Page 115 of Marble Hall Murders

‘That’s understandable.’

‘You don’t think that, though?’

‘I think it must have been a very difficult decision for you. But you had to do what you thought was right.’

It hadn’t been a difficult decision at all – but I couldn’t tell her that.

‘I did warn you,’ she went on. ‘He gets very depressed. More than that. Sometimes he thinks he’ll never get out of there, and it is such a dreadful place.’

‘He wants the police to arrest me.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’ Elaine almost scolded me, as if what I’d just said was ridiculous. ‘Charles wasn’t happy when I asked him to see you, but I persuaded him to help you because we all owe it to Eliot. I’m sorry, Susan. Didn’t he tell you anything?’

‘There was some new information he gave me. The trouble is, I’m not sure how it’s going to help.’

Four minutes until my train arrived. I just wanted to be on my way.

I heard a doorbell ring at the other end of the line. ‘There’s someone here,’ Elaine said, lowering her voice. ‘I have to go.’

‘Yes. My train’s just pulling in.’

‘Let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Call me any time.’

The line went dead.

*

The journey back to Crouch End felt endless, crossing the whole of London and changing trains twice. Then there wasthe walk down the hill from Highgate station with the afternoon sun and no hint of a breeze. I got to the house just after five o’clock. I let myself in through the front door. There was an Amazon package lying on the mat – a book, I guessed from the shape. Why did I notice it? Why did I even think about it when, in the same glance, I saw what had happened while I had been away?

Someone had broken in. The flat had been trashed.

It took me several seconds to work out what I was seeing and for the images to make any sort of sense in my head. It took me longer to persuade myself to step forward and cross the threshold. My first thought was that I had been burgled, that I had become just another London statistic to be ignored by the police. Then I realised that it was something much worse.

Everything that was of any value to me had been deliberately smashed, ripped apart, soiled, cut to pieces. The kitchen and the living room were unrecognisable. Someone had blocked the sink and turned the taps on full so that the water had overflowed all over the floor and there were white polyurethane clouds floating on the surface. The same person had taken a kitchen knife to my cushions and sofas, giving the impression of a devastated miniature landscape. I saw pages ripped out of my books, sodden and hopeless, and these hurt me most. Insurance would pay for the damage, but whoever had done this had known how to make it personal. They had taken special care with my photographs. The frames were mangled, the glass in pieces, the images torn up. Katie and the kids, Andreas, Crete, dinners, holidays … anything connected to my life had been mutilated beyond recognition. There was no way I would ever be able to wipe away the violence of what had been done.

In a daze, I drifted from room to room. The French windows were open, but I didn’t dare go into the garden, not yet. Part of me wondered if the intruder might still be outside. I was numb with sadness and shock. My drinks cupboard was empty, the wood kicked in, the contents of every bottle emptied. I continued to the rear of the flat, following a trail of what looked like dark red ink that had been splattered onto the carpet. The bathroom door was open. Looking in, the first thing I noticed was that the mirror above the sink had been smashed. Then I saw the weapon that had been used. It was the one award that I’d hung on to, which had travelled to Crete and back: British Book Awards, Editor of the Year. It was a heavy thing and it had been used as a hammer against the glass and then thrown into the toilet, cracking the porcelain.

I went into my bedroom. I barely noticed the bed linen in rags, the duvet cut open, the curtains pulled down, my make-up smeared, poured or thrown everywhere. My attention was drawn to the single word scrawled with a tube of my own lipstick on the (Little Greene Loft White) wall opposite me.

KILLER

Somebody thought I had killed Eliot Crace and they had taken revenge on his behalf. I couldn’t think of any other reason for this. How had they got in? Nobody had keys except for me. Then I remembered the rickety back door leading into the garden from the street and the French windows open downstairs. I’d meant to buy a surveillance system when I moved in. I could have bought a camera off the net for fiftyquid. But this was Crouch End. It hadn’t felt like a priority. Well, I was paying for it now.

The red marks I had noticed on the carpet continued under the bed and suddenly, as if I’d been electrocuted, I knew what they were.

Blood.

Hugo hadn’t been waiting for me when I came in and I knew with absolute certainty that he had been stabbed in the living room or the kitchen and that he had made his way back here to die. I burst into tears. I’d managed to persuade myself that I didn’t like the cat very much, that he somehow represented a style of life I wanted to avoid, but there’s something about animals: cats and dogs. They’ve learned how to make themselves indispensable and the thought that he’d been here on his own when someone broke in and that he had become another object of their fury was too much to bear. I knew he was under the bed but I couldn’t bring myself to look. I just stood there and cried.

And then I heard a whimper, so faint as to be almost inaudible. I dropped to my knees and saw him curled up in a ball, lying on a carpet stained red by his own blood. But still alive. He saw me and yowled pitifully, as if blaming me for not being there when this had happened. His eyes were bright with pain. Very slowly, I reached out and pulled him towards me, cupping him in my hands, trying not to hurt him any more than he had been hurt already. He didn’t try to resist. He cleared the edge of the bed and I swept him up in my arms, certain that he could not live much longer. His fur concealed most of the stab wound in his side, but from the amount of blood lost, I could tell that it was deep and had happened a while ago.

Right then, everything else was forgotten. I was determined to save him. Holding him against my chest, I half ran, half stumbled into the kitchen and laid him down on the counter. He didn’t move. He was barely breathing. I opened the fridge. All the food – eggs, milk, yoghurt, vegetables – had been scooped out and thrown on the floor but there was still ice in the freezer. I grabbed a tea towel, filled it with ice cubes and wrapped it round the cat. I looked for my car keys, remembered I no longer had a car, then picked up Hugo and ran out of the house.

There were several vets in Crouch End, but the nearest one was half a mile away – fortunately, downhill. I ran the whole way, Hugo now moaning as he reacted to the stress of the journey. It was a choice between moving fast or moving carefully and I was certain the poor creature would stop breathing at any moment. With every step, I was cursing the police for impounding my MG – irrational, but my grief and fury needed a target. I reached the Clock Tower in the middle of the village. Twenty past five. I would never be able to see the clockface in the same way again. There were still a few shoppers around and they looked at me in horror as I ran into the road, swerving through the traffic. A madwoman with a half-dead cat. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bus bearing down on me and I thought it might even be a welcome end to this whole experience if I was run down and killed.

But I reached the other side of the road and continued past a row of shops until I came to a veterinary surgeon I’d walked past a hundred times but had never thought I’d need. I barged in. There were three people sitting on plastic chairs surrounded by sacks of dog food and brightly coloured toys.I ignored them, running straight to the receptionist, a young woman talking on the phone.

‘Please, you’ve got to help me,’ I gasped. ‘My cat has been stabbed.’

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