Michael Ridpath - See No Evil

‘What! You think I tried to kill my own son?’

‘And I’ve told the police all about it,’ Calder went on.

Cornelius pulled himself together, straightened himself up. ‘That’s probably a good idea, Alex. I’m sure they’ll be here to talk to me in the morning. Now I’m very sorry about your sister, but you’d better go.’

Calder noticed him flapping a signal with his left hand. He turned to see a woman in her nightgown standing in the doorway looking scared. Jessica Montgomery, the third Mrs van Zyl: Calder recognized her from newspaper photographs of her with her husband. She seemed to be in her fifties, tall, narrow, blonde, just on the emaciated side of attractive.

‘Don’t worry, honey,’ Cornelius said. ‘I’ll handle this.’

‘Oh, you’ll handle it all right,’ Calder said. ‘The police will come and ask you polite questions and you’ll answer them and if the questions get difficult you’ll get a lawyer and the police will never arrest you because you’re too fucking clever and they won’t be able to pin anything on you.’

‘I can assure you I’ll cooperate fully with the police. I want to find who injured your sister as much as you do.’

‘Huh,’ Calder snorted. He knew what he wanted to do next, but he knew he was almost too drunk to do it. Cornelius, although in his seventies, was still big and strong and alert. If Calder took a drunken swing, Cornelius would block it and Calder’s whole journey would have been in vain. He focused on Cornelius’s chin, fixing it still. His feet were well balanced. He would have to be quick.

‘Alex...’ Cornelius took half a step forward and raised his right hand towards Calder’s shoulder. Calder was fast and accurate. He hit Cornelius directly on the chin. Cornelius staggered two steps backward. Calder hit him again and again. Cornelius slumped to the ground, and Calder kicked the old man in the ribs once, twice. He heard screaming and someone pulling at his arm. He flung the woman off. Cornelius groaned. Calder kicked again. Then something large and hard hit his head. He staggered and half turned. He saw Jessica Montgomery swing a table lamp towards his head for a second time. He lifted an arm and the table lamp hit his shoulder and struck the top of his skull. He fell to the ground, fighting to retain consciousness.

Cornelius pulled himself to his feet, rubbing his chin. ‘Don’t do that, honey,’ he said to his wife, who had picked up the telephone.

She ignored him.

Cornelius hauled Calder to his feet. The room was spinning. Until it stopped Calder couldn’t hit Cornelius again.

‘Listen, Alex,’ Cornelius said, grabbing him by the shoulders. ‘The police will be here in a minute. Now go out of that door and run. Doesn’t matter where. Just run.’

‘You can’t let him go!’ Jessica shouted.

Cornelius picked up the plastic bag Calder had been carrying, pushed it into his hand, turned him towards the door, shoved him out into the hallway and out of the front door. ‘Run!’

Calder looked back at the house, then at the gate on to the street, and ran.

He heard sirens. He ran faster, round a corner, round another. It felt good to run, to feel his legs pumping up and down, the blood rushing through his system, his heart rattling in his chest. But his stomach suddenly churned and he had to stop to throw up. He wiped his mouth and trotted on, soon finding himself in the warren of back streets behind Euston station. He slowed to a walk, or a stagger. No sirens. No police.

What had he done? Hit Cornelius. That was good. That was very good. But he hadn’t solved anything. Tomorrow was still there, lying in wait for him.

He stopped, polished off the last of the Laphroaig and threw the bottle away. Had a swig of the White Horse.

He walked. It was still Saturday. It had been a very, very long Saturday. The streets were full of people, many of them drunk like him. He didn’t care where he went.

Sandy. Sandy was staying somewhere in London, he knew it. The Howard Hotel, that was it. The Howard Hotel. Down by the river near the Strand. He’d see Sandy.

He staggered on. He didn’t know how long it took him, or even how he navigated the once familiar streets of London, but eventually he found himself at the steps of the Howard Hotel, which for some reason had acquired a Swiss white cross above its door since he had last been there. It was late. The doorman tried not to let him in. Calder said he had to see a guest, and the doorman reluctantly took him to the reception desk. With a great effort he put on a pretence of sobriety sufficient to persuade the receptionist to check his computer.

‘Miss Waterhouse checked out two days ago,’ the man said.

‘No, you don’t understand,’ Calder said, lurching forward.

Strong hands grabbed him by the collar. Strong arms pushed him out of the door.

Calder looked around him. Cars flashed by on the Embankment in front of him. Beyond that was the river.

He swayed up to the road. Waited. The cars didn’t stop. Waited. A light somewhere went red and there was a gap in the traffic. He lurched across the road. A car hooted. He stumbled along the pavement beside the river. There were lights everywhere — God this city was bright — everywhere but down below where the river pulled and tugged at the light, pulling it down, down into the darkness. Calder watched it, the darkness. He felt himself drawn towards it.

Tomorrow. God, who wanted tomorrow?

He pulled out the bottle for a swig.

‘Hey, mate!’ He looked down at his feet. A scrawny man with a three-day stubble and wearing a torn denim jacket and jeans was slumped against the wall. Calder hadn’t even noticed him. ‘Hey, mate. Can I have some of that?’

‘Sure,’ said Calder, sinking down beside him. ‘Here. Take it. Take it all.’

The sunlight woke him up, burning red through his closed eyelids. He was slumped on his side on the pavement, dried vomit inches from his nose. He sat up and looked at his watch. Five past five. The sky was the light grey of a summer dawn, there was no one to be seen on the Embankment, although single cars were speeding past even at this time of the morning. His head pounded. He ran his tongue over his teeth: the inside of his mouth felt as if someone had poured vinegar and lighter fluid on to a large ball of cotton wool and then ignited it. The pounding increased in intensity and chemicals in his stomach began to gurgle and churn.

He pulled himself to his feet. There was no sign of his companion of the night before, nor of his bottle of whisky. He felt his trouser pocket for his wallet: still there. He began staggering unsteadily northwards towards King’s Cross. There was still enough alcohol in his bloodstream to disrupt his balance, but the walk and the early-morning sunshine did him some good, stirring his feeble circulation.

He reached King’s Cross, found an all-night chemist and bought some paracetamol, found an all-night café and grabbed a fried breakfast. There were quite a few people around King’s Cross at that time on a Sunday morning as the dregs of the night traders in sex and drugs overlapped with early-morning workers. His head still pounding, he crossed the road into the station in search of the first train to King’s Lynn.

It was nine-thirty by the time he got to Norfolk and he decided to take a taxi straight home. There was no way he could face the hospital in his current state. The cottage was guarded by police tape and a uniformed constable. He introduced himself, climbed upstairs, pulled the curtains and went back to sleep. The phone rang a couple of times and he ignored it.

At one in the afternoon he woke up, had a shower and called Alfie to take him to the hospital. The taxi fares were racking up: he would have to organize himself a car. There was still some activity outside the cottage, where the twisted wreckage of his Maserati was being carefully loaded on to a lorry. A policeman was taking down the scene-of-crime tape. He nodded to Calder and jotted something in his notebook.