Nobody True (39 page)

When the weeping had stopped and my eyes were dried, a realization occurred to me. I had “remembered” through Moker the killing of four people. Four people. I hadn’t been among them. Not that I needed it, but this was final proof that Oliver Guinane was my murderer. Bitter resentment and insanity were Moker’s excuse, but what was Guinane’s? Envy and greed? Yeah, envy and greed. He envied me my wife—and child. He wanted to make a huge pile of money out of something I didn’t support. Pretty basic, really.

But why he had chopped off my genitals was a mystery.

I looked out the side window up at the gtp sign, our agency’s logo, neon-lit over the glass front doors. Guinane True Presswell. That name was going to vanish when the so-called “merger” went through. Some accounts might move, but many of our existing clients would be content to come under the wing of such an internationally successful advertising agency as Blake & Turnbrow. Oh, a certain amount of new presentations would have to take place, a lot of client lunches would have to be undertaken, as well as corporate days out, but no doubt the freshness and glamour of it all would win most reluctant clients over. It was the nature of the game.

Although these thoughts ran through my mind now that Moker’s memories mercifully appeared to be spent, they were trivial, totally unimportant as, in the grand scheme of things, all such matters are. At that moment, I focused on one thing alone.

Clumsily pushing down the handle, I opened the car door and lumbered out. With effort, I peered up at the building. The top office lights were on, the low stone balustrade of the mock balcony on the fifth floor silhouetted by them. Sydney’s office, and next door, the one I shared with Guinane. And Guinane’s silver BMW was parked right outside our building, just behind Sydney’s Merc.

It took me several attempts to get my finger—Moker’s finger—to press the lift button for the fifth floor. For some reason, conducting small tasks with somebody else’s body proved more difficult than making the bigger moves—it hadn’t been easy to pick up the killer’s deadly knitting needle from the floor in my home and slide it into one of the raincoat’s deep pockets, as it hadn’t been easy buttoning the dead woman’s jacket earlier that night. Walking, getting in and out of cars, even driving was relatively easy compared to opening doors and pressing lift buttons.

Fortunately, the plate-glass doors of the agency were unlocked, so one side only needed a shove for me to gain access.

The street outside, dampened by a light drizzle, was deserted, which was unsurprising at this late or early hour, whichever way you cared to look at it. My feeling, and it was only a guess, was that it was around one or two o’clock in the morning. The small lift came, its door slid open. Feeling weaker by the moment, I shuffled inside, awkwardly thumped the fifth-floor button and leaned back against the rear wall, hands resting on the waist-high interior steel rail, allowing them to take some of my weight. I wasn’t sure how long I could use this body before its system finally ran down completely, but the woman’s corpse earlier had got me from Bayswater to Paddington, so I should have some time left. Of course, I hadn’t walked from my house to the agency in the centre of London, but the sheer effort of concentrating on driving, hindered by the constant sudden replays of Moker’s memories, had somehow wearied me, let alone the body I had borrowed. My knees were not far from buckling and my upper body felt too heavy, as if I were carrying weights in the raincoat’s pockets. It was even hard to keep my head up; the neck felt too decrepit to bear such a load. Had to cope though, had to use whatever was left to carry out my little task.

The lift came to a halt, although I didn’t feel it and only realized I was on the fifth floor when the doors slid open. The mini-reception area (the main one was on the ground floor) and corridor were unlit, only a faint glow radiating from an office further along. Walking woodenly from the small lift, I waited in the reception area for a while, listening for any sounds, anything at all. The three partners’ office suite was at the far end of the corridor and nobody there would have heard the lift arriving. At least, I didn’t think so, but at this time of night (or morning) the rest of the building was silent, so the sound might have travelled. I hoped it hadn’t: it was important to catch Guinane by surprise. I’d use the knitting needle to kill him.

So quiet. So very quiet. I’d worked enough late nights in my time to be used to the loneliness that comes to offices when most employees have packed up and gone home for the night, switching off lights and leaving behind a sepulchral kind of quietness. You might get a lot more work done without the usual interruptions, but eventually the eeriness starts to get to you and you wonder if you’re the only person left on the planet. That’s when you give someone a call—wife, girlfriend, business associate, it doesn’t matter who, just so that you hear another voice.

On this night, the agency was filled with that quiet eeriness—more so than ever, you might say—but who could I call? What would I say? It’s me, babe, but not as you know me. If only I’d had a proper mouth to say the words. Andrea didn’t need to be freaked out anymore tonight. Besides, I didn’t regard her as my wife now; he’d destroyed that. And it seemed I could no longer regard Prim as my daughter either. That was the really hard part.

I shuffled onwards, occasionally reaching out a hand to the wall to steady myself, knocking askew one of the several framed advertising awards the agency had won, most by Guinane and me, a couple by one of our talented junior art director/copywriter teams. Our Walk of Vanity, we called it, but all the awards seemed absolutely worthless to me now. Although I didn’t need to breathe air anymore, I was conscious of the involuntary snuffling sounds coming from the cavity of Moker’s face, half-raspy, half-sibilant, and I did my best to control them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a controllable thing and I could only hope the sound was loud to me alone.

Halfway down the corridor, the murmur of voices came to me. I stopped to listen.

Was it only one voice I could hear? I took a few more steps, Moker’s grubby sneakers scuffing the carpet. It sounded like one voice, a kind of monotonous low-key drone that now and again was interrupted by…? A groan? Somebody groaning? Had Guinane hurt Sydney Presswell? Was Sydney next on his hit list? With both partners gone, Guinane stood to make a lot more money and, if he had it in him to murder me, then Sydney would be no problem.

I edged further along the corridor, this time forcing myself not to hurry, afraid I’d be heard and so lose the element of surprise, which I would need if I were to get close enough to Guinane to push the needle into his chest. It’s funny how in zombie movies, the zombie is always endowed with superhuman strength, whereas in reality (if we can talk reality here) the undead’s muscles and sinews would have atrophied and lost most of their power. In Moker’s debilitated—debilitated by death—body, I was weak and becoming weaker by the moment. Soon, the body would collapse—just as earlier, in the police station, the woman had finally expired—and would be useless to me. I could not afford to let Guinane see me coming; I had to strike before he had a chance to defend himself. Carefully, I placed one tool in front of the other, waited a beat, did the same thing again, making my way down the carpeted corridor a snail’s pace, keeping as quiet as I possibly could.

The voice—and the groans—became louder as I approached the end offices. Soon I was able to make out the words being spoken.

42

Sydney Presswell’s office was empty, although the lights were on. As Moker, I was standing at the darkened corridor’s junction with another, shorter, corridor, and opposite, but a little to the right, was the open doorway into Sydney’s place of work, where company files and records were kept and where the agency’s financial accounts were balanced so diligently. It wasn’t unusual for our bookkeeper to be working late, although I could never quite understand his fascination for figures and balance sheets; mercifully I didn’t have to, nor did Guinane—Sydney relieved us of such stultifying but essential tedium and we were glad to let him. Oh yeah, that’s how stupid we both were.

The voices came from the large office next door, to the left of the junction, which Guinane and I, as copywriter and art director, shared so that we could work on ideas together. The door to this was ajar so I couldn’t see much of the interior, the opening no more than a foot or so wide. Although the angle also meant that I could not easily be seen, I stepped back and pressed against the corridor’s wall so that the corner of the junction concealed me completely. Trying to keep those guttural noises I was making down to a minimum, I listened.

“… pity you caught me searching through your desk when you showed up tonight, Oliver. Pity for you, that is, because as far as I’m concerned, it suits my plans very well. Jim was always a stumbling block, but you… well, you were just a bloody nuisance.”

A low murmuring then, almost a grumble. From Guinane? Had to be.

Then Sydney once more: “I must have hit you a little too hard—you’ve been out of it for some time. I did want to explain a few things to you before…” His voice trailed off, leaving an implication hanging in the air.

I peered round the corner of the corridor in an attempt to see more through the partially open doorway and ducked back swiftly as a figure passed across the gap. It was Sydney, pacing the floor, something long and silvery gripped in one hand, its upper length resting in the open palm of his other hand. With my back braced against the corridor wall, I waited and tried to muffle the snuffling noise that came from the aperture of Moker’s face with my hands. Although I’d only caught a brief glimpse, I suddenly realized what the silvery thing he had been brandishing was; a three-foot long unmarked steel rule, the one I used for cutting card and paper. One side was flat, blunted, while the other was slightly angled to provide a keen cutting edge for a Stanley knife blade or scalpel. Although flat at each end of its length, it resembled—and I’m sure could be used as—a sabre or heavy sword. Whatever, I was always aware it could be a lethal weapon in the wrong hands.

“You know what I was looking for, Oliver?”

Despite the circumstances, Sydney’s voice was modulated, restrained, the kind of monotonous tone that used to make my eyelids heavy the moment the first balance sheet figures were mentioned.

Only a mumble came from Guinane.

“I was looking for more letters,” Sydney went on. “Those very private letters Jim’s wife has been sending you over the years. I discovered the first one a long, long time ago and have kept tabs on them ever since. Rather a passionate lady, Andrea, although I could have done without the guilt trip she laid on you both. Tried to stop your affair many times, didn’t she? Only you wouldn’t let go. But why keep those letters in your locked drawer, Oliver? Oh, by the way, I have extra keys to every drawer, cupboard and filing cabinet in the place. Very handy for my kind of snooping. But why, Oliver, why keep the letters in the office? Tell you what I think. I think you got some kind of kick reading them while your friend and partner sat opposite you without a clue. Wasn’t that the reason? Yes, I really do believe so.”

“Bastard!”

At least this was coherent, but Guinane failed to follow up with anything else.

“You see, all those late nights I put in were not just spent doctoring the agency’s accounts. No, I was spying on you and Jim too. I can’t tell you how much I despised your cosy relationship. I was always the outsider, the boring bean counter, while you and he were the agency, you were the creative team that brought in all the suckers. I’ve always been in a weak position, which is why I had to watch you both constantly, make sure you weren’t conspiring against me.”

I almost banged the wall behind me with the heel of my fist. What was he on about? The company was called gtp, for Christ’s sake, Guinane True Presswell—he was always an equal partner. We never conspired against him, he was an important part of the team, the shrewd one that kept our feet on the ground, who dealt… with… all… the… agency’s financial affairs… The words slowed down in my mind. Apart from searching our desks and, no doubt, our files too, what else was Sydney involved in?

“Oh yes, you were the glory boys, the winners of clients and awards. Me? Just a third party, nobody important. As I said, bean counter. Did either of you consider I had an outside life? Did you? Did you know I’ve been divorced twice, the third one on the way? And each divorce cost me dear, as the next one will. And did you know I gamble, Oliver? Oh, I love to gamble. Horses, casinos, even dog tracks—I love ‘em all. Have you any idea what it costs to maintain such a lifestyle? And then there’s the cost of cocaine. That’s the great irony. Jim thought only you had a problem with drugs—we discussed it many times behind your back. How do we get you off them, would you agree to rehab? Should we even confront you with the issue, would it damage the partnership? In fact, I was the one who pointed out to Jim that you were back on the coke again. And all the time, neither of you realized I was a heavy user myself. Though, unlike you, I know how to control it. Question of metabolism, and you must have the wrong kind. An expensive habit, all the same.”

I heard a mirthless chuckle and it came from Sydney as he paced the floor. From Guinane there was only more mumbling, a weak kind of protest, I think. What the hell was wrong with him?

“I could never let either of you know that I had financial difficulties, of course. If I had, the first thing you’d do is check the books, or have an independent auditor take a look at them, and no way could I allow that. I’m running too many scams with the company’s money, see? Couldn’t have some snooper inspecting the accounts. No, I’d probably end up in prison. Want to hear about some of my little deceptions, Oliver?”