away for a while. . you know that.’
‘Yes, darling. . but. . but. .’ she pressed the heel of her sports shoe into the lawn causing a deep indentation. ‘Look at that. . what my heel has done. . the garden is waterlogged. . you are drowning the garden.’
‘You can’t drown a plant.’ Malpass continued to spray the shrubbery. ‘They have a kind of shut off valve which activates when they have had sufficient to drink. . but I want the garden to be well-watered. . I don’t like fretting about the garden when I am away, or we are on holiday. It spoils everything for me.’
‘Yes, darling. . but even so. . enough is enough, and there’s other things to be done.’
‘Perhaps, but I still have the front garden to water.’
‘The front. .’ She rested her hand on his forearm. ‘What will the neighbours think when they see you watering the garden in this sort of weather? It rained last night and just look at these rain clouds approaching.’
Ronald Malpass glanced to his right and saw mountainous grey clouds menacing in the east. ‘No hosepipe ban yet. . so why shouldn’t a fella care for his plants. . and since when have I been worried about the opinion of the neighbours?’
‘But,’ she protested, ‘as I said. . still things to do. . we need to fill the car with petrol for one thing.’
‘Oh. . yes, all right. .’ He laid the hosepipe on the ground. ‘Confess I had forgotten that. .’
‘Well, we won’t get far on an empty tank.’ She smiled.
‘Certainly won’t.’
‘I’ll make us some coffee. . we both need a break.’
‘Yes. .’ Ronald Malpass smiled at his wife. ‘Yes,’ he said again as their eyes met. ‘Yes. Coffee. A coffee with you would be good. Very, very good. . just once more before we set off.’
Sylvia Malpass returned to the house with a spring in her step; her husband by contrast, walked with a powerful determined heavy footfall across the sodden lawn to where the hose was attached to a tap set in the wall. He turned the tap off, screwing it down firmly, and then entered the house, wiping his feet on the mat as he did so.
Some moments later, Ronald and Sylvia Malpass sat in identical armchairs facing each other in a living room, which had been tidied to perfection, and the air in which was heavy with the smell of furniture polish and freshener. They each sipped coffees from cups which, like the armchairs, were identical.
‘It tastes exquisite,’ Ronald Malpass commented. ‘You know that I often say that the first cup of coffee in the morning is the most enjoyable cup of the whole day. . the most enjoyable by far, but there is something refreshing about this cup of coffee. It is special somehow.’
‘I know what you mean, darling. I thought that the garden had a certain freshness about its fragrance as I walked out there just now. . something which I hadn’t noticed before.’
‘That is probably because I had watered it, doing that always releases the scents. .’
‘Yes, but even allowing for that. . there was a definite something other. . something now in the air.’
‘Perhaps.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Perhaps, but it’s possible because it is often like that before you go on a journey. . you seem to have a heightened sense of awareness of your surroundings. It’s a bit like saying goodbye to a house just before you shut the door behind you for the last time.’
‘My mother used to do that.’ Sylvia Malpass looked upwards as if recollecting memories. ‘I never have. . I dare say I was always looking forward. My old dad, he used to say that she must be soft in the head to talk to empty houses, but he was a hard case. I take more after him than her. . and I could never take to the other thing she always had us do — which was that before we left the house as a family, even if it was only for the day, we would sit and pause for a minute or two, and I mean just for sixty or one hundred and twenty seconds or some time in between, to collect ourselves as a family before going out. Even if there was a taxi waiting outside with the meter ticking, down we would sit. . in silence. . then we could leave the house as a family.’
Ronald Malpass pursed his lips. ‘You know, I quite like that. . and you never told me that. . not in all these years. .’
‘I didn’t, did I. . I just remembered it now for some reason. Probably because you never did that, paused before leaving the house, and I never wanted to do it anyway. I just left it behind in my childhood along with the dolls and tea sets.’
‘But as I said. . I quite like the sound of it. I could quite take to the practice.’
‘Well, we can do it today if you wish. Especially before this journey, when we don’t know where we are going.’
‘Yes. . just getting away from here. . away from Hutton Cranswick and the Vale of York altogether.’
‘How long do you think we have got?’
‘Time yet.’
‘But they’re coming?’
‘Oh yes. . yes. . they’re coming. So long as we are well away by then. That is the main thing.’
‘Yes. It’s all done upstairs. All neat and shipshape and Bristol fashion. . just as my Master commanded.’
‘My Master. .’ Malpass smiled and drank the last of his coffee. ‘You haven’t called me that for a long, long while.’
‘My Master and Commander. I haven’t, have I?’
‘Yes, that was it. . My Master and Commander.’
‘I just stopped for some reason. . I dare say that our marriage moved on as marriages tend to do. . a continuously evolving process.’
‘Dare say. . When did you first use it? Can you recall?’
‘Oh. . that would be in Ireland. . I am sure it was during the Irish venture.’
‘That was fun. You were like a coyote.’
‘A coyote. . a wild dog. .’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘In the mid west of the USA, so I once read, the coyotes who live outside small towns send a bitch on heat into the town. . and dogs just cannot resist a bitch on heat, and those dogs who are not tethered or kept in doors will form a pack and follow the coyote. . these are domesticated dogs, people’s pets, and the bitch leads the pack of pet dogs out of the town where the other pack, the coyotes, are waiting. Carnage.’
‘Wow. . I’d like to see that!’
‘So would I. . What I’d give to be a bird in a tree looking down on that.’
‘Yes. . not just the bloodletting, but the anguish of the pet owners. . all that guilt for not keeping their family pet safe. But we. . I didn’t attract a pack, just one at a time. Remember we called it the Black Widow game.’
‘Yes. That was it.’
‘The one with the black wig, and into the bar. . sitting alone. . grief stricken young widow. . just lost her husband. . allowed myself to get chatted up, and eventually asked if he knew a place where we could go because I have my needs. . but somewhere close. . they all did and it was guaranteed to be isolated. . and you followed us. . dressed in black with a black painted pickaxe handle. You know that’s where we learned the value of changing the MO.’
‘Yes. . once semi-conscious from the pickaxe handle, we did the business. . one got drain cleaning fluid down his throat. . we left him choking his life away. . that was a bit noisy. . we were isolated enough. . but I was worried by the racket he made. . learned the value of silence there.’
‘Yes. The old learning curve was steep in those days.’
‘Another had a plastic bag pulled over his head; the third had his throat cut; the fourth had a knife shoved into his chest. . picked up after ourselves. . left nothing behind. . no prints. . nothing, and the glass you drank from in the bar would have been well washed and dried by the time each body was found.’
‘Four of them. . Dublin, across to Galway, then back via Cork and Waterford. . well, not those places but little towns just outside them.’
‘Never pulled that stunt in the UK.’
‘Didn’t, did we. . that’s because we hit on the idea of targeting alcoholics. . but. . Ireland. .’ Malpass smiled at the memory. ‘That was a pleasant little jaunt indeed. Most enjoyable. And that was a pleasant and enjoyable cup of coffee.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll go and fill up the car. . check the oil.’
‘And I’ll wash up. . leave everything just so.’
‘Yes. .’ Ronald Malpass glanced at this watch. ‘Time is perhaps beginning to press a little. . we must not
