totally out of character for them. And we got that from close friends of both. We only found out that they had used brasses when we retraced their movements before death.”
“A lot of people have dark secrets that nobody else knows about.”
“Sure. We can’t be certain that neither one had done it before. But both were successful, good-looking guys, professionals, one an insurance broker, the other a lawyer. The first one had a gorgeous-looking wife, remember?”
Simmons nodded as he rested an arm on the car’s rooftop.
“Would you wander if you had someone as stunning as her to come home to?”
“Probably not. But y’know, the old adage—a bit of rough now and again. Change is the biggest aphrodisiac.”
“Okay. Could happen. But what about the second guy?”
“Again, maybe something different.”
“Going off with a rent boy when the guy wasn’t even gay?”
“As I said, dark secrets.”
“Yeah, but his partner—another great looker, by the way—told us there was nothing bent about her live-in boyfriend. Quite the opposite, as it happens. According to his friends he’d been quite a stud man and only ever looked at women. A bit homophobic, too—and don’t tell me that’s a sign of latent homosexuality because we both know that’s crap.”
“All right, I know all that. As you say, out of character. But we’ve both been in the business long enough to know people can do some surprising things.”
“Okay. So then there’s the third victim, the woman.”
“Oh yeah. Now that was a bit weird.”
“Weird? It was fucking ridiculous. She was an attractive thirty-year-old, married to a wealthy banker, fashionably dressed and, by all accounts, bright and socially gracious. Why the fuck would she suddenly prostitute herself? We found witnesses who said she’d been making a nuisance of herself around Shepherd Market, near where her body was eventually dumped. Shit, the local brasses were complaining because she was trespassing on their turf.”
“I know. Makes no sense at all.”
“Y’think?” Coates raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.
“Well, they all engaged in some bizarre activities, things that might have put them in danger.”
“All except James True.”
“Yup, doesn’t follow the pattern. He was working for his agency the whole weekend and, as far as we know, he never left the hotel, nor did anything exceptional. And no hookers of either sex went up to his suite—again, as far as we know.”
“The only thing that fits the pattern was that he was youngish, good-looking and successful, and the same kinds of murder weapon were used, but in a different order of usage. The point, though, is that his business partner, this Oliver Guinane guy, didn’t know about that, nor the peculiar activities of the previous three victims. No one did, we kept it to ourselves.”
“SIO’s orders. Partly because we didn’t want the closest relatives to suffer more over the publicity it would have caused, but mainly because we want to keep the similarities to ourselves for now.”
“Right. The public wasn’t made aware through the media because we put a block on it. Guinane certainly wouldn’t have known. I think that’s where he slipped up, not that he could have done anything about it, anyway.”
“Because of the theory that the killer either blackmailed or threatened the victims to commit those out-of- character acts. Maybe said he’d kill the victim’s family.”
“Exactly.”
“But he would have had to know about the murder weapons.”
“So he found out. We can’t keep everything out of the public domain. Loose talk at the Yard got out, spread elsewhere. He could even have picked the info up in a pub. Guinane’s a writer, who’s to say he doesn’t mix with journos? You know how they gab after a couple of drinks.”
Simmons shook his head doubtfully. “I dunno, Dan. You’re stretching it a bit. Anyway if he knew about the weapons, why wasn’t he aware of which one was used first?”
“Trust me on this,” Coates said, grinning at his colleague. “Even reporters have a conscience. Maybe they don’t want it to get out. At least not yet. They’re obeying our rules on that.”
“We’ve still got no strong evidence against Guinane. Come on, it’s bloody cold out here. Let’s get in the car and on the way back you can tell me more about your source.”
Coates chuckled as he opened the car door and ducked inside. “You’ll believe me when I do,” I heard him say.
They were both slamming doors shut before anything else was said. They drove off leaving me standing by the kerbside, with nothing to do but stare after them and wonder.
24
Then, for me, there came a time of wandering. I was depressed, confused, afraid—and I felt completely helpless. The police suspected Oliver of my murder, the plan for it to appear as the work of a mad serial killer apparently not wholly successful. I had thought he was my friend, now I knew he had betrayed me. Betrayed me with my wife. How bad could it get? (Funny how often, when you ask yourself that question, things invariably manage to get worse; this was no exception.) I was totally alone, seemingly abandoned by God himself. My body was dead, yet I didn’t seem to be. No, I didn’t even think I was a ghost, because aren’t ghosts supposed to see other ghosts? I’d caught weird and fleeting glimpses of things that might once have been living beings (I remembered the almost limpid but familiar face that had lingered at a distance twice now, once when I was in my teens, and then at my funeral) but all were non-communicative and only temporary. So what was my destiny? To walk the earth for all eternity, a kind of spirit nomad that had no purpose? Maybe this was Hell.
I didn’t return to the house that afternoon. I didn’t want to look at Andrea. I just couldn’t. As much as I hungered to be with Prim, I wanted to be as far away from my unfaithful wife as possible. Love should be an honest thing, but how often is it? I wanted to scream with rage, howl in despair, but what would be the point? No one would hear, no one would care.
I drifted away from my home.
Ask yourself how you’d feel if you became invisible. What fun, right? The places you could go, the people you could spy on. And imagine you weren’t even solid anymore, that nothing could touch or harm you. A lot more fun, yeah?
Well, you’d be wrong. Doesn’t work that way, you see. At least, not if you’re traumatized like I was. In my own view, I was the walking dead on a journey of discovery and disillusionment, the main discoveries so far being that in my lifetime I’d been betrayed by my mother (How could she have hidden my father’s letters from me? How could she rip up the photograph of her only son with such loathing in her eyes, just because I’d had the audacity to die on her and, to make it worse, in the most public of ways?); by my own father who, despite those unread letters, had run out on me when I was only a child; betrayed by my best friend and business partner, and by the woman I’d loved all these years and who had borne my daughter. People I’d loved and respected during my time on earth (except for my father, for whom I had no feelings whatsoever) had deceived me.
With that heavy load dragging on me, I made my lonely way back to the city.
I visited places: the cinema, theatre, bars and hotels, family homes, the zoo (where tigers growled as I went by and monkeys yattered; most animals ignored me as I passed their cages and pens, only a few showing an awareness of me, watching suspiciously as though my presence disturbed them). I became an observer of life, of people, singling out particular individuals who looked interesting, sharing their day or night’s routine with them.
I sat at the side of theatre stages and watched great actors perform, even stood among the back chorus line of one musical production and sang along with them; I strolled through parks and took bus rides; I watched children in playgrounds and classrooms, and thought of Primrose, yearning for her, desperately wanting to see her again, to hold her, kiss her chubby little cheek, to whisper how much I loved and missed her… But I resisted the urge to return home, still consumed with anger and dismay because of Andrea’s adultery and Oliver’s treachery, telling
