it by injecting her. It was all written down in the diary, you said, and also how he planned to get rid of you too because he blamed you for her death. That's right, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'

‘But look …' Diane Locke opened the shiny black cover and held up the book to face me. ‘There's nothing written here.' She riffled through the pages, which were all blank. ‘Smith never wrote anything down.'

I laughed. ‘Of course he didn't,' I said harshly. ‘Do you think he's a fool? Morduch would have been onto him in a flash if he'd written it all down. I told you he was smart, cunning, devious. Perhaps now you'll believe me.'

‘I do believe you. I always have.'

What trick was this? God, you couldn't trust women an inch. Their minds were an impenetrable mystery.

‘Your wife is dead,' Diane Locke went on. ‘I believe that. But it wasn't Benson that killed her.'

‘Wasn't it?'

‘No.'

‘Why did I think it was?'

‘You had to blame someone.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it was you that killed her.'

‘Me? I never killed anyone …'

‘Yes,' Diane Locke said quietly. ‘Your wife was ill. She had suffered for five years from diabetes and she began to get worse – much worse. Her sight began to fail. She made you promise that if she went blind you would find a way to end it for her. And that's what happened.'

The woman was mad. ‘I suppose,' I said, ‘I stuck the needle in her arm when she was asleep, then I lay down beside her and we slept side by side, all night long, but she never woke up.'

Diane Locke nodded. ‘That's probably how it happened. But you've got to remember
why
it happened. Your wife begged you to end it for her – remember that too.' She took two or three pieces of newspaper from her pocket. ‘You even kept the cuttings from the local paper about the inquest. They were in the diary. Why didn't you open it and read them?' She thrust the cuttings, bunched in her fist, at me angrily. ‘You must remember. Try to remember!'

Why was she so angry? Why should she care what happened to me, a complete stranger? I can hear the wind howling in the eaves and start to wonder where I am. The room is cold and bare, with faded floral wallpaper. Is this her house I'm in? I can see the plume of my breath in the air. Who the fuck is she? How did I get here?

Perhaps S – knew the answers, if only I could summon up the nerve to face him. But suppose I could and did – will the horrible voice come back too, harsh and rasping, chafing the soft tissue of my brain? The last thing I want is to harm this woman, though I can't vouch for S –. Having killed once, S – might have acquired a taste for it. Might actually enjoy it. I can't be held responsible for his actions …

No, I decided, better not to know the answers. Better to continue living in this grey anonymous world of shadows than to confront the truth; no truth is worth my sanity. I will stay sane if I can avoid the truth, which I suspect is more terrible than my own most terrible imaginings.

‘Do you remember now, how you met Peter Holford in the Clinic?'

What does she want from me, this woman with dark tousled hair streaked with grey, whose grey-blue eyes are burning with an intensity I can almost feel as a physical sensation? Does she realise how close to the wind she's sailing? Doesn't she know what pain remembering can bring, what harm it can do?

‘You couldn't face the truth about your wife, so you swapped places with Peter Holford and took over his life. That's what Dr Morduch meant when he spoke about your “externality”. Peter Holford's life became your life, and his wife became yours – except
your
wife was dead, so Peter's wife had to be dead too. And if she was dead, someone must have killed her, or at any rate caused her death, which to you was the same thing. So you had to get even, and you set out to avenge her death by destroying Benson. But all you knew about Benson was that Peter Holford had told you he lived in Brickton. So you left the Clinic and went there to find him.