Nicci French - Until it's Over

‘Us. This house.’

‘I’m going to pack tomorrow,’ said Pippa.

‘Do you know where you’re going?’

‘I’m making inquiries. By the way, I’m sorry.’

‘What about?’

‘Owen.’

‘Oh, that. It all seems a long time ago. You slept with Owen, I slept with Owen. What’s to apologize about?’

I walked into the kitchen and saw Davy, Mel and Miles in a huddle around the table.

‘Was it horrible?’ asked Davy.

‘Next stupid question,’ I said.

‘The police are going to talk to all of us,’ said Mel.

‘I know.’

‘We were shopping,’ she said. ‘Will they want to know that?’

‘I’m sure they will. Anyway, that lets you off the hook,’ I said. I really wasn’t interested in hearing everybody’s alibis.

Miles stood up. He looked years older; his face had lines and creases in it that I’d never seen before. I walked over to him and hugged him hard. His arms went round me, and as he held me, I felt his entire body shake. After a few moments we stepped back from each other. He started to speak but his voice cracked and he didn’t manage anything intelligible.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

Miles stared at me, still unable to speak. He swallowed. ‘Our last words were bitter ones,’ he said. ‘Whenever I try and remember her, I think of that.’

‘It’s not the last moments that count,’ I said helplessly. ‘It’s all of it.’

He shook his head from side to side, like a wounded animal. ‘You saw her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she look…?’ He stopped.

‘She looked quite peaceful,’ I said, as I had said to Andrew de Soto about Ingrid. It’s what you’re meant to say about dead people. It comforts the living, supposedly.

‘I can’t believe she’s gone.’ Tears welled in his eyes. ‘She was so… so alive. So forceful.’

‘That’s true.’

‘I’ve got something for you.’ He tugged a fat envelope out of his pocket and looked at it as if he was surprised to see it, then glanced at Davy and Mel. ‘I wanted to ask you a favour.’

‘Of course, Miles.’

‘Not here,’ he said. He led me out of the kitchen and up the stairs. When we reached the hallway he took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know if everything has changed. I can’t think properly. But I’ve done this. Leah said I had to. It was the last thing she said, almost. It was what we were arguing about.’

‘What? What is it?’

‘Here,’ he said. He pushed the envelope into my hands.

I opened it and saw it was bulging with money. I looked more closely: they were fifty-pound notes. Lots of them, thick like a paperback book.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s the twenty thousand pounds,’ he said. ‘It’s for you all. A sort of down-payment. Maybe you should all stay. I don’t know anything. Take it anyway. I don’t care any more. I didn’t know who to give it to.’

‘I can’t take twenty thousand in cash, Miles!’

‘You share it out. I don’t care how you do it.’

‘But it’s ridiculous. I can’t walk around with all this money. I’ve never seen so much.’ Miles didn’t seem as if he was really listening to me. ‘I’ll put it somewhere,’ I said, ‘and then we can talk. You shouldn’t be thinking about this now. You shouldn’t be making decisions about anything.’

‘I feel like a murderer,’ he said.

‘Don’t. We all behaved badly but -’

I stopped when I heard footsteps on the stairs. I closed the envelope and Miles and I stood silently, like two people with a guilty secret, as Davy and Mel pushed their way past us.

‘Everything all right?’ asked Davy.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ I said.

‘If there’s anything…’

‘Yes,’ I said, too quickly. ‘Yes, thanks.’

Mick came past. He didn’t say anything, but his feet echoed loudly on the uncarpeted stairs.

I returned to my room and sat on my bed and contemplated the envelope full of money. I lifted it to my nose. It had a sour odour as if the notes had been contaminated by all the unclean fingers that had grasped them. How many were there? I tried to do the sum in my head and kept failing, then finally got it right: four hundred fifty-pound notes in a plump, bendy, scary pile. I looked around the room. Where could I put it? A drawer, behind the books, in the box of tissues, under my mattress? They all seemed hopeless and then I thought of Dario, bleaching his room in anticipation of the police search that would be coming any time now. If I hid the money in my room, the police would inevitably find it and then what? Was it a crime to have that much cash? Would I be legally obliged to explain it? They might think it was the contents of the missing package from Ingrid de Soto ’s house. Of course, Miles could explain what the money was for but, still, it wouldn’t look good.

I tucked the money into the inside pocket of my jacket. It was ridiculous. I couldn’t walk around with it like that. I could almost feel it hot against my chest. I needed to sort this out as quickly as possible, before everybody dispersed. I sat on my bed for a few moments, putting my head in my hands and trying not to see the faces of Ingrid de Soto and Leah – both faces beautiful and mutilated, with eyes that had stared accusingly up at me. I thought of Kamsky (‘You want a connection?’) and of Ingrid de Soto ’s father (‘What do you know, Ms Bell?’) and my brain fizzed uselessly. If I was the connection, then how – why? If I knew something without knowing it, what could it be? Was it somehow, beyond the shores of my comprehension, my fault?

I needed to speak to someone. That wasn’t right. I needed to speak to Owen. No one else would do. I stood up from the bed, suddenly realizing how exhausted I felt – hollow and shaky with tiredness – and stepped out of my room, where I almost collided with Dario who was manoeuvring a large cardboard box along the corridor.

‘What are you doing?’ I said.

‘I told Miles I was moving out,’ he said, his eyes darting around him nervously. ‘I can’t be in this place any more. But he said I had to get rid of my stuff first. I said he could keep it but he didn’t want any of it. It’s going to take days, and I don’t have days. I don’t have hours. Anything could happen. Everybody’s after me. They’re getting me one by one.’

‘I’m not after you,’ I said.

‘What time was it?’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘When you found it. I mean her, Leah.’

‘About half past ten.’

I saw an expression of intense concentration on his face. ‘I think I saw Mick,’ he said.

‘Mick told me he was asleep.’

‘I was doing stuff in the house,’ said Dario, frantically. ‘Everyone had gone to work. I met the postman. He made me sign for something.’

‘I don’t care, Dario. Tell the police, not me,’ I said. ‘By the way, I’ve got the money. I’ll give you your share before you go.’

Dario’s whole expression changed. ‘Really?’

‘I’ve got to work out the exact amount. By the way, have you seen Owen?’

‘He just got in.’

It took a few seconds of hovering nervously outside Owen’s door before I steeled myself to knock. There was no reply, but I pushed open the door. A travelling bag was gaping wide, with clothes spilling out. The doors of the wardrobe were ajar, revealing rows of empty hangers. Photographs that had been stacked along the walls were now in piles on the large desk. I sat down beside them, and idly lifted a few while I was waiting. Some I had seen before, others were unfamiliar. One, near the bottom of the pile, made me gasp. I put my hand against my heart. There was a sharp pain in my chest and for a few seconds I could do nothing but breathe raggedly.