Chapter 33
EDINBURGH
The Reader walked into the bookshop, careful not to look up at the camera. Karen Blair was behind the counter. A mousey woman who was always talking about how she needed to lose some weight, all the while snacking on a chocolate bar. He had listened to her rabbiting away while he waited for Sylvia.
He made sure he put his red-coloured eyeglasses on when he wasn’t wearing sunglasses. He slipped them out and put them on after he closed the door behind him. Retinal dysfunction he had told Sylvia the first time she saw him with them on.
‘Just like Bono,’ Karen said, smiling and nodding at his glasses. ‘You haven’t always worn them, have you?’
‘I have to when it gets sunny outside. My retinas can’t take the brightness. It’s a level of blindness.’ He kept a straight face, wiping the smile off hers.
‘I’m sorry, Peter. I didn’t know it was so serious.’
He waved her apology away and then smiled.
It was important to win her over now. ‘No need for an apology. I have to wear a different tint in the winter. Maybe that’s why you’ve never seen me with the red ones on.
’ It was all horseshit, but this woman looked like she couldn’t tie her own shoelaces without the aid of a YouTube video.
‘If you’re looking for Sylvia, then she isn’t going to be in today. She said she was going to have a few days off and asked me to step in. In fact… weren’t you supposed to be with her?’
‘That’s why I’m here. Sylvia needs your help.
She wants you to come round to her house tonight for dinner, but she’s making some Italian dish, and she’s not confident it will come out right.
She knows you’re a good cook. Would you mind coming round and helping her?
You can close the shop early, she says.’
Karen smiled, both at the thought of getting wired into some Italian food and going somewhere else for dinner rather than back to her dull house.
‘I’d love that.’ She smiled at him, and he thought she was attracted to him. If he tried hard enough, he knew he could sleep with her, but that wasn’t the job at hand. Besides, she wasn’t his type.
Nancy was his type. His sweet, beautiful Nancy.
‘We can close up now.’
‘Oh, right.’
Karen busied about, doing whatever it was she had to do to prepare the shop for closing, then they were ready to go. The Reader made sure to keep his hat on.
‘Oh, one thing I have to pick up for her,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘A book.’ He walked over to one of the shelves and plucked one from the shelf. ‘One of her favourites,’ he said, smiling.
Five minutes later, they were outside and in his car.
‘Before we go to Sylvia’s, I was wondering if you would mind coming with me?
’ He pointed to the clock on the dashboard.
‘Sylvia called me before I came into the shop and said she had popped out for something for dessert, so she isn’t home just now. We have time. If you wouldn’t mind.’
He looked round at the bunch of flowers on the back seat. Karen followed his gaze and her eyes went wide. ‘They’re beautiful. Sylvia’s going to be so pleased.’
‘Oh, they’re not for Sylvia.’
‘Oh? Who are they for?’ There were two bright spots on her cheeks.
The Reader forced himself to smile. The fat old bitch thought they were for her. That he was going to cheat on his and Sylvia’s fictitious relationship.
‘I’d like to put them on my sister’s grave. She died a year ago today.’ The lie came easily. He’d had ample practice now, and it was a line he’d rehearsed so much, he could deliver it in his sleep. ‘You don’t mind coming with me, do you?’
Ask it in a way that they find awkward to say no to.
‘Oh. No, that’s fine. Sorry to hear about your sister.’
‘Thank you, Karen. This means a lot to me. I’ve been dreading this first anniversary all week. I was hesitant to ask Sylvia.’ He looked over at Karen. ‘But I look on you as a friend. Somebody I can trust.’
‘That’s so sweet,’ Karen said.
They chatted as he drove down to the cemetery.
Inside, he followed the track round to the entrance to the old part.
The grass and weeds were taking over, growing tall, which was good camouflage.
This made him think of the song ‘Camouflage’ by Stan Ridgway.
Just another random thought that popped into The Reader’s head.
‘Here we are,’ he said, still singing the song in his head. An earworm, he thought. Fucking things. He’d need to start singing the Postman Pat theme to get rid of it.
They got out into the shade provided by the tall trees in the cemetery. He reached in and grabbed the flowers from the back seat.
‘What was her name?’
The question caught The Reader off guard for a moment. He should have had one prepared, but didn’t. Had Sylvia asked? No, he didn’t think so. She was too self-absorbed.
‘Caroline.’ He made it sound real, even though it had just come off the top of his head.
‘Was she young? Like you?’ Karen asked as they walked under the archway.
‘Karen, that’s very kind. I’m not young, and neither was Caroline. I suppose she was what one might say, middle-aged. Just along here.’
They walked past the large gravestone that had hidden Ivy Jack all these years, and the others that held some surprises of their own.
‘It’s a disgrace,’ Karen said, and for a moment he thought she was talking about his little adventures in here.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said.
‘This.’ She swept an arm around. ‘The council pushing all the gravestones over. It makes the place feel disrespected. Why not repair them?’
Why not indeed? At least it helped hide his crimes. For the most part. ‘It’s shocking,’ he said.
‘Here we are.’
‘Who’s this?’ Karen said as The Reader gently placed the flowers onto the ground in front of the gravestone. She looked at him.
‘I don’t have a sister called Caroline,’ he said. Then he turned to look at her. ‘In fact, I don’t even have a sister.’
There was no smile on her face now as she realised she had come into a cemetery with this man and nobody knew where she was. Her phone was in her bag, which she’d left in the car.
‘What… what’s going on?’ she asked.
He smiled at her. ‘Have a look. Nancy Simpson. You remember the name, don’t you?’
‘Nancy Simpson,’ Karen said out loud, rolling her eyes up and to the side, as if the answer lay in the ivy bushes that had climbed the boundary wall. ‘Nancy…’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s a name that should be etched into your mind like it was written with indelible ink. Nancy Simpson. The woman who I buried on the day we were to get married.’
Her eyes went wide. She fucking well knew. She was just stalling for time. The fat bitch knew as soon as she’d seen the name chipped into the granite. Then she turned and ran.
The Reader was expecting it and bolted after her. Karen made it ten feet before a strong hand grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back, half dragging her, literally kicking and screaming.
He bunched his fingers in her hair and made her look at the names. ‘My Nancy,’ he said, then let her hair go, then punched her hard in the face, breaking her nose, then punched her on the jaw, knocking her sideways.
Karen fell in a heap and it took him a few minutes to get her into exactly the correct position. He took the paperback from his pocket and laid it on her chest before going round to the back of the tall gravestone that was a few spaces along from Nancy’s.
This one was bigger than the one Sylvia was under so it took extra work. But the adrenaline was coursing fast through his veins now, so pushing the heavy gravestone was easy.
It fell with a sickening thud onto Karen, and all moaning ended.
He was sweating now, his breath coming in rasps, and he knew he would start shaking when the adrenaline was gone. He hurried back to his car, sweating and out of breath.
He saw the handbag still sitting on the passenger seat. Then he looked in the back of the car and saw Nancy sitting there. He smiled. ‘Hello, sweetheart.’
‘Hello, my love.’
‘I did it. I took care of the fat one.’
‘Thank you.’ She smiled at him.
‘You know I love you, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
He looked at her beautiful face, her shining eyes, the gorgeous lips. Then the blood started to seep out of her mouth and her eyes went wide. He closed his eyes for a second and when he opened them again, her face was pure once more.
‘You’ll be waiting for me, won’t you, my love?’ he asked her.
‘Of course I will. I’m waiting now.’ She smiled that smile of hers but as he stared at her, she started to fade again. ‘We’ll talk again soon, my darling…’ she said, then she was gone.
He started the car and drove out of the cemetery. He still had a lot of work to do.