The Other Side of the Door, Nicci French [new reading .TXT] 📗

looked strange to me, full of shadows and planes. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to lie to me.’

‘I didn’t. I swear. I thought you did.’

‘I wouldn’t blame you, Bonnie. I even thought you were right. Then after, when you looked at me as though you hated me . . .’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said. ‘I was going to see Hayden but I arrived after you did. I found Hayden and I . . . I guess I found what you’d done.’

Neal looked dazed. ‘So what did you do?’

‘We . . .’ I stopped myself.

‘Why didn’t you just leave?

‘You’d done it for me,’ I said. ‘It seemed like my fault. I couldn’t just leave you to it.’

‘But I didn’t do it.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

Neal had the expression of someone hearing bad news followed by even worse news, a boxer at the end of a fight being hit and then hit again. ‘Then who did?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘Who did kill him? Oh, fuck.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more. Shit, there’s a killer out there. I didn’t think of you as a killer, it was just an accident—but this. This is something else.’

‘Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie.’ Neal’s voice was a groan. ‘When the body wasn’t found, I thought I was going completely insane.’ He looked at me. ‘And that was you?’ I didn’t reply. ‘You thought I’d killed him and you wanted to protect me?’

‘I felt responsible.’ I leaned forward and put my hand on his.

‘You protected me, I protected you. Someone’s got away free.’

‘Yeah. I know. But the police are going to think it was me. Or you. Or both of us together.’

He put his head into his hands and rocked to and fro slightly. I could hear him muttering. Finally he looked up. ‘OK, we have to talk about the alibi. I interfered with a crime scene and you did a hell of a lot more than that. I mean, you haven’t killed someone so I guess that’s something, but God knows what laws you’ve broken. And I don’t know how long your plan will hold together. The car, his car, what happened to it?’

‘It was found in Walthamstow.’

‘How did it get to Walthamstow?’

‘I left it there.’

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know—I thought it might confuse things.’

‘What a brilliant idea,’ said Neal.

I don’t think he meant it. We gazed at each other and I had the dizzy sensation that I was looking into a mirror. I heard myself laughing, a snorting giggle that didn’t sound like me. Neal’s face broke into an appalled answering grin, although he had tears in his eyes. I wanted to cry as well but instead this dreadful snickering mirth spilled out. I felt as though I was breaking up with the hilarity and terror of it all, the sheer farcical horror of what we had done.

‘And meanwhile,’ said Neal, ‘there’s someone out there who really did do it and one after the other we covered up for them and now they must be wondering what the hell happened and what they ought to be doing about it.’

‘Yes, that’s true. I hadn’t thought.’

‘So tell me, Bonnie, what do we do now? Have you got another master plan?’

‘Can I try some of that vodka first?’

Before

I put on the Hank Williams CD I’d brought and we sat and drank a glass of the white wine I’d also brought, and Hayden had a smoke, but after the fifth or sixth track about being lonesome or lovesick or divorced or rootless it didn’t seem such a good idea. I asked him if he wanted me to put something else on.

‘What for?’

‘Isn’t it a bit depressing? It’s just song after song of different kinds of misery. My baby done left me and I’m so lonesome I could cry.’

‘If something’s that good,’ said Hayden, ‘it can’t be depressing. He’s the daddy of us all. Forget Dylan and Buddy Holly. Hank was the first great singer-songwriter. He sang about his own experiences. He went out on the road and lived it and then he wrote beautiful songs about it.’

‘And he died when he was about thirty-five,’ I said. ‘Worn out by it.’

‘He was twenty-nine,’ he said. ‘The same age as Shelley. And a better poet.’

‘I always had trouble getting over the tasselled shirts.’

‘He died in the back seat of a car on the way to another gig,’ said Hayden. ‘That’s the way to go.’ He laughed. ‘You don’t believe that. It’s the woman in you. You think it’s sad when someone doesn’t die at three score and ten surrounded by their family and household possessions, with a pension plan and lots of money in the bank.’

‘Don’t pigeonhole me.’

‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’

‘Is it so bad to grow old? Is it so bad to have things?’ I said.

‘You mean the sort of things you argue over when you break up with someone?’

‘You’re drinking wine I bought for you. You’re living in a flat I arranged for you.’

‘You’re trying to provoke me,’ he said, ‘but I won’t be provoked. Not today.’

‘Liza worked for this flat,’ I said. ‘At the end of the summer after she left college she got a job, and after a year she put down a deposit and bought this, and she’s been paying the mortgage ever since.’

‘And your point is?’ said Hayden. He leaned forward and picked up the little metal sculpture on the coffee-table. ‘She probably saw this in a gallery somewhere and paid fifty pounds for it. Or maybe someone gave it to her. And when she’s died some relative will look at it and say, “What the fuck can we do with this?” And it’ll either be a doorstop or it’ll be put on a skip.’

Hayden ground the butt into one of Liza’s ashtrays and then he kissed me, but I pushed him away, if only for a moment. I glanced around the room at the pictures, the ornaments, the books. ‘When I look around this room I see a woman who loved things, who took pleasure in them, even