‘I didn’t know Aidan last June,’ I say, aware I’m not the one in need of a defence. ‘I met him later, in August. I needed a job, and Saul told me Aidan needed an assistant.’
‘How perfectly ironic,’ says Mary. ‘It was my fault you met him. One more thing to feel bad about.’
I want to tell her that meeting Aidan’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, but I can’t say it and mean it, not without knowing what he’s done.
Not unconditionally.
‘Did you know Aidan used to work for Saul, before he set up on his own?’ Mary asks.
I shake my head.
‘That’s another reason I thought he had to be pulling your strings—the Saul connection. It seemed too much of a coincidence. ’ Anguish flares in her eyes. ‘I thought you wanted the painting so that you could give it to him.’
I look away. I’m not brave enough to tell her that was exactly what happened, only later. Not in June last year, but after Christmas, when I went to Megson Crescent for that very reason: to get
Abberton
because Aidan wanted it. Needed it.
Mary sucks hard on her cigarette. ‘When I told Saul I’d been thrown by how pushy you were, he said you were always like that about pictures you fell in love with. That’s how you met him, right? He told me the story: you wanted a painting that was in his window and told him you’d pay any price for it, however high. I realised then that you weren’t trying to work me—you really did fall in love with
Abberton
.’
‘Yesterday, at your house, I found another canvas. It was unfinished, but it looked a bit like
Abberton
. There was a different name on the back:
Blandford
.’
‘What about it?’ Mary flicks ash on the carpet, rubs it in with her bare foot.
‘Is it . . . are the two pictures part of a series?’
‘Why do you want to know? Yes, part of a series,’ she says quickly. ‘Why?’
‘A series of how many?’
She lifts her chin: a defensive stance, designed to keep me at a distance. ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll see how far I get before I run out of steam.’
I’ve got no choice, not if I want to find out the truth. ‘Nine,’ I say. ‘
Abberton
,
Blandford
,
Darville
,
Elstow
,
Goundry
,
Heathcote
,
Margerison
,
Rodwell
,
Winduss
.’
Mary cries out, as if I’ve stuck a needle in her heart. Her body folds in on itself.
‘What is it, Mary? Why do those names frighten you?’
‘He told you, didn’t he?’
‘Told me what? Who are they?’
Her eyes glaze over. ‘I don’t know who they were,’ she whispers. ‘They never told us. Isn’t that funny?’
‘Were?’ The word falls through my brain in slow motion. ‘They’re dead?’
She makes an effort to pull herself together. ‘Gemma Crowther’s dead,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Did you know she was out of prison?’
I didn’t want to know. I asked not to be told. I wrote that in my letter . . .
‘Ruth?’
‘No. No.’
In some parts of the world, they stone you to death for fucking another woman’s man.
Dead. Did Mary say that Gemma Crowther was dead?
‘I didn’t want to tell you like this.’ Her words come out jerkily. ‘When you came round yesterday, you were in such a state—I couldn’t tell you then. You were ranting about Aidan hiding in my house. You wouldn’t have listened. I’d spent most of the day with a detective from London. He’d just left when you arrived. Gemma Crowther was murdered, she was shot. Twice—in the head and in the heart.’
Gemma Crowther, murdered. Yes; it makes sense. People who behave as she did might well end up getting murdered.
In the head and in the heart.
I’m trying to get a grip on what I’ve heard when Mary says, ‘If you still think it’s the truth you want, ask me who killed her.’
14
5/3/08
Olivia was looking out of her first-floor window as Simon and Charlie got out of the cab. By the time they’d paid, she was at the front door.
‘I don’t give a fuck about Martha Wyers,’ said Simon, by way of a greeting. Then, to Charlie, ‘Kerry Gatti’s who we should be talking to.’
‘Did you say Kerry Gatti?’ Olivia asked. She got no reply. ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘I say we go.’
‘I wouldn’t.’ Olivia glared at him. ‘There’s a great big whopping connection between Martha Wyers and your case, or whoever’s case it is. Are you helping the London police or are they helping you?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ Charlie told her. She hadn’t forgiven her sister for yesterday.
I’m sorry, Char. It’s bad news.
Charlie had imagined Simon half dead, held hostage by a psychopath, until Olivia had abandoned the grief-stricken act and passed on his message. She hadn’t forgiven Simon, come to think of it, for leaving the message with Olivia rather than telling her himself. Charlie knew why he’d done it. He’d thought she’d be angry with him for dragging her into it, or that she’d taunt him for being careless and getting caught out.
That the two of them weren’t wanted back at work for as long as they were of interest to Dunning and Milward was no more than an inconvenience that would, in time, be rectified. Charlie wasn’t worried about her job, and no one at work wanted to lose Simon, not even the people who disliked him personally. Not even the Chief Super and the Chief Constable, neither of whom could stand the sight of him.
‘Tell us what you think we need to know,’ he said grudgingly to Olivia.
‘Thank you. Well, firstly, even though I didn’t manage to find anything about Martha Wyers’ death, I’d bet a million pounds that she committed suicide. She wasn’t murdered.’
‘That’s the equivalent of a less extravagant person betting a fiver,’ Charlie pointed out.
‘A billion, then. She published one book—a novel. I looked it up on Amazon. It’s about a woman who falls passionately in love with a man she hardly knows, and it ends up wrecking her life. The blurb on Amazon even contains the word “suicidal”.’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ said Simon. ‘Half the novels that have ever been written are about that. That’s the plot of
Anna Karenina
. Tolstoy didn’t commit suicide. Charlie, we’re wasting time here.’
‘Listen, will you?’ Olivia snapped. ‘When I told Senga McAllister at
The Times
that Martha Wyers was dead, the first thing she asked me was if she’d killed herself. In 1999, while Senga was still a jobbing arts reporter, she wrote a feature called
Future Famous Five
, a profile of five arty types that readers ought to look out for in the new millennium: stars of the future, that sort of thing.’ Olivia paused to draw breath.
‘Martha Wyers was the author they chose. Senga chose her personally. She hadn’t read the novel at that point, but she’d read a few of her short stories and thought she was easily the most brilliant new writer she’d come across for years.’
‘Brilliance requires originality,’ said Simon. ‘A novel about a woman with a broken heart’s not original, not if it’s written in 1999.’
‘Does he really mean that?’ Olivia asked Charlie.
‘Carry on, Liv. Ignore him.’
‘There are different
kinds
of broken hearts, Simon. I hope you never have to find that out.’
‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Liv,’ Charlie waved her hands in front of her sister’s face. ‘Carry on.’
‘Senga was a bit embarrassed about having picked Martha Wyers.’ Olivia glanced at Simon as if she planned to deal with him later. ‘Her first novel turned out to be her only one. She sank without trace.’
‘That’s death for you,’ said Charlie. ‘It tends to impede productivity. ’
‘Wyers never wrote anything else, and faded into obscurity soon after the feature went to press. Some of Senga’s colleagues who’d picked these up-and-coming stars—the music critic, the drama critic—their choices are now famous, household names.’
‘Such as?’
‘Pippa Dowd was the music choice.’
‘From Limited Sympathy,’ Charlie told Simon. ‘He hasn’t heard of anyone,’ she explained to Liv.
‘And the actor was Doohan Champion.’
‘He’s a talentless streak of piss!’
‘As well as a multi-millionaire, yes,’ said Liv drily. ‘I suppose it must be hard to predict which careers will succeed and which fail—no one can foresee the future.’ Seeing the look on Simon’s face, she went on quickly, ‘Anyway, then Senga said something I remembered later on, when she emailed me the article and I saw that all the bits apart from the section on Martha were missing. She said, “At least I wasn’t the only one who got it wrong. The art critic and the comedy buff ended up with egg on their faces, too. Their picks also sank without trace.” I thought: I wonder who the art critic chose? I wondered if it was Mary Trelease.’
Simon turned on Charlie. ‘What does she know about Trelease? ’
‘Plenty,’ said Olivia. ‘I know there’s a woman called Ruth Bussey who’s got a thing about Charlie, whose boyfriend Aidan Seed thinks he killed an artist called Mary Trelease even though she isn’t dead.’
‘You told her the
names
?’
Charlie looked away. She’d told Liv a lot more than she normally would. They’d needed something to talk about that wasn’t the cuttings on the bedroom wall and how Charlie felt about them. She’d had a good story and she’d used it. You can’t make a story come to life without naming the characters.
‘So what if the painter in the article’s Mary Trelease?’ Simon demanded. ‘So what if Trelease and this Martha Wyers woman were part of the same colour supplement feature in 1999? So fucking what?’
‘Liv’s trying to help, Simon.’ To her sister, Charlie said, ‘A connection between Martha Wyers and Mary Trelease doesn’t really help us. If we need one, we’ve got it already: they both went to Villiers School. They were contemporaries there.’
Olivia looked angry, then puzzled. Then she laughed. ‘You both seem to be assuming that the young visual artist
The Times
chose was Mary Trelease.’
Simon moved towards her, ready to snatch the papers she was holding from her hand. ‘Was it or wasn’t it?’
‘No, as a matter of fact.’
Charlie pursed her lips. ‘Liv, whatever you’re . . .’
‘We’ve pissed about enough here already,’ Simon called over his shoulder, halfway to the door. ‘Let’s go.’
‘It was Aidan Seed,’ said Olivia, holding the printed-out article for Charlie to take. ‘Now do you want to see this? Yes,’ her face set in a hard smile as she watched Simon’s about-turn, ‘I thought you might.’
15
Wednesday 5 March 2008
‘When did Gemma die?’ I ask.
‘The police wouldn’t tell me much, but from the questions they asked, it must have been Monday night,’ says Mary. ‘They wanted to know my movements.’ She walks over to the window, opens it, flicks ash out. The cows are still moaning in the fields, as if they’re in pain.
Forty-eight hours ago, Gemma was alive.
‘Why did the police speak to you?’
Mary tucks her hair behind her ears. It springs back, like dark thunderclouds enveloping her thin face. ‘I didn’t believe Charlotte Zailer when she told me you were Aidan’s girlfriend. I thought, no. Can’t be. When I had it confirmed by First Call, my heart nearly stopped. Once I’d got myself together, I drove to Aidan’s workshop, waited outside in my car. A bit later, Zailer turned up with another cop I recognised—DC Waterhouse. He’d been round to see me on Saturday, also about Aidan. The two of them went inside.’
‘I was there,’ I tell her.
‘They stayed for a while, then left, except Waterhouse didn’t go far. He sat in his car and waited at the top of the road. A few minutes later, Aidan came out, got into his car and drove away. Waterhouse followed him, and I followed Waterhouse. The three of us drove to London in convoy. To Muswell Hill.’ She watches me for a reaction. ‘I started to have a feeling, then, that I knew where he was going, except it made no sense.’
‘Where?’ I ask, breathless. All those times Aidan was away, when he told me he’d been in Manchester, working for Jeanette Golenya. Lies, every time.
‘I knew Stephen Elton and Gemma Crowther had been paroled. My First Call guy—he’s thorough. He’d given me their new address, details of their new jobs . . .’
‘What jobs?’
Mary frowns. ‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stephen Elton works for the Ford dealership in Kilburn. He’s some kind of mechanic. Gemma Crowther works . . .
worked
for an alternative health centre in Swiss Cottage called The Healing Rooms. My friend visited her there. She gave him a hot-stone massage.’ She’s talking about the man with the red bobble hat and the dog.
Someone I used to know. I’ve hired him before
—that’s what she said. Finally, those words filter through. ‘Proud as punch, he was, when he told me that. Said it was a perk of the job—charged me for his treatment, cheeky sod.’
‘Stone,’ I repeat blankly.
Mary opens her mouth, says nothing. It hadn’t occurred to her.
Gemma Crowther, a healer. ‘Stephen was a chemist, a pharmacist, ’ I say. ‘
She
was a primary school teacher.’
‘Yeah, well, obviously they’d have had difficulty getting similar jobs after what they’d done. And not so much difficulty getting taken on by a garage, or some quack outfit like an alternative healing centre. Some places check out prospective employees’ backgrounds more diligently than others, presumably. ’ Mary throws her cigarette butt out of the window and rubs the small of her back with both hands.
‘Their new address—it was in Muswell Hill?’
She nods. ‘23b Ruskington Road. That’s where Aidan was going on Monday.’
‘But he didn’t know about . . .’
‘Yes, Ruth. He knew.’
Nothing will make me believe it. Aidan, seeing Stephen and Gemma behind my back?
No.