‘You wouldn’t dare. Your family would love it, the scandal’
‘Try me,’ said Gaskell and blew up another condom.
‘Plastic freak.’
‘Bull dyke.’
Sally’s eyes narrowed. She was beginning to think he meant what he said about divorce and if Gaskell divorced her in England what sort of alimony would she get? Very little. There were no children and she had the idea that British courts were mean in matters of money. So was Gaskell and there was his family too. Rich and mean. She sat and eyed him.
‘Where’s your nail varnish?’ Gaskell asked when he had finished and twelve contraceptives cluttered the cabin.
‘Drop dead,’ said Sally and went out on deck to think. She stared down at the dark water and thought about rats and death and being poor again and liberated. The rat paradigm. The world was a rotten place. People were objects to be used and discarded. It was Gaskell’s own philosophy and now he was discarding her. And one slip on this oily deck could solve her problems. All that had to happen was for Gaskell to slip and drown and she would be free and rich and no one would ever know. An accident. Natural death. But Gaskell could swim and there had to be no mistakes. Try it once and fail and she wouldn’t be able to try again. He would be on his guard. It had to be certain and it had to be natural.
Gaskell came out on deck with the contraceptives. He had tied them together and painted on each one a single letter with nail varnish so that the whole read HELP SOS HELP. He climbed up on the cabin roof and launched them into the air. They floated up for a moment, were caught in the light breeze and sagged sideways down on to the water. Gaskell pulled them in on the string and tried again. Once again they floated down on to the water.
‘I’ll wait until there’s some more wind,’ he said, and tied the string to the rail where they bobbed gently. Then he went into the cabin and lay on the bunk.
‘What are you going to do now?’ Sally asked.
‘Sleep. Wake me when there’s a wind.’ He took off his glasses and pulled a blanket over him.
Outside Sally sat on a locker and thought about drowning in bed.
‘Mr Gosdyke,’ said Inspector Flint, ‘you and I have had dealings for a good many years now and I’m prepared to be frank with you. I don’t know.’
‘But you’ve charged him with murder.’ said Mr Gosdyke.
‘He’ll come up for remand on Monday. In the meantime I am going on questioning him.’
‘But surely the fact that he admits burying a life-size doll…’
‘Dressed in his wife’s clothes, Gosdyke. In his wife’s clothes. Don’t forget that.’
‘It still seems insufficient to me. Can you be absolutely sure that a murder has been committed?’
‘Three people disappear off the face of the earth without a trace. They leave behind them two cars, a house littered with unwashed glasses and the leftovers of a party…you should see that house…a bathroom and landing covered will blood…’
‘They could have gone in someone else’s car.’
They could have but they didn’t. Dr Pringsheim didn’t like being driven by anyone else. We know that from his colleagues at the Department of Biochemistry. He had a rooted objection to British drivers. Don’t ask me why but be had.’
‘Trains? Buses? Planes?’
‘Checked, rechecked and checked again. No one answering to their description used any form of public or private transport out of town. And if you think they went on a bicycle
