Angel of Death

‘What’s this?’ Terry opened it, read it, dropped it on the desk. It was her notice, handwritten. ‘Have you got another job?’

She nodded, eyes down, her face cold.

‘More money?’

‘No, about the same.’

He did not ask her why she was going; he could guess, she had a tight-lipped face, her eyes disapproved of him and his son. She did not want to be mixed up in murder. Clear off, then, he thought – and anyway he hadn’t been satisfied with her work, he wasn’t sorry to see her go.

Crisply he said, ‘Clear your desk, take all your possessions, and leave immediately. You can settle what you’re owed with Accounts later.’

He turned away contemptuously, reached for the phone to ring an agency and ask for a temp.

She banged the door deliberately as she went and the next time he went past her office the room was empty. She had gone. And he could not even remember her name, try as he might.

The only name he remembered was Miranda’s.

It rang in his head like a bell across the sea. Miranda, Miranda, Miranda.

When he left the office late that afternoon the press were waiting. Terry didn’t understand at first, blinking in the first battery of flash-bulbs, deafened by the shouting of his name, the crude insolence of the questions.

‘Terry, Terry . . .’

‘Did you know all about it? Did you help Sean murder the girl? It was your plane he used to dump her in the sea, wasn’t it?’

Where did they get that? Who gave them informat

ion that should not be public property, at least until it came out during the trial? Did they bribe policemen on the desk in stations? Did they have a source inside the force? It had never occurred to him before – he had read the gutter press without thinking about the way they gathered their stories, whether what they wrote was true or not.

‘Terry, look this way . . . hey, Terry . . .’ they cooed like bilious pigeons, ducking and diving in a flock, cameras levelled his way. He ignored them, fighting his way through to get to his car.

It took him some time, but at last he was in the car and driving off. But if he thought he would get away from them all he soon saw he was over-optimistic. They got into cars, too, and followed him.

He decided to go to his country home – if he had realised the press were outside he would have stayed in his flat in the office building.

Or would he?

He hadn’t used it since the murder. The idea of sleeping there made the hair rise on the back of his neck. He had been over there; the atmosphere was . . . he hesitated to use the word, but how else could he describe it? Haunted. The flat was haunted. You almost felt you could hear the screams of that girl, the violent splashing, the gasps and smothered groans of someone drowning.

Was that how Miranda had felt after her husband drowned? Had she kept thinking she heard him . . .

Terry put his foot down, accelerating away from the pack of reporters on his heels.

He was being stupid. The flat wasn’t haunted. He didn’t hear that girl drowning. He was just letting his imagination run away with him, and it had to stop. He would go mad if he didn’t forget all about her, that girl he had never even met.

What had she really been like, the girl who would have been the mother of his grandchild? Would he have liked her? Would she have made Sean a good wife?

And the baby – had it been a boy or a girl? He would never know, unless it was mentioned during the trial. No doubt they had found out the sex of the child when the autopsy was done, but it might not come up in court. Why should it? That had no bearing on the case.

The only person interested was himself. He groaned, his eyes fixed on the road ahead and burning with unshed tears.

He wanted to know, he needed to know. He had always dreamt of grandchildren; of having them climbing on to his lap, warm and comforting, with their talcum smell and their open, innocent faces, calling him Grandpa, giving him hope for the future.

But the child had died with its mother. Murdered by its father.

He drove even faster, half hoping he would crash and end all this misery. How could you live with these thoughts churning round in your head?

But he didn’t crash. He reached his house at dusk and let himself in with his front door key a minute or so before the hounds behind him arrived.