Майкл Ридпат - The Predator

‘He was in England that day,’ Megan said quietly. ‘He came up here to see me.’

‘He what?’

‘He came up to Cambridge. We went out for tea. We talked.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’ Chris demanded.

Megan shrugged. ‘I don’t have to tell you everything.’

‘Megan!’

‘Look, Chris, he was my old boyfriend. I feel uncomfortable talking about him with you; you know that. It was no big deal. But it does mean he wasn’t in Paris.’

‘But that doesn’t matter. We know he gets someone else to do his dirty work.’

‘Maybe Duncan does as well. Have you thought about that?’

Chris ran his hand through his hair in frustration. ‘But the whole point is that we assumed Duncan had killed Ian in a fit of anger. If Eric did all this, it was carefully planned.’

‘Maybe Duncan planned the whole thing,’ Megan said. ‘I’ve never trusted him. Whereas I do trust Eric.’

Chris looked at her. Just ten minutes ago, everything had seemed so simple. Now it was becoming complicated. Megan’s readiness to defend Eric bothered Chris. It bothered him intensely. And if she had seen Eric on Sunday, then that, rather than the shock of discovering the knife on her pillow, might explain her coolness towards him that evening.

Megan was obviously following these thoughts. ‘There’s nothing between us now, you know. There’s been nothing for years.’ She touched his arm. ‘You must believe me, Chris.’

‘Must I?’ he snapped.

‘I’d like you to.’

Chris wanted to argue, but he bit his tongue. He knew Megan was trying not to make an issue of it and he wanted to try to do the same. ‘OK,’ he said, making his tone as conciliatory as possible. ‘But do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions about Eric?’

‘Sure.’

‘We know that Alex and Ian took drugs when we were all in New York together. Did Eric?’

Megan looked uncomfortable. ‘Yes, he did. A little. Cocaine. But he stopped when Alex was caught.’

Chris stared at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘It didn’t seem important. Everyone took drugs then.’

‘Did you?’

‘No,’ Megan admitted. ‘I’d tried it at college, of course. But I never really got into it.’

‘But Eric did?’

‘Yes. I was a bit worried about him at college. And again in New York. But, as I said, after Alex was caught he gave up. It might have interfered with his precious political ambitions.’

‘I can see it might have,’ Chris said. ‘And who had the drugs?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean. Presumably, either Eric or Alex must have bought the drugs from someone. Which of them was it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Megan. ‘I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know about it.’

‘OK, so who kept them safe?’

‘Eric,’ Megan said reluctantly.

‘And when Alex wanted some, he would go to Eric?’

‘I guess that’s right.’

‘So Alex could have told Bloomfield Weiss that Eric was his supplier?’

‘No,’ Megan protested, raising her voice for the first time. ‘They were friends. What are you trying to say? Eric was the evil drug-dealer, and Alex was his innocent victim?’

‘No. I’m trying to say that Alex was going to shop Eric to George Calhoun. That Eric knew this. And that when Eric saw he had a chance to shut Alex up for good, he took it.’

Megan snorted.

‘Megan,’ Chris said quietly. ‘Duncan and I think we should go to the police.’

‘About Eric?’

Chris nodded.

‘Don’t you think you should discuss that with me, first?’

‘That’s what I wanted to do this evening.’

‘Oh, did you? Well, I think you’d be making a big mistake. You’re just jealous of Eric because he and I were going out years ago, and you want to protect your stupid friend from the consequences of his own actions. I’m not going to go along with it.’

Chris had been trying to hold his temper, trying to avoid the confrontation that had been looming, but he lost it.

‘Maybe I am jealous. Maybe I should be,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot you haven’t told me about Eric. You never mentioned the drugs before. You never told me he came to see you on Sunday. There’s probably a lot else you haven’t told me about him. You’re the one who’s losing perspective. The man’s a killer, Megan! Don’t you understand that? He’s extremely dangerous. It’s quite likely that he’ll try to kill you or me or both of us. We should think hard about that. Do something, before it’s too late.’

Megan glared at Chris. He suddenly felt cold and awkward in his nakedness. ‘I think you’d better go,’ she muttered through clenched teeth.

‘But Megan—’

‘Just get dressed and go!’

So Chris went.

Megan watched Chris as he strode across the court below, shoulders hunched. For a moment, she felt the urge to open the windows and shout down to him to come back. But she couldn’t. Not without admitting that he was right about Eric. And that was something she could not do.

She had genuinely tried to put Eric behind her. Her warm welcome to Chris hadn’t been entirely for his benefit. She had wanted to prove to herself that Eric was in the past, that it was Chris she cared about now.

But she had failed. Chris was right about her and Eric. Her head’s battle with her heart had been lost. She, who was so proud of her self-control and her ability to analyse the most complicated problems dispassionately, wanted to see Eric — no, bad to see Eric. She knew nothing would come of it. She knew it was pointless. But she had to do it; she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if she let the opportunity to see what would develop between them slip by. She knew now that she had never stopped loving him when they had split up. She might have told herself time and time again that she was over him, but she wasn’t, she never had been. Now she would have to accept that fact and see what happened. The prospect frightened her, especially the likelihood that she would be rejected, but it also thrilled her. Remembering her afternoon with him that Sunday, she knew he still felt something for her. There had to be a chance.

Chris had sensed all that, and that had made her angry with him. She had denied what he could see was obvious, and she had been unfair to him. She liked him, liked him very much, and she didn’t want to hurt him, but she felt that the situation was out of her control. Until that week, she hadn’t believed in destiny. Now she felt destiny was taking hold of her life and her role was to let it.

She was sure that Chris was wrong about one thing, though: that Eric had killed all those people. She knew Eric, and she knew he would never do anything like that. She distrusted both Duncan and Ian and she was sure that one or other of them had been responsible for the deaths. Chris’s jealousy had made him unable to see what was to her perfectly obvious.

She turned away from the window and began to work on her notes. She soon gave that up; she hadn’t the concentration. So she pulled out an old, dog-eared volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry that Eric had given to her when they were at college. The familiarity of the poems gave her some comfort, like old friends, their rhythms stable, unchanging, reliable.

The phone rang. She lifted the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘Megan?’

She felt a glow course through her body as she recognized the voice. ‘Eric.’

‘How are you?’

‘Not too good, actually.’

‘Have you heard about Ian?’

‘Yes, I have. I can’t believe it. Another one.’

‘Yeah. I called because I’m worried about you.’

‘Oh, yes?’

Yes. I mean, I’ve no idea why Ian was killed, but after our conversation on Sunday, I wanted to make sure you were OK.’