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hoped that the man they had killed by mistake had been an ass, whose family were not sorry he was dead. And although he recognized the selfishness of this idea, he felt so stupidly cheered by it that he let it run about freely in his head for a bit, enjoying itself. The positivity was infectious. Maybe the whole thing would come to nothing. The police must know where to find him, and yet here he was, free as a lark, walking Mabel and chatting to neighbours as if he hadn’t killed a man at all.
Mabel stopped suddenly to widdle on a weed growing against the Martins’ garden wall, and Felix sighed as his silly fantasy fragmented and blew away. He had created a new reality and he needed to accept it. He’d given Miss Knott his key now, so Mabel would be all right. And if he couldn’t get hold of Geoffrey tonight . . . well then, tomorrow he’d just have to go to the police anyway, and explain his mistake.
Although he wasn’t sure how . . .
‘Hurry up, Mabel,’ he said with a tug, but the little dog hadn’t finished snuffling and dug in her heels. Felix didn’t press the point. He knew from experience that Mabel’s weight increased exponentially the harder he tried to drag her away from any point of interest.
While he stood there waiting for her to set off again, he looked at the Martins’ flowerbeds. It was early May but the tulips were still spectacular. A living, breathing firework display of orange, pink and red brilliance, with daphne scenting the air and velvety camellia petals scattered over the small patch of lawn.
Felix gave the Martins’ garden an eight.
He called Geoffrey for the third time since he’d arrived home.
No answer.
Felix frowned at the telephone. He really wanted to make sure they were on the same page regarding Amanda’s involvement. He was sure Geoffrey would support the promise he’d made to Amanda that he would take care of everything because, although he was still hazy as to what everything might entail, he was reasonably sure it didn’t mean ratting on her to the police.
Felix shuddered. Ratting on her. He’d been a criminal for less than a day and already he was using the vernacular.
He dialled again. Again there was no answer, so he made preparations to hand himself in.
He went around the house and switched off all the appliances apart from the fridge-freezer, then watered the houseplants, with double rations for the gerbera at the top of the stairs that always drooped pathetically at the first sign of drought. If he wasn’t back soon, that would be the first to go. He furled a Post-it note into the neck of a milk bottle – No milk until further notice, thank you. F. Pink – and put the bottle on the step.
He tried Geoffrey again, but the phone just rang and rang.
He was becoming concerned. Geoffrey had once told him that he rarely left the house, but apparently he’d left it now. Or had fallen over and was unable to reach the phone. Felix hoped that wasn’t the case.
He glanced at his watch. It was just gone three. There was still time before he should head to Bideford, so he sat down at the kitchen table and leaned over the jigsaw, picking up the awkward tuft.
But then he just held it between his thumb and finger and stared blankly at the reindeer.
There was one more thing that had been bothering him all day. It had seemed insignificant in comparison with everything else that had happened, and so he’d tried to push it out of his mind. But now he found that the more he tried to ignore it, the more he couldn’t.
There had been a moment – a single split second – when the horror of his blunder had hit him. And in that frozen moment at the bedroom door, Felix Pink’s life had flashed before his eyes.
It was a cliché, and he felt a little foolish that it had even happened to him, but now that he had time to think about it, the most worrying thing about it was that it had been so . . .
So . . .
Felix grimaced.
It had been so . . .
boring.
There. Boring. He’d thought it now and couldn’t take it back.
Felix was boring. Deep, deep down, he’d always suspected it. Feared it. He’d just never admitted it – even to himself – before this very moment. But he’d always been boring. He’d been a boring child and a boring teenager. The middle of three, with an athletic brother and a genius sister. He’d been average at school and at work. Not bully or bullied. Neither bright nor dull. Neither lonely nor popular. On the fringes of everything – unable to lead and slow to follow. Always somewhere in the middle, and making a pretty poor fist even of that. Felix had never missed death by inches or experienced a religious epiphany or had a eureka moment. There’d been no crazy hallucinogenic trips, no mountain-top sunrises, no stolen kisses or dumb near-misses. He’d spent three years at university without dabbling in sex, drugs or rock ’n’ roll, before finding his spiritual home in accounting. Risk-averse and lumpen, it suited his nature. Independent thought was not required and flair was frowned upon – and Felix had been more than capable of not bringing them to the table.
Even Jamie had once called him boring. He was just a teenager and had quickly laughed and made it sound like a joke, but Felix had known . . .
And Margaret?
Well, he had the beige zip-up jacket to remind him of what Margaret had thought of him . . .
He remembered the mascara smudge and hoped it would come out. He had some upholstery cleaner in the utility room. That would probably do the job. It had worked on the living-room rug where Mabel had had a little accident. Although, of course, the rug was dark red with a faux-oriental pattern, and his jacket was a single, pale colour, so it would require a bit of luck to—
Felix blinked in surprise. See? What was wrong with him? Worrying about mascara on his jacket at a time like this? He’d killed a man, for God’s sake!
And he was painfully aware that it had immediately become the most interesting thing about him.
The phone rang and he flinched.
‘John?’
‘Geoffrey!’ said Felix. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Not bad, thank you,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Only thing is, I’ve been arrested for murder.’
Geoffrey’s Day Out
Despite being arrested for murder, Calvin thought that Geoffrey Skeet seemed to be enjoying his day out.
He and Jackie had been careful with the wheelchair, and considerate when helping Geoffrey haul himself from it and into the back of the police car. Calvin thought he could have carried him from the house to the car if he’d had to, the man was so thin.
Then – because Geoffrey obviously didn’t get out much – Jackie had taken the scenic route from Exeter to Bideford, down pretty lanes and through tunnels of trees, and then across what people still called the new bridge over the Torridge, even though it had been there thirty years. It gave a glorious view up and down the river – of sailing boats and bright little trawlers leaned over in the swirling mudflats, and grand houses with gardens that sloped all the way down to the water, and of the Old Bridge further upstream, tripping across the river in twenty-four uneven arches.
Geoffrey had enjoyed the scenery and the progress, and chatted about the past – his and theirs – and marvelled to find that he’d once taught European history to Jackie Braddick’s father, who now owned half of Appledore, despite having had no interest in the Hapsburgs. Then Calvin had let slip that he’d grown up in Tiverton, where Geoffrey had also spent time in his youth, and he’d kept trying to name somebody they both knew – although without much success.
‘Different generations, I suppose,’ he’d said more than once, while Calvin had nodded in the rear-view mirror.
Then when they’d reached the police station he’d noticed Tony Coral was wearing a South West Steam Society lapel pin, and they’d got talking