Falling Off Air (17 page)

I half expected to be arrested on suspicion of murder, but after Finney had talked again to my mother, they let me stay in
my own house. As I pulled the curtains I saw a patrol car sitting in the road outside. I doubt it was for my protection.

When Finney had gone, I went to bed. I closed my eyes and in my head I opened the car door and looked inside. There were the
keys, in the ignition. There, with a foot on the accelerator, sat an ill-defined shape, a figure not male not female, silent,
anonymous, a figment of my imagination were it not for the fact that Adam was dead.

I hardly slept and then somewhere around five in the morning I fell into a sleep as deep as death. I awoke at dawn to a cry
from William. My son's father was dead. The knowledge paralyzed me. I could not get out of bed to go and get William. I could
scarcely breathe and my chest seemed bound in iron. I lay there, every muscle clenched. I heard my mother go and fetch the
children from their cribs, shushing them in case they disturbed me. I gazed at the ceiling, moved my eyes slowly to the curtained
windows and then to the pile of clothes on the chair by my bed. Even the familiar room seemed strange to me, as though I had
stepped through some portal into another world. All this time I had thought Adam was not with me, but he'd been part of everything
all along. The children wouldn't even know he'd gone. They would grow up with their father not just absent but dead, nowhere
to be found. Tears welled, then worked their way down my cheeks and down, soaking the pillow. I curled into a fetal position.
I closed my eyes. I slept again. This time, when I awoke, I was ready for the wave of loss that washed over me. I sat on the
edge of the bed, jaw set. I weathered it. I got up.

The night before, Finney had looked like a wreck. This morning, at the station, he was clean shaven and he'd put on a new
white shirt, but the bags under his eyes matched mine for volume. He nodded a hello and gestured at Mann to switch on the
tape recorder. He glanced at me, then glanced again.

“You look upset,” he said. It was a professional judgment, nothing more.

I had soaked my eyes in icy water, but they were still red-rimmed and swollen from crying and from sleeplessness.

“I
am
upset,” I agreed. I sat down opposite him.

He looked away, avoiding my eyes, and Mann asked a question.

“Is there any other way you would describe the way you feel this morning?” Her voice was kind, sympathetic, and it pierced
holes in my defenses.

I gazed at her.

“I am …” I felt tears rise and then words burst out of me, “so sorry …”

Finney's head snapped up. I struggled to regain control and felt the tension in their silence.

“I'm so sorry he's not here, I mean that he's not anywhere,” I tried to explain, my voice still shaking. “And I'm so sorry
my children will never meet him.”

Finney's mouth twisted. Was he disappointed not to have a confession? He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece
of newsprint, folded. I knew what it was before he had spread it out on the table and pushed it across to me. He took care
that his fingers did not touch mine.

“I'd like to ask you again about your relations with Mr. Wills,” Finney said. “I'm assuming you know what's written here.”

I pushed the
Chronicle
clip back toward him.

“Don't believe everything you read.”

Mann intervened.

“Robin, do you want your lawyer present?”

I shook my head. My mother was outside, last seen with her head bent over a newspaper. I had told her I did not want her to
sit in on the interview. I wanted to make no admission of weakness and I wanted to rely on no one but myself. I was volunteering
all the help I could. I'd given my fingerprints, I'd given blood. If only Finney would stop riling me, I would give him my
cooperation too.

“You were seen arguing in public last week,” Finney carried straight on, his voice distant. “Mr. Wills was begging you to
let him see the children.”

I made a couple of false starts, then settled on a way of explaining that I thought clarified matters.

“It was the first time he'd ever asked to see them, I wasn't keeping him from them, he just left long before they were born.
I can't see,” I added for good measure, “what gives him the right to see them.”

Finney's eyebrows twitched upward again and for an instant that look of arrogance returned. It annoyed me.

“Adam was pretty unconcerned about what became of his sperm,” I added wearily, “until he decided it would improve his reputation
if he was a devoted father.”

Something flashed through Finney's eyes and his jaw tightened. He leaned back in his chair, tipping it on its back legs, waiting
for me to go on. Police and journalists, we all do it. Shut up and wait for someone to talk themselves into a trap.

“Look,” I said, leaning toward him. My lips were quivering with exhaustion. “He rang me on Sunday night and we talked. We
didn't have a row. I agreed that he would come around last night and we would talk things through. I didn't want him to see
the children, but we would have come to some sort of an arrangement. I was sitting there all evening waiting for him to come
…”

There are times when your head goes AWOL, and at this point my brain decided without any encouragement from me to take a few
moments out to consider where Adam had been while I was waiting. Until this point my mind's eye had refused to envisage an
impact of metal on flesh, bones grating under pressure, blood leaking through mashed muscle and shredded skin. Now all this
and more flashed before me, as immediate as if it was taking place in front of my eyes, but it was stylized, in slow motion.
Adam's mouth gaping open with the shock, arms flung wide, body hitting the ground, bouncing upwards, settling. I cleared my
throat. Adam's broken body lingered stubbornly in my head. His body lay crumpled like Paula Carmichael's, she fallen on pavement,
he flung on the tarmac, both of them just yards from my home. Was this an end or a beginning to the symmetry?

Finney was looking at me expectantly. I let the silence stretch. I was incapable of speech. The muscles around my jaw shuddered
under the strain.

“You left us in midsentence, Miss Ballantyne.” Finney's tone was razor sharp.

There must have been sirens of course, but there were always sirens. It wasn't that I had not heard them. I must have heard
them and ignored them.

“I'm not angry at him anymore,” I said, realizing this to be the case as I said it.

“I'm delighted to hear it,” Finney said, his voice heavy with sarcasm and bringing his chair back to earth. I looked at him,
frowning. I expected better of him than this. We had liked each other, I thought, at least in a combative sort of way. Now
he seemed to hate me. Finney dropped his gaze and reached for the newspaper clip, putting it back in his pocket. He changed
the subject.

“You saw Mr. Wills leave Paula Carmichael's funeral yesterday,” he said.

I nodded.

“I'm going to ask you again whether you know why he walked out.”

I shook my head and then added as an afterthought, “Suzette said he had a headache.”

“You think he made a scene at a funeral because he had a headache?” Finney repeated the words with scorn.

“He gets migraines.” It sounded weak and even as I was saying it I realized that, in all the time I'd been waiting for Adam
the night before, it had not once crossed my mind that he was not well.

Finney let another silence stretch, but I ignored it and eventually he spoke again, this time in a more persuasive voice.

“Miss Ballantyne, I want to take you back over the past few months.” He leaned toward me, his elbows on the desk between us.
“I understand what you've told me about your relationship with Mr. Wills. No one would deny that you've been through a hard
time. There's been ill feeling and you think Mr. Wills has neglected his duties.”

I caught my breath and I gave Finney a look I thought was guaranteed to shut him up, but he looked at me blankly and plowed
right on.

“So please be assured that if you answer these next questions honestly, people are going to understand. Miss Ballantyne, have
you made phone calls to Adam Wills in the last two months?”

I frowned, remembering a series of questions like this about Paula Carmichael, and again the two deaths merged in my mind
and I found that part of my brain was coolly working on the problem and had already decided that the two must be linked. That
they knew each other was indisputable, that I was known to both of them and involved even indirectly in the death of each
was also clear. That they should meet violent deaths within days of each other was surely too much of a coincidence.

“I didn't phone Adam,” I was speaking slowly, trying to be accurate. “Not apart from the call I told you about on Sunday,
and then it was he who rang me.”

“Maybe you've sometimes just dialed his number, then hung up when he answered?” he suggested.

“Why would I do that?”

Finney glanced down, and I saw that he had placed a small notebook on his desk at his elbow.

“Did you ever go and wait outside his flat, perhaps hoping to bump into him?”

“No.” I was beginning to get angry.

“Or send anyone with a message on your behalf?”

“What is this, you think I'm a stalker?”

I looked at Finney's face, then at Mann's. They had averted their eyes, and that told me everything I needed to know. My brain
started to creak back into action.

“Adam had a stalker?” I asked, incredulous.

Finney closed his eyes for a moment and Mann stepped into the breach.

“Miss Ballantyne, I think it would be helpful if you didn't try to second-guess us. Helpful to you, as well as to us.”

I ignored her. I was already working on this new information.

“Did he report it? He must have reported it.”

Finney let Mann do the cool denial, but I was sure I was on to something, and I warmed to the interview.

“Okay. What do you want to know?” I challenged, sitting back in my chair for the first time. Perhaps I could learn more.

Finney gazed at me and puffed out his cheeks, Mann put her head on one side and regarded me like a naughty child. We sat without
speaking for a minute, the battle lines redrawn. Outside the interview room, men were talking in loud voices in the corridor.
One of the men swore, then he was hushed, and a herd of footsteps receded. I knew, now, why the police had not simply thrown
me in a cell the night before. There was another suspect, a stalker, and while they might like to believe the stalker was
me, it was looking more likely to them that we were two people. The information filled me not only with profound relief but
with the zeal of the wrongly accused. With information like this I could fight an offensive game, not hang around waiting
for Finney to take a potshot. Finney had read my mind, and I could see him trying to decide on a strategy. He didn't want
to give me information, but every question he could ask would tell me something.

So far the police had told me nothing of the circumstances of Adam's death, except that he had been hit by my car. What little
I had learnt, I had heard on the radio. Adam, who hated driving, had caught the Northern Line to Tooting Bec station and had
walked up from the tube toward my house. When he crossed the road to turn into my street, a car—my car—had hit him before
proceeding in the direction of the city. The radio suggested that there had been witnesses, but gave no detail of what had
been seen. My car had been found abandoned near the Oval.

“If you're out of questions I have a few.”

Mann rolled her eyes but Finney ignored her.

“How did you know where to find the car?”

Neither of them answered me.

“Why look at the Oval of all places? And why go looking for my car at all? I hadn't reported it missing, and I doubt any of
your witnesses could tell you more than the color and make. You do have witnesses, do you?”

“You'll choose a better hiding place next time than the Oval, will you?” Mann parried, fighting a rearguard action. I didn't
bother to answer her. I thought for a moment, and something occurred to me.

“Did you get a tip-off, was that it?”

“Or did you give us a tip-off, was that it?” Mann came back, but too quickly. She'd let the information slip. Someone somewhere
had told the police about the car. I put the information aside to be analyzed later and moved on rapidly, while I still had
the upper hand.

“Don't you think Adam's death might have something to do with Paula Carmichael's?” I said.

“You mean to say,” Finney said slowly and carefully, “you want us to consider Paula Carmichael's death, where you were the
first at the scene, also a murder?”

“You've been investigating it as though it could be a murder,” I pointed out.

Finney shook his head. “That investigation's over.” He paused, searching I thought for a decision about how much to say, then
decided on total disclosure. “We're satisfied that Paula Carmichael's death was suicide. We have records now from her psychiatrist.
The woman was clinically depressed. She'd been prescribed Prozac, but she hadn't taken it for several days before she jumped.
She even wrote about committing suicide.”