‘I know,’ I said.
I looked round. Byrne, Deborah and Adam were looking puzzled. Did they think now that I had really and finally gone over the edge? I didn’t mind. I was in control again, my mind clear. It wasn’t me that was mad.
‘I know where Adam put her. I know where Adam buried Adele Blanchard.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Byrne.
I looked at Adam and he looked back steadily, unwavering. Then I fumbled in my coat and found my purse. I opened it and pulled out a season ticket, receipts, some foreign currency, and there it was: me, photographed by Adam at the moment he asked me to marry him. I handed the photograph to Byrne, who took it and looked at it with a puzzled expression.
‘Careful with that,’ I said. ‘It’s the only copy. Adele’s buried there.’
I looked round at Adam. He didn’t look away, even then, but I knew he was thinking. This was his genius, making calculations in a crisis. What was he planning inside that beautiful head?
Byrne turned away from me and showed the photograph to Adam. ‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Where is it?’
Adam gave a baffled, sympathetic smile. ‘I don’t know exactly,’ he said. ‘It was just on a walk somewhere.’ He turned his gaze back to me.
At that moment I knew that I was right.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t just a walk somewhere. Adam took me there to this special spot. He had been let down before, he told me. But now in that special place he wanted to ask me to marry him. A moment and a promise. We vowed to be faithful to each other over the dead body of Adele Blanchard.’
‘Adele Blanchard?’ said Adam. ‘Who’s she?’ He looked at me very closely. I could feel his eyes on mine trying to assess what I knew. ‘This is crazy. I don’t remember where we were on that walk. And you. You don’t remember either, do you, darling? You slept all the way up in the car. You don’t know where it is.’
I looked at the photograph with a sudden lurch of horror. He was right. I didn’t. I looked at the grass, so green, tantalizingly graspable and so far away. Adele, where are you? Where is your betrayed, broken, lost body? And then I had it. Here I am. Here I am.
‘St Eadmund’s,’ I said.
‘What?’ said Byrne and Adam, at the same time.
‘St Eadmund’s with an A. Adele Blanchard taught at St Eadmund’s primary school near Corrick, and the church of St Eadmund’s is there as well. Take me to the church of St Eadmund’s and I’ll take you to this spot.’
Byrne looked from me to Adam and then back again. He didn’t know what to do but he was wavering. I took a step closer to Adam so that our faces were almost touching. I looked into his clear, blue eyes. There wasn’t the smallest flicker of disquiet. He was magnificent. Perhaps for the first moment I had a clear sense of this man on a mountain, saving a life or taking it away. I raised my right hand and touched his cheek as he had touched mine. He flinched very slightly. I had to say something to him. Whatever happened, I would never have another chance.
‘I understand that you killed Adele and Françoise because, in some terrible way, you loved them. And I suppose that Tara was threatening you. Had her sister told her something? Did she know? Or suspect? But what about the others? Pete. Carrie. Tomas. Alexis. When you went back up the mountain, did you actually push Françoise over the edge? Did somebody see you? Was it just convenient?’ I waited. There was no response. ‘You’ll never say, will you? You won’t give lesser mortals the satisfaction.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Adam said. ‘Alice needs help. I can legally take custody of her.’
‘You’ve got to take note of this,’ I said to Byrne. ‘I’ve reported the existence of a murdered body. I’ve identified the location. You are obliged to investigate.’
Byrne looked between us. Then his face relaxed into a sardonic smile. He sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. Then he looked over at Adam. ‘Don’t worry, sir. We’ll take good care of your wife.’
‘Goodbye,’ I said to Adam. ‘Goodbye, Adam.’
He smiled at me, a smile of such sweetness that he looked like a little boy, full of terrifying hope. But he didn’t say anything, just looked at me as I walked away, and I didn’t look back.
Thirty-nine
WPC Mayer looked about sixteen. She had bobbed brown hair and a round, slightly spotty face. I sat in the back of the car – a plain blue one, not the police car I’d been expecting – and looked at the back of her plump neck above her crisp white collar. It looked stiff to me, disapproving, and her listless handshake and brief, shallow glance had seemed indifferent.
She made no effort to talk to me, except to tell me at the start of the journey to fasten my seat-belt, please, and I was grateful for that. I leaned against the cool plastic and stared at the London traffic outside, seeing almost nothing. It was a bright morning, and the light gave me a headache, but when I closed my eyes it was no better, for then images chased across the lids. Particularly Adam’s face, my last sight of him. My whole body felt sore and hollow. It was as if I could feel all the different bits of me: my heart, my guts, my lungs, my aching kidneys, the blood coursing round me, my ringing head.
Every so often, WPC Mayer’s radio would crackle into life and she would speak into the car, a strange formulaic kind of language about rendezvous and times of arrival. Outside this car was ordinary real life – people going about their daily business, irritated, bored, contented, indifferent, excited, tired. Thinking about their work, or what to cook for supper, or what their daughter had said at breakfast that morning, or thinking of the boy they fancied, or how their hair needed cutting or how their back ached. It was hard to imagine I had ever been there, in that life. Dimly, as in a dream half forgotten, I remembered evenings in the Vine with the Crew. What had we talked about, night after night, as if time didn’t matter, as if we had all the time in the world? Had I been happy then? I didn’t know any more. I could barely recall Jake’s face now, or not Jake’s face when I was living with him, not his lover’s face, not the way he had looked at me when we lay in bed together. Adam’s face got in the way, his gazing eyes. How he had pushed his way between me and the world, blotting out my view so that all I could see was him.
I had been Alice-with-Jake, then Alice-with-Adam. Now I was just Alice. Alice alone. No one to tell me how I looked or ask me how I felt. No one to make plans with or test thoughts against or be protected by or lose myself in. If I survived this, I would be alone. I looked down at my hands, lying inert on my lap. I listened to my breathing, steady and quiet. Maybe I wouldn’t survive. Before Adam, I had never been too scared of death, mainly because death had always seemed far off, happening to some comfy white-haired old woman whom I couldn’t connect with myself. Who would miss me, I wondered. Well, my parents would miss me, of course. My friends? In a way – but for them I had already gone missing when I walked out on Jake and the old life. They would shake their heads over me as over a curiosity. ‘Poor thing,’ they would say. Adam would miss me, though; yes, Adam would miss me. He would weep for me, genuine tears of grief . He would always remember me and he would always mourn me. How strange that was. I almost smiled.
I took the photograph out of my pocket again and stared at it. There I was, so happy at the miracle of my new life that I looked like a madwoman. There was a hawthorn bush behind me, and grass and sky, but that was all. What if I couldn’t remember? I tried to recall the route from the church but as I did so a sense of utter blankness came over me. I couldn’t even visualize the church itself. I tried to stop myself thinking about it, as if by doing so I might drive away the last shreds of memory. I looked at the photograph again and I heard my own voice: ‘For ever,’ I had said. For ever. What had Adam said back? I couldn’t think about that, but I remembered that he had cried. I had felt his tears on my cheek. For a moment, I nearly cried myself, sitting in that chilly police car, on my way to find out if I was going to win or be defeated by him, live or be destroyed by him. Adam was my enemy now but he had loved me, whatever that meant. I had loved him, too. For one disastrous moment, I wanted to tell WPC Mayer to turn round and go home; it was all a terrible mistake, a mad aberration.