Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

“She led him round to the back. A few seconds later, some lights came on. Just downstairs at first, where I couldn’t see much. Then, after about ten minutes, on the landing and in one of the bedrooms. I had a clear view straight in through the window. I saw Louise and Naylor walk into the room. Neither of them made a move for the curtains. Perhaps they didn’t think there’d be anybody outside, watching them. Perhaps they just didn’t care. At the time, I had the crazy idea Louise knew I was there and wanted me to see what she was capable of-with the right sort of man.

“I’m not going to describe what she let him do to her. Well, there wasn’t much she didn’t let him do. She was a willing partner all right. Like Naylor said at his trial, it wasn’t rape. If only it had been. I could have rushed in and tried to rescue her then. I could have been her white knight in shining armour. Instead, I just sat there and watched what would have been a Peeping Tom’s dream come true. It was horrible. Not because of the sex itself. That was just two bodies moving together in a rectangle of light. Like a pornographic movie on a TV screen. No, it was the pleasure on her face, the leisurely expertise of her actions that so appalled me. It couldn’t have been the first time she’d done such things. It was a practised performance. She did it well. As well as the most accomplished of whores. I could almost have believed that’s what she was. A high-class tart for this… creature she’d found… to use and abuse. Anyone’s. If the money was right. Or she took a fancy to you. Anyone’s at all. But not mine. Never mine.

“He didn’t stay long afterwards. Got dressed and walked out, leaving her in bed. Well, on the bed. She didn’t even bother to cover herself. He came out and drove away. She didn’t get up. She must have fallen asleep. I went on watching her for a few minutes. Disbelief turned to jealousy. And jealousy became rage. I wanted to punish her for denying me everything she’d so casually given to a stranger. For shattering the image of her I’d built up in my mind. For not being the woman I’d dreamt she was.

“I scrambled through a gap in the hedge, dropped down the bank into the lane and crept round to the back of the cottage. The door wasn’t locked, of course. I went in, moving as quietly as I could. I still didn’t really know what I was going to do. The lights were on in the kitchen and the lounge. The studio door was open. I glanced in and noticed a coil of picture-hanging wire on a bench. I stood staring at the wire, until I’d convinced myself she deserved it. Until I’d committed myself to the act so completely it seemed inevitable. I picked up some pliers that were lying next to the wire and cut off a length. Then I put on an old pair of leather gloves I’d seen on a shelf near the back door. I wasn’t thinking about fingerprints. It was just I didn’t want the wire to cut into my hands. As I knew it would, when I drew it tight around her neck.

“I can’t remember exactly what happened next. The surge of conflicting emotions blots out part of the memory, I suppose. I went up to the bedroom. But whether I tiptoed or ran I can’t say. I was suddenly in the room, looking down at her, naked on the bed. She was lying on her side, her face averted. She heard something and stirred. ‘Shaun?’ she said. ‘Is that-’ Then I was on her, forcing her down against the mattress with the weight of my own body as I looped the wire over her head and pulled it taut around her throat. She gagged and tried to throw me off. But I was too strong for her. ‘It’s me, you bitch,’ I shouted in her ear as I strained at the wire. ‘It’s Paul.’ She choked and writhed and struggled. But there was no way out now. For either of us. It went on longer than I’d expected. So much longer. But, in the end, all the life was squeezed out. And she lay limp and still beneath me. No breath. No movement. No flicker of the eyes. She was dead.

“I stood up and looked down at her beautiful body, which I’d once longed to touch and caress. But now there was nothing there. Just her pale flesh, growing colder by the second. I turned round and saw a reflection of the scene in a large mirror that filled most of the wall facing me. Seeing myself, hollow-eyed and panting, with her body on the bed behind me, made it somehow even worse. I lashed out at the mirror with my boot, splintering one of the corners. Then I rushed out of the room.

“I’d got as far as the kitchen when I heard a car draw up outside. It sounded like Bantock’s. The creaking of the garage door confirmed my guess. I was about to run for it before he came in when I suddenly realized how disastrous that would be. If he saw me, he’d recognize me. Even if he didn’t see me, he’d tell the police I’d called there on an unconvincing pretext earlier in the day. And my rucksack was on the other side of the hedge. If I left it there, there’d be no doubt of my guilt. What little I knew of forensics suggested that if they had cause to suspect me, they’d be able to prove I’d been there that night. A fingerprint. A fibre. A hair. God knows what. But they’d find it. And I’d be done for. Whereas if they had no cause to suspect me… if they had no reason even to think of me…

“I dodged into the studio and cut off another length of wire. I was planning to pounce on Bantock as he went through the kitchen. But when he opened the back door, shouted ‘Louise?’ and got no answer, he stopped, then turned towards the studio, almost as if he sensed my presence there. I shrank back behind the door and, as he came in, leapt at his back, looping the wire over his head and tightening it around his neck in one movement. He yielded as I pulled, then fought back, hurling himself forward in an attempt to throw me off. We crashed to the floor and rolled over several times. I could hear and feel objects tumbling around us. He was a big strong man, but overweight and out of condition. I had the advantage of youth and determination. I couldn’t afford to let him get the better of me. I forced him onto his stomach, managed to pin his arms with my knees and twisted at the wire in a frenzy. And that was how he died, a choking clawing heap on the floor of his studio, his face smeared with a fine multi-coloured dust formed of tiny flakes of paint shed over the years from his brushes and palettes.

“I struggled to my feet and tried to think clearly. With Bantock dead, there was nobody to connect me with what had happened. I was supposed to be abroad and, if I could get back to France without being seen by anybody who knew me, I was almost certainly safe from detection. The instinct for self-preservation erased the horror of what I’d done, at least for a while. I pocketed the coil of wire and the pliers, kept the gloves on and rushed out into the lane. There was nobody about. I was safe if I kept my nerve. I ran up the lane to the common and worked my way round to the beech tree where I’d left the rucksack. I took out my torch and checked the ground for things I might have dropped, gathered up the empty lager tins and stuffed them into the rucksack, then stumbled down across the field towards the road into Kington, navigating by the lights in the houses along Butterbur Lane.

“Once I was on the road, I reckoned I looked like any other hiker. I walked straight through the town, restraining my pace all the way, resisting the urge to break into a run, and out to the bypass. Then I started trying to hitch a lift. My luck was in. A lorry driver stopped for me after only a few minutes. He was heading for Coventry. Well, anywhere as long as it was far from Kington suited me. He dropped me at a motorway service area between Birmingham and Coventry in the small hours of the following morning. I managed to pick up another lift from there down to London. By the time the bodies were found at Whistler’s Cot, I was on a ferry halfway across the Channel.