Exit Page 6

  ‘Other than that the only women are me and Mrs Digby next door.’

  Calvin thanked her and said goodbye, and moved on to the next house, where Mrs Digby – a very old woman on a walker – took for ever to reach the glass front door. Then, when she made it, she couldn’t hear Calvin, even when he shouted.

  ‘I’LL FETCH MY HEARING AID!’ she finally yelled, as if it was something that had to be toted about by Sherpas instead of worn in her ear. Calvin almost told her not to bother, and then – after another five minutes of fruitless conversation on the doorstep – wished he had.

  Calvin saw Pete knocking on the door of the middle house and called over, ‘Any luck?’

  Pete shook his head.

  Calvin crossed the road. The last house in the row had a No Parking sign on the wall, a Keep off the Grass sign on the grass and a No Cold Callers sign on the door. When he knocked, a flurry of angry barking surprised him and he took a small, wary step backwards. Calvin wasn’t scared of dogs but this one sounded big and he’d once been bitten by a Dalmatian. The owner had said it was just playing, but Calvin had seen the intent in its white-walled eye.

  The door cracked open on a chain, and the dog stopped barking.

  ‘Yes?’

  The man was middle-aged, with a monobrow. Calvin glanced down but couldn’t see the dog.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir, I’m PC Bridge from Bideford. Just asking neighbours about an incident in the street. Wondered whether you’d seen or heard anything unusual.’

  ‘What kind of incident?’

  Calvin sidestepped. ‘Somebody called in a report of two suspicious visitors to the Canns’ home earlier today. Was that call made from here, sir?’

  ‘No,’ said the man. ‘Not me.’

  ‘It was a woman who called. Could that have been your wife?’

  ‘I don’t have a wife any more, thank God.’

  ‘OK,’ nodded Calvin, relieved for womankind. ‘Could I take your name and a phone number, please, sir? In case we have any further questions?’

  ‘Bob Wilson.’

  Calvin jotted it down.

  ‘Like the goalkeeper.’

  ‘Yes? Who does he play for?’ Calvin wasn’t a big soccer fan.

  ‘Bob Wilson!’ said Mr Wilson tetchily. ‘Arsenal, 1963 to 1974!’

  ‘Before my time, I’m afraid, Mr Wilson,’ smiled Calvin, but Mr Wilson was in no mood to forgive Calvin his age. He gave a big tut of contempt and said his phone number fast, as if he might also catch Calvin not knowing the numbers between one and ten.

  ‘Well, thanks, Mr Wilson. You just give us a call if you remember anything.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten anything!’ he said angrily, and banged the door loudly in Calvin’s face.

  He blinked at the door for a moment, then knocked again.

  The dog barked, just as hard as the first time – sounding ready to tear his throat out. But when Mr Wilson answered, it stopped again.

  ‘What?’ said Wilson angrily.

  Calvin looked down at the man’s legs. There was no dog. No real dog anyway.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Calvin.

  He turned away and took a shortcut across Bob Wilson’s grass.

  Waiting

  It was two hours past Mabel’s lunchtime walk, and Felix still hadn’t been arrested, so finally he jingled the lead, clipped it to her collar, and took the spare key from the hook. Then he closed the front door behind him with a Post-it note stuck to it at eye level.

  Dear Officer. Walking the dog. Not armed. Back soon. F. Pink.

  Miss Knott was weeding next door.

  ‘Hello, Mabel!’ she always said. ‘And how’s my favourite girl?’

  Felix always suspected that Miss Knott would like him to respond to such greetings in Mabel’s voice – Bit RUFF today, Miss Knott, and how are WOOF? – but he refused to summon up the required foolishness.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Knott.’

  ‘And how are you, Mr Mabel?’ Miss Knott smiled.

  I killed a man today.

  ‘Quite well, thank you, Miss Knott.’

  ‘Going anywhere exciting?’

  To prison, in all probability.

  ‘Just around the block.’

  ‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘It’s a nice block, isn’t it?’

  Felix didn’t know what to say to that. The block was no nicer than many and no worse than most. Mostly residential with a mix of terraces that opened straight on to the pavement, and semis that had driveways and little front gardens. There was a corner shop with a bucket of overpriced flowers on the pavement and a rack of postcards that showed pictures of pretty places that were quite near, but not quite here.

  ‘I like looking at the other people’s gardens,’ Miss Knott went on. ‘Don’t you?’

  Felix never noticed other people’s gardens but he said ‘Mm’ to be polite, as she prattled on gaily, ‘I like to give them marks out of ten.’

  ‘Oh,’ he nodded. And then he said, ‘Actually, Miss Knott, I’ve been meaning to give you my spare key’ – as if he’d moved in a month ago, not forty years.

  Miss Knott looked surprised. ‘Are you going away?’

  Felix winced at her unwitting turn of phrase. ‘It’s only for emergencies,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking of Mabel being stuck indoors, you see, if something should happen to me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it won’t,’ Miss Knott said sweetly, and then added, ‘But that’s a very good idea, isn’t it, Mabel?’

  It’s GRRRRReat!

  Felix didn’t say that. He just handed Miss Knott the key. He didn’t tell her that he expected she would be using it quite soon because he was wanted by the police and would shortly be dragged off in handcuffs. That would only complicate matters.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Knott,’ he said, and was relieved that the transaction was over. He didn’t like to ask people for favours. People might think they were friends.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Miss Knott. ‘And please, do call me Winnie.’

  See what I mean? thought Felix, but he just said, ‘Of course.’

  ‘Perhaps I should give you my key as well.’

  Really, this was spiralling out of control. Felix heartily wished he’d given his key to somebody else, but the thing was, there was nobody else. Not since their friends – or the friends Margaret had graciously shared with him – had drifted out of his life. Miss Knott, however, had never stopped visiting, and had cried hard at both funerals, and continued to hand-deliver a Christmas card to him every year, so Felix cleared his throat impatiently and said, ‘If you like. For emergencies.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll pop it round.’

  ‘Just put it through the letterbox,’ he said. ‘Well, we must be going.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mabel,’ said Miss Knott, and giggled – which was an oddly pretty sound to come out of such an old woman – and gave them a little wave of a trowel as they went on their way.

  Felix waited until he was out of earshot before looking down at Mabel and murmuring, ‘Mad as a hatter.’ But Mabel gave him a sidelong look that made him feel rather judged, and he proceeded more humbly with his walk.

  He hoped Amanda was all right. He hoped she wasn’t wracked with guilt. He’d misjudged the situation, so it was only right and proper that he should take the blame.

  Except he hadn’t taken the blame. Instead he’d fled the scene of the crime to feed his dog.

  Felix blushed at the memory. In the heat of the moment it had seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Now it seemed like a cowardly plummet from the moral high ground he’d claimed so grandly when he’d told Amanda that she must leave and he would take care of everything.

  So now he was . . . wanted.

  Felix Pink hadn’t expected to be a wanted man when he’d left home this morning. He’d expected t
o go to Abbotsham, oversee a man departing this life with quiet dignity, and be home in time for tea. Instead Amanda had panicked and the wrong man had died, and he’d had to escape from police by breaking down a garden fence. After seventy-five years of law-abiding citizenship, Felix hated to think of all the laws he’d broken, all since breakfast. Goodness only knew what Margaret would say!

  Felix hoped that the man they had killed by mistake had been an ass, whose family were not sorry he was dead. And although he recognized the selfishness of this idea, he felt so stupidly cheered by it that he let it run about freely in his head for a bit, enjoying itself. The positivity was infectious. Maybe the whole thing would come to nothing. The police must know where to find him, and yet here he was, free as a lark, walking Mabel and chatting to neighbours as if he hadn’t killed a man at all.

  Mabel stopped suddenly to widdle on a weed growing against the Martins’ garden wall, and Felix sighed as his silly fantasy fragmented and blew away. He had created a new reality and he needed to accept it. He’d given Miss Knott his key now, so Mabel would be all right. And if he couldn’t get hold of Geoffrey tonight . . . well then, tomorrow he’d just have to go to the police anyway, and explain his mistake.

  Although he wasn’t sure how . . .

  ‘Hurry up, Mabel,’ he said with a tug, but the little dog hadn’t finished snuffling and dug in her heels. Felix didn’t press the point. He knew from experience that Mabel’s weight increased exponentially the harder he tried to drag her away from any point of interest.

  While he stood there waiting for her to set off again, he looked at the Martins’ flowerbeds. It was early May but the tulips were still spectacular. A living, breathing firework display of orange, pink and red brilliance, with daphne scenting the air and velvety camellia petals scattered over the small patch of lawn.

  Felix gave the Martins’ garden an eight.

  He called Geoffrey for the third time since he’d arrived home.

  No answer.

  Felix frowned at the telephone. He really wanted to make sure they were on the same page regarding Amanda’s involvement. He was sure Geoffrey would support the promise he’d made to Amanda that he would take care of everything because, although he was still hazy as to what everything might entail, he was reasonably sure it didn’t mean ratting on her to the police.

  Felix shuddered. Ratting on her. He’d been a criminal for less than a day and already he was using the vernacular.

  He dialled again. Again there was no answer, so he made preparations to hand himself in.

  He went around the house and switched off all the appliances apart from the fridge-freezer, then watered the houseplants, with double rations for the gerbera at the top of the stairs that always drooped pathetically at the first sign of drought. If he wasn’t back soon, that would be the first to go. He furled a Post-it note into the neck of a milk bottle – No milk until further notice, thank you. F. Pink – and put the bottle on the step.

  He tried Geoffrey again, but the phone just rang and rang.

  He was becoming concerned. Geoffrey had once told him that he rarely left the house, but apparently he’d left it now. Or had fallen over and was unable to reach the phone. Felix hoped that wasn’t the case.

  He glanced at his watch. It was just gone three. There was still time before he should head to Bideford, so he sat down at the kitchen table and leaned over the jigsaw, picking up the awkward tuft.

  But then he just held it between his thumb and finger and stared blankly at the reindeer.

  There was one more thing that had been bothering him all day. It had seemed insignificant in comparison with everything else that had happened, and so he’d tried to push it out of his mind. But now he found that the more he tried to ignore it, the more he couldn’t.

  There had been a moment – a single split second – when the horror of his blunder had hit him. And in that frozen moment at the bedroom door, Felix Pink’s life had flashed before his eyes.

  It was a cliché, and he felt a little foolish that it had even happened to him, but now that he had time to think about it, the most worrying thing about it was that it had been so . . .

  So . . .

  Felix grimaced.

  It had been so . . .

  boring.

  There. Boring. He’d thought it now and couldn’t take it back.

  Felix was boring. Deep, deep down, he’d always suspected it. Feared it. He’d just never admitted it – even to himself – before this very moment. But he’d always been boring. He’d been a boring child and a boring teenager. The middle of three, with an athletic brother and a genius sister. He’d been average at school and at work. Not bully or bullied. Neither bright nor dull. Neither lonely nor popular. On the fringes of everything – unable to lead and slow to follow. Always somewhere in the middle, and making a pretty poor fist even of that. Felix had never missed death by inches or experienced a religious epiphany or had a eureka moment. There’d been no crazy hallucinogenic trips, no mountain-top sunrises, no stolen kisses or dumb near-misses. He’d spent three years at university without dabbling in sex, drugs or rock ’n’ roll, before finding his spiritual home in accounting. Risk-averse and lumpen, it suited his nature. Independent thought was not required and flair was frowned upon – and Felix had been more than capable of not bringing them to the table.

  Even Jamie had once called him boring. He was just a teenager and had quickly laughed and made it sound like a joke, but Felix had known . . .

  And Margaret?

  Well, he had the beige zip-up jacket to remind him of what Margaret had thought of him . . .

  He remembered the mascara smudge and hoped it would come out. He had some upholstery cleaner in the utility room. That would probably do the job. It had worked on the living-room rug where Mabel had had a little accident. Although, of course, the rug was dark red with a faux-oriental pattern, and his jacket was a single, pale colour, so it would require a bit of luck to—

  Felix blinked in surprise. See? What was wrong with him? Worrying about mascara on his jacket at a time like this? He’d killed a man, for God’s sake!

  And he was painfully aware that it had immediately become the most interesting thing about him.

  The phone rang and he flinched.

  ‘John?’

  ‘Geoffrey!’ said Felix. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Not bad, thank you,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Only thing is, I’ve been arrested for murder.’

  Geoffrey’s Day Out

  Despite being arrested for murder, Calvin thought that Geoffrey Skeet seemed to be enjoying his day out.

  He and Jackie had been careful with the wheelchair, and considerate when helping Geoffrey haul himself from it and into the back of the police car. Calvin thought he could have carried him from the house to the car if he’d had to, the man was so thin.

  Then – because Geoffrey obviously didn’t get out much – Jackie had taken the scenic route from Exeter to Bideford, down pretty lanes and through tunnels of trees, and then across what people still called the new bridge over the Torridge, even though it had been there thirty years. It gave a glorious view up and down the river – of sailing boats and bright little trawlers leaned over in the swirling mudflats, and grand houses with gardens that sloped all the way down to the water, and of the Old Bridge further upstream, tripping across the river in twenty-four uneven arches.

  Geoffrey had enjoyed the scenery and the progress, and chatted about the past – his and theirs – and marvelled to find that he’d once taught European history to Jackie Braddick’s father, who now owned half of Appledore, despite having had no interest in the Hapsburgs. Then Calvin had let slip that he’d grown up in Tiverton, where Geoffrey had also spent time in his youth, and he’d kept trying to name somebody they both knew – although without much success.

  ‘Different generations, I suppose,’ he’d said more th
an once, while Calvin had nodded in the rear-view mirror.

  Then when they’d reached the police station he’d noticed Tony Coral was wearing a South West Steam Society lapel pin, and they’d got talking about locomotives and gauges and signage, and the tragic conversion of branch lines into ghastly tarmac tracks filled with dogs and bicycles instead of rolling stock, and how eBay had become a bloody minefield for honest, decent grisers trying to preserve an enamelled bit of railway history.

  Calvin and Jackie went to report to DCI King and left Tony asking whether Geoffrey wanted tea or coffee or another slice of his wife’s leaden fruit cake.

  King picked up the Cann file and headed for the interview room. ‘Does he seem worried?’

  Jackie shrugged. ‘As an orphan at the circus.’

  There were four of them in the cramped Victorian cell-cum-interview room, with village-hall plastic chairs pushed aside for the wheelchair, and an old wooden desk that held a digital recorder. In one corner of the room was a television; in the other was a camera pointing at Geoffrey.

  DCI King glanced at Calvin and Pete, then cleared her throat and began. ‘Geoffrey Skeet, we were given your number by a Mr Charles Cann, also known as Skipper, of Black Lane, Abbotsham.’

  Geoffrey said nothing.

  ‘Mr Cann says he spoke to you several times in your capacity as the organizer of the Exiteers regarding arrangements for his proposed suicide.’

  Silence.

  ‘Is that true, Mr Skeet?’

  Geoffrey looked at her and then sighed regretfully. ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ he said, ‘but I have no comment.’

  ‘Well, we have no reason to doubt Mr Cann’s version of events.’

  Silence.

  ‘He says you told him that two people would be there today to witness his suicide.’

  Silence.

  ‘Given that, doesn’t it seem logical that, when two people arrive at his home this morning, they would have been sent by you?’

  Geoffrey sighed. ‘No comment.’

  DCI King took a piece of paper from a case file and laid it on the table between them. ‘We found this at the scene.’