Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

It was a bathroom, blue-walled and chill. The view through the doorway was of a wash-hand basin and a frosted sash window. Propped incongruously on the window-sill was a bulky black tape recorder. As I stepped into the room, my view broadened to encompass a half-open door in the far corner, a wooden-seated loo visible in the gloom beyond. The bath was to my left, an old roll-top cast-iron tub with ball-and-claw feet. The tap end was out of my sight for the moment, behind the wide-open door. Paul was leaning against the wall near the other end, his right arm crossed over his chest, his left hand supporting his elbow while he nestled the gun against his cheek. I didn’t know what to make of his narrow-lidded stare, but a phrase of Bella’s came into my mind-“ extremely clever as well as seriously insane ”-and fear suddenly descended on me, like some unseen and unsuspected creature leaping onto my back.

“You shouldn’t have come down here,” he said matter-of-factly. There was a moan and a rattle from behind the door. I stepped forward and turned my head. And then I saw.

Shaun Naylor, dressed in jeans, T-shirt and a denim jacket, was on his knees in the bath. His wrists and ankles were shackled together behind him, the shackles held fast by a chain tied round the tap mountings and stretched taut to eliminate all freedom of movement. His arms were bound so tightly that his shoulders had been dragged back and his chest pushed forward. His chin was lolling against his chest, but he raised it to look at me. One of his eyes was swollen to the point of closure. There was a gash on his forehead and drops of congealed blood round the neck of his T-shirt. A broad strip of adhesive brown sealing tape had been stuck across his mouth. He was breathing hard through his nose and sweating profusely, either from panic or the vain struggle to escape. He strained at the chain as I watched, his brow creasing with the effort, his eyes swivelling up to meet mine. The hollow noise of metal on pipework was what I’d heard from the hall. But his knees slid no more than an inch forward or sideways and he gave up, slumping against the wall of the bath and groaning in protest.

“He thinks he can fight his way out of this,” said Paul with a snigger. “But he can’t. Hear that, Naylor? There’s no way out this time, you stinking bastard.”

“For God’s sake!” I shouted, horrified more by Paul’s gloating tone than the ugly weals on Naylor’s face.

“But that’s right,” said Paul. “It is for God’s sake. And Rowena’s. And her mother’s. And Oscar Bantock’s. We’re doing it for all their sakes.”

“That’s your justification for torture?”

“It isn’t torture,” said Sarah, stepping into the room behind me. I swung round to look at her. There was no hint of shame in her expression-or in her voice. “It’s justice.”

“What?”

“You wanted to know why. Well, this is why. When Rowena died, Paul and I agreed we had to put an end to the evil and suffering this man”-she pointed at Naylor-“ chose to inflict on those we’d loved. We agreed to do what everybody seemed so anxious to do. Prove him innocent. Get him released from prison. Set him free. And then…”

“Take his freedom away again,” Paul concluded with a quivering smile.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” I looked at each of them in turn and could see in their eyes the proof that it did make sense. To them.

“They’d never have given up, Robin,” said Sarah. “I told you that. They’d have gone on and on and on. Until they’d turned Naylor into some kind of folk hero. Well, he’s no kind of hero. And we’re going to prove that.”

“How?”

“We’ve tape-recorded his confession. That’s why we had to get him out of prison. So we could make him answer for what he’d done. And why we had to lure him here. So we could have him all to ourselves. It’s thanks to you we worked out how to pull it off. You went to see him in Albany and told me afterwards about his marital problems. So, I went to see him myself. I’ve been every other week since. Assuring him how sorry I am he should have been wrongly imprisoned. Offering him whatever… consolation… he might need after his release. I was there on Tuesday, urging him to come round here as soon as he could. Didn’t take him long, did it? I think he was expecting me to drop my knickers for him the moment he stepped through the door. I’d promised him a surprise Christmas present, you see. Well, I’ve kept my word, haven’t I?”

“Not about this place you haven’t,” complained Paul. Instantly, I was alert to the hint of friction between them. “It was supposed to be impossible for anyone to trace the address.”

“Yes.” Sarah frowned in disappointment, as if somebody had just pointed out a trivial flaw in a legal argument. “It was. But I suppose something was bound to go wrong eventually. We’ve been lucky to get as far as we have. There were times I thought we were certain to be found out.” She raised her head defiantly-almost proudly-as she looked at me. “But you believed Paul’s confession, didn’t you, Robin, when we tried it out on you? And so did the police. They never dreamt I was feeding Paul the information they couldn’t account for him possessing. Sarwate let me examine his files on the murders when I went to him and said I was beginning to have doubts about his client’s guilt following the Benefit of the Doubt broadcast. That’s how I got the facts right. By combing through all the statements from witnesses and speaking to one or two of them myself-without telling them who I was, of course. Sarwate had copies of just about everything. Even the scene-of-crime photographs. I asked him not to tell anybody about my enquiries to spare me family and professional embarrassment. And he agreed. From his point of view, it would have been advantageous to have me on his side. I don’t suppose it ever occurred to him that Paul and I were conspiring together. He was hardly likely to look a gift horse in the mouth, was he?”

“You talk about this as if it were some kind of game.”

“It’s no game,” said Paul.

I turned on him, stupefaction swamping my fear of what they meant to do. “Whose idea was it? Which of you suggested it to the other?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Sarah.

Paul smirked grimly at me. “It matters to you, though, doesn’t it, Robin? Well, for what it’s worth, I suggested it. I’d spent weeks mourning Rowena and our unborn child and the ache of it-the anger I couldn’t vent-only got worse. I started looking back on our life together, trying to see how I could have prevented her death. It always came back to her mother’s death. And to this worthless bastard.” He waved his gun at Naylor, who seemed hardly to notice. “It started as an idle thought. Where was I the night Louise died? The answer was so banal. In bed in a cheap pension in Chamonix with some Swedish girl whose name I couldn’t even remember. But then it came to me. How easily I could pretend I’d been somewhere else. How easily I could claim to have committed the murders. Then they’d have to let Naylor go. Well, he couldn’t argue, could he? He couldn’t change his mind and say he was guilty after all. And he wouldn’t want to. Freedom’s worth any amount of bewilderment. But once he was free… he was at our mercy.” He sniggered. “I couldn’t have done it without Sarah’s help, of course. She had her mother’s diary and her trained memory of what happened and when. She also had the forensic skill to put the whole thing together. All I had to do was act the part she wrote for me. Christ, it was a demanding performance, though. Three months of twisting my mind to fit the past we’d invented. Three months pretty close to hell. But they were worth it. For this moment.”