Nicci French - Killing Me Softly

He delicately removed my hand from his. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Talk it over with your husband. You can sort it out.’

‘But…’

Then we were interrupted. A uniformed officer beckoned Byrne away and they talked in low voices, occasionally looking across at me. Byrne nodded at the man, who went back the way he had come. He sat down at his desk once more and looked at me with an expression of great solemnity.

‘Your husband is at the front desk.’

‘Of course,’ I said bitterly.

‘No,’ said Byrne gently. ‘It’s not like that. He’s here with a doctor. He wants to help you.’

‘A doctor?’

‘I understand that you have been under pressure lately. You’ve been acting irrationally. I gather there’s some suggestion of pretending to be a journalist, that sort of thing. Can we bring them through?’

‘I don’t care,’ I said. I had lost. What was the point of fighting it? Byrne picked up the phone.

The doctor was Deborah. The two of them looked almost glorious as they walked across the seedy office, tall and tanned, among the pale, sallow detectives and secretaries. Deborah gave a tentative smile as she caught my eye. I didn’t smile back.

‘Alice,’ she said. ‘We’re here to help you. It’ll be all right.’ She nodded at Adam then addressed Byrne. ‘Are you the officer of record?’

He looked puzzled. ‘I’m the one to talk to,’ he said warily.

Deborah spoke in a calm, soothing voice as if Byrne, too, were one of her patients. ‘I’m a general practitioner and under section four of the Mental Health Act of nineteen eighty-three I am making an emergency application to take charge of Alice Loudon. After discussion with her husband, Mr Tallis here, I am convinced that she urgently needs hospital admission and assessment for her own safety.’

‘Are you sectioning me?’ I asked.

Deborah looked down, almost shiftily, at a notebook she held in her hand. ‘It’s not really that. You mustn’t think of it like that. We only want what’s best.’

I looked at Adam. He had a soft, almost loving expression. ‘My darling Alice,’ was all he said.

Byrne looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s all a bit far-fetched but…’ he said.

‘It’s a medical call,’ said Deborah firmly. ‘In any case, that’s for the psychiatric assessment. Meanwhile, I ask for Alice Loudon to be released into the care of her husband.’

Adam put out his hand and touched my cheek, so tenderly. ‘Sweetest love,’ he said. I looked up at him. His blue eyes shone down at me, like the sky. His long hair looked windswept. His mouth was slightly open, as if he were about to speak or to kiss me. I put my hand up and touched the necklace he had given me, long ago in the first days of our love. It was as if there was nobody in the room except me and him, everything else was just blur and noise. Maybe I had been wrong about it all. Suddenly the temptation seemed irresistible just to give myself up to these people and be cared for, people who really loved me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I heard myself say, in a feeble voice.

Adam bent down and took me in his arms. I smelt his sweat, felt the roughness of his cheek against mine.

‘Love’s a funny business,’ I said. ‘How can you kill someone you love?’

‘Alice, my darling,’ he said, soft against my ear, hand on my hair, ‘didn’t I promise that I would always look after you? For ever and ever.’

He held me close and it felt wonderful. For ever and ever. That was the way I had thought it was going to be. Maybe it could still be like that. Maybe we could turn the clock back, pretend he had never killed people and I had never known. I felt tears running down my face. A promise to look after me for ever and ever. A moment and a promise. Where had I heard those words? There was something in my mind, blurred and indistinct, and then it took shape and I saw it. I stepped back, out of Adam’s arms, and I looked clearly at Adam’s face.

‘I know,’ I said.

I looked round. Byrne, Deborah and Adam were looking puzzled. Did they think now that I had really and finally gone over the edge? I didn’t mind. I was in control again, my mind clear. It wasn’t me that was mad.

‘I know where Adam put her. I know where Adam buried Adele Blanchard.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Byrne.

I looked at Adam and he looked back steadily, unwavering. Then I fumbled in my coat and found my purse. I opened it and pulled out a season ticket, receipts, some foreign currency, and there it was: me, photographed by Adam at the moment he asked me to marry him. I handed the photograph to Byrne, who took it and looked at it with a puzzled expression.

‘Careful with that,’ I said. ‘It’s the only copy. Adele’s buried there.’

I looked round at Adam. He didn’t look away, even then, but I knew he was thinking. This was his genius, making calculations in a crisis. What was he planning inside that beautiful head?

Byrne turned away from me and showed the photograph to Adam. ‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Where is it?’

Adam gave a baffled, sympathetic smile. ‘I don’t know exactly,’ he said. ‘It was just on a walk somewhere.’ He turned his gaze back to me.

At that moment I knew that I was right.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t just a walk somewhere. Adam took me there to this special spot. He had been let down before, he told me. But now in that special place he wanted to ask me to marry him. A moment and a promise. We vowed to be faithful to each other over the dead body of Adele Blanchard.’

‘Adele Blanchard?’ said Adam. ‘Who’s she?’ He looked at me very closely. I could feel his eyes on mine trying to assess what I knew. ‘This is crazy. I don’t remember where we were on that walk. And you. You don’t remember either, do you, darling? You slept all the way up in the car. You don’t know where it is.’

I looked at the photograph with a sudden lurch of horror. He was right. I didn’t. I looked at the grass, so green, tantalizingly graspable and so far away. Adele, where are you? Where is your betrayed, broken, lost body? And then I had it. Here I am. Here I am.

‘St Eadmund’s,’ I said.

‘What?’ said Byrne and Adam, at the same time.

‘St Eadmund’s with an A. Adele Blanchard taught at St Eadmund’s primary school near Corrick, and the church of St Eadmund’s is there as well. Take me to the church of St Eadmund’s and I’ll take you to this spot.’

Byrne looked from me to Adam and then back again. He didn’t know what to do but he was wavering. I took a step closer to Adam so that our faces were almost touching. I looked into his clear, blue eyes. There wasn’t the smallest flicker of disquiet. He was magnificent. Perhaps for the first moment I had a clear sense of this man on a mountain, saving a life or taking it away. I raised my right hand and touched his cheek as he had touched mine. He flinched very slightly. I had to say something to him. Whatever happened, I would never have another chance.

‘I understand that you killed Adele and Françoise because, in some terrible way, you loved them. And I suppose that Tara was threatening you. Had her sister told her something? Did she know? Or suspect? But what about the others? Pete. Carrie. Tomas. Alexis. When you went back up the mountain, did you actually push Françoise over the edge? Did somebody see you? Was it just convenient?’ I waited. There was no response. ‘You’ll never say, will you? You won’t give lesser mortals the satisfaction.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Adam said. ‘Alice needs help. I can legally take custody of her.’

‘You’ve got to take note of this,’ I said to Byrne. ‘I’ve reported the existence of a murdered body. I’ve identified the location. You are obliged to investigate.’