It was the truth that Rob was reminding him of here. Will had been heading towards the comfort of drugs long before the night of the accident, his life so hemmed in by his family that the only way out was through extremes. If it hadn’t been the accident it would have been something else that had broken him.
‘His flatmate thinks he was murdered,’ said Alex, the shift in the discussion so abrupt that Rob looked momentarily confused, as if he’d misheard. ‘That’s why I wanted to see you, to let you and the others know.’
‘To let us know what?’
‘Just that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty well certain he wasn’t murdered, but given the slight possibility that he was, well, I thought it only fair to warn the rest of you, in case we’re in danger too.’
Rob was looking at him now as if he’d spoken in tongues, his face paralysed in an expression of stunned confusion.
‘Wait there,’ he said finally, ‘I’m not quite sure I’m getting this. If he was murdered, why would that suggest the rest of us were in danger? I don’t see a link.’
Alex nodded, feeling slightly embarrassed, his paranoia exposed.
‘There probably isn’t a link. And it probably was just a straightforward overdose.’ He hesitated a second, putting his own thoughts in order, thinking through the best way to present this without sounding like a flake. ‘The flatmate brought me his papers, things that Will’s family didn’t want. There was a scrapbook that he used to keep cuttings in, mainly the cuttings about the accident. Like I said, he was obsessed. Well anyway, the flatmate was convinced that the scrapbook was taken the same weekend Will died, and that it was the only thing taken.’
Rob was drawn onto a different track for a second, as he said, ‘Do you think the flatmate knew why the scrapbook was so important?’
‘Maybe. Put it this way, he was scared, too scared to stay in Brighton afterwards. And if the scrapbook was taken...’
Rob laughed and said, ‘I can see where you’re coming from here, Alex, but Jesus, do you honestly think that’s likely? No one would go to that much trouble, and besides, why would anyone? We have to assume none of us have talked.’
‘We can’t assume that. Like we’ve just said, with Will alone we can’t assume that.’
‘Okay, true, though even if one of us had talked, it’s hard to see how that would lead to something like this. And otherwise, what are we looking at here? We’re looking at one of us. Let’s face it, we turned out to be a pretty dysfunctional group of friends, and yeah, we were conceited and generally horrendous people back then, but I don’t think any of us was murderer material.’
‘I know.’ He felt stupid. ‘It’s not even like there’s a possible motive.’
Their food arrived, distracting them momentarily, Alex not even sure if the subject had been dropped altogether. After they’d started eating though, Rob paused, putting down his knife and fork as he said, ‘Of course, you’re wrong about the lack of a possible motive. I don’t think for a second that this has anywhere to go in terms of explaining Will’s death, but there was always a fatal flaw in our decision to keep the secret.’
‘You’re right, I remember Will saying something at graduation.’ Will, who despite everything had been effortlessly smarter than the rest of them.
‘So do I, about how this could be potentially damaging in the future. See, at the time, once we decided to keep it a secret we all had the same to lose from that secret being revealed, and that’s how we always thought it would be. But what if someone suddenly has more to lose than the others?’
He went back to his food, the question left hanging in the air. Alex thought it over, backing away from his own fears, realizing how unlikely it was now, that any of the five of them would have so much to lose that they’d consider killing the others. And the idea that it was a revenge killer, that had always seemed absurd.
‘Like you said, Will was always gonna fall. It just gets to me I suppose, that we weren’t there for him. You know, we made a mistake, we did something wrong, but it wasn’t like we meant to hurt anyone, so why did it have such an effect?’
Rob smiled, finishing what was in his mouth, taking a gulp of wine, not responding even then but collecting his thoughts instead.
‘I don’t know. Maybe underneath the veneer of easy success we were all screwed up anyway, or maybe we’d just all been so cosseted our whole lives that we didn’t know how to cope with it. A death, it’s quite something to deal with. Ultimately that was our problem - we were shallow, just not shallow enough.’ Alex laughed, and then Rob added, ‘Anyway, at least you’ve answered something that’s always puzzled me.’
‘What?’
‘Why you went into the field you did. It seemed a strange choice to me, but from what you just said, I’m guessing you have a personal interest.’
Alex gave a small acknowledging nod and said, ‘I don’t think I’ve had a normal night’s sleep since it happened.’