Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost (42 page)

I nodded, wondering how many more off-the-record revelations there would be.

“It wasn’t
that
hard. It wasn’t like I was a born mother. I was selfish—still am, actually—and I resented the demands a child made on my time. I think there are probably quite a few women who feel this way only they’d never admit it.”

She turned to face me head on and she was smiling at me, appealing to me.
You agree with me, don’t you? We’re becoming friends,
right?
I felt edgy. I had no desire to bond with Angie Marriott. I was here on a professional basis. I wondered how close she had become to Cath. Had Cath been invited back to her hidden retreat?

“I loved my son,” said Angie, “I really did—but at a distance. I

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had a baby for Kip. I loved
him
. I would do anything for him and that’s what he wanted—a child. I’ve thought a lot about it and I’ve worked it all out. I remember one awful moment when I was pregnant. I actually found myself thinking of Sean as a fashion accessory—you know, got the rich rock star husband, got my own successful career, got the perfect house, all I need now is a baby. And when he arrived I was proud of him, he was such a beautiful little boy. Delicate. People went
ooh
and
aah
when they saw him and he had impeccable manners. I’m a disgusting person, aren’t I?” Again she seemed to be imploring me to condone her view of herself. “I’m really telling you everything. I don’t know why, Lee, but I need to open up to someone. Just hear me out, will you?”

Her eyes were filled with tears but her voice was still strong.

“You have to understand that I’m telling you how I was
then
.

But when he died, when I first met you in that store right after the funeral, I discovered something about myself. I realized that of course I loved Sean, I mean
really
loved
him,
even though I didn’t know him. I cared about him in retrospect. Isn’t that awful? I didn’t know myself back then and I just slotted him into a compartment in my emotions. I didn’t acknowledge what he meant to me. But since then I’ve come to terms with who I am, with everything that’s happened to me, the gang rape, Kip,
everything. I’ve learned to accept myself and somewhere along the journey I realized I had to get Sean back. You understand what I’m trying to tell you, don’t you?”

All I understood was that I felt nauseous. There was something appallingly claustrophobic about being shut up in this private retreat with Angie intent on baring her soul. I needed to get out for some air if only for a few seconds.

“Could I use your loo?” I smiled to show I was sorry to be interrupting her story.

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“Out the door, down the passage, and it’s the first door on the left at the bottom of the stairs,” she said without getting up.

But the door was locked and from the inside I could hear water running. Someone was in there.

I should have waited but I was pretty desperate. So I tiptoed upstairs assuming I’d find another bathroom. And of course it gave me a chance to nose around a bit.

I glanced through a door at the top of the stairs and saw a bedroom. In fact it was more like a wood-paneled womb with richly textured fabrics and a four-poster bed piled high with velvet cushions. I saw a bathroom leading off it and rushed in.

Coming back into the bedroom, I flicked on the light switch and stopped dead.

The room was a shrine to Shotgun. Every inch of the walls was covered with photographs and memorabilia. Shotgun on stage, microphone in hand and standing in a pool of spotlight.

Shotgun with the band, arms around their shoulders. Shotgun with celebrities. I moved closer to scrutinize each picture. His eyes gave him away. He looked trapped, nervous, uncomfortable.

I turned to the photos in frames on the various surfaces. On each of her bedside tables she had giant portraits of him smiling wistfully at her. Smaller heart-shaped frames showed him cradling Sean as a baby, kicking a football to him as a young boy.

It was an old house with generous sash windows and the deep sills were the perfect place to display pictures. I crossed the room to study the group amassed on the far windowsill and found they were all—predictably—of Shotgun but here there was a difference. Like the ones of Sean downstairs, they were recent pictures taken on Long Island—and it was clear he had not known he was being photographed. I recognized the beach below Mallaby and here and there a shot of him in the woods near the house itself.

When had these been taken? When she was over there for Sean’s

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funeral? But as I looked closer, I could make out Sean in some of the long-distance shots hovering near his father with Mallaby in the background.Whoever had taken these pictures had been spying on them from the woods.

There was a wooden frame at the back hidden behind the others and I reached for it. This was an older picture, a blurred amateur image of two girls in school uniform.

“We haven’t changed a bit, have we?” said a voice behind me and I turned around to see Martha Farrell smiling at me nervously.

And behind her stood Angie with a twelve-bore shotgun hanging loosely in the crook of her arm.

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IT’S OKAY, I’M NOT GOING TO SHOOT YOU.” ANGIE’S

smile was almost gracious. “At least not in here. Think of the mess! If I used this thing in this confined space you’d be splat-tered all over the room.” She actually laughed. “Martha heard you come upstairs and actually it’s rather cozy in here. Martha, why don’t you go down and get our drinks. We’ll have a little party right here in my bedroom.”

I couldn’t move and I couldn’t speak. All I could do was keep my eyes fixated on the barrel of the gun. I didn’t know anything about shotguns. I didn’t know anything about
any
gun. I had no idea how to tell if it was loaded. When Martha began to walk across to the door I was convinced the vibration of her weight on the floorboards would cause the thing to go off.

“I had a secret nickname for her when we were at school together,” said Angie when Martha had left the room. “You know what it was? Putty. Because that’s what she was in my hands. I could get her to do anything I wanted. In an instant. All I had to do was throw her a smile every now and then. And here she is today, alive and well and still ready to do whatever I ask her.”

I wanted to ask her if she knew about Martha’s novel because as Angie was speaking I had realized instantly that the fictional monster Martha had created in Iona was of course based on

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Angie. But I dared not move, not even to open my mouth. I was like a statue planted in the middle of her bedroom.

“You know I was all set to do a book,” Angie went on, “I really was. I knew I had to point the finger at Kip before he broke his silence about me. I knew it was only a matter of time before he told someone even if he did it inadvertently.”

No,
I wanted to cry out to her,
no, he protected you to the last. He
thought he’d be able to tell what really happened but at the last minute
he backed out and now I know why. He still loves you. He’ll keep your
pact to the end, I know he will
.

But I had convinced myself that if I opened my mouth it would cause the gun to go off, so I maintained my rigid and silent stance and the only change was that I was now blinking away tears of terror.

“And then it would just be a quick step and a jump to him telling the world how I smothered the groupie in his bed. I’m telling you, if it hadn’t been her it would have been another one.

I’d had enough. I knew Kip took girls back to that flat. I got up that night after the concert and went round there. I assumed I’d find Kip there with someone and I was just going to confront him. But he wasn’t around, there was just this girl asleep in his bed. I was enraged—” Angie paused and shifted the gun to her other arm and I knew the true meaning of the expression
I
thought I would die
.

“At first,” she said, shrugging casually in reflection, “I think I just meant to hit her but then her eyes opened and she began to sit up. I grabbed the pillow from under her head and smashed it down on her face. I held it there—she was a tiny little thing, too skinny to be attractive, but Kip had all sorts of girls, you know?

He told me it was all in my imagination, his womanizing, but I kept thinking about it, seeing him with them, and the images would fester in my mind, Lee. Have you ever been jealous?”

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She was appealing to me and coming toward me with the shotgun. I wondered why I did not faint with fear, my knees were shaking so hard and my teeth were clacking away like a rattle.

But she moved past me to stand the gun against the wall as Martha came back into the room and handed her the pomegranate juice. I burst into tears in relief and Martha put her arm around me.

“Poor duck,” she said, “here, sit down and drink your wine.

It’ll calm you down.You’re in a real state, aren’t you?”

“Leave her be, Martha. I’m telling her about that groupie nightmare. It’s true, that girl really did look as if she were asleep.

I got out of there fast, leaving a mass of evidence, I imagine.

Which is why I was so amazed when they went after Kip. Everything I told you downstairs, about the two of us making a pact to keep quiet, was a bunch of lies. I never saw him there. He must have come back, found her dead, got rid of everything that would incriminate me, like the pillow I used to smother her. He must have known it was me because I was the only other person with a key to the place.”

She took a sip of pomegranate juice. It was dark red, almost black, the color of dried blood.

“But he would never—ever—talk to me about what happened.When I saw him he said right away he did not want to discuss it. All he did was make me promise that I would never tell anyone. And he said he wouldn’t either. But it was an order from him, not a mutual pact. And then he left and took Sean. We agreed that he would say that I was leaving him but of course it was the other way around. And that was where we left it until Bettina started nosing around. They had no firm evidence that Kip had killed that girl, no witnesses, and both the policeman and the Australian had seen him outside the flat around the time of death.

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“So,” she said, flashing me a grim smile, “when you told me you knew about Bettina’s meeting with the Australian, I realized it was all over.You knew I went to the flat that night so you were going to be a problem. Just like Bettina, you had to go too far, didn’t you? It’s a shame you had to blow it because up to then I could have let you go. I know Kip didn’t tell you anything. I’ve got the disk of all your transcripts. Quite touching, some of it.”

I stared at Martha. It was
she
who had taken my disk from the cabin, not Shotgun.

“You know, I always thought I’d get Sean back one day but when Martha told me Bettina had arrived on the scene I realized things were going to get rough. I remembered what a nightmare she had been the first time she’d tried to do a book with Kip. I knew if she got another chance, she’d dig deep and I couldn’t allow that to happen,” said Angie. “So we hatched a little plan, didn’t we, Martha? When Kip decided to go and bury himself in the back of beyond out on Long Island, Martha was the first person I thought of. She was living in Manhattan, trying to make a go of it on Broadway or some such fantasy. Total waste of time, she was a useless actress. Don’t look at me like that, darling, you were hopeless, you know you were. I told her to stop trying to achieve the impossible and move to the Hamptons to keep an eye on my son for me. We thought about changing her name in case Kip heard about her, but in the end we decided it would be too much aggravation. Martha and I had been friends at school but, although we kept up by phone and letter, we didn’t really get together that often once I was in London. She was never part of my life with Kip. I don’t think he even met her.” She looked at Martha, who shook her head. “I did the right thing, I sent her money.Well, she couldn’t live on what she made from those silly wedding dresses, could she? And she sent me news of Sean as he was growing up, pictures.

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“When Kip called me to tell me Sean was dead he had no idea I was already on Long Island, just down the beach from him in Martha’s trailer. He was calling me on my cell phone and he thought I was still in London. I’m still waiting for that incompetent Detective Morrison to ask me what I was doing in America
before
Sean’s funeral. He must have learned from Immigration that I was there and he’s asked me a lot of stuff about Kip but he’s never asked me
that
.”

Because Evan Morrison wouldn’t have wanted you to be the killer whatever evidence he had, I thought. He had been determined to convict Shotgun no matter what. What would he do when he found out Angie was the killer?

If
he found out. What was going to happen to me? I knew as much as Bettina and Angie had killed
her
.Wasn’t that what Shotgun had intimated when he had tried to explain why he no longer wanted me to do his book? He hadn’t named Angie but had he known she was responsible?

And now here I was at Angie’s mercy. Stupidly I didn’t have my cell phone with me. I could visualize it lying on the kitchen table at Blenheim Crescent. Had I mentioned to Max when I was seeing Angie? I didn’t think I had.

“It doesn’t matter if you told anyone you were coming here,”

said Angie with an uncanny insight into my thoughts. “I’m assuming you told that agent of yours. If you suddenly disappear, Martha will be my witness. She’ll tell them she was with me tonight and that you turned up for a while—your prints are all over the place—but that then you left. She’s useful that way, aren’t you, Martha?”