‘I don’t have a car. I’m walking.’
She looked momentarily flummoxed but smiled again as she found a suitable response.
‘I can call you a cab.’
‘No, thanks, I want to walk, if it’s not too far.’
She studied the address again, as if the directions had changed now that he was walking. Finally she nodded to herself, and said, ‘That should be fine.’ She smiled and pointed, saying, ‘Walk right along Main Street, cross the bridge and take a right. That’s Riverside Lane.’
‘Oh, so it’s not far.’ She smiled but didn’t respond so he thanked her and left.
He felt a little out of place as he walked along Main Street in his overcoat and scarf, most of the other people dressed like they were hikers or ready for winter sports. The further he walked, the less it bothered him, because he was invisible anyway, his reflection passing unnoticed across the windows that people looked in.
Main Street came to an abrupt end with the bridge across the river. He stopped and looked down at the water quite a way below, fast and loud, breaking white over its rocky floor. He looked back the way he’d come then, Main Street looking pretty much like all there was to Garrington.
Beyond the bridge there were a few houses on either side of the road, woods, not much else. Riverside Lane looked at first like it was cut through a woodland that was devoid of houses, climbing slowly away from the town and from the river itself which grew quieter as he walked.
He’d been making steady and isolated progress for ten minutes before he encountered the first gated entrance and a drive leading off to a house that wasn’t visible from the road. It was another twenty minutes and three more houses before he came to Matt’s.
He slowed but walked past, checking the gates for cameras, glancing beyond to see if anyone was about. He looked up and down the road then to see if any cars were approaching. He was alone out there, leafless branches clattering lightly, a mournful sound beyond which the river was inaudible now.
He crossed the road and back to the gates. There was still plenty of greenery on that side, shrubs and hedges to shield the houses from onlookers. Even so, with the trees bare he could just make out part of the roof of Matt’s house, set well back, the drive clearly sweeping away and then back towards it.
There was no sign of anyone about. He kept checking behind him, nervous that he might look suspicious to people passing, but even though there was nothing to see he couldn’t move on. He kept staring at the stray edges of gable he could see, trying to picture the house beneath it, the people inside.
He wondered how Matt would react to him if he was there. That was one of the reasons he’d come, because he was certain he’d know from Matt’s face alone when he saw him, whether he was behind this. And if he thought Matt was innocent he could simply play along with the charade of the surprise visit, the sad news of old friends.
That was something he hadn’t thought about though, and it troubled him now. He’d considered the possibility of Matt being innocent in all of this, and had thought too of the things he would say to him about that night ten years ago, but he hadn’t yet thought of breaking the news about Will and Rob.
It had never occurred to him that if Matt was innocent he wouldn’t know about the deaths. And as he thought of how he’d tell him he realized that he hadn’t even thought about the deaths himself.
He’d thought about them in an abstract way, as part of a potentially lethal puzzle he needed to solve, but he hadn’t pictured the deaths, imagined those last moments, and wasn’t that what people were meant to do? Normal people showed empathy, part of the grieving process which for him had been swept up in more personal concerns.
For the first time he thought of Will, already drugged perhaps, the reason for the lack of a struggle, his killer carefully injecting the lethal dose of heroin into his arm. He thought of him slipping into a coma as he lay there, his body growing cold while the only person who cared about him was away for the weekend.
And he thought of Rob, wondering whether he’d gone out on an adrenaline rush, more thrill than nightmare, or whether they’d been scared in those last few minutes as the explosions had crept closer and the walls had shattered around them. He hoped not, uncomfortable with the thought of Rob being scared at the end.