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“In fact, I will take the whole month off,” he said. “They’ve been bugging me to use up my leave from last year, and Arnaud suggested this morning that I take some holiday.” He gave a wry smile. “He knows I haven’t been in a good place lately, although he doesn’t know why. And after we’ve told Laure and Gabriel, we’ll need time to sort things out.”
“Good idea,” I said, hiding my rising panic at the realization that if he was going to come back with me, it really was going to happen.
“I’ll message Claire too,” he went on. “She’s been worried about me, so I’d better let her know I’m going away, otherwise she’ll think something terrible has happened.”
I think it was those words that gave me the idea of killing him. It seems unbelievable now that the thought even entered my mind; it seems unbelievable that I actually did it. But all I could think of was Gabriel and Beth, and a rage began to build inside me at Pierre’s disregard for everyone’s happiness but his own. He didn’t seem to care that he was about to destroy four other lives despite there being no guarantee that it would make his better. I knew Beth; she adored Gabriel, he hadbeen her father for the last twenty years. If the truth came out, she might have rejected me, but she would never have rejected Gabriel.
The waiter came to take our order. My mind was spinning. If I was to kill Pierre, I would need a weapon, and I would need somewhere to do it, somewhere where his body wouldn’t be discovered for a while. I thought of the storeroom in the basement of their building where they kept their bikes and tools and bits of broken furniture. There was even an old chest freezer, and Laure had laughed one day that it was the perfect place to hide a body.
“What would you like to eat, Iris?” Pierre smiled at me, and the thought that I was going to kill him made me so dizzy that I had to grip the table to stop myself from falling.
“Steak frites,” I said, because somewhere in my subconscious, I connected the need for a murder weapon with a knife. Not just an ordinary knife, but a sharp knife.
Our lunch came promptly. I picked up my knife and let it slip from my hand. It clattered to the floor and I stooped quickly and put it in the tote bag at my feet, then told Pierre I couldn’t find it. It didn’t matter, he explained. I would be brought a clean one, and someone would fish the errant knife from under the bench when they tidied up after the service.
“I’ll need to go back to the apartment to get some things,” he said.
I nodded. “Of course. And while we’re there, could we go down to your storeroom? The last time I was here with Gabriel, I left my umbrella in the basket of Laure’s bike. Beth gave it to me, so I’d really like to get it.” He nodded in agreement.
Lunch over, we walked the ten minutes to his apartment, the oppressive heat, with its hint of a storm to come, only adding to the tension inside me.
“Aren’t you hot in that?” Gabriel asked, because the weather had been cloudy when I’d left home so I was wearing a long cardigan over my dress. On the train, I’d been annoyed to discover in the pockets, a tissue, a hair clip and a pair of the thin, flesh-colored cotton gloves that Laure wore when she was sunbathing or running. I’d got used to herborrowing my clothes, but had wished on numerous occasions that she would empty the pockets before putting them back in my wardrobe. Now I was glad that she hadn’t.
“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”
We arrived at their building and I suggested going to the storeroom first, to get the umbrella. As I followed him down the stairs to the basement and along the rabbit warren passageways, I took Laure’s gloves from my pocket and slipped them on. I felt strangely detached. Pierre was no longer a friend, just an obstacle that had got in my way. My focus was not on him, but on getting done what I had to do as quickly and cleanly as possible.
He unlocked the door, snaked his hand around it for the light switch, and stood back to let me pass in front of him.
“You still have the freezer,” I exclaimed, heading for it, noting its lid wedged slightly open by a piece of wood, indicating that it was empty. Using my body to shield my gloved hand I pushed up the lid and peered inside. “I thought you might have got rid of it.”
He came into the room. “We keep meaning to,” he said. “We’ve just never got around to it.”
The confined space meant that I only needed to turn, take a small step toward him. I already had the steak knife in my hand. He was the same height as me, and narrow-bodied. Without giving myself time to think, I plunged the knife into his chest.
He took a surprised step back, but I followed his movement and drove the knife in farther.
“What—” He shook his head slightly, trying to work it out, and then the pain must have hit, because a gasp of shock expelled from him. I caught him as his legs buckled, and then, in a macabre dance, I twisted our clasped bodies around to the freezer behind me, stooped, hooked an arm under his knees and tipped him in.
He landed on his side, and lay immobile, apart from his eyes, which flickered upward, searching for an answer. I reached in and pulled out the knife and watched as blood seeped from him, staining the floorof the freezer red. Then I took his phone from his pocket and closed the lid.
It was only when I looked down at myself, saw the knife in my hand, its blade red with blood and the red stain on my cardigan, that shock hit me with a force so great I almost collapsed. I closed my eyes, summoned Beth’s face and used her image to fight the weakness in my limbs and calm my panicked breathing. I focused on what I needed to do. I took off my cardigan and bundled the knife into it, then added the SIM card from Pierre’s phone. I thought for a moment, then dug out the hair clip. Several of Laure’s hairs had been caught in the clasp, so I pulled one out and let it drop to the floor. I checked my dress; no bloodstains had seeped through from my cardigan and I was grateful I’d had the presence of mind to remove the knife from Pierre’s chest once he was in the freezer. Stooping, I plugged the freezer into its socket, and left the storeroom.
Pierre had left his keys in the door, so I locked it behind me, slipped the keys into my rolled-up cardigan, put it in my bag and walked back through the narrow corridors and up the basement steps. I made it to the front door without meeting anyone; the whole building was silent.
I walked to Gare du Nord, rode the metro north for ten minutes, got off at a random station, took the cardigan from my tote and dumped it in a nearby bin. Then I took the metro back to Gare du Nord, in time for my train to St. Pancras. When I arrived at St. Pancras, I bought, from the shops on the concourse, a bottle green polo shirt for Gabriel, a beautiful silk scarf for Laure, and a skirt and sandals for myself as evidence of my shopping trip with Jade. Then I went home, and waited for the right time to plant Pierre’s phone among Laure’s belongings. And while I was in her bedroom, I took her blue dress and canvas shoes, and hid them among the rubbish in the bin, due to be collected the next day.
My phone buzzes, interrupting my musings. A WhatsApp from Gabriel telling me that he and Beth have arrived in Winchester. What do youreply to someone who is about to go to a funeral? I message backI hope everything goes as well as can be expected. Let me know when you’re on your way home, and add two kisses.
I walk to the window and look out, as I’ve done so many times before, thinking about the day after I killed Pierre. I dropped Laure off at the station in time for her train to London. I hadn’t slept all night and my anxiety was acute. What if Laure decided, when she found the apartment empty, to go looking for Pierre in the basement?
I distracted myself by sending Gabriel to the supermarket so that Joseph and I could have lunch together, just the two of us. The lunch was both a distraction and a reward. I needed something to take my mind off Laure and, after everything I’d been through the previous day, I felt I deserved some time alone with Joseph. I thought I was fine, but as I walked to the walled garden to call him, the scarlet flowers that lined the path, the same color as the blood that had spilled from Pierre, haunted me. And when the knife I used to slice the tomato slid so easily into its flesh, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the knife that had slid just as easily into Pierre.
When Gabriel interrupted the lunch I’d so carefully prepared, I fled to the bedroom and drew in deep breaths, praying for Laure to phone. I don’t know how I managed to sleep, from exhaustion perhaps. When she finally called me from Gare du Nord and said that Pierre hadn’t been at the flat, and she was coming straight back, my relief was so immense that I dropped to my knees and gave thanks, although I’m not sure whom to. I went to find Gabriel, and his hangdog look as he sat on the bench moping about the letter he’d received from Maggie Ingram’s grief counselor made me want to scream. I had murdered for this man, and here he was, feeling sorry for himself because Maggie wanted to meet him.
It was because he was wrapped up in his own problems that it was easy for me to pretend, later that day, that Laure had come home wearing clothes different from the ones she’d been wearing that morning, to pretend that she’d been feverish and overexcited when she’d onlybeen defiant. He believed what I told him, because he had no reason to believe I would lie.
If I felt any guilt in setting up Laure to take the blame for Pierre’s murder, it disappeared when I discovered she was in a relationship with Joseph. The truth was, from simply being intrigued by him and liking the way he paid me attention, I had become obsessed. Everything about him, from his dark good looks, to the lilt of his voice, to his easy, confident stride, awakened something in me, something that I hadn’t allowed myself to feel for many years. Pure, uncontrollable desire.
