Nonetheless, he returned to the room and once again sought a pulse at the man’s throat.
He was still dead.
BANG!
Amanda and Felix both flinched and turned to look at the door at the opposite end of the landing.
‘Somebody’s in there,’ whispered Amanda.
Felix put down his briefcase and crossed the landing in three strides. He stood for a long moment, then took a deep breath and pushed open the door.
In the front bedroom an old man was leaning out of a bed by the window, trying to reach a walking stick that had apparently fallen on to the wooden floor. He propped himself on an elbow, glared at Felix and grumbled:
‘You took your time!’
Felix froze.
Took in the gaunt, grey face, the frail body, the bedside table filled with pills . . .
Then he stepped backwards out of the room and pulled the door smartly shut behind him.
Amanda was at his shoulder now. ‘What is it?’ she said, but Felix couldn’t speak because all the words he’d ever known seemed to be whirling around inside his skull like bingo balls.
The ones he needed finally dropped slowly from his numb lips.
‘We killed the wrong man.’
The Wrong Man
‘What?’
Felix cleared his throat. ‘We killed the wrong man.’
‘What?’ she said again, and Felix was going to repeat his line, but then realized they could be here all day saying the same two things to each other and still not quite grasp what had happened, or how. Only one thing was clear: accidentally assisting a man who had planned to die by providing him with an instrument of death was a technicality.
Doing the same thing to a man who had not planned to die was something else entirely.
‘The wrong man ?’ Amanda said, not moving. ‘What do you—?’
‘Ssh!’ He glanced at the bedroom door.
‘But how do you know ?’ she whispered.
And he hissed back, ‘Because the man in this room is expecting us.’
Amanda gasped at the closed door, and then turned to stare down the landing at the inanimate mound that had been a living human being just minutes before.
‘But how—?’
‘I don’t know.’
Amanda stared at the front bedroom door again, as if she could see through it, and through the wall beyond that, and into the road outside.
‘Shit!’ she said, and slow horror dawned on her face.
And then he heard it too.
Sirens.
For one long, thrumming moment Felix might have panicked.
Then he said, ‘You have to go.’
‘Go?’
‘Yes. You have to go,’ he said again, more urgently this time. ‘Just go home and forget this ever happened.’
‘What?’ she stammered. ‘But what will you do?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of everything.’
Felix had no idea what everything might entail. All he knew for sure was that Amanda was twenty-three with her whole life ahead of her, while he was seventy-five, with most of his behind him. Mathematically, it made no sense for her to be involved.
‘Hurry now,’ he said, but she was looking at him, open-mouthed, wide-eyed. Dazed. Felix put a hand on her back and propelled her firmly along the landing and down the first few stairs.
She grabbed the banister and turned to look up at him. ‘But what about you?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘You just go.’
‘OK.’ Her eyes swam with tears. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and then she hurried on down the stairs and out of the front door.
The dog had come into the hallway to watch her leave – and now looked up at Felix, waiting for his next move.
But Felix didn’t have a next move.
He looked again at the body of the man he’d believed to be Charles Cann. Then he walked slowly downstairs and sat on the sofa.
This was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
As soon as he had the thought, Felix rejected it, but, an instant after that, he knew it was true.
Jamie’s death had been tragic. Heart-crushing. Unbearable.
But it had not been his fault.
This was.
Amanda had handed the man the mask, but it was his fault. He’d assumed she would react the way Chris would have reacted. But it was her first time and the man was dying badly, and she’d panicked. In hindsight, it all seemed very obvious that something had been likely to go wrong. He should have planned for disaster, taken charge, sat on that side of the bed, warned her more forcefully – done something – before the point of no return . . .
Numbness crept slowly over Felix Pink. A merciful detachment. His old life was over, and now he was just going to sit here and wait for someone to come along and show him the way his new life was going to be.
He took off his watch. It was nothing special – just a quartz Sekonda he’d been given when he’d retired, and probably worth a pound for every year he’d given to the company – but there was no reason to have it scratched by handcuffs. He zipped it safely into the inside pocket of the beige jacket. There were two of those – one on each side – and they were very useful. He kept his reading glasses in the other one.
The sirens were closer now. Soon they would be here. Felix wondered what being arrested was going to be like. What they would say. What he would say. Would they have guns? Should he put his hands up? Like a cowboy? He hoped they wouldn’t make him lie on the floor to cuff him. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to get up again, because of his hip. He had been on the list for a replacement for over a year now and it wasn’t getting any better . . . Although he supposed that the policemen would just help him up if he got into difficulties, so maybe he shouldn’t worry about that aspect of his imminent arrest.
The sirens wailed.
Felix straightened his tie with a trembling hand, and cleared his throat in preparation. He brushed at the mascara smudge on his beige jacket, but it didn’t come off. He tutted and wondered if it ever would. It would be ironic if he had to throw the jacket away now, all of a sudden, and before he had identified a worthy replacement. Although where he was going he probably wouldn’t need the beige jacket for quite some time. Or any jacket . . .
The little black-and-tan dog jumped up beside him on the sofa, then sat and scratched its ear with a noise like a flag in a high wind. Felix wondered if it had fleas. He stood up quickly and with a wince, and brushed his trousers down briskly. He didn’t want to give Mabel fleas—
Then he froze.
Mabel!
Who would let Mabel out if he didn’t go home? Worse, who would feed her? Nobody knew he wasn’t there. Nobody knew he wouldn’t be there. And even if they did know, nobody had a key. By the time word filtered back to his neighbours that he had been arrested, Mabel could be dead!
The sirens groaned and faded. Through the window he saw the blue flashing lights swing into the road.
Coming for him.
But he couldn’t be arrested. Not yet. Not until he had made sure Mabel would be all right.
With