Stephen Gallagher - The Boat House

Next door in the kitchen, the warning signal on the water heater began to sound. Someone switched it off.

"Oh, no, Ross," Angelica said, disbelievingly. "Not Tom."

But Aldridge was already getting to his feet, and he held up a calming hand.

"Look," he said, "nothing about this to anybody. It's just a stupid idea of mine, and I want to be the one to knock it on the head before it goes any further. There's no theory or anything, it's just… too many accidents."

So, feeling strangely like some kind of a Judas even though she knew that Tom Amis couldn't have been involved, she told him how to find the old hunting lodge up on the treeline that, after a few false starts in the past three or four years, was undergoing final conversion to become the new High Rigg ski centre. It wasn't a place that Aldridge had known much about, although this was bound to change when the next winter season arrived. This is simply a matter of elimination, Angelica told herself; a helping hand toward proof of innocence, rather than a betrayal.

"Thanks," Aldridge told her as he made for the door. "I've got a few calls to make about the wreck, and then I'll go up and see him. Not a word to anyone."

And then he left.

Angelica stood at the main door, watching through the lace curtained glass as his car made a turn in the square. Now she was thinking, what did she really know about Tom Amis anyway? And she was so intrigued by this new light on an untested idea that she didn't even notice Alina's emergence from the kitchen until the waitress was standing alongside her.

"Miss Venetz?" she said.

Angelica looked at her, a little dazed as if she'd just been jogged out of a waking dream.

Alina went on, "I wonder if I can take the afternoon off. I'm not feeling so well."

"Of course," Angelica said. "Sonia can cover." She looked out again through the glass.

"And may I borrow the van to get me home," Alina added, "if you weren't planning to use it? I can bring it back in the morning. I wouldn't ask, but I don't quite feel up to the walk."

"I'll drive you," Angelica said, beginning to tear herself away, but Alina didn't seem to want to cause so much disruption.

"I can drive," she said. "Please, I'd rather."

It didn't even occur to Angelica, at least not straight away, that an illegal immigrant with no valid license probably wasn't the best insurance risk in the event of any accident; almost absently she went back to the office and opened a drawer to let Alina have the van keys, and then she returned to one of the windows overlooking the square. It was almost as if the life going on outside had taken on an entirely new and fascinating aspect for her.

Tom Amis? she was thinking, almost entranced.

And she was still thinking it a few minutes later when their small Renault van went by, with Alina at the wheel.

Pete had been back at the yard for little more than half an hour and was making himself useful by restocking the Coke machine on the marina wharf when he saw Diane again; he quickly threw the cans in wherever they'd fit, Coke in the Fanta line and Fanta in the Seven Up, and then he closed up the front of the machine and went to meet her.

"Busy day?" she said, looking him over. Getting the burned-out car up onto the hoist in a way that satisfied the police lab officials had been a messy, complicated job. He'd tidied himself up on his return but there hadn't been time for him to run home and change; he'd considered it, but he hadn't wanted to risk missing her.

"Busy enough," he said. "How about you?"

"You're going to hear all about it," she said. "Can we go somewhere and talk?"

Pete glanced across the yard. "How about in the house? Ted won't mind."

"That could be a problem. I don't want Ted or anybody else to hear this."

So Pete looked around; a big Birchwood and a smaller Chris Craft stood empty at a couple of the nearer jetties, but they were sales stock it wouldn't look good if the yard staff were to be seen using them like a rest area.

"Let's take one of the cars, then," he said.

And Diane quickly said, "Let's make it mine."

They walked through the main part of the yard, Pete leaving the Coke machine keys with one of the Wilson boys and looking in to say a quick goodbye to Ted and to Frank Lowry on the way out. But Lowry had already gone home and Ted was on the phone in his office, having trouble getting himself out of a none-too-fascinating business conversation with somebody called Ellis. With the phone still to his ear Ted leaned out to look past Pete and then, having seen Diane just outside the doorway, he caught Pete's eye again and pointed to an envelope that was just out of reach in his OUT tray. Pete saw that it had Diane's name on it, and he took it outside to her.

She opened it as they walked toward the Toyota. It contained the key to the boat house, and nothing else.

"I didn't know what to say about this," she said, looking at it bleakly.

"It's only a key," Pete said.

Diane looked at it a moment longer.

"Is it?" she said, and then she slipped it, envelope and all, into one of the pockets of her jacket.

"You can get right in, the car isn't locked," she said.

Ross Aldridge was going to be home late again.

He could avoid it by leaving this conversation with Tom Amis for another day, and he was tempted to do exactly that… but the professional side of his nature told him that he ought to know better and, besides, for some time now Loren had been in the kind of mood where nothing seemed to suit her no matter what he did. Whether he came home early, or came home late; whether they went out, or stayed in and sat around. The company of a total stranger would have been better than this; a stranger would feel an obligation to be civil, at least. Loren was rarely straight out rude, but she no longer seemed to be able to answer a simple question without throwing in a dash of attitude. He didn't know what he could do about it. He wasn't a saint, he couldn't go on like this forever; for the first two years after the stillbirth he'd felt as if he was carrying her across a tightrope while she bit and clawed at him every step of the way. They'd come through that, but not to return to the relationship they'd once had. Everything was different. She was different. Sometimes he felt as if she didn't want a husband anymore, just a guilty witness to the hard time that she was having.

The sun was getting low in the sky as he turned his Metro toward the old sawmill track that would lead to the ski centre. The owners had been upgrading the road but it was only half finished, a bed of crushed stone that had already fallen into ruts from forestry traffic. As the car laboured upward he passed the raw fresh scars of trees recently tended, and great white splashes of sawdust on the forest floor. At a place where another track crossed, several large stumps had been wrapped in chains and were now waiting to be hooked onto tractors and dragged elsewhere. The car bounced hard a couple of times, jarring all the equipment in the back; he knew that he wasn't concentrating as much as he should, and he tried to focus himself on the job in hand.

They never talked about the child they'd never had. Not even to give her a name; beforehand they'd bought one of those books of names and their meanings and they'd each made their own lists, but it had all come to nothing.

So Aldridge had given her a name of his own, although he'd never said as much out loud.

The lodge announced itself with a blinding reflection from the main windows, flooding his car with the sun's late rays and forcing him to slow down and shade his eyes until he'd driven around into the shadow side of the reception block. The ride suddenly turned smooth on him. The tarmac here looked pretty new, when his eyes got over the dazzle enough for him to make it out. He stopped and sat for a minute or more, waiting for the fireworks to subside before he got out.