Page 49

The doorbell rang. I looked through the peephole and saw Elaine Clover standing outside.

She was the person I most wanted to see, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to let her in right now. This wasn’t the right time. But I knew I had no choice. She might well have seen me through the window and I needed to talk to her. So I called out – ‘One minute!’ – hastily gathered up Blakeney’s pages and tucked them away in a drawer. I slid a couple of dirty dishes into the dishwasher, grabbed my glasses and phone, and took one quick look around the room. I was still in the house in Muswell Hill and I’d been doing my best to keep it tidy in case Rob and Steve happened to come back. It was much roomier than my flat, with high ceilings, cornices and lots of original features, but its main showpiece was a kitchen that might have been delivered by a spaceship. I’d never seen so many knobs and buttons, blenders and processors, multiple ovens, cupboards and drawers. Practically the only device I’d used in the week I’d been there had been the kettle.

I opened the door. ‘Elaine!’ I said. ‘I’m glad to see you.’

‘I’ve just been to your flat. There were decorators there. They told me you’d moved out and I had to persuade them to give me this address. What’s happened?’

‘I was burgled.’ I didn’t want to go into it all, not with her.

‘Oh my God! One thing after another! Are you all right?’

‘Not really. Do you want to come in?’

We embraced and I showed her into the kitchen. It’s funny how that’s always the room of choice. Nobody actually lives in a living room any more – if they ever did. I noticed that Hugo had sprinted out of sight the moment he heard the bell and realised that he would be doing that for the rest of his life.

‘I should have called ahead,’ she said. ‘But there are things I’ve got to tell you and I didn’t want to do it over the phone.’

‘Have you driven all the way here?’

‘No. I’ve got a lunch in Hampstead and I thought I’d take a chance that you were in. If I’d missed you, I could have browsed in the bookshops or something. Did you know that Charles and I met in Hampstead?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘I was living in a shared house in Frognal Lane.’ She looked at me wistfully. ‘That was a long time ago.’

‘Would you like a coffee?’ I asked.

‘Please. White – no sugar.’

I found the percolator and made coffee for both of us as we talked around the subject that had brought her here. She looked as immaculate as ever – her clothes, her jewellery, hair that looked fresh from the hairdresser’s. She really was a lady who lunched. I knew that, by contrast, I was a wreck. But I was entitled to be.

Finally, we were sitting together. I’d carried over a box of tissues and placed them between us, as if one or both of us might need them. ‘So what’s happened?’ I asked.

‘Tell me what Charles said to you,’ she countered. ‘When we spoke on the phone, you said he’d given you new information.’

‘It was nothing that will help me,’ I said gloomily. ‘He’d spoken to Eliot about the death of his grandmother … that was all.’

‘Poor Eliot! It’s just so horrible. Every day I wake up, I can’t believe he’s dead. With Charles, I’d known him since he was a child.’ She drew a breath. ‘Emma Wardlaw came to see me yesterday.’

I felt a rising sickness in my stomach. I was glad we’d come to the crunch. I needed this to be over. But I was also afraid. My heart was beating so hard that I could feel its rhythm in every part of my body. ‘What did she say?’

‘They’re going to arrest you, Susan. Very soon.’

I nodded, dazed. ‘She told you that?’

‘She said that they’d found fresh evidence in your flat. And they’ve had another witness report of your car being in Trafalgar Square …’

This was the first thing she’d told me that I didn’t know. ‘How did that happen?’

‘A phone call.’

‘Another anonymous tip-off?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so. You can’t drive from one side of London without being seen.’ She realised what she’d just said. ‘I was there when you arrived, Susan. You can tell me the truth. Did you drive …?’

‘Why are you even asking that, Elaine? Why would I lie to you?’

‘The police are convinced you killed Eliot because he fired you and – I’ve got to tell you this – they’re not going to find it very difficult to prove in front of a jury. If it goes that far.’

‘That’s what DI Blakeney said. He said there wasn’t a jury in the country that wouldn’t convict me.’

‘He’s right. But …’ She hesitated. ‘I could lie for you if you want. I could tell them I saw you coming out of the station.’

I looked at her hopefully. ‘Would you do that for me, Elaine? Would you really perjure yourself in court?’

‘If you wanted me to.’

I shook my head. ‘No. I couldn’t do that …’

‘I’m so frightened for you, Susan. You have no idea what prison is like. You’ve seen what it’s done to Charles. He’s older than you, he’s a man and he was strong when this all began, but I’m not sure you’ll be able to survive it. First the humiliation. The arrest and the trial. The media hounding your family, writing lies about them, never leaving them alone. You must warn Katie and her children. Their lives are going to be torn apart.’

‘You’re scaring me, Elaine.’

‘The system is vile. It’s inhuman. I watched Charles being ripped to pieces and I can’t bear for it to happen to you. I don’t think you’ll be able to survive one week in a women’s prison. Every time I visit Belmarsh, it makes me sick. Charles often says he wishes he’d taken sleeping pills or thrown himself under a train before he was arrested. He says that it would have been easier for him in the long run. His life was over anyway.’

‘Is that what you’re advising me to do, Elaine?’ I looked around me and noticed a rack of knives on the counter next to the fridge. They were Japanese, made by Gyuto. Damascus steel with maple wood handles. Typical Rob and Steve. They’d told me the blade would cut as easily through meat as through bone and that you wouldn’t feel the difference. ‘Are you saying I should kill myself?’

She reached out and gently laid her hands on mine. ‘I could never do that,’ she said. ‘But as a friend, I must tell you that what’s going to happen to you could be even worse than death. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll go far, far away. Don’t let them put you in prison.’

‘But if I try to run away, it’ll make me look guilty.’

She leaned back. ‘You are guilty, Susan. That’s what they think.’

I stared at her, in shock. ‘I have nowhere to go.’

‘Then maybe you should find … an easy way. Avoid hurting people who are close to you. Don’t put yourself through all this pain.’

I pulled out a tissue and wiped my eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘I only want what’s best for you, Susan.’

‘I know that. But there is one thing I don’t understand.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You’ve just been to my flat. The decorators told you I was here. But how did you know where I lived in the first place?’

She looked stunned – as if it was the most absurd, irrelevant question I could have asked. ‘Eliot told me,’ she said at last.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t remember. I wanted to know where you lived and he told me.’

‘But why would you want to know that?’

She smiled, confused. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, my dear.’

‘Detective Inspector Blakeney said something very interesting to me just a few days ago. We were talking about the break-in at my flat. It wasn’t a burglary, Elaine. Someone trashed the place and tried to kill my cat. It must have taken them a while, so he asked me who knew I wouldn’t be at home that day. And there was something else. I didn’t drive to the party, but someone still reported seeing my car in Trafalgar Square – and was even able to read part of the licence plate. It must have been someone who knew what car I drive.’

‘And who would that be?’

‘Actually, it might be you. Nobody else knew about my MG. Not Eliot, not Roland Crace, not Jonathan, no-one. When I visited Marble Hall, I parked in the car park. When I saw Dr Lambert, I had to leave the car round the corner from his house. But you’ve seen it lots of times. When I went to Gillian’s, you saw me arrive.’

Elaine looked at me and spoke with total sincerity. ‘I promise you, Susan, I never told anyone what car you drove.’

‘That’s not quite what I mean,’ I assured her. ‘You were also the only person who knew I was going to be in Belmarsh Prison – because you helped arrange it. I didn’t tell anyone else. And that was when my flat was ransacked.’

‘Susan, are you suggesting—’

I held up a hand, stopping her. ‘You telephoned me when I was at the station,’ I said. ‘Where were you?’

‘I was at home.’

‘In Parsons Green.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s definitely a lie, Elaine. Don’t you remember? Somebody rang the doorbell in the middle of our conversation. Your doorbell plays a few bars of a piece of music by Bach. It’s Charles at the piano. But the doorbell I heard was a very ordinary one. In fact, I think it was identical to mine.’ I hurried on before she could interrupt. ‘And there was another funny thing. When the doorbell rang, you lowered your voice. Why would you do that if you were in your own home – or anywhere else for that matter? But while you were there, smashing and tearing up everything you could get your hands on, you were disturbed by an Amazon delivery. There was a package on the floor, waiting for me when I got back. That was why you spoke more quietly. You didn’t want the driver to know you were there.’

‘Susan – this is madness. You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘You wrote “KILLER” on the wall. That was clever. It made everyone think I was being blamed for Eliot’s death and it also made it more likely that I was the one who was responsible. I was to blame. But you were there to plant the watch, just as you had planted the piece of cloth and kicked in the grille of my MG earlier. You must have left the party shortly after Eliot and found him lying in the road. I have to say, it must have taken quite a mind, an incredible reservoir of hate, to turn what had happened into an opportunity. But that was when you got the idea. You decided to use his death to frame me. Punish me, the same way Charles has been punished … at least, that’s how you saw it. And Charles is in on it too, isn’t he? The two of you, working together. Why else would he have agreed to see me? He made it clear how much he hates me, but when I was with him, he couldn’t stop himself. He told me that I was going to get a taste of my own medicine. That’s what the two of you planned. The only trouble is, you’ve overreached yourself, Elaine. Coming here and telling me to slit my wrists in the shower or jump under a train. Did you really think that was going to work? Did you really think I was going to sit here and let you watch me die?’

She said nothing, but as I watched her, an impossible transformation came over her face. It was like a special effect on the cinema screen as layer after layer of her personality was wiped away, revealing the Fury beneath. It was the eyes that gave her away. The hatred that she felt for me – deep, vengeful, all-consuming – had finally been released, welling up from the very depths of her being. It was extraordinary, really. Nothing had changed. Her expression was frozen in place. Yet everything had changed.

‘You were lying from the very start, weren’t you,’ I said. ‘When we met at Causton Books, you pretended to be my friend because you were working out how to trap me. Did Eliot know too? Was he part of it?’

‘Eliot knew nothing.’

And there it was. The admission. Game over.

‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ she went on. ‘Nobody is going to believe you. As far as the world is concerned, we didn’t have this conversation. I wanted you to feel what I felt, Susan, when you took Charles away, ruined our retirement, stole our last years together. I wanted you to understand what your high-mindedness, your cruelty, your intransigence did to us.’

‘Charles killed Alan Conway. He tried to kill me.’

‘I wish he’d succeeded. You bitch! He had done so much for you. If it hadn’t been for him, you’d never have had a career in publishing. He took you in and gave you everything you wanted and you never showed him a shred of gratitude. Did you ever think about me and my daughters? My grandchildren? Did you ever think about what you did to us?’

‘I did nothing to you, Elaine. It was Charles.’

‘Charles made a mistake, that’s all. Two mistakes. He pushed that stupid author off the tower – well, he deserved it – and he trusted you.’

‘Do you know who killed Eliot?’

‘I don’t care who killed Eliot! And no. I didn’t see anything – but if I had, I wouldn’t say. I heard a screech of tyres as I came out of the party, but I didn’t see the car. Eliot was already dead. That was when I knew providence was on my side and that I could pay you back the way you so dearly deserved. I took a scrap of his clothing and his watch and some dust from the road and after that it was all so easy. You can tell the police anything you like, my dear, but they’re not going to believe you. You can put a knife in yourself or you can wait for someone to do it to you in prison. Either way, you’re finished. You’re dead.’

She got to her feet and that was when I did something so stupid, looking back on it now, I honestly believe I deserved everything that followed. It had gone so well, but right then the cold-bloodedness of what she had done, the madness of it all, got through to me. She had said she’d wanted to be my friend and I’d believed her. More than that, by reporting Charles to the police, I felt I’d done her harm and therefore in some way I owed her. What a fool I’d been! For a brief moment, I was furious with both myself and her.

‘It’s not going to work, Elaine,’ I called out to her.

‘Go to hell, Susan.’

I pulled my mobile phone out of the tissue box, where it had been all along, and held it up for her to see. ‘I’ve recorded every word of this conversation, Elaine. You talk about traps, but the moment you came through the door, you walked into mine. All I wanted was to hear it from your own lips – and you’ve spelled it out very nicely. I think you’re the one who’s going to need a lawyer. Now get out of here.’

She didn’t move.

‘Give me that,’ she said.

‘No. I’m giving it to the police.’

‘You tricked me.’

‘That’s right. Just like you tricked me!’

‘Give it to me!’ She moved incredibly quickly. She had been standing near the counter and even as she spoke, her hand had whipped out and grabbed one of the Japanese knives. Suddenly I was looking at ten inches of razor-sharp steel.

‘Don’t be stupid, Elaine,’ I said, doing my best to keep my voice steady, glancing around the room for anything I could use to defend myself. ‘People will have seen you arrive. Your car is parked outside. If you hurt me, you’re going to be the one who ends up in prison.’

‘Give it to me!’

There had been a second transformation. It was only now that I realised Elaine wasn’t just vengeful, she was seriously out of her mind. What was left was this crazed woman in Dior and Estée Lauder brandishing a hideous carving knife in a way that was both improbable and terrifying.

‘Think of your daughters, Elaine. Think of your grandchildren. Don’t you want to see them again? Go home. We can forget about this …’

I was lying. Elaine had perverted the course of justice, obstructed the police and God knows what else. Nobody was going to give her a free pass and perhaps somewhere inside that broken mind of hers she knew it. She let loose a stream of swear words, screaming them as she moved towards me, and I was so paralysed by what she had become that I didn’t realise what she was going to do until it was almost too late. I saw the knife above her head. I saw her bring it down in a vicious, scything motion. But it was only when the blade sliced through my upper arm and chest, cutting open my dress and the flesh beneath, that I understood I was in mortal danger and unless I reacted very quickly, I was going to die.

‘Give me the phone!’ she screamed, her voice like nothing I had heard before.

I backed away, aware of blood coursing down my arm and seeping through my clothes. There was no pain yet. That would come later. I tried to stop her. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing, Elaine. Stop this! This is crazy!’

Somehow, I’d had the presence of mind to pick up a chair and I held it with the legs pointing towards her, using it to keep her away from me. She was slashing with the knife, left and right, left and right, eyes staring. I saw it sweep inches away from my face, just out of reach. My blood was splattering the white Carrara marble floor. And still she was screaming, a hysterical, meaningless cacophony. By this stage, all she wanted to do was kill me and to hell with the consequences. There was nothing I could say to her. The rising flood of grief and rage had finally burst its banks.

She lowered the knife and charged towards me. I chose the moment to thrust forward, pinning her between the four legs of the chair and propelling her backwards into a larder cupboard, which happened to be open. There was a crash of breaking wood. Spice bottles and storage jars cascaded onto the floor and exploded all around her. She lashed out with her left hand and I lost hold of the chair. It was sent hurtling to one side and now there was nothing between Elaine and me. She saw her opportunity, rushing towards me with the knife. I backed away, almost slipping on my own blood. I couldn’t stop her. It was over for me.

I heard an explosion of wood and glass and saw the window on one side of the room disintegrate as a metal cylinder – which I would only later recognise as a dustbin – smashed into the room. It came within an inch of hitting me and for a terrible moment I thought someone else had joined in the attack, that somehow Charles had got out of Belmarsh and had arrived in time to help his wife. But it had been used as a battering ram, not a weapon, and a second later, Detective Inspector Ian Blakeney climbed through the hole that had been made and imposed himself between me and Elaine, his face flecked with blood from the fragments of broken glass.

‘Drop the knife, Mrs Clover. I’m a police officer.’

Elaine stared at him.

‘Put the knife down. Now!’

The madness had already left her. As she realised what she had done, she burst into tears, howling like an animal. Her hand fell and she dropped the knife, which broke on the marble floor. Blakeney was unarmed. It was only his personality that was keeping her at bay.

‘I want you to kneel down and put your hands behind your head, Mrs Clover. I don’t want to hurt you.’

Slowly, dazed, still sobbing, she did what he had said.

He looked at me. ‘Susan, do you have a phone? I want you to call 999 and then hand it to me. Can you do that?’

I no longer had the phone! I must have dropped it when I picked up the kitchen chair. For a terrible moment, I wondered if Elaine had managed to destroy it after all. Not that it would really matter. Not after what Blakeney had witnessed. He was standing over her, his eyes fixed on her. I felt something pulling at my dress and remembered that it had a pocket. The phone was inside. I must have slipped it in there without realising what I was doing. I did as he asked. I dialled the number and when it was answered, I handed it to him.

That’s all I remember. After that, like a character in a Victorian novel, I think I must have passed out.