John Gapper - A Fatal Debt

“Let’s just stay here.”

We had to get up eventually to wash, to eat. It was night when we did, and Anna took a bath while I hunted around the kitchen for food. I found some spaghetti and chopped up onions and garlic for the base of a tomato sauce while I listened to her soap herself. I found candles in one cupboard and I took one to the bathroom and set it beside her. In the kitchen, I placed others on the table and dimmed the lights so that they glowed next to the plates and glasses. I kept the curtains facing the main house closed but raised a blind on a window at the end of the room to let in a square of night sky. The stars glittered and I could see the wash of the Milky Way.

When Anna came out of the bathroom, she was wearing a silk robe and her hair was bundled in a twisted towel above her head, like a turban. She walked over to the saucepan and tasted the sauce.

“Mmm,” she said. “You can move in.”

She sat and I served the food, looping the pasta into a bowl and pouring some wine. Then I sat opposite her and we ate happily. I was reaching for the wine bottle to refill her glass when I saw a light shining over her shoulder through the open blind. It was far away in the distance, and at first I thought it might be the reflection of the moon from a house. But as I watched the beam snaking from side to side, I saw it was a car’s headlights tracing the road along the coast. Anna kept on eating, her back to it, so I followed its progress alone, waiting for it to turn down a side road and leave us in peace. But it didn’t. It kept on coming until it disappeared for ten seconds behind a house and reemerged, this time near enough that the single light had split into two, driving straight toward us along the lane.

“Anna,” I said.

“What?” she said, looking up with a smear of sauce on her chin, then seeing my face and turning around.

I pinched out the candles between my finger and thumb, darkening the room so the driver would not see us. Then we stared from the window in dumb amazement, trapped at the end of this cul-de-sac far from the safety of the city. Anna rose without speaking and walked to the far side of the room, as if she could evade it by hiding, while I sat frozen, watching its movement like that of an arrow with the two of us as its target. As I got to my feet, it went over a bump and the headlights jumped upward, shining into the room and illuminating me. I ducked, but it was too late.

The lights went past the open window and we heard the sound of the vehicle for the first time as it came to a halt by the foot of the Shapiros’ lane, the hum of its engine idling. I reached for Anna’s hand and she held mine as we stood there half-naked. The glow penetrated the gap in the curtains near us and shone across the room. Then it faded and turned a fainter red as the car moved again, turning left up the drive to the Shapiros’ house. I could hear it take the hill rapidly and the crunch of the gravel spurted out from its tires, as if the driver weren’t familiar with the slope. My car , I thought. I left it by the house . We walked to the room adjoining the kitchen at the front. There was a sofa by the window and we knelt on it, her robe slithering with a silken hiss.

I reached to part the curtains for us to peer through, hearing her soft breath and feeling her warmth next to my face. She was panting slightly-now out of fear rather than desire. She placed her face beneath mine to look through the parting and we gazed up along the drive, past the split-rail fence and the weeping trees. The car had halted next to mine and the driver was climbing out. I still half wondered if it might be Nathan, having ignored our agreement for him to return to the city. What if he catches us together like this? I thought. He’s going to strangle me properly this time . I didn’t believe it, though. I knew it hadn’t been a man behind the wheel of the car. It was a woman-the one who’d controlled this affair all along and who had fooled everyone but Harry.

As she extinguished the headlights and stepped out of the car, her face was shrouded by dark. A cloud covered the moon and only her outline was visible against the still-glowing sky. She stood by her car, then walked to mine and stepped around it at a slow, deliberate pace, as if inspecting it for damage. She bent to look through one window, then straightened and stepped onto the lawn, disappearing from sight.

“Where’s she going?” Anna whispered.

“I don’t know. I can’t-”

I stopped speaking as the woman reappeared from behind the house and walked up to the kitchen door. She reached into her handbag for a key and unlocked it. As she walked inside, I expected her to turn on the lights, but the room remained in darkness. We had a vista of the front of the house, but it was useless without light. Then the moon emerged from behind the clouds. It shone through the conservatory and cast a glow in the living room. It was empty for a minute or two, until the woman entered the room from the hallway. She walked across the room and then halted in the middle on the spot where Greene had died.

I glanced briefly down at Anna, her lips open and her breasts uncovered by the robe, before the woman regained my attention. She moved toward the kitchen and flicked on the lights as she entered, clearly visible for the first time. She stopped at the brushed-steel intercom by the door and pressed a button, as I’d seen Anna do the first time I’d been in that room. As she did, there was an electronic crackle in the room, and I remembered Anna telling me that the whole estate was wired.

“Dr. Cowper?” said a disembodied voice.

We both flinched, and Anna’s face, pale with panic, gazed at mine. She shook her head, imploring me not to answer.

“I know you’re there,” the voice said matter-of-factly.

Anna looked at me again and I shrugged. There was no way out of the cottage except through the front door, straight into our tormentor’s line of sight. The rear of the building led to ponds and reeds, and I could hardly walk, let alone climb out of a window and swim. The only shred of privacy we had left was that Anna hadn’t been caught in the headlights with me. I couldn’t sacrifice that.

“Yes, Mrs. Shapiro?” I said.

“Come here,” Nora said.

I stepped through the front door of the cottage into the night air. It was cool to the skin, the last warmth of the afternoon gone, and I walked down the path where I’d stood with Anna a few hours before. Then I crossed the lane to the bottom of the Shapiros’ drive. The moon was full in the sky, and the night was silent: no sirens, no city hubbub, nothing but the hiss of the sea. As I started to walk up the drive, the crunch of my feet on the gravel echoed in the night.

Passing this way by car, concentrating on taking the turn up the hill in the daylight, I hadn’t noticed that the drooping trees formed a tunnel, blocking the house from view until the last minute, like the long drive to a country mansion. It was more artful than I’d taken the time to realize. I looked up at the house as I walked but couldn’t see anything through the trees except the glow of lights. I rounded the last curve and there in front of me were two cars: my own and Nora’s Range Rover.

I walked the last few steps to my car and pulled open the front passenger door as softly as I could. The car wasn’t locked because I hadn’t bothered when I’d arrived, but things were different now. Nathan had caught me defenseless out by the airfield and I needed a means of protecting myself. Leaning into the car, I pulled open the compartment in front of the passenger seat. I removed a small package and placed it in my pocket.

The kitchen door gave to my touch. I stepped inside to see Nora’s leather bag on the counter, the one from which she’d extracted Harry’s gun as I’d sat with her in the waiting room of the ER. The kitchen was bare: the cutlery was put away, the plates stacked. Dust from the renovation had been wiped from the kitchen surfaces so thoroughly that I doubted if there were fingerprints left. The door on the far side of the room was half-ajar, displaying a glow from the living room. I paused for a second, thinking of watching Nora and Anna together in this kitchen on my first visit. Her arm had hung around Anna’s shoulders as if in casual friendship, but the gesture felt freighted now-a display of dominance.