He followed her west, into Notting Hill, where she paused for a long time outside a big white house, then north, through Ladbroke Grove. He followed her, unnoticed, all the way to her front door. It took almost an hour and a half. Afterwards, he realised that he had walked her home. Though he had no children of his own — and never would have, not now — he felt towards her the way he imagined a father might feel, an emotion that was both fierce and clumsy, difficult to name. He seemed to take a kind of pride in her. It was unthinkable that somebody might do her harm.
Yet here he was, with nineteen hours left. He looked at the clock on his bedside table. Yes, nineteen hours. And then the Scotsman would arrive with his blowtorch. And later, when the agony was over, the job would be given to someone else. He slept in snatches, his mind swept by plans that all, inevitably, failed. Finally, at a quarter to six, he reached up and switched on the light. Blinking, he felt his way into the lounge. She would still be asleep, her bright-blonde hair tangled on the pillow.
He lifted weights for twenty minutes. His blood woke up. Through the open window he could hear trucks braking on Crucifix Lane. He showered and dressed. There was no sunrise, no colour in the east, only a gradual lightening of the sky. The absence of strange weather surprised him. He put the kettle on, fried some bacon. Twenty-five-past six. He watched his hands spoon coffee grounds into the chipped enamel pot. It was Tuesday. When he tried to think of Wednesday, he found that he could not imagine it.
At ten to seven he locked the door to his flat and set off down the stairs. All the evidence had been destroyed. He had burned Lambert’s document in a metal basin on the roof outside his kitchen. The cool air would scatter the ashes across the narrow gardens behind the house. A funeral of sorts … Smiling grimly, he stepped out on to the pavement and pulled the door shut after him. In his hand he held a small parcel that was addressed to Harold Higgs. He had scrawled a note to his employer, explaining that he had been forced to leave suddenly, for personal reasons. He enclosed £700, which ought to be enough money to pay for a hip replacement. He told Higgs to forget the NHS, go private; the sooner he got it sorted, the better. Also in the parcel he had enclosed two letters, already addressed. He asked Higgs to send them by registered post. One contained £500 and a two-line note: Charlton — something to help you get over that redhead — Barker. The other, to his mother, had taken him more time. He told her to spend the money he was sending her on something nice. A new TV, maybe. Some furniture. He signed off by saying that he missed her. When he reached the corner of the street, he pushed the package through the slot into the letter-box. He hoped he’d put enough stamps on it; he didn’t want all that money to go astray. He couldn’t wait until the post office opened, though, and he couldn’t risk carrying the package around with him either, in case it fell into the wrong hands.
He walked down Morocco Street, which was a dead end, and crossed the area of wasteground beyond it, then cut through a housing estate and circled round behind Guy’s Hospital. It was an eccentric route to take to the station, but he wanted to make sure he wasn’t being followed. What was about to happen should happen in private, unobserved. He heard a clock strike seven, the notes wobbling in the cool, glassy air.
Sixteen hours.
Waiting in the tube at London Bridge, with rush-hour just beginning, he thought of Glade again, her orange shirt, her long black skirt clinging to her hips. The way she looked when he first saw her.
That first sighting, a coincidence. Dark branches held against the glass roof. Flashed glimpses of her through the windows of a train. And then the distance between them widening as he deliberately let her go …
Before he left the flat that morning, he had called Jill. It was the first contact in more than a year. A woman answered. Jill’s mother. He asked if Jill was up yet.
‘Who is this?’ she said.
‘Barker Dodds.’
‘Oh.’
She had never approved of him, wanting something better for her daughter. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had told him that Jill was away on holiday, he wouldn’t have blamed her for lying, but instead, after a moment’s hesitation, he heard her put the phone down and call Jill’s name. Through the kitchen window he watched Lambert’s instructions burning. He saw how the flames seemed to taste the air around the edges of the bowl. He must have waited minutes. At last he heard footsteps, faint at first, but growing louder.
‘Barker?’
She sounded just the same. It was strange how the sound of someone’s voice could close a gap. As if the last fifteen months had never happened.
‘How are you, Jill?’
‘OK. Tired.’ She yawned.
‘You working?’
She smiled into the phone. You can hear somebody smile. ‘Same shitty building society …’
He smiled too. She was just saying that. She loved her job.
‘Have they promoted you yet?’
‘Not yet. The end of the year maybe.’
The end of the year. How far away that sounded. As far away as the Dark Ages he had recently been reading about. In fact, in some ways, the Dark Ages seemed closer, less mysterious.
‘Barker?’
‘Yes?’
‘What about you? What have you been doing?’
‘Nothing much.’
In the silence he heard the scratch of the flint on a cheap lighter as she lit a cigarette, the faint kiss of her lips separating from the filter as she inhaled. She had always liked to smoke when she was on the phone.
‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘I just wanted to ring you up.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Well, I should be going.’
‘Will you ring again?’ She seemed to be saying she would like it if he rang but, at the same time, she didn’t want to pressurise him into anything. Also, perhaps, for her own sake, she couldn’t risk putting it that bluntly.
‘I don’t know,’ was the best that he could manage.
Silence fell between them once again. He could hear her breathing out, almost the same sound as when you blow into the red part of a fire to get it going.
‘You never came for me,’ she murmured. ‘I thought you’d come for me.’
He didn’t speak for several seconds. He couldn’t.
‘Barker? Are you there?’
‘I think about you, Jill,’ he said at last, then he hung up.
She couldn’t phone him back, of course; she didn’t know the number. She probably didn’t even know that he had moved to London — and by the time she found out, he’d be gone.