Death of a Murderer Read Free

focus.
    “Susie Newman.”
    Standing in that poky office, with its threadbare carpet and its dog-eared girlie calendar, he had repeated her name out loud. She watched him carefully, and puzzled lines appeared on her forehead, though there was also the promise of a smile at the edges of her mouth. But he’d been in a kind of dream. As soon as she told him her name, he’d had the feeling that it was familiar. Not that he had ever heard it before. No, it was more as if he had been propelled into his own future, a future that included her, or even revolved around her. Her name seemed familiar because it was about to become familiar. It was a familiarity that hadn’t happened yet.
    He didn’t mention any of this to Susie, though—not that morning, anyway. When he was twenty-eight, he had gone out with a girl called Venetia. He had been unable to conceal the extent of his infatuation, and it had spoiled everything. “I can’t breathe with you around,” Venetia had told him once. “You use up all the air.” Over the years he’d learned that sometimes it’s better to go slowly. When he finally told Susie about the feeling he’d had on hearing her name, it was two months later, and they were having a cup of tea in a place just round the corner from the garage, the Kingsway Hotel on Victoria Road. She let him finish talking, then she tucked her hair behind her ear and looked straight at him, her eyes so shiny that he could have been the first thing they had ever seen.
    “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she said.
    He didn’t laugh, nor did he attempt to deny it; he remained perfectly serious, and his gaze dropped to the tablecloth. Though he had spent weeks trying to work it out, what he had just told her still perplexed him.
    “I’ve
never
said it before,” he said. “I’ve never even
felt
it.”
    There was a moment when nothing happened, nothing at all, but they both knew what was coming, so those few seconds were slow-motion and yet urgent, the slowness and the sense of urgency simultaneous but contradictory, delicious too, like ice-cream wrapped in hot meringue. At last, she put a hand on the back of his head and drew him towards her until their lips were touching. After the kiss, they remained an inch or two apart, looking into each other’s faces. He could feel the warm steam from his tea on the underside of his chin.
    “Don’t go travelling,” he said. “Not yet.”

4
    If you see the sugar factory, you’ve gone too far, Phil had said, but Billy left the Al4 at the Bury St. Edmunds East exit, and the hospital showed up on signposts shortly after. He went through several roundabouts, then up a quiet suburban road. Trees on either side, large houses. Bury wasn’t a town he knew particularly well. He had driven here one Saturday with Sue when Emma was a baby. They had spent an hour at a car-boot sale, and Sue had bought a bamboo wind-chime, which she had hung in their garden. On the first blustery day, though, their neighbours, the Gibsons, complained about the noise it made, and Sue had to take it down again.
    He signalled left and turned into the drive, passing beneath the dark, flat branches of a cedar. The car-park was full. He waited, indicator flashing, while a woman backed out of a narrow space. Leaning close to the steering-wheel, he stared up at the hospital. It had been painted a curious mint-green colour, and modern bay windows jutted squarely from the façade. The place looked new, but cheap. It looked prefabricated.
    Even from where he was, he could see the crowd gathered outside the main entrance. In his phone-call, Phil had mentioned the press, and how they had been camped in the hospital grounds ever since the news broke. It wasn’t anything they hadn’t expected, he had said; in fact, they’d thought it would be far worse. During the past four days, the police had talked to reporters on a regular basis, keeping them informed, but no one had been allowed into the hospital itself.