The Woman in the Fifth (27 page)

'She cut me off. "
I never want to talk to you again
," she said, crying. Then she hung up.

'Naturally I called her straight back. Susan answered – and said, her voice completely calm, "
You will never see – or hear from – your daughter again
." And then she added, "
If I were you I'd kill myself
."

'But it was Shelley who did that. Late that night, while everyone was asleep, she left her parents' house. Around two hours later, she jumped off a highway overpass a mile from where they lived. She landed right in the path of an oncoming truck. The cops said someone saw her standing on the overpass for several minutes before she jumped. This led them to surmise that she was waiting for some large vehicle to approach.'

'Or maybe she was trying to find the courage to jump.'

'She left no note, or any hint that she was planning to . . .'

I fell silent and reached for the whisky bottle, pouring myself another substantial slug.

'Do you think she jumped because she was about to be revealed as a fantasist?'

'Perhaps. Or maybe her father had been making her life hell for her. And if her obsessive behavior was anything to go by, she was certainly not in the most balanced and reasonable state . . . which, in turn, was all due to me breaking it off with her.'

'Harry – if the diary proved anything, it's that she lived in a fantasy world. She didn't reveal the extent of her compulsions while you were getting friendly with each other . . . which means she was either very good at disguising her manias or you were completely blind to them. But knowing you, I sense it was the former. Had she shown telltale signs of obsessiveness—'

'I would have ended it well before we slept together.'

'My point entirely. But instead, she wove this fiction about "having your baby". Robson went public with it. You countered, saying she was making it up. When faced with probable exposure as a fantasist, she killed herself.'

'That's one interpretation.'

'Was it your friend Douglas who found out all the details of the suicide?' Margit asked.

I nodded.

'And did he inform you about Robson and your ex-wife?'

'Doug finally did tell me about the rumors going around. He also admitted that he had known about them for the past few months – but felt uneasy about telling me, in case it blew over. I understood – especially as I never told Doug that I knew that, a couple of years earlier, his ex-wife had been sleeping with the college librarian . . . who was also a woman.

'Anyway, Doug was also unable to accuse Robson of leaking both the story and Shelley's diary to the press. He was coming up for promotion in a few months and, if he crossed Robson, he was finished. Still, privately, he was appalled – and encouraged me to simply disappear. "You start exposing Robson now, and it's going to look like you're trying to deflect responsibility. It's really best if you just vanish."

'The next day, the Cincinnati medical examiner revealed that Shelley hadn't been pregnant when she killed herself. Within an hour, the family lawyer issued a statement saying that it was medically plausible that her period had been several weeks late – and that the pregnancy test might have been faulty. "
Whether or not she was actually carrying Professor Ricks's child
," he said, "
is less important than the fact that she thought she was pregnant – and that Ricks, upon hearing the news, dropped her and insisted on the abortion . . . a demand which sent her fragile psyche into a downward spiral, eventually resulting in her suicide. Ricks, in essence, murdered this poor young woman
."

'Well, this spin on the story played everywhere – and I decided to take Doug's advice. I got him to go over to my house when Susan wasn't there to collect my passport and laptop. I went downtown to my bank. When I walked in, the manager told me that my custom was no longer welcome here. I said,
"Fine by me, because I'm closing my account.
" I had twenty-two thousand dollars in a savings account. I transferred fifteen of that into a mutual fund for Megan. I took the rest in cash – and grabbed my things at Doug's and got into my beat-up Volvo and left town. Eight hours later I was in Chicago. I found a cheap hotel – four hundred and fifty dollars a week – off Lake Shore Drive. I parked my bags and drove out into the 'burbs and stopped at the first used-car lot I found and accepted three grand in cash for my Volvo. Then I caught a cab back to the subway, returned to the hotel, and began a life of . . . well, nothing, really. My room was shabby, but adequate. It had a lumpy bed, and an old television, and a toilet that flushed, if you were lucky, on the third go. But the management asked no questions, and I paid my weekly bill on time, and didn't ever complain or say much to them during the weeks I was there.'

'How many weeks?'

'Six.'

'What did you do during that time?'

'I forget.'

'I see.'

'It's the truth. I remember sleeping until noon every day and always having breakfast in the same little luncheonette, and never buying a newspaper or magazine because I was afraid of reading something about the case. I never checked my email. I spent a lot of time at the movies. I bought paperbacks in second-hand shops, I drank in down-at-heel bars near the hotel, then watched shit television half the night. I suppose I was in total shock. I never had any sort of emotional highs or lows. I just dragged myself through the day like the walking dead. Until, one evening, I came home from an all-day session at the same multiplex cinema. The night porter on duty told me that a guy had come by that morning, asking for me. "
He looked like some sort of process server to me
," he said, and added that he was certain to come back very early the next morning, "
because that's what those assholes all do
".

'I went upstairs and called Doug. He asked me why the hell hadn't I answered any of the emails he'd sent me, and did I know that Shelley's father had made good on his threat to sue the college? The college, in turn, had decided (at Robson's urging) to sue me for defamation of their public reputation, gross professional negligence and so forth, and had hired a private detective to find me. "
If you're calling me, the gumshoe has obviously tracked you down
," Doug said. When I explained that it seemed I was about to be served papers, he told me to flee immediately. "
Get out of the country now, otherwise prepare to be destroyed in the courts
."

'So I said, "
OK, I'll get the next flight to Paris
."'

'And once you got here?'

'I did manage to get back into contact with Megan – and we actually started a correspondence until her mother found out and put an end to it. I haven't heard from my daughter since then. But after they reached some sort of smallish payoff arrangement with Shelley's dad, the college did decide to drop its threatened action against me. According to Doug, the college's Board of Directors overruled Robson, who wanted me pursued to the ends of the earth.'

'That man really has it in for you.'

'Yes. It's not enough that I have been ruined. He won't be happy until he sees me completely crushed.'

'And if you could be revenged against him . . . ?'

'I don't want revenge.'

'Yes, you do. And you deserve it. So does Shelley. Had he not leaked any of this to the press, she would probably still be alive today. So what do you think would be an appropriate payback for all the harm he perpetrated?'

'You want me to fantasize here?' I asked.

'Absolutely. The worst thing that could happen to the bastard.'

'You mean, like discovering that he had a huge collection of kiddy porn on his computer?'

'That would do nicely. And say you wanted to devise an appropriate punishment for your ex-wife . . . ?'

'Now let's not get ridiculous here . . .'

'Go on, it's just loose talk.'

'If she lost her job—'

'You'd feel vindicated then?'

'Why are you playing this game?'

'To help you.'

'Help me . . . what? Psychologically?'

'The talking cure is a good one – especially when it comes to articulating your anger, your grief. But it doesn't fully close the wound.'

'Then what does?'

She shrugged and said nothing. Except, 'You need to be on your way now. We will continue talking in three days' time, if that's fine with you.'

'Of course.'

'We might even have sex the next time . . . as you might be feeling less guilty about fucking that barmaid. You will definitely tell her to go crying to her husband about Omar's horrible assault on her.'

'I'm dreading the idea—'

'You will dread a beating even more.
À très bientôt . . .
'

Having now done what Margit had demanded – having spoken to Yanna and hatched my plan with her – I felt strangely calm. Though there was part of me that wanted to go to Mr Beard and make up some story about having to leave town for a few days on 'personal business', I decided to stay put and see just how things played out . . . like someone playing Russian roulette, who was certain it was worth staying in the game because the odds were six to one that he wouldn't get his brains blown out.

Back in my office later that night, I opened my laptop and went to work. My novel was now over four hundred pages in length. The doubts that haunted the early months of writing had been replaced by a fierce momentum – and the sense that the novel was starting to write itself. This was another reason why I was loath to run away from this small nocturnal cell. Its claustrophobic bleakness had become almost talismanic to me; the place where, free from all outside distraction, I pounded out the words and moved the story on. And I feared if I suddenly left this room, the writing would stop. So despite all the creeping doubts about everything to do with this job, this
quartier
, I was determined to stay working here until the novel was finished. Then, one day, I'd simply pack up my things and slip away. Until then—

Why is somebody screaming downstairs?

The scream was loud, shrill, alarming. It had an almost animalistic intensity – like that of a wild beast caught in a trap and howling in torment. After a moment it fell silent. Then I could hear the same voice engaged in loud supplications, followed by other voices shouting him down, and then . . .

The scream this time was agonizing. Pain was being inflicted in a merciless manner. When a further howl pierced the concrete walls of my room, I found myself on my feet and unbolting the door. But as soon as I yanked it open, the howling stopped. I peered downstairs into an empty corridor. I walked down several steps and stared at the door at the end of the corridor on the ground floor. A voice in my head whispered,
Are you out of your fucking mind?
I dashed upstairs, closed the door and bolted it again, trying my best to secure it quietly. But it still made a decisive
thwack
when I pushed it home. After a minute, the howling started again. This time, the other voices started to shout, the howls became hysterical, a word –
Yok! Yok! Yok!
– was repeated over and over again by the man who was screaming. There was further shouting, then one final appalling screech . . . then a deep, eerie silence.

I sat at my desk, chewing on a finger, feeling helpless, terrified.
Don't move, don't move. But if you hear footsteps coming up the stairs, grab your laptop and make a dash for the emergency exit
(not that I had any idea where that exit might actually bring me).

Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes went by. I kept staring at the television monitor. No one appeared on its fuzzy screen. Twenty-five minutes. Silence. Then, suddenly, I heard the downstairs door open and footsteps in the corridor. The front door opened. A man came out into the lane. He appeared short – but it was hard to discern anything about him, as he had the hood of his parka pulled up around his head to conceal his face. He also had a broom in one hand.
What the hell is he doing with that?
I wondered – until he thrust the broom handle at the camera hanging above the door. I flinched – because the image that appeared on the monitor made it seem like he was jabbing the broom handle directly at me. With the first blow the camera just shook. With the second, he scored a bull's-eye on the lens and the screen went black. Then I could hear whispered voices and low grunts accompanied by the sound of something heavy being dragged along the corridor. The dragging sound stopped, there were more whispers –
Were they checking that the coast was clear before hoisting the body?
– then the sound of further dragging before the front door closed with a dull thud.