‘Yes, Sir. Detective Sergeant Simmons and Detective Constable Coates – we met you at the hotel on Monday.’
‘Of course.’ Oliver nodded to them both.
‘May we come in?’ Simmons asked Andrea courteously.
She hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘I . . . I suppose so. My daughter is asleep upstairs.’
‘We’ll be very quiet. Just some questions we need to ask Mr Guinane.’
Andrea opened the door wide and stepped to one side to allow the two policemen to enter.
Simmons and Coates stood in the hallway, looking awkward, but their eyes finding Oliver’s from time to time.
‘As you probably know, Mrs True, DC Coates and I are working on the case of your husband’s murder.’
She nodded. ‘I noticed you at the funeral.’
‘I hope we weren’t obtrusive in any way.’
‘No. Unlike the Press people.’
‘Yes.’ Simmons pondered this for a second or two. ‘Newspaper people can be a nuisance sometimes. But there was nothing that we, as policemen, could do about it. Free Press, and all that.’
‘It’s okay, I wasn’t blaming you.’ She glanced at Oliver, who was still waiting in the doorway to the lounge. ‘Why did you want to see Oliver?’
Andrea seemed nervous to me, probably because of what she and my ex-friend had been up to a couple of minutes ago.
‘Ah, I think that must be between Mr Guinane and us for now.’ It was the shorter man, Coates, who had spoken. ‘It’s only a few simple questions, nothing formal. Shouldn’t take long.’
Andrea looked questioningly at Oliver, who had stepped aside from the door.
‘I’ve no objection to Andrea being present. Shall we go through?’ His hand indicated the lounge.
‘Uh, no, Mr Guinane.’ Simmons again. ‘Certainly we can talk wherever you suggest, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for Mrs True to be in on this.’
Quick, anxious looks were exchanged between Andrea and Oliver. Oliver started to protest, but Andrea interrupted.
‘That’s all right, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘I’ll check on my daughter and wait with her until you tell me I can come down.’
‘Shouldn’t be too long,’ Simmons promised this time.
I wasn’t prepared for the next moment. Andrea strode straight through me to climb the stairs and I almost sagged with the weight of the emotions that hit me. She was confused and unexpectedly frightened, all beneath a surging undercurrent of terrible grief. Fortunately, she passed on swiftly and mounted the stairs, her step weary.
Both detectives faced Oliver.
‘Shall we go through, Sir?’ suggested Coates, who had an undisguised glint in his eye as he regarded Oliver.
Oliver allowed them access, then followed into the room. I trailed in after Oliver.
He indicated, inviting both policemen to sit and they duly found places at either end of the sofa. As for me, I was in no mood to sit, because I was raging. I wanted to catch hold of my ex-friend and partner and throttle him there and then. I wanted to beat him to a pulp and, indeed, I took several swings at him, all of them useless, merely swiping through him as though he was nothing more than a hologram. I ranted. I kicked him where it really should have hurt, but he didn’t even flinch. God, I wanted to kill him!
But I could only wait and listen. The interview went something like this:
DS SIMMONS: ‘Mr Guinane, the other day you told us that you left the hotel on the night of James True’s murder and returned home.’
OLIVER: ‘Yes.’
DS SIMMONS: ‘Yet a neighbour of yours, an early riser who had a pet dog to let out into the apartment gardens, told us he saw you entering the apartments’ foyer around 6 a.m.’
OLIVER: Silence.
DC COATES: ‘You were empty-handed, so you couldn’t have been out to buy milk or the morning papers.’
OLIVER: Uncomfortable silence.
DS SIMMONS: ‘Do you wish to change your original statement, Sir?’
OLIVER: ‘I couldn’t sleep. I was kind of wired – you know Jim and I were working on a big campaign for a prospective client? It’s hard to relax after you’ve been dreaming up winning ideas half the night.’
DC COATES: ‘So you left the hotel suite quite early, did you? Sunday night, I mean.’
OLIVER: ‘Well, not that early. It must’ve been somewhere around midnight. I didn’t check my watch, had no reason to.’
DC COATES: ‘You were overheard having a violent argument with James True—’
OLIVER: ‘It was hardly violent. There’s bound to be creative differences from time to time. It goes with the territory and it’s never serious.’
DS SIMMONS: ‘The hotel’s night porter, who was collecting breakfast order cards, said the row sounded extremely serious when he passed by the room.’
OLIVER: ‘He’s wrong. We might have been a bit loud, but we didn’t come to blows or anything like that.’
DC COATES: ‘Isn’t it true that there was also a significant business disagreement between you both at this time?’
OLIVER: ‘We failed to agree on a forthcoming merger with a larger agency – I was pro, Jim was con – but it was hardly cause for murder, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’
DS SIMMONS: ‘We’re not suggesting anything at this time.’
DC COATES: ‘You and True’s wife were lovers at one time, weren’t you?’
OLIVER: ‘Good God. Has somebody at the agency been gossiping? Our relationship was years ago, before Jim and Andrea were married. In fact, Andrea was actually my live-in partner before she decided on Jim. There’s been nothing between us since.’
ME: Huh!
DS SIMMONS: ‘Are you quite certain of that, Mr Guinane?’
OLIVER: ‘Of course I’m bloody certain!’
DS SIMMONS: ‘Well, we’ll leave that for now.’
ME: No, ask him more. He’s lying!
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?’
OLIVER: ‘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.’
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‘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 black-mailed 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.