Nobody True (21 page)

DC COATES: “A moment ago you mentioned being wired. Was that appertaining to drugs, Sir?”

OLIVER: “What?”

DC COATES: “Do you take drugs?”

OLIVER: “More idle chat at the agency?”

DS SIMMONS: “We’ve learned that your drug consumption was bad enough to cause problems more than once over the years, especially as far as Mr True was concerned.”

OLIVER: “That was a long time ago. I did marijuana, some coke, nothing really heavy. But now I’m clean. When I said wired, I meant uh, wound up. Wired is just a word we use in the game. You know—in advertising.”

DC COATES: “You ever heard of a Ruby Red, Mr Guinane?”

OLIVERcharacter.: “What are you talking about?”

DC COATES: “Ruby Red. Some of my colleagues call it a Rudolph. You know, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.”

OLIVER: “What’s your point?”

DC COATES: “Well you see, one of the dead giveaways when someone’s doing a lot of coke is that the tip of the nose can get slightly sore. Not bright, not loud. You see a few celebs with it on television when their make-up’s worn off. Nothing too conspicuous, you understand, just a little redness on the tip. Like on the tip of your nose right now.”

OLIVER: “That’s nonsense! I gave all that up years ago.”

ME: Why are you lying, Ollie? What else are you hiding besides having an affair with my wife?

DC COATES: “Really?”

OLIVER: “You may not have noticed, but I lost a good friend this week. I’ve done some weeping, believe it or not.”

DS SIMMONS: “Why were you arguing with James True last Sunday night?”

OLIVER: “Oh, back to that again, is it? It was trivial, a little difference of opinion between friends. Jim thought I was on cocaine again.”

DC COATES: “Ah, so you are still on drugs.”

OLIVER: “I didn’t say that. I’ve admitted nothing. But look, do you seriously believe I killed my best friend and business colleague? I thought he was supposed to be the victim of a serial killer?”

DS SIMMONS: “It could easily have been set up to appear that way. A copycat murder. If someone wanted another person out of the way without becoming an obvious suspect, why not hide the motive among a series of same-such murders, let the serial killer take the blame. Unfortunately for the guilty party, Mr True’s death was not quite the same as in the previous killings. Not quite the same modus operandi, you see.”

OLIVER: “I don’t understand.”

DS SIMMONS: “In the first three cases, all the victims were dead some time before their bodies were mutilated. Although there was a certain amount of blood spilt because of the mutilations, it hadn’t travelled far. Their blood didn’t gush, for want of a better word. Whereas, in James True’s case the mutilation took place either immediately after death, or, more likely, just before, as far as we can tell. That’s why there was more blood spillage than with the previous three—his heart was still pumping it through the veins and arteries. It hadn’t begun to coagulate.”

OLIVER: “So presumably the killer would also be covered in blood.”

DC COATES: “You… I mean, the guilty party would have had plenty of time to clean himself. All night, in fact. And of course, he could have been wearing covering clothes—a plastic mac, gloves, things that could easily be hidden or thrown away afterwards.”

OLIVER: “Look, are you charging me with murder? If so, I’m saying nothing more without the presence of my solicitor.”

DS SIMMONS: “We’re not charging you with anything, Mr Guinane. At least, not for the time being. But we will be questioning you again in the next day or so, probably at New Scotland Yard, so if you feel you will need a solicitor, then I suggest you contact one as soon as possible.”

OLIVER: “This is preposterous! It’s completely insane!”

DS SIMMONS: “Just make sure you’re available to us, Sir. That’s all for now.”

Finding Oliver and Andrea together in a clinch had devastated me, left me weak (and there was worse to come); now, hearing Oliver more or less accused of my murder left me completely stunned. It wasn’t possible! Not Ollie. Not my best friend. No! Couldn’t be right! Yet… he’d betrayed me with Andrea. There was I, a few days cold, and he was passionately kissing my wife in my own home. How long had their affair been going on? A couple of weeks, a few months—a year? I had no idea, hadn’t noticed any signs. Andrea wouldn’t do this to me. Would she? She’d loved Oliver before me, so maybe the flame had never truly died. Oh dear God, how much more did I have to take? Had she ever been true to me?

I was literally drooping, my knees bent, shoulders hunched; I would have collapsed had I carried the weight of my physical form. I felt drained, my energy dissipated. But the two detectives were leaving and I wanted to hear more from them. I wanted to hear what they had to say to each other when they were out of earshot of the suspect. I followed them from the house, walking close behind as they made their way to their car parked further down the road.

“How did you know about the drugs?” I heard Simmons ask.

“The old Ruby,” Coates replied. His black hair was close-cropped. His frame was stocky and he looked tough, but not quite as hard as his stone-faced companion.

“Come on, Danny. A Ruby? We both know that’s rubbish.” Simmons, his beaky nose as sharp as a hatchet, was obviously impatient with his lower-ranking officer.

“Inside info,” Coates told him. “But I couldn’t let Guinane know about that.”

“You’ve been to the advertising agency?”

“You could say.”

“Without me? We’re supposed to be a team. Shit, we’re supposed to be part of a team.”

“I’ve got a connection, Nick.”

“Don’t be playing silly buggers with me. What about this business between Guinane and True’s wife? Some more inside gossip?”

“Well I wouldn’t call it gossip.” They had reached their car and Coates was fumbling inside a trouser pocket for the key. He was grinning across the roof of the Vauxhall at Simmons.

“Okay, that’s enough, Danny.” Simmons was not at all amused. “You got me to come here after the funeral to talk to Guinane and we’ve had to hang around for hours. I’m not fucking about now—what’s going on?”

“Well it turns out that True’s wife used to be Guinane’s girlfriend before she married True.”

“Yeah, we know that. So?”

“My source tells me the affair took off again shortly after the marriage. And it’s still going on.”

“Christ. Another reason for Guinane to resent his business partner.”

“Right. That and the merger dispute. And, of course, we know that True’s murder didn’t follow the same pattern as the others.”

“What, the weird stuff the first three victims got up to before they were topped?”

“That’s it. Two of ‘em—the men—visited prostitutes before they died, right? Something that apparently was 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.