Free Under the Harrow: by Flynn Berry Page B

cold on Friday.
    “Did she tell you she was moving?” I ask.
    “No. To where?”
    “Cornwall. She would have been there by now.”
    “No, that’s not possible. She didn’t give notice.”
    “Who do you think did it?” I ask.
    “I don’t know.” She pauses. “It might not have had anything to do with Rachel. It might have been the location.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It’s secluded. Close to a major motorway. Where was she moving in Cornwall?”
    “St. Ives.”
    “I thought she liked the Lizard.”
    “We’ve been there. She wouldn’t go to a place she’d been if she wanted to get away from someone. Has she ever mentioned a man named Keith Denton to you?”
    “No.”
    “Are you certain?”
    “Yes. Do you really think that’s why she wanted to move? Cornwall isn’t very far, it’s only five hours.”
    “It feels farther,” I say. “And it’s not so easy to find someone. If she changed her name.”
    “I doubt she thought she was in danger. She would have reported it.”
    “Someone was watching her from the ridge by her house.”
    I can tell Helen doesn’t believe me. When I return inside, the priest says, “Did you have any music in mind?”
    “Gymnopédie number one.”
    He says he will locate a piano player.
    “Do people tell you their secrets?” I ask.
    “Sometimes.”
    “If one of your parishioners told you they had done something wrong, what would you do?”
    “I don’t know,” he says. “It would depend on the severity of the transgression.”
     • • • 
    My friends start to arrive at the Hunters on the day before the funeral. This alarms me. I thought they would all stay in Oxford.
    I sit on the landing, out of sight, and listen to them bumping into each other. Despite the circumstances, there is something giddy about the encounters, like it’s a reunion or a wedding.
    “I didn’t know you were coming,” I hear them say, again and again.
    I recognize the voices downstairs, but without any sense of possession. I can’t claim any of them and, hunched on the steps, I’m surprised I ever could.
    Then Martha is coming up the stairs at a run. Before I can say anything, she is on the landing and her arms close around me.
     • • • 
    On the night before her funeral, I can’t sleep. The dread grows worse with every hour and warps the next day into something I won’t survive without rest. I don’t have sleeping pills or tranquilizers, but I do have the bottle of red wine I brought from London for Rachel. There isn’t a corkscrew in the room. I go downstairs, but the heavy wooden doors to the bar are locked. Upstairs, I stare at the bottle of red wine. I use a knife to cut the foil and then consider the cork.
    There is a screwdriver on top of the bathroom cabinet. Someone must have forgotten it after a repair.
    I dig the screwdriver into the cork, pushing it down the neck of the bottle. There is a crash as the cork breaks the seal and wine erupts. Red liquid gushes onto my stomach and drips down my chest.
    I sit with the screwdriver in my hand. The wine tracks down my arms along my veins. The wet plasters my shirt to my stomach. There are red spatters on the walls, and already the room smells rancid. I stay where I am, under the stained walls, as the ringing starts in my ears, and grip the screwdriver.

19
    B EFORE THE FUNERAL STARTS, I scan the church and kill each person in exchange for her. They stand three deep behind the benches and along the walls. I recognize some of them from the library, the pubs, the aqueduct. I notice Lewis and Moretti and the woman, the DCI who walked up the hill with Moretti that day. They sit apart, which at first I think is a tactical police maneuver, but is probably only because they arrived separately and the church filled quickly.
    Our dad has not turned up. As far as I know, the police have not found him yet, but this is the funeral of his eldest daughter. He might learn of it somehow. He might limp up the aisle and settle in