Paul had so far been quite pleased with himself in the circumstances. He supposed it would have been overly optimistic to have expected his ruse to result in Fielding actually being convicted for a crime he had not committed. He’d settled for knowing that he’d wreaked havoc in the policeman’s life, just the way Fielding had wreaked havoc in his. He’d rather the policeman had been convicted, of course, sent down for good. But his plan had proved effective enough. It had ended Fielding’s career and been the final nail in the coffin of the detective’s affair with Joanna. Actually, he’d been quite content to settle for that — and for getting Joanna back.
But now he was not quite sure of her again. For a moment, as they had sat together earlier, he had thought she had been going to level some kind of accusation at him. He couldn’t be certain, but he reckoned he ought to play safe. Joanna must never know what he had done. That would ruin everything.
He finished his drink, put the empty glass in the sink in the kitchen and left the house through the kitchen door. As he headed across the lawn, he glanced behind him up at the window of the bedroom he and Jo shared. The light had been switched off. He’d had an ulterior motive in pouring her that extra large Scotch. She was certain to be deep into a whisky-induced sleep by now. Nothing was going to wake her for several hours.
At the bottom of the garden he unlocked the shed. The second-hand laptop was still safe in its usual hiding place. He knew he ought to have disposed of it before now and wasn’t quite sure why he hadn’t. A kind of arrogance, he supposed. He had always been so far ahead of the game he hadn’t felt the need to abide by the normal rules. But Joanna had rattled his confidence somewhat and he was going to take no more risks.
He picked up the laptop, all its various software and connecting bits, and carried the lot back into the house cradled in his arms. He closed and locked the kitchen door behind him, walked through the house to the front and put the pile on the hall table while he opened the door to the cupboard alongside and rummaged around for the holdall he knew was there somewhere. When he’d found it he transferred everything into it and left the house through the front door as quietly as possible, setting off on foot down the hill. He had considered using either Jo’s car or his own, locked in the garage, but he didn’t know where her keys were and opening up the garage could well make enough noise to wake even Joanna. No more risks. That was his new rule. He’d walk. After all, the river wasn’t far away.
Less than a minute later Joanna slipped out of the house behind him.
She hadn’t drunk the huge whisky Paul had poured for her. She hadn’t wanted it. Neither had she wanted to sleep. She had just wanted to be alone to carry on thinking. She had switched off the bedroom lights and sat, still fully clothed, in the chair by the window overlooking the garden.
It was a clear, starry night and anyway it never got properly dark in London or the suburbs. She had seen Paul padding across the lawn, disappearing past the fruit trees into the dense shrubby area at the bottom of the garden. At first she took little notice, he quite frequently went into the garden when he came home at night. She had no idea what he did down there and had never given it much thought until now. She certainly had no idea of any of the uses he had for the garden shed. He just told her that he enjoyed the fresh night air after a day cooped up in an air-conditioned building and that had always seemed perfectly reasonable. But watching idly as he reappeared, walking back across the lawn towards the house just a few minutes later, she saw that he was carrying something in his arms, although the light was too dim for her to see what it was.
She heard him lock up the back of the house and make his way through to the front, then open the hall cupboard and start rummaging about. On impulse, she made her way as silently as possible out through the already ajar bedroom door to the top of the stairs. Looking down, she could clearly see an unfamiliar laptop computer on the hall table. She backed away on to the landing as Paul emerged from the cupboard clutching a holdall and, peeping cautiously through the banisters, she watched him load the little computer into the bag, sling it over his shoulder and leave the house.
Again acting on impulse, she decided to follow him, hardly believing what she was doing. It was almost one o’clock on an autumn night; there were hardly any other pedestrians about and very little traffic. She was wearing only jeans and a cotton shirt, as she hadn’t waited to grab a coat or a jacket. She shivered in the cool air and was careful to keep well back as Paul made his way down Richmond Hill and into Hill Rise past their favourite Chinese restaurant. Then he turned smartly left towards the river and set off purposefully across Richmond Bridge. Jo ducked into a convenient doorway, realising she would have to wait until he had crossed over before following him if she was to have any chance of avoiding being seen.
But halfway over the bridge Paul paused, glancing briefly around him as if checking there was nobody nearby. Then he moved closer to the bridge wall. His back was towards Jo. The street lighting on the bridge was not as bright as it might have been and Jo’s angle of sight was all wrong. From the doorway she could not quite see what he was doing. She moved out on to the pavement and took a few cautious steps forward in order to get a better view. As she did so, she saw Paul remove the holdall from his shoulder and in one fluent movement toss it into the River Thames.
Joanna gasped and only just stopped herself crying out. She supposed this was what she had been half expecting. It was also what she had been dreading. She went into shock.
Her husband stood for just a few seconds longer, looking down at the water, then turned round and began to walk briskly back towards her. At that moment a car swung over the bridge, its headlights fully illuminating Jo. She felt like a rabbit trapped by a lamper. She just couldn’t move. She froze.
Paul’s stride faltered. She knew he must have seen her, must have realised that she had followed him and what she had witnessed.
Her body was starting to work again. She found she could move her legs, now, and took a step backwards. Paul was still approaching, more slowly, his arms stretched out towards her. She spun round and took off at a run, not up Richmond Hill towards the home she shared with this man she didn’t want near her, the house where their daughter slept unaware, but off to the left along the main street through the town. She didn’t know where she was going. She barely cared. Her body might be functioning once more, but her brain was numb.
‘Jo, Jo, wait...’
She heard him call after her. She ran all the harder.