But didnt you move here after? Maggie said, unable to finish the sentence.
Yes, we did. Randall didnt want me to do this. He said the whole point of coming here was to move on. ButDo you have children, Ashley?
I dont. No.
Well, I think most mothers would understand. She stared at the floor, then at the empty bed. You cant always move on. Not everyone can do it.
They stood in silence for a while, then Pamelas mother crouched on the floor by the bed, lifted the valance and tugged at the drawer that was revealed beneath. Inside was a blanket, neatly folded. She looked up at Maggie. Randall didnt know about this place. Only me.
Beneath the blanket was a large, black-bound scrapbook. She pulled it out, then perched on the end of the bed and opened it. She patted the space next to her, encouraging Maggie to sit down. Look, she said.
Glued into the scrapbook was a yellowing two-page spread from the Madisonian, the newspaper of James Madison High. At the centre was that same prom picture of Pamela Everett, except this time it was surrounded by snippets of tribute, paid by former classmates. You were an angel, sent down from heaven. Now you are back among the stars.
She turned the page, to what Maggie recognized as a cutting from the Daily World. Blaze at downtown hotel, read the headline.
Gently, Maggie inched the scrapbook closer so that she could read the story. It described a late-night fire at the Meredith Hotel, how a drill had brought all the guests out into the streets in their nightclothes as the inferno gutted several storeys of the hotel, leading ceilings to collapse and walls to fall in. It reported uncertainty at the time of writing over casualties. Accompanying the story was a large, if poorly printed, black-and-white photograph of the hotel front ablaze.
Maggie looked to the top right of the cutting. March 16. Page five. The missing page.
She could feel her head throbbing. Who had done it? Who had removed it from the microfilm? Was it Forbes, so that he would enjoy a monopoly on the evidence? Or did he know about Mrs Everett and her secret hiding place? Was this yellowing page, stuck into an album stashed away in the faithfully reconstructed bedroom of a long-dead prom queen indeed, hidden under a blanket his blanket?
This is what I wanted to show you, Mrs Everett said quietly. She turned a couple more pages of the scrapbook.
Another complete page from The Daily World.
There he is, Anne Everett said with that same wistful smile.
Sure enough, there stood a young, eager and handsome Stephen Baker shaking the hand of some older, distinguished man in oversized glasses. Below was an extended caption:
Washingtons senior US Senator, Paul Corbyn, greets the states first winner of a Rhodes scholarship since Corbyn himself nearly forty years earlier. The lucky young man is Stephen Baker, graduate of James Madison High School and, this summer, Harvard University. The photograph was taken in Sen Corbyns Washington, DC office on March 15.
Anne Everett said nothing as Maggie read it again. Then she looked back at the date at the top of the page: March 18. If only she had checked the archive for that date, shed have seen it. This photo proves it wasnt him, Maggie said softly.
Thats right, Mrs Everett agreed, giving a tight little nod. He was on the other side of the country that day. In Washington, DC. Last year, during the election campaign, I often wondered whether someone would knock on my door. Making accusations. Thats why Im glad I kept this. Everyone had such high hopes for Stephen Baker. Not just in America. All round the world. Hopes for the future. But not me. My hopes are all in the past, Leslie. But I often think how different things would have been if Stephen Baker had taken Pamela out that night instead of that, that bastard, she spat out the word with the venom of a woman who never swears. Then my Pamela would be alive today. I am sure of it.
53
New York, Sunday March 26, 23.01
Late nights suited him. Best time to work: no email, no phone calls, no distractions. Not even a view out of the window; just darkness.
This way his vision could be dominated by the screen on the desk. Amazing what could be done on the computer these days. Pretty much everything.
There was a glass by the side of the keyboard, amber with whisky. But he had barely touched it. The ice had melted long ago, diluting the spirit to a paler, less enticing shade. He liked that it was there, proof that he was absorbed in his work.
Which he was. He hadnt heard from Maggie for a while, but that only served to motivate him further: she was clearly in a bit of trouble here, and so he was duty bound to do whatever he could to help. Besides, with Maggie it was never just duty.
He moved the mouse across the screen and clicked open the fifty-one-second video that had, at last, caused the penny to drop. It was a crucial piece of footage; he could not quite believe he had not discovered it till now. As soon as Maggie was back in DC, he would show it to her and all would at last be clear. But why wait till then? He reached for his phone and punched in Maggies number and it rang and rang and then went to voicemail. Yet again. Sighing, he shoved the phone back into his trouser pocket.
He returned to the screen and watched the video through yet again, this time noticing something new. He sat up. Was that a noise he hadnt heard before: a metallic clang, muffled but definitely there? He spooled back and replayed the same sequence. No sound this time. Must have been outside.
He needed to think how best to organize this material, for maximum impact. What would work best? Despite the full panoply of state-of-the-art software at his fingertips, including perhaps half a dozen first-class word-processing programs, he reached for the pad and pen and began jotting notes.
There it was again. Not the same noise, more of a creak this time and, if anything, louder.
Hello?
Nothing.
Anyone there?
He checked the clock at the top right of the screen. Past eleven.
He went back to the sheet of notepaper, scribbling in handwriting that no one but he could ever decipher the logical sequence as he now understood it. He imagined relaying it to Maggie, watching as a smile spread across her face, a smile of recognition as she understood the pattern he now understood. That smile could make a man fall in love with Maggie Costello.
Reaching a knot in the clear logical line he was trying to unspool on paper, he sucked on his pen, feeling the plastic flake off into his mouth. Anticipating a choke, he reached for the watery glass of whisky, glancing at the darkness of the window as he did so.
The sight of a mans face peering in made him jump. Idiotically, he wondered how someone could be outside his window here in a fifth-floor apartment.
It took him a half-second to understand the truth. That the face staring, dead-eyed, at him was in fact a reflection of a man standing inside and just behind him.
By then it was too late. The mans hands were on his shoulders, pinning him to his chair, and then on his neck. He tried to gasp but it was no good: the grip was too tight.
His own reaction surprised him. He writhed and clawed at his attacker but the strength in this mans hands was insuperable; there was, he could tell instantly, a professionalism to this attack that guaranteed it would succeed. Suddenly, and with horrible certainty, he knew he was going to die.
All of this was measured in seconds. And throughout, the only face he could see was Maggies. Even in these desperate circumstances he registered this as a curious fact. He had not realized how much she meant to him. But suddenly all that mattered was knowing that if they were ready to kill him, they would be ready to kill her and that thought gave him determination. Letting his hands fall as if in submission to his fate, he dug into his pocket and then, summoning the strength for a big push, gave a sharp lurch to his right to shake the man off. He knew it would not save his life, but it might at least delay his death by a moment or two.
As his attacker stumbled backwards, he gulped down oxygen. All his concentration was on his left hand. Adept at using the phone when he wasnt looking at it, he jabbed at the buttons. The strangling hands were back on his neck now, attempting to get a grip as he writhed, while his own left hand remained deep in his pocket, searching for the green key that would start the call. With a superhuman effort he stopped himself from crying out straight away, knowing he needed to wait a few seconds for the machine to pick up and the message to play.
Now. He would do it now.
With his right arm he tried to lash out backwards at his assailant and, once again, the man had to take one hand off his victims neck to fend off the diversion.
Ennnnnn! he rasped, in what sounded like an exhalation of desperate pain.
His attacker had forced him off the chair now and onto his knees, so that he bore the full weight of his brutal killer on his shoulders. Somehow he had to find the strength to cry out once more.
Ayyyy! he shouted, though the sound that emerged was more like a whisper.
Out of frustration, perhaps, the attacker now took his hands off his preys neck and punched him instead, hard in the jaw. Even so, he did not flinch, instead seizing on the chance to cry out, Seeeeeeeee!
This continued for perhaps ten more seconds, even if it felt like the longest and most terrifying hour of his life. Somehow he found the energy to force his executioner to interrupt the job of asphyxiation even, at one point, directing a fist into the mans balls and to do it often enough that eventually he had cried out five times.
It was then his strength left him. He could flail no more at the dead-eyed, grey-faced man in the cheap suit who was squeezing the life out of him. At last he surrendered, allowing him to kill him as he had known he would.
He ended up on the floor of his own study, curled up and lifeless.
There was a noise outside in the hall. The attacker, unnerved by the sound of neighbours returning to the next-door apartment, moved swiftly tearing off the top, scribbled sheet of the notepad on the desk and then using the device he had been given to wipe the computers hard drive.