Lost Summer. Stuart Harrison
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ultimately in the breakdown of your relationship with Louise. That is what you seem to be telling me isn’t it?’
‘I’m not telling you anything. I thought you were the one who came up with the answers.’
‘If that was true, I would say that there is more.’
‘More?’
‘That you haven’t told me everything. In my experience psychological cause and effect is never so straightforward as this.’
Adam didn’t say anything. Morris was right. There was more. But none of it was relevant. Louise just needed to understand that once a girl had vanished and she remained on his conscience, rightly or wrongly. ‘Time’s up,’ he said, rising to leave.
There was a postscript to Meg’s disappearance that Adam didn’t tell Morris about. During the final weekend of the summer Adam went fishing with David and the others at Cold Tarn. It was a long ride up to the fells and then through the forest to the lake. When they got there Adam wandered off along the shore and found a shady place where he cast his line out into the water and then propped his rod against a log and sat down to read The Catcher in the Rye. After a while he felt drowsy, lulled by the peace and the stillness of the water. He nodded off and when he woke it was getting late. He checked his line and found his bait gone as usual, but no fish on the hook so he packed up and started back along the shore to look for the others.
There was a part of the shore where he had to cut into the woods that fringed the lake to avoid a high rocky promontory that formed one side of a small bay. He would have passed by, but he saw David standing by the water’s edge, seemingly deep in thought. Intrigued, Adam put his gear down and moved closer, quietly making his way out along the promontory. David remained motionless looking out across the lake. Though Adam followed his gaze there was nothing to see but the still, almost black waters of the tarn, and high above the far shore the small outline of a walkers’ hostel that was open in the summer months.
As Adam watched David looked at something he was holding in his hand. He stared at it for several seconds before he suddenly drew back his arm as if to throw it into the lake, and whatever it was flashed when it caught the sun. But then he froze and after a few moments he dropped his arm again. As he did Adam dislodged a piece of loose rock that skittered down the slope and dropped to the water. David appeared startled and looked from the spreading ripples on the lake towards the trees where Adam crouched hidden. For a moment they seemed to look directly into one another’s eyes, then David turned away and quickly vanished among the trees.
A few weeks after what had turned out to be his final session with Morris, Adam followed a man as he made his way through the crowds at Euston and climbed aboard the six-fifteen from platform seven. They shared the same first-class compartment, the other man nodding briefly before he opened the evening paper. Alan Thomas was forty-six. He was an executive for a print firm. Adam knew a lot about him. He had three children, a boy and two girls. Adam knew their names, where they went to school, when their birthdays were. Thomas’s wife, Christine, habitually wore a vaguely trapped expression that manifested itself in a kind of desperation in her eyes.
The train started moving and as it did the compartment door opened. A man with a briefcase started to come in until Adam stood up and blocked his way.
‘Sorry, this compartment is full.’
The man looked startled and then puzzled by the empty seats. Adam smiled apologetically, though he didn’t move out of the way. ‘I’m sure there are seats further on,’ he said. Eventually the man made a snorting sound and turned on his heel. There was a rustle of paper as Thomas regarded Adam warily, perhaps thinking he was sharing a compartment with a madman. Adam closed the door and returned to his seat. He weighed up the man opposite him. Thomas was heavier, but running to fat. He probably ate lunch at expensive restaurants too often, drank too much. Maybe lately he was drinking more. To help him sleep. If things went wrong then Adam thought he would come out on top. He was younger and fitter, even with a bad leg. He clenched his fist, and unclenched it again and he stared at Thomas coldly. He almost hoped Thomas tried something.
‘I want to know what you did with Liz Mount’s body after you killed her,’ he said.
He saw the reaction in Thomas’s eyes. The sickening fear and perhaps a kind of relief as well. Relief that the demons he’d lived with for months finally had a face if not yet a name.
When he got off the train forty minutes later Adam went to the police and told them what he knew. He couldn’t give them the name of Liz’s friend who’d told him that Liz had confided that Thomas had once tried to kiss her when he’d taken her home after baby-sitting, and that he’d put his hand up her skirt. He’d said if she told anyone they wouldn’t believe her and she would get into trouble. It wasn’t worth it, she’d said to her friend. She just wouldn’t go back.
Thomas hadn’t admitted anything, but Adam could guess some of what had happened. Thomas had probably seen Liz on the train that morning and perhaps he’d followed her. When she went back later he’d been on the train with her. Somehow he’d managed to get her to his house without anyone seeing them, though Adam didn’t know how. Perhaps he’d threatened her, perhaps it was just opportunist luck. Maybe he hadn’t even meant to kill her.
The police would question Thomas, and they would find Liz’s body somewhere near the house, Adam was sure of that, either before or after he confessed. After he left the police station he went to see the Mounts. He sat outside their house for a long time before he finally went to the door. Parents have a kind of extra sense where their children are concerned, especially mothers. He believed in the intuition of women. Carol Mount opened the door and as soon as she saw him she began to cry.
He found out later that Thomas had tried to assault Liz on the train and when she had resisted he’d pushed her out. Later he’d driven back to the spot where she’d fallen and recovered her body.
When he finished the story he wrote Adam sat for a long time in the dark. The light on the phone didn’t blink. By then Louise had left him.
Two Years Later
The Reception area at Condor Publications was self-consciously trendy. Visitors were confronted with a long, curved silver counter behind which sat two young women who might have been part-time models. Having given his name and stated his business Adam was invited to take a seat. There was a choice of three couches, each a different colour. He chose the grape and idly flicked through a magazine, one of Condor’s mass-market coffee-table monthlies.
The phone call that had brought him here had been slightly mysterious. Karen Stone had managed to avoid revealing exactly why she wanted him to come in, except to say that she wanted him to meet somebody she was certain would interest him. Beyond that she wouldn’t be drawn. He wasn’t busy, in fact wasn’t working on anything at all, and so he’d agreed. He was also a little bit intrigued, he admitted to himself. The past six months had been spent ghostwriting the autobiography of a twenty-five-year-old pop star. He’d laboured to make the accumulation of obscene amounts of money by somebody who was largely uninteresting and devoid of talent sound interesting, and he was relieved to have finished. It had reaffirmed his belief in the notion that there is no justice in the world. The book had been a break from his normal work. An attempt to make some changes in his life. It had been a largely unsuccessful experiment, he decided.
‘Adam.’
Jolted from his reverie he turned to find Karen Stone smiling warmly at him. He stood up and she offered her cheek to be kissed. She smelled of expensive perfume and looked, as ever, fantastic. He tried to remember when he’d last seen her. A month ago? Longer, he