Майкл Ридпат - Fatal Error

‘I’ll walk with you,’ I said to Mel.

I handed the key to the manager, picked up her bag and walked out with her into the dusk. Although it was late, it wasn’t dark yet at this latitude. The birds were noisily preparing for their brief sleep. There was no traffic on the road. On one side was the sea, with the Scottish mainland clearly visible over the sound, on the other a mountain. We trudged along in silence, silence apart from intermittent sniffs from Mel.

She mumbled something.

‘What?’

‘I said, I probably deserve it.’

‘No you don’t,’ I said.

‘After France. And his bloody father. I probably deserve it.’

I put my arm around her and squeezed. She needed comfort. She deserved comfort. ‘Not because of that,’ I said. ‘Never because of that. That’s best forgotten.’

‘I try to push it out of my mind. And I can for a while. But only for a while.’

‘I know,’ I said. Remembering Dominique. Her body. Making love to her. The ridiculous euphoria afterwards. And then learning about her death. And the guilt. The guilt.

That week had left its scars on all of us: Mel, me. And Guy.

‘Back there you said something about Guy,’ I said. ‘About his secret deals. His cover-ups.’

‘That was nothing.’

‘It must have been something,’ I said. ‘It seemed to worry the hell out of him.’

‘You’re right, it was something.’ We walked on as Mel gathered her thoughts. Then she spoke. ‘You know why the gardener ran away?’

‘Yeah. He’d killed Dominique. He didn’t want to hang around and get caught.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No. He was paid to run away. By Hoyle and Guy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I overheard them talking. They were in the dining room and I was just outside.’

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘I found you there.’

‘Did you? I don’t remember that. But I do remember what they were saying.’

‘What?’

‘They were talking about how they would pay the gardener five hundred thousand francs to disappear. Apparently Owen had spied on him having sex with Dominique, and the idea — Guy’s idea — was to tell the police this. Then once he had gone they would be bound to suspect him of killing her. Especially since the jewellery was missing.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Sure enough, that afternoon the gardener disappeared. And the police never found him.’

‘Until this year.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah. Didn’t you know? Actually, I’m not surprised Guy didn’t tell you. They found him a few weeks ago in a dustbin in Marseilles.’

‘How tidy.’

‘So the gardener was the fall-guy to deflect suspicion from the real killer?’

‘To deflect suspicion from someone, certainly.’

‘What about the jewellery case that was found in his room?’

‘Must have been planted.’

‘By Hoyle?’

‘Presumably. Or maybe he arranged for somebody else to plant it.’

‘Jesus.’

The road was empty. It was getting dark now, the gloom was pressing down on the water a few yards away from us. I thought through what Mel had just told me. It all hung together. I had heard Hoyle repeating the gardener’s name; it was quite possible that Mel could have overheard the rest. I remembered Ingrid’s comment as we were leaving Les Sarrasins: the disappearance was too convenient. According to Mel it was Guy’s idea and Hoyle fixed it. Very possible.

‘So they were trying to cover for Tony? Divert the police’s attention away from him and on to the gardener?’

‘That’s what I’ve assumed,’ said Mel. ‘Most of the time.’

‘Most of the time?’

‘Sometimes, just occasionally, at times like now, I wonder.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sometimes I wonder if Tony didn’t kill his wife. If Guy was trying to cover for someone else.’

‘Himself?’

‘As I said. Sometimes I wonder.’

‘That can’t be right,’ I said. I could believe Tony had killed Dominique. But not Guy. Surely not Guy. ‘You’re just angry with him.’

‘I’m certainly that,’ said Mel.

‘You didn’t tell the police any of this?’

‘No. If Guy was covering for his father, I didn’t want to spoil it.’

‘What about Guy? Have you ever told him?’

‘He doesn’t know I know. Bastard.’

We approached a row of cottages, one of which bore a discreet B&B sign. Mrs Campbell must have been briefed by the manager because she was very welcoming to Mel, even though it was so late. I left her at the door and wandered back to the hotel in the gathering dark, thinking about what Mel had said.

Could Guy really have killed Dominique?

I was confident that Mel was telling the truth about what she had overheard. But not about her conclusions. She was just being vindictive, surely. It was ridiculous to think that Guy had killed his stepmother. Wasn’t it?

I thought about Guy. I had known him for many years. I counted him as a friend. He wasn’t a cold-hearted murderer.

Or had I just fallen under his spell like Mel and so many other women before her? Like Torsten, for that matter. Like all his other friends.

I thought about the flight that afternoon. About the blind determination with which he had flown the aeroplane up that glen, ignoring me, leading us on to a certain collision with the mountain.

Did I really know Guy?

Then I remembered something. The footprint outside Dominique’s window. Guy’s footprint. Unlike Mel, unlike the French police, probably unlike Patrick Hoyle, I knew it hadn’t been put there by Guy on his way to bed. So how the hell had it got there?

The police had had a theory. That’s why they had arrested Guy. What if their theory was correct?

I stopped and looked out over the sound. It was dark now. I could hear the wavelets lapping against the shore a few yards in front of me. A solitary car drove past, its headlights briefly illuminating the ruffled surface of the sea before plunging it into an even greater darkness. I could hear the engine for a full minute after it had passed me.

I had fallen under Guy’s spell. I had known it was happening: more than that, I’d been happy to let it happen. I had had more fun in the last couple of months than any time since I started work. The drinking, the late nights, the chasing women. We were only young once, so we may as well enjoy it: that was Guy’s motto, and I was embracing it. His life seemed so much more colourful than mine. I coveted it.

Or did I? I remembered the bus journey back from France when I had realized that the lives of people like Guy weren’t all they were cracked up to be. I had forgotten that lesson. Guy’s father was a bastard, I knew that. Was Guy turning into a bastard as well? He might ignore the way he was treating Mel, or claim that she deserved it, but that didn’t mean I should too. His acting career was going nowhere. His life was going nowhere. Did I really want to join him on that journey?

When I reached the hotel I looked into the bar, but it was empty, apart from the manager. I thanked him for finding Mel somewhere to stay and went up to bed.

I checked my key. Room 210. Deep in thought, I walked down the landing, put the key in the door and opened it.

Three things hit me.

First, room 210 wasn’t my room.

Second, Guy was lying on the bed in room 210 locked in a deep embrace with a girl.

Third, the girl was Ingrid.

I stood there stupidly. For some reason the question that most puzzled me was why wasn’t I in my own room. I looked at the key in my hand. I must somehow have mixed up the keys: passed my own to the manager when I had left the hotel with Mel and kept hers.

Then I looked at the two figures on the bed. They were both still mostly clothed. Ingrid sat up, dishevelled, bleary eyed. Guy looked stricken.