Читать книгу Exit - Belinda Bauer - Страница 11

The Wrong Man

‘What?’

Felix cleared his throat. ‘We killed the wrong man.’

‘What?’ she said again, and Felix was going to repeat his line, but then realized they could be here all day saying the same two things to each other and still not quite grasp what had happened, or how. Only one thing was clear: accidentally assisting a man who had planned to die by providing him with an instrument of death was a technicality.

Doing the same thing to a man who had not planned to die was something else entirely.

‘The wrong man ?’ Amanda said, not moving. ‘What do you—?’

‘Ssh!’ He glanced at the bedroom door.

‘But how do you know ?’ she whispered.

And he hissed back, ‘Because the man in this room is expecting us.’

Amanda gasped at the closed door, and then turned to stare down the landing at the inanimate mound that had been a living human being just minutes before.

‘But how—?’

‘I don’t know.’

Amanda stared at the front bedroom door again, as if she could see through it, and through the wall beyond that, and into the road outside.

‘Shit!’ she said, and slow horror dawned on her face.

And then he heard it too.

Sirens.

For one long, thrumming moment Felix might have panicked.

Then he said, ‘You have to go.’

‘Go?’

‘Yes. You have to go,’ he said again, more urgently this time. ‘Just go home and forget this ever happened.’

‘What?’ she stammered. ‘But what will you do?’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of everything.’

Felix had no idea what everything might entail. All he knew for sure was that Amanda was twenty-three with her whole life ahead of her, while he was seventy-five, with most of his behind him. Mathematically, it made no sense for her to be involved.

‘Hurry now,’ he said, but she was looking at him, open-mouthed, wide-eyed. Dazed. Felix put a hand on her back and propelled her firmly along the landing and down the first few stairs.

She grabbed the banister and turned to look up at him. ‘But what about you?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘You just go.’

‘OK.’ Her eyes swam with tears. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and then she hurried on down the stairs and out of the front door.

The dog had come into the hallway to watch her leave – and now looked up at Felix, waiting for his next move.

But Felix didn’t have a next move.

He looked again at the body of the man he’d believed to be Charles Cann. Then he walked slowly downstairs and sat on the sofa.

This was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

As soon as he had the thought, Felix rejected it, but, an instant after that, he knew it was true.

Jamie’s death had been tragic. Heart-crushing. Unbearable.

But it had not been his fault.

This was.

Amanda had handed the man the mask, but it was his fault. He’d assumed she would react the way Chris would have reacted. But it was her first time and the man was dying badly, and she’d panicked. In hindsight, it all seemed very obvious that something had been likely to go wrong. He should have planned for disaster, taken charge, sat on that side of the bed, warned her more forcefully – done something – before the point of no return . . .

Numbness crept slowly over Felix Pink. A merciful detachment. His old life was over, and now he was just going to sit here and wait for someone to come along and show him the way his new life was going to be.

He took off his watch. It was nothing special – just a quartz Sekonda he’d been given when he’d retired, and probably worth a pound for every year he’d given to the company – but there was no reason to have it scratched by handcuffs. He zipped it safely into the inside pocket of the beige jacket. There were two of those – one on each side – and they were very useful. He kept his reading glasses in the other one.

The sirens were closer now. Soon they would be here. Felix wondered what being arrested was going to be like. What they would say. What he would say. Would they have guns? Should he put his hands up? Like a cowboy? He hoped they wouldn’t make him lie on the floor to cuff him. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to get up again, because of his hip. He had been on the list for a replacement for over a year now and it wasn’t getting any better . . . Although he supposed that the policemen would just help him up if he got into difficulties, so maybe he shouldn’t worry about that aspect of his imminent arrest.

The sirens wailed.

Felix straightened his tie with a trembling hand, and cleared his throat in preparation. He brushed at the mascara smudge on his beige jacket, but it didn’t come off. He tutted and wondered if it ever would. It would be ironic if he had to throw the jacket away now, all of a sudden, and before he had identified a worthy replacement. Although where he was going he probably wouldn’t need the beige jacket for quite some time. Or any jacket . . .

The little black-and-tan dog jumped up beside him on the sofa, then sat and scratched its ear with a noise like a flag in a high wind. Felix wondered if it had fleas. He stood up quickly and with a wince, and brushed his trousers down briskly. He didn’t want to give Mabel fleas—

Then he froze.

Mabel!

Who would let Mabel out if he didn’t go home? Worse, who would feed her? Nobody knew he wasn’t there. Nobody knew he wouldn’t be there. And even if they did know, nobody had a key. By the time word filtered back to his neighbours that he had been arrested, Mabel could be dead!

The sirens groaned and faded. Through the window he saw the blue flashing lights swing into the road.

Coming for him.

But he couldn’t be arrested. Not yet. Not until he had made sure Mabel would be all right.

With a twinge in his hip that made him suck air through his teeth, Felix hurried through the house and out of the back door. The little black-and-tan dog rushed out with him, barking and excited to be out.

‘No!’ Felix said. ‘Inside!’

He limped back to the door and waved an urgent hand at the dog, which was sniffing around some rusty paint tins.

‘Here, boy! Here, boy!’

The dog cocked its leg on an old wooden ladder.

Felix heard the car doors slam. He picked up the dog, and deposited it unceremoniously inside the house, then closed the back door and lurched down the garden as fast as he could go.

The garden was so dense with brambles that it was only after he’d rounded an old greengage tree at the end of it that he realized it was completely enclosed by a solid wood-panel fence, silver with age, as tall as he was – and without a gate.

Felix put his hands on the top of the planking, clambered awkwardly on to an old plastic garden chair, and peered over the fence to the safety of the fields beyond. Even on the chair, the fence was armpit-high. He’d never be able to climb it. Not even for Mabel.

His bid for escape was over.

Felix looked back up the garden. The house was almost hidden from his view by brambles and the tree, which leaned drunkenly between him and the back door. But through the branches he could see the hi-vis jacket of a policeman, checking the back of the house. He hadn’t seen him. Yet. Felix glanced skywards and thanked Margaret for dressing him in beige. But it would only buy him seconds. Once the policeman turned and came down the garden, there was only so much a beige jacket could do to hide a full-grown man against a garden fence, and then he would be captured.

Felix turned and shook the top of the fence as if he could pull or push the whole thing over.

And that’s exactly what he did.

With a rotten crack, an entire six-foot panel of fence flopped flimsily towards him like a big wooden blanket.

For one surprised moment, Felix was the only thing holding it up. Then he lowered the panel quietly to the ground, and hobbled over it to freedom.

It wasn’t until he got off the bus in Barnstaple that Felix Pink realized that, in all the confusion, he had left his briefcase on the landing.