Flynn Berry: Under the Harrow

“Do you want something to drink?” he asks, and I nod. While he fixes us tea, I try to think of something to tell him, but I can’t remember any changes in her habits. I read the brochure from Victim Support. “Life can fall apart after a murder,” it says. “Simple things like paying bills and answering the phone can become difficult.”

I want to ask Moretti what he does in Whitstable, and how often he goes there. I expect to tell Rachel about all of this, and it is something she will want to know. We drink our tea in silence.

“On Sunday Rachel said she was off to meet someone named Martin.”

Moretti turns to me. “And where did they go?”

“She didn’t say. It was the evening, so dinner somewhere, I think. I asked if it was a date and she said no. She said he was a friend from the hospital.”

“His surname?”

“She didn’t tell me.”

Moretti says, “When did Rachel decide to move?”

“She wasn’t moving.”

“She visited an estate agent two weeks ago.”

“Where was she going?”

“St. Ives.” The north coast of Cornwall. I have a pulse of excitement. I love St. Ives. I’ll get to visit her there. “Rachel planned to move, and she didn’t sleep at her house this week. We think it’s likely she was being threatened.”

“Where was she staying?”

“With Helen Thompson.”

Moretti stands and I follow him from the room, too baffled to protest. He says, “Sergeant Lewis is on his way to Marlow. He’s offered to drop you at the hotel.”

A tall black man with a South London accent meets me in the corridor. In the lift on the way down, he says, “I’m sorry about your sister.”

When the doors open, I follow him outside to his car. Rain begins to drum the windscreen as we work our way through the traffic.

“Where do people go afterward?” I ask.

“They go home,” he says. The wipers sluice water from the glass.

“How long have you been a policeman?”

“Eight years,” he says, leaning forward at a crossing to check the oncoming traffic. “I give myself two more.”

RACHEL BOUGHT HER HOUSE in Marlow five years ago. Her town is perfect. There are painted-wood buildings on the high street. There is the common. There are the yews on the long end of the common. There is the yellow clock in the village hall. There are the two pubs. There is the church and the church graveyard. There is the rill. There is the petrol station.

The Duck and Cover is the tradesmen’s pub. It used to be called something different, the Duck and Clover, until someone painted out one of the letters. The Miller’s Arms is the commuters’ pub. It serves Pimm’s and shows sports only during the World Cup and Wimbledon. Rachel thought there was going to be an explosive showdown between the two sides eventually. She hoped for one. She sided firmly with the Duck and Cover. She said, “We don’t want it to turn into Chipping Norton.” She said, “It’s important that the people who work here can afford to live here.”

With the exception of the Miller’s Arms, the town hasn’t changed much, or not yet. There are no clothing or housewares shops on the high street. The village has a spring fête, and a pasta dinner to raise money for the firehouse.

“Why weren’t there as many commuters before?” I asked her.

“The trains got faster.”

There is another, larger town with the same name near London, with a famous pub, but Rachel never corrected people when they confused the two, or when they told her they had been to the Hand and Flowers.

Rachel said there was something wrong with the town. I can’t remember exactly when this happened. It was recent, sometime after we got back from Cornwall. I didn’t let her finish. We were eating breakfast at her house. I had just woken up, and I didn’t want to hear it. I knew from her tone of voice that what she was about to tell me was horrible. I knew I had to stop her. I had a raspberry croissant and an espresso and I had her town.

There is the wine shop. There is the building society. There is the gold rooster on top of the Hunters. There is the library. There are the twins who work for the town. There is the yellow awning of the Miller’s Arms. There are the poplars in front of the repair garage.

I thought the twins were one person until I saw them both at once washing a bin lorry. They both wore mirrored sunglasses and they both kept their hair long and they both had rottweilers.

“Do they have identical dogs?” I asked.

“No, there’s just one dog,” said Rachel.

• • •

The Hunters isn’t doing very well. There are twelve rooms and only two other guests. It’s November, but according to Rachel no one stayed there in the summer either. She said it only stayed open because of the bar below the rooms. This is good news for me, since I am not planning to leave.

When I return from the police station, I steal a carving knife from the kitchen. I put it under my bed, so if I drop my arm over the edge I can reach it. Then I sink down on the bed, wondering what she wanted to tell me, and let the darkness swarm my face.

THE FIRST PASSENGERS ARE already waiting in the darkness on the train platform when I go out to buy the papers at the newsagent’s shop across the road the next morning and carry them back to the empty front room at the inn. The room has green wallpaper with gold lilies of the valley. It’s where the riders used to eat breakfast before a hunt.

Rachel isn’t in the Telegraph . She isn’t in the Independent , the Sun , the Guardian , or the Daily Mail . If none of the national papers reported it, maybe it didn’t happen.

But she is on the cover of the Oxford Mail . The reporter must have had a copy of the postmortem. She died from arterial bleeding, I learn. The time of death was between three and four in the afternoon. She was stabbed eleven times in the stomach, chest, and neck. She had defensive wounds on her hands and arms.

I am at the table reading the article and then I am on all fours on the carpet. The pattern in the wallpaper starts to move. My mouth gapes.

When the worst of the pain recedes, I am washed against the corner of the room. I put the newspapers in the empty fireplace. I want to burn them, but I don’t have any matches.

• • •

I call the landscaper. I tell her there has been a death in the family and that I don’t know when I will come back to London. The phrasing pleases me, like it wasn’t Rachel who died, but someone else in the family, an aunt, our dad. She tells me to take all the time I need, but she doesn’t offer paid bereavement leave. I don’t really blame her. It isn’t that sort of job.

I call my best friend, Martha. She wants to come stay with me but I say I need to be alone at the moment.

“When are you coming home?” she asks.

“I don’t know. The detective asked me to stay in the area.”

“Why?”

“They need information about her, I think.”

I ask Martha to tell our other friends, and I give her the numbers for Rachel’s as well. Alice lives in Guatemala. I don’t have her number, and I hope Martha can’t find it either. It comforts me that to her Rachel is alive and well, like that makes it partially true.

• • •

After the calls, I walk to her house. It is a Sunday afternoon in late November, and a few people drive past me, going about their errands. I can’t believe that I plan to survive her, to go on into life without her. The road to her house, a stripe of black tarmac, stretches in front of me.

The newspaper article didn’t mention the dog. The police must be pleased. I still see him, hanging from the top of the stairs. A large German shepherd. I’m surprised the banister post could hold his weight.