Jeffrey Archer - A Twist in the Tale

I ran down the hall, out onto the street, jumped into my car and drove off quickly. I couldn’t have been with her for more than ten minutes. Although I felt like murdering her at the time, I regretted having hit her long before I reached home. Twice I nearly turned back. Everything she had complained about was fair and I wondered if I dared phone her once I had reached home.

If Elizabeth had intended to comment on my being late, she changed her mind the moment I handed her the roses. She began to arrange them in a vase while I poured myself a large whisky. I waited for her to say something as I rarely drank before dinner but she seemed preoccupied with the flowers. Although I had already made up my mind to phone Carla and try to make amends, I decided I couldn’t do it from home. In any case, if I waited until the morning when I was back in the office, she might have calmed down a little.

I woke early the next day and lay in bed, considering what form my apology should take. I decided to invite her to lunch at that little French bistro she liked so much, halfway between my office and hers. Carla always appreciated being taken out in the middle of the day, when she knew it couldn’t be just for sex. After I had shaved and dressed I joined Elizabeth for breakfast and seeing there was nothing interesting on the front page of the morning paper, I turned to the financial section. The company’s shares had fallen again, following City forecasts of poor interim profits. Millions would undoubtedly be wiped off our quoted price following such a bad piece of publicity. I already knew that when it came to publishing the annual accounts it would be a miracle if the company didn’t declare a loss.

After gulping down a second cup of coffee I kissed my wife on the cheek and made for the car. It was then that I decided to drop a note through Carla’s letterbox rather than cope with the embarrassment of a phone call.

‘Forgive me,’ I wrote. ‘Marcel’s, one o’clock. Sole Véronique on a Friday. Love, Cassaneva.’ I rarely wrote to Carla, and whenever I did I only signed it with her chosen nickname.

I took a short detour so that I could pass her home but was held up by a traffic jam. As I approached the flat I could see that the hold-up was being caused by some sort of accident. It had to be quite a serious one because there was an ambulance blocking the other side of the road and delaying the flow of oncoming vehicles. A traffic warden was trying to help but she was only slowing things down even more. It was obvious that it was going to be impossible to park anywhere near Carla’s flat, so I resigned myself to phoning her from the office.

Moments later I felt a sinking feeling when I saw that the ambulance was parked only a few yards from the front door to her block of flats. I knew I was being irrational but I began to fear the worst. I tried to convince myself it was probably a road accident and had nothing to do with Carla.

It was then that I spotted the police car tucked in behind the ambulance.

As I drew level with the ambulance I saw that Carla’s front door was wide open. A man in a long white coat came scurrying out and opened the back of the ambulance. I stopped my car to observe more carefully what was going on, hoping the man behind me would not become impatient. Drivers coming from the other direction raised a hand to thank me for allowing them to pass. I thought I could let a dozen or so through before anyone would start to complain. The traffic warden helped by urging them on.

Then a stretcher appeared at the end of the hall. Two uniformed orderlies carried a shrouded body out onto the road and placed it in the back of the ambulance. I was unable to see the face because it was covered by the sheet, but a third man, who could only have been a detective, walked immediately behind the stretcher. He was carrying a plastic bag, inside which I could make out a red garment that I feared must be the negligee I had given Carla.

I vomited my breakfast all over the passenger seat, my head finally resting on the steering wheel. A moment later they closed the ambulance door, a siren started up and the traffic warden began waving me on. The ambulance moved quickly off and the man behind me started to press his horn. He was, after all, only an innocent bystander. I lurched forward and later could not recall any part of my journey to the office.

Once I had reached the office car park I cleared up the mess on the passenger seat as best I could and left a window open before taking a lift to the washroom on the seventh floor. I tore my lunch invitation to Carla into little pieces and flushed them down the lavatory. I walked into my room on the twelfth floor a little after eight thirty, to find the managing director pacing up and down in front of my desk, obviously waiting for me. I had quite forgotten that it was Friday and he always expected the latest completed figures to be ready for his consideration.

This Friday it turned out he also wanted the projected accounts for the months of May, June and July. I promised they would be on his desk by midday. The one thing I had needed was a clear morning to think, but I was not going to be allowed it.

Every time the phone rang, the door opened or anyone even spoke to me, my heart missed a beat — I assumed it could only be the police. By midday I had finished some sort of report for the managing director, but I knew he would find it neither adequate nor accurate. As soon as I had deposited the papers with his secretary, I left for an early lunch. I realized I wouldn’t be able to eat anything, but at least I could get hold of the first edition of the Standard and search for any news they might have picked up about Carla’s death.

I sat in the corner of my local pub where I knew I couldn’t be seen from behind the bar. A tomato juice by my side, I began slowly to turn the pages of the paper.

She hadn’t made page one, or the second, third or fourth pages. And on page five she rated only a tiny paragraph. ‘Miss Carla Moorland, aged 31, was found dead at her home in Pimlico earlier this morning.’ I remember thinking at the time that they hadn’t even got her age right. ‘Detective Inspector Simmons, who has been put in charge of the case, said that an investigation was being carried out and they were awaiting the pathologist’s report but to date they had no reason to suggest foul play.’

After that piece of news I even managed a little soup and a roll. Once I had read the report a second time I made my way back to the office car park and sat in my car. I wound down the other front window to allow more fresh air in before tuning to the World At One on the radio. Carla didn’t even get a mention. In the age of pump shotguns, drugs, AIDS and gold bullion robberies the death of a thirty-two-year-old industrial personal assistant had passed unnoticed by the BBC.

I returned to my office to find on my desk a memo containing a series of questions that had been fired back from the managing director, leaving me in no doubt as to how he felt about my report. I was able to deal with nearly all of his queries and return the answers to his secretary before I left the office that night, despite spending most of the afternoon trying to convince myself that whatever had caused Carla’s death must have happened after I left and could not possibly have been connected with my hitting her. But the red negligee kept returning to my thoughts. Was there any way they could trace it back to me? I had bought it at Harrods — an extravagance but I still felt certain it couldn’t be unique and it remained the only serious present I’d ever given her. But the note that was attached — had Carla destroyed it? Would they try to find out who Cassaneva was?

I drove directly home that evening, aware that I would never again be able to travel down the road Carla had lived in. I listened to the end of the PM program on my car radio and as soon as I reached home switched on the six o’clock news. I turned to Channel Four at seven and back to the BBC at nine. I returned to ITV at ten and even ended up watching Newsnight.