Nicci French: The Memory Game

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right. Brought it on myself. People were scattering throughout the day. I imagine it would be completely impossible to reconstruct who exactly was where at any one point on that day.’

‘Except for Natalie, by the river, shortly before one o’clock. Was there any particular reason why she should be there?’

‘None that I can think of. I mean, no particular reason, except it doesn’t seem so odd that she should have been. I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m being much help.’

‘That’s all right. Anyway, I gather that you were indirectly responsible for the body being found. Why were you building the cottage just there?’

I explained that I’d originally wanted to build the cottage – only then it wasn’t going to be a cottage, but a structure – further down the hill, but had changed my plan when I’d found that a small tributary of the river flowed just beneath that area. Drainage would have been difficult and very expensive. I told her about the digging, and how we’d unearthed Natalie’s bones.

‘Why did you assume that it was Natalie?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied, slightly taken aback. ‘I suppose it was just that Natalie disappeared, and I always thought she must be dead – though Martha would never believe that-so when there was a body next to the house, well…’ I trailed off, then tried again. ‘I’ve always thought that one day we would find Natalie’s body. So in a way I’ve been waiting for that, and I think that perhaps we all have. But I never thought that, well, that she’d been killed. I assumed she’d had an accident or something. So finding her, it was awful, not just because it was her, but because somebody must have buried her. In fact, that’s what I wanted to ask you about. Don’t you think it’s a peculiar place to bury Natalie – in the garden, just a stone’s throw from where she lived?’

Auster smiled across at her colleague. ‘We were talking about that, weren’t we, Stuart? It could be seen as a very clever place to hide a body. Most murderers aren’t very good at hiding bodies. Remote areas of scrub or moorland might seem like a good idea, but they are places without much activity and it can be easy to see that digging has taken place. A garden is constantly being dug up.’

‘But there are lots of people around in a garden,’ I protested.

‘Yes,’ she said, with an obvious lack of interest. She clearly had no wish to sit debating theories with me. ‘As I said, if you remember anything that might be significant, please get in touch.’

She looked at her watch and asked if there was a pub nearby. I said there was one at the end of the road and she asked if I would like to join them for a bite of lunch. I loathe pubs and I wasn’t hungry but I said I’d have a drink. Turnbull said he wanted to go to Oxford Street on the way to the Isle of Dogs, so Helen Auster and I walked along the road to the Globe Arms, where she ordered a pint of bitter and a lasagne and I toyed with a tomato juice and smoked cigarettes. I began to take to Helen, as I now called her. She talked about being a female officer and the canteen culture, and about her husband who was a delivery coordinator in Shropshire for Sainsbury’s. She asked me about my divorce and I confided a few banalities. When it was almost time to go, I returned to the case:

‘It’s all too late, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘You’re not going to be able to find anything out.’

‘There are one or two possibilities, but it will be difficult.’

‘It looks like you drew the short straw.’

‘I thought so. Now I’m starting to think that the Martellos are an interesting family.’

Helen gave me a card and wrote her direct line on it. As we parted on the pavement on Highgate Road, I told her that she must get in touch the next time she was down in London and she promised to. Is it possible that I could become friends with a policewoman?

‘Don’t you think it’s time you gave up smoking?’

Kim was sitting across the table from me; a candle on the paper tablecloth cast shadows on the pale triangle of her face. She skewered some swordfish with her fork, swilled it back with a gulp of wine.

‘How many are you on now? Thirty a day?’

I had finished my meal – or rather, I had pushed it away, hardly touched, and was now sitting in a state of light-headed contentedness, blowing blue smoke over the debris of the table. I waved over the Italian waiter, and pointed at the empty wine bottle.

‘Another of these please.’

I tapped the chimney of ash into the ashtray.

‘More than thirty, I hope. I’m going to stop soon. Honestly. The trouble is, I do enjoy it so much. It doesn’t make me feel ill or anything.’

The waiter came over, uncorked a bottle of amber wine and poured it into my glass to taste.

‘I stopped quite easily before. I’ll stop again.’

‘Yesterday I saw the results of a woman I referred for a chest X-ray. She had a persistent cough and some mild chest pains. She’ll be dead by this time next year. She’s forty-four, with three teenage children.’

‘Don’t.’

‘And how’s your hostel coming on?’

‘Don’t.’

It wasn’t coming on at all. It was a site marked on a piece of paper; a conversation in the office; a matter for meetings at the council offices; a subject for planning permission. At work, I had dozens of large sheets of graph paper on which I had blocked in my proposals: geometric designs, square by square, with sharpened pencils. I was just waiting for someone to tell me I could go ahead. Meanwhile, there was talk about consultation with local people. I didn’t like the sound of that.

‘Okay, let’s not talk about the hostel,’ said Kim. ‘Let’s talk about you. What are you doing with yourself now that you’re alone?’

‘I lit another cigarette, and poured another glass of wine.

‘I’ve become a convenient single woman,’ I said. ‘I’m starting to find myself seated next to the divorced man at dinner parties. Does that happen to you much?’

Kim shrugged. ‘Not any longer.’

‘We don’t usually have much to say to each other,’ I continued. ‘Then there are friends whom I haven’t seen for ages, who suddenly ring me up, and they sound so sorry for me now that Claud and I have separated, and I can’t help feeling some of them are quite pleased to be able to be sorry for me. But actually, I’m quite enjoying living on my own.’ I was surprised by the firmness in my voice. ‘I watch films on TV in the middle of the day, and go to exhibitions, and get in touch with people I’d let slip. I can be untidy. The house feels large, though. For ages, there have been four of us living there, and now there’s just me. There are some rooms I never go into. I suppose I’ll have to sell it one day.’

It wasn’t just that the house felt large; it felt lonely. I spent as little time as possible there now, though in the past I had loved it when Claud and the boys had all gone out and left me alone. For nearly two decades I had gone out to work every weekday, and raced home to a large rackety house which was full of noise and mess and loud boys shouting for my attention. I’d vacuumed and ironed, and done the washing, and cooked, and as they’d grown older I’d ferried the boys back and forth from increasingly alarming social venues. I’d given dinner parties for colleagues – mine or Claud’s. I’d gone to Christmas plays and summer sports days and cobbled together packed lunches from an empty fridge. I’d played Monopoly, which I hate, and chess, at which I always lose, dreaming all the while of a book by the fire. I’d made cakes for the school bring-and-buy. I’d baked late at night to make myself feel a good mother, especially after my own mother had died. I’d suffered loud records from the latest groups that had made me feel middle-aged when I was in my thirties. I’d overseen the acne and the sulks and the homework. I’d stayed in our bedroom when the boys had had parties. I’d sat, evening after evening, sipping a gin and tonic with Claud before supper. I’d woken up night after night with my head full of lists, woken up in the morning with a tired headache, gone to sleep in the evening knowing that my day was so full there was no room left for me.