Never Tell Page 12

  ‘Right …’ Fingers of fear clutched my neck. ‘God. Foul play, presumably?’

  ‘Definitely sounds dodgy. Not sure what the coup is yet. If I hear more, I’ll let you know. Just wanted to give you the heads-up.’

  ‘Cheers, Louise. I really appreciate it.’

  I tried to ignore the tightness in my chest, easing myself over sleeping children, pulling my cardigan on to go to find James. He was snoring on the studio sofa, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the floor, headphones beside it and an ashtray overflowing with spliff ends. No wonder he was having the nightmares again.

  ‘James.’ I shook him. ‘James, I need to pop out.’

  ‘What?’ He was groggy, hardly awake, his eyes closing again immediately.

  ‘Can you come into the house, please, James?’ I shook him gently. ‘I need you to listen out for the children. I’ve got to go out. Breaking news.’

  I wanted to go before I had to explain, and dashed from the room as he started to sit up properly. ‘The kids won’t wake yet, I’m sure. I’ll be back,’ I called, as I heard him grumbling behind me. ‘Freddie’s milk is in the fridge if he does, though. You’ll have to warm it up in the microwave. Twenty-five seconds. Don’t nuke it.’

  I pulled on my boots and fleece and ran to the car. I wasn’t sure how I would explain my presence; I wasn’t even sure why I was going, but going I was. At this moment my main concern was who the hell was dead.

  Dawn was breaking over the empty brown fields as I drove through the lanes, suffusing the sky with an unearthly light. A small brown rabbit froze between hedgerows as I braked just in time. Rounding the bend in the drive, I saw two police cars and an ambulance parked at the foot of the front steps. The front door was ajar, a uniformed PC standing in the porch. I parked my car by the stable block and pulled on my woolly hat and gloves.

  ‘No press, love.’ The policeman stepped down a few stairs and blocked my path, his breath crystallising in the dawn air. It was absolutely freezing.

  ‘I’m not press, I’m a friend of the family. Who’s dead?’

  ‘I’m sure I recognise you.’ He cocked a sandy eyebrow at me. His nose was red and dripping from the cold.

  ‘I think my daughter goes to school with your son.’ I smiled as becomingly as was possible at 5.30 a.m. ‘Alicia Miller?’

  ‘St Erth’s? That might be it,’ he said comfortably. ‘Good school, that.’

  ‘So …’ I took a hopeful step round him.

  ‘You still can’t go in.’ He held an arm out. ‘The pathologist is doing his stuff.’

  ‘Who’s dead?’ I repeated urgently. A cockerel was crowing somewhere insistently, over and over again.

  ‘Not for me to say. No official identification as yet.’ He was implacable.

  I was about to start wheedling when the front door was flung wide. A young woman stood silhouetted on the top step.

  Maya Kattan, at last.

  She was wearing what looked like black silk pyjamas and was once again wild-eyed and dishevelled. Her face was as tear-streaked as the first time I’d seen her, and she staggered where she stood, as if it was too much effort to keep upright. And then she moved down the stairs in her bare feet, and she began to run. She ran straight past me, near enough for me to smell her musky perfume. I called her name but she didn’t even hesitate, just kept going right past me towards the side of the house, across the gravel, despite her lack of shoes.

  As I wavered there, two paramedics emerged from the house, stretchering a body, totally covered, down the stairs.

  The wind sighed through the blossom trees as a human voice raised to join it in a chilling scream. I turned to see Maya falling, sprawling on the gravel, and I began to run towards her myself, driven by instinct, by her obvious pain – but someone else had materialised beside her. He was there, leaning down to pick her up, and I slowed, unsure what to do, filled with a sudden emotion I couldn’t place.

  The stretcher was down the stairs now, being lifted into the ambulance. I glanced back to Maya and I was halted by the look on Danny’s face; the hairs went up on my arms as I read the expression of tenderness. I watched the way she placed her hand in his, rather like a child would. She let him pull her up, and he leaned down and said something to her, pushing the glossy black curtain of hair behind her ear very gently. I noticed that her hands were intricately tattooed with henna as she stood alone now and shook her head at something Danny said, and began to walk away, round the back of the house.

  I stepped in her direction but this time it was Danny who blocked my way.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m not surprised to see you here,’ he said, the Scottish drawl weary. He looked like he hadn’t slept, his sun-bleached hair dishevelled, his black windbreaker zipped up to his unshaven chin. ‘You’re like a bad penny.’

  ‘I got a call,’ I said lamely. ‘I thought perhaps I could help.’

  Maya Kattan had vanished as the doors of the ambulance slammed shut behind us.

  ‘It’s a bit late for help, I’d say, wouldn’t you?’

  From somewhere came an almighty revving of a powerful engine. Danny glanced round and then back at me. ‘I think you should go, doll. Go back to where you stay. Now. Before there’s any more trouble.’

  We locked eyes.

  ‘This, Rose Miller, this is not a happy family to be around.’

  ‘Who is that?’ I gestured to the ambulance. ‘Who’s dead?’

  ‘Maya’s boyfriend, Nadif.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said, but felt a surge of inexplicable relief. ‘Boyfriend? The one her father called a “heart-breaker”?’

  ‘When was that?’ Danny Callendar looked down at me.

  ‘The other night,’ I said. ‘He said she’d gone walkabout because she was miserable.’

  ‘I see.’ He was harder to read than Proust, this man. ‘Like I said, not a happy family.’

  ‘Was he –’ I touched the welts on my neck unconsciously –’Was it the man from the other day? The black guy?’

  ‘Yeah, the Somalian. I wouldn’t be too sad,’ Danny said coldly, and fear licked me again. ‘He was bad news all round.’

  ‘How did he die?’ I began to ask, and then Maya’s car tore round the corner, skidding on the gravel, heading towards the fountain in the middle of the circular lawn.

  ‘Christ, she’s going to hit it!’ I gasped, but Maya righted the wheel just in time, the back end of her Porsche swinging across the grass, tyres churning up the immaculate turf before she accelerated down the drive. A sleek black vehicle rounded the bend now, a Mercedes, heading straight towards her.

  The cars were going to meet head-on.

  I closed my eyes and waited for the crash – but it never came. The Porsche was almost in the hedge as Maya threw herself out of the vehicle.

  ‘You murderer,’ she screamed. ‘You fucking murderer. You will stop at nothing, will you?’ She kicked the tyre of the now stationary Mercedes with a bare foot, over and over again. She kicked it like a woman possessed.

  Hadi Kattan stepped out of the car. ‘Maya,’ he said, extending his arms towards her. ‘Please, Maya. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Get the fuck away from me,’ she screamed. Blood was streaming down her foot. ‘I never want to see you again,’ and she stood very close to her father and stared at him. ‘You just couldn’t let me have my happiness, could you?’

  ‘Maya lal,’ he implored. ‘Don’t.’

  He said something in Arabic. She considered him for a short moment and then she spat right in his face.

  For a moment I thought he might hit her, but his arms remained by his side. Maya glared at him and then she turned and ran back to the Porsche. The gravel spun and flicked behind her, making the horses in the stable whinny in terror, and then she was gone.

  ‘Callendar,’ Kattan called. His tone was flat and hard as steel as he wiped the spittle off with a white handkerchief. ‘Take the car up to the house. Now.’

  Deftly Danny caught the key Kattan threw at
him and then he went to obey.

  I felt a surge of nervous energy as Hadi Kattan walked towards me. He crossed the small lawn that housed the fountain, flattening the tiny white crocuses scattered throughout the grass. For the first time I saw something in his face that scared me.

  ‘What are you doing here, Mrs Miller?’ he asked. He looked older than he had the other night, less noble, his face hawk-like in the early light.

  I should have made good my escape while I could. I heard the cock crow a final time.

  ‘Oh, Mr Kattan. I – I heard the bad news and—’

  ‘I don’t think you have been totally honest with me,’ he interrupted quietly. ‘Is there something you’d like to tell me, perhaps?’

  My stomach lurched. ‘Like what?’ I smiled shakily. ‘I don’t have any secrets, Mr Kattan. Not proper ones.’

  He stared at me until I wanted to hide my face like my children did when they thought I couldn’t see them.

  ‘But your husband told me, my dear.’

  Betrayed by my own husband? My mind scrabbled like a rat in a trap.

  ‘You are a writer, aren’t you?’ he persisted.

  In the background, the ambulance started up.

  ‘A writer?’ I stalled. ‘I write a few shopping lists, I know that much.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Rose,’ Kattan’s voice was like a blade coated in honey. ‘You write for that local rag, the Chronicle.’

  Relief swept through my body until my knees actually felt like cotton wool.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, and I actually laughed. ‘I do. I’m sorry, I thought you knew. That’s not a secret.’

  ‘But you do have one, don’t you, my dear Rose? A secret you have kept hidden as best you can.’

  ‘What?’ My legs still felt wobbly.

  ‘I don’t want you up here again, you understand?’ Kattan took my arm and walked me towards my car. ‘You have disappointed me.’

  ‘Really?’ I was confused, and his grip was firm. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t want you anywhere near my daughter.’

  ‘But why?’ I protested.

  ‘Listen to me, Mrs Rose Miller,’ his face was grim, ‘I know all about your sordid past. And let me tell you, not everyone thinks that blasphemy is a joke.’

  ‘Blasphemy?’ My skin was prickling. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You are an intelligent woman, I’m sure you can work it out. Some even call it a sin, you know. Whatever god you follow. Don’t come here again, and please, don’t cross me.’ His hooded eyes were absolutely unreadable. He looked suddenly reptilian to me. ‘It really would not be wise.’

  UNIVERSITY, FEBRUARY 1992

  You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet

  your neighbour’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female

  servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your

  neighbour’s.

  Bible, Exodus 20:17

  Since the Post article about the defecating in the cathedral, there had been some mutterings amongst the students that Dalziel’s exploits were going too far. To silence his critics, he organised another Society X soirée on Valentine’s Night, this time to celebrate the tenth commandment, the one about coveting stuff. Only he asked Lena and James to help him arrange the party, and not me. I wasn’t sure what I was meant to have done wrong, but I had a feeling it was something to do with the girl in the pub. Dalziel had seemed so upset that evening when we left, and even more so that I’d witnessed it. When I’d asked him later why she’d been so cross, he simply cut me off mid-flow and refused to talk about it again.

  The anti-religion aspect of the party meant nothing to me; I knew now it was just an excuse – Dalziel had admitted as much – and I was unsure whether he’d put pen to paper for his dissertation the whole time I’d known him. And I wasn’t sure how much I was looking forward to the night. Frankly, Dalziel’s mood was scaring me a little since the Pegasus incident. He seemed increasingly desperate and wild, only calm really when we were in our opium trance.

  I realised I was forgiven when he arrived at my room the night before the party. We got high together, and I was allowed to invite Jen as a special honour, and this time the evening was funny, people wore silly masks and came with real pigs and lambs. Lena and James went one better and stole a donkey from the sanctuary out by Woodstock. Dalziel had the bench from one neighbour’s garden removed and put it in the neighbour’s garden on the other side, and then rang the police to offer an eye-witness account. An extremely unamused WPC came to take a statement about what had occurred. When she left, Dalziel shut the front door triumphantly and turned to the inebriated crowd.

  ‘Number Nine. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour”,’ he crowed, and everybody whooped and clapped. It seemed so harmless and silly that the dramatic events of that January night melted into a distant memory. I watched him intently as he spoke; when I looked up, James was watching me. We’d been spending more time together as a group again in the past few weeks and it was a strange triangle Dalziel, James and I created, one that Lena sometimes barged into as well, though more and more often she was so wasted she was in her own world. James too was drinking all the time, Dalziel constantly plying him with whiskey and a new type of dope they called skunk, so strong it was hallucinogenic. James and I had stopped connecting properly a while ago, although we had never officially called it all off.

  ‘I am the ultimate iconoclast,’ Dalziel declared that night, standing in front of a print of the hideous green Grünewald Christ on the cross, pain and suffering seeping from every pore. His eyes glittering dangerously, Dalziel held up a knife and slashed Jesus again and again.

  ‘The ultimate twat aristocrat, doesn’t he mean? Thinks he’s fucking God,’ someone muttered. ‘Christ, this is embarrassing.’

  ‘Perhaps God’s fucking him – who can tell with this lot?’ a female voice whispered back. ‘What next, thou shalt definitely shag a sheep?’

  Turning sharply, I recognised the female editor of the rival student paper, the New Student, standing behind me. A jolly Brummie with one long eyebrow and too many freckles, she winked at me.

  ‘I thought von Bismarck’s lot were bad, but this is bloody stupid,’ she murmured to her companion. ‘Someone ought to tell him this is real life, not fucking Brideshead Regurgitated.’

  ‘He’s certainly a vile body though.’

  They both sniggered, and I felt a flush creep all over me. Was it for my benefit? I didn’t know, but it was the first time I’d heard anyone speak out against Dalziel, and I realised I felt physically shocked, which later seemed naïve. I didn’t know whether to say something to them – or what I would have said if I’d dared speak – but Dalziel was talking again now.

  He turned back from the poster and toasted the room, unaware of his critics. ‘Here’s to nihilism,’ he crowed, and we toasted him back – even the editor and her crony, with their cans of Stella.

  People started pogoing to The Undertones’ ‘Teenage Kicks’; I could see that Jen was having fun, as she danced with Brian, the boy with the bullet head. I shuddered, remembering the last time I’d seen him – between Huriyyah’s legs. Then Lena began an excruciating ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ striptease, much to everyone’s hilarity – and quite quickly I stopped enjoying myself altogether. Lena was more and more out of control these days, since she and Dalziel had stopped the pretence of dating. She seemed beyond reach.

  Dalziel found me lingering in the corner, wondering whether to leave. He kissed the top of my head lightly. ‘Two birds with one stone, and another magnificent success,’ he drawled. ‘I just can’t help myself.’

  I smiled weakly. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Why don’t you go upstairs?’ he murmured. ‘It’s specially for you, you know.’

  But suddenly I didn’t believe him. Nothing was for me, it was all a charade, and I was stunned by a sudden flash before my eyes: as if I’d just experienced the beginning of the
edifice crumbling and felt the urge to flee before it collapsed on me. I kept seeing the gun levelled at the horse’s great chest; at the skinny little groom. I didn’t understand what motivated Dalziel any more, I realised that now.

  Soon after that the dark boy appeared and Dalziel vanished with him, so I went upstairs and had a pipe in the smoking-den that had been created in a bedroom, trying to curb my inexplicable jealousy. Dalziel would say it was so pedestrian – envy. But the bullet-headed boy had abandoned Jen now and had persuaded a ratty girl with train-track braces to give him a blow-job in the corner, and she was so drunk she was alternating it with being sick, so I left and went home with James, utterly confused.

  That night James and I had strange disjointed sex for the first time in weeks, and it was like being out of body. I had felt so strongly about him at first, but now I watched us from the ceiling dispassionately, simply craving a return to my own private and romantic land, a land free of Society X’s taint.

  THE NEW STUDENT – FEBRUARY 1992

  What fuels Dalziel St John’s arrogant belief that his pathetic Society X holds any sort of allure for those with half a brain? We all know that Oxford is rife with societies, mostly for the rich and stupid. Piers Gaveston has celebrated actor Hugh Grant looking pretty in leopard-skin and God only knows what those boys got up to (anyone there, God?). The Bullingdon Club is of course for those male students with more money than sense -£1200 a tailcoat, people? Ex-chancellor Nigel Lawson’s daughter Nigella even bravely tackled Sedan Chair Croquet in the Dangerous Sports Club (ooh, the danger). But the Honourable Mr St John prides himself in letting women into his marvellous society as well – how very modern – although I have a sneaking suspicion there is a very specific reason for this quaint anomaly. Yawn.

  Having attended a meeting of the so-called ‘Secret Society’ the other night, I can safely say I was far from impressed. The evening was hardly challenging. Although St John chooses to surround himself with a group of easily-pleased suburban acolytes who apparently do whatever he suggests, this, I should point out, does not equate power. It just means he’s choosing the weak. Suicidal ex-lesbians, drippy English students and music geeks who can’t play a note are not the new élite, I fear. Nor is it ‘iconoclastic’ to slash cheap pictures of Christ; St John calls it ‘nihilism’, I call it embarrassing. And as for the celebration of stealing farm animals, there’s something deeply alarming in this practice. Far be it from me to suggest bestiality but really …