The Telling Error (24 page)
Being four, I didn’t phrase it to myself quite like that, but I understood the impossibility of taking the three beautiful angels home. I also understood that the kind playgroup woman didn’t understand, which was even more distressing.
On the other hand, I had to have the angels. I had to risk it, even if something unimaginably terrible happened to me as a result. My liking for them had turned to deep love. I would have risked anything. So I said thank you and put them in my shoe. From that day until the day I left home, the day after my eighteenth birthday, I kept those angels safe in my parents’ house. Mum and Dad never found out I had them. They still don’t know. I often wonder if they’d recognise them if I pulled them out of a jacket pocket one day and said, ‘Look.’
I tell Adam that I can’t face seeing or speaking to my parents without having the angels hidden somewhere in my clothes. ‘I’ve never told you before because I was scared you’d think I was crazy.’
Adam frowns. ‘It
is
a bit weird, Nicki, you’ve got to admit. I bet there’s no one else – I mean, not even one other person on the planet – who can only speak to their parents with secret angels concealed about their person.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I say. ‘Any other comments on the story?’
‘Um …’ He looks caught out. ‘Maybe you should try and find a way to
not
need the angels when you see your folks? Stupid superstitions like that – why keep them going? Why not choose to behave rationally instead?’ Seeing my face, Adam changes tack and says, ‘Though I suppose it’s a harmless enough ritual, and if it makes you feel better … I’m not quite sure what you want me to say.’ He frowns. ‘Lovely of the kindergarten lady to let you keep them – very shrewd of her.’
‘Why shrewd?’ I ask.
‘Well, she obviously twigged that your mum was guilt-tripping you above and beyond what the situation required. She felt sorry for you and probably thought being allowed to keep the angels would cheer you up.’
I can’t be bothered to ask him any more questions. ‘I’ve been unfaithful to you,’ I say quickly, to have it over and done with. ‘I need to tell you about it because it’s connected to a murder investigation. I wouldn’t have told you otherwise. I did it because there’s something in me … I mean, it’s nothing to do with you or our relationship. I’d have been unfaithful to anyone I was married to. I love you just as much as I always—’ I stop with a gasp.
Just as much as
…
He is no less dead. He is just as dead.
The meanings are interchangeable.
I know what it means. Exactly what those words mean. And, though I still don’t know who killed him, I know that Damon Blundy’s death is my fault.
Mine and King Edward’s.
Damon Blundy, 1 November 2011,
Daily Herald Online
What can I say? I was wrong. It happens sometimes, and when it does, I admit it. In an
exclusive interview
with the
Sunday Times
, Saint Paula of Privilege has finally revealed her true reason for sending her son Toby to a failing state school when she could easily have afforded to send him to an excellent private one. (Toby is mentioned by name in the feature, incidentally, and his photograph also appears; let’s hope the boy has no yen for privacy.)
It seems that Paula wasn’t, as I
once suggested
, motivated by the desire to score political points for a rotten cause at the expense of her only child’s welfare and future. Nor was her decision, as I later
playfully posited
, a passive aggressive one-in-the-eye for her aristocratic Tory parents who sent her, our very own Paula of the Proles, to an exclusive all-girls boarding school where she suffered the torment of receiving a world-class education. No, gentlest reader, none of the above. Our Paula sent young Toby to Gorse Edge School because she was having an illicit affair with its deputy head, Harry Bowers.
I’m sure Bowers and his wife, Julie, would rather you and I didn’t know this, but, thanks to Saint Paula’s obsessive desire to prove me wrong, we do. We and all the other
Sunday Times
readers, and all their friends and families, have the
full story
, in Paula Privilege’s own words. I particularly like the parts that refer to me specifically. I get no fewer than four mentions, which proves that I am currently the person uppermost in Saint Paula’s mind. I pity poor Mr Privilege. How’s he coping with all this media attention? By ‘poor’, I of course mean unfortunate; last time I looked, Richard Crumlish was just about managing to scrape by on his heir-to-colossal-diamond-fortune private income.
Still, a vast fortune is no substitute for a faithful wife, one could argue, and this
isn’t the first time
that Saint Paula’s adulterous exploits have spilled over into the public sphere. Remember Keiran Holland? I try not to, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Remember the mediocre American movie director whose name I have forgotten? Both Crumlish and Labour let those two indiscretions pass, and no doubt for the same reason: hotties like Paula are few and far between. Will Crumlish stand by his woman again, now that she has cheated on him a third time and freely shared the full details of her betrayal with a national newspaper? It’s early days, and, while we remain glued to every facet of their unfolding marital misfortune, we can only speculate: will it be stick or carats for Saint Paula?
Whatever happens to her marriage, her political career is over, or very soon will be. Charitable as it is in allowing the likes of Eds Miliband and Balls onto its front benches, the Labour Party’s goodwill cannot possibly stretch as far as retaining an MP who announces to the country without a hint of regret that she chose a school for her son with a view to sneaking into the stationery cupboard with her tastiest constituent seconds after she’d dropped off little Toby at his classroom door.
Just in case Labour are feeling especially lenient about both infidelity and exhibitionism at the moment (you never know – they might have heard that the Tories are making moves in that direction and be keen to follow suit), Saint Paula made sure to add another choice revelation to her spontaneous media combustion:
‘If Damon Blundy wants to add lustre to his sad little life by trashing me week after week in his column, can I suggest that he judges me for the shoplifting problem I had as a teenager that lasted into my early twenties? Oh, sorry, I forgot – Blundy doesn’t know about that because I never got caught. Perhaps he’d like to admit that he has no idea what kind of person I am – good, bad or indifferent – just as I have no idea what kind of person he is, though I do know, as we all do, that he chooses to behave for much of the time like a vile bigot. But we mustn’t let his bigotry, disgusting though it is, blind us to his foolishness. It is tempting to assume that those who offend and upset us are telling hard truths that we can’t stand to hear, but sometimes, as in the case of Blundy, they are as wrong as they are unpleasant. Only a fool would imagine that my decision to send my son to a state school was in any way controversial or a matter of public interest. Thanks to my relationship with Harry, I was in the fortunate position of knowing enough about Gorse Edge and its staff to trust it completely, but even if that hadn’t been the case, I would have sent Toby to his local state primary school because I believe in state education.’
I choose to behave like a vile bigot? Oh, Paula, that’s not fair. No one chooses how to behave – not you and not me. Free will is the greatest lie we’ve ever been sold as a species. If humans have free will, why would Bryn Gilligan spend
all day and night on Twitter
, engaging at length with creep after creep on the subject of whether or not he ought to end his life? Why would Reuben Tasker imagine there’s any point in his
forbidding me to read any more of his books
since I evidently don’t appreciate them? Why would Keiran Holland
attack me
for lobbying to strip Tasker of his
Books Enhance Lives Award
? Having done no such thing, I’m a little baffled. I thought I’d been arguing to give Bryn Gilligan back his Olympic medals, and merely using Reuben Tasker as a convenient analogy. I’m equally baffled as to why Holland should feel the need to explain to me in
such detail
the difference between Olympic sprinting and a horror novel. In case any of you have been waiting for clarification on this point, here’s a small extract from his lengthy treatise on the subject:
A novel is the product of a process; it is not the process itself. Reuben Tasker’s artistic creation is his novel, not his ability to write a novel, whereas Bryn Gilligan’s product is his ability to run fast and nothing more than that. In competitive sprinting, product – the sprint sprinted – and process are interchangeable. A race does not last through the decades or the centuries, and so is inseparable from the ability to run, which is why that ability mustn’t be chemically enhanced. In the case of a novel, we do not and should not care how it came into being, only about what it is.
I can think of other differences that Holland omits to mention. Sprinting requires a pair of trainers and a can of Lucozade. Horror novels can manage without both. Sprinting involves moving fast. A book doesn’t necessarily have to move fast (read Reuben Tasker’s if you want proof). On the other hand, horror novels and Olympic sprinting have some features in common: both can make you sweaty, whether from fear or exertion. Both have a competitive aspect – there are sprinting prizes and book prizes. If illegal drugs are a bar to winning in one, why not in the other? After all, the cash prize goes to the law-breaking drug-taking writer, not to the book itself. Books do not have bank accounts. Keiran Holland has yet to offer a persuasive reason why Bryn Gilligan should be deprived of his medals while supernaturally stoned Reuben Tasker should get to hang on to his.
Thursday 4 July 2013
‘Nicki Clements is a liar,’ Melissa Redgate told Gibbs. ‘She always has been.’
Unlike me, you and all decent people
was the clear implication.
Speak for yourself, thought Gibbs. Though, of course, Melissa hadn’t spoken the words out loud. Gibbs couldn’t prove – yet – that she was a self-satisfied moral majority type. It was just a sense he had. He wasn’t enjoying being in a small interview room with her. What kind of person contacts detectives, unsolicited, and says, ‘You might want to suspect my best friend of murder, even though I have no proof’?
Nicki Clements hadn’t murdered Damon Blundy, unless she was far cleverer than she appeared to be. The secretary of Freeth Lane Primary School had endorsed her alibi: Nicki had been on the phone to the school, on her landline, on and off all morning. She wouldn’t have had time to drive to Elmhirst Road, kill a man and drive back home between phone calls.
Having heard Robbie Meakin’s account of his meeting with Nicki, Gibbs couldn’t help but pity the woman. She sounded more like a desperate idiot than an evil genius.
Melissa handed Gibbs a blue box file that she’d brought in with her. ‘There’s a printout of an advertisement in there that Nicki posted on a casual-sex website called Intimate Links. I’m fairly sure Damon Blundy answered and the two of them started having an affair.’
Gibbs flicked through the pages in the box. ‘There’s a lot more here than one advert. Are these …?’
‘A selection of Damon Blundy’s newspaper columns, plus comments sections. I printed them out to save you having to look them up on the Internet. And there are plenty more, if you’re interested. Those are just a random sample. Between October 2011 and February this year, Nicki commented on nearly all of Blundy’s columns – always sticking up for his point of view, however craven it was, and attacking other commenters for attacking him. Why would she do that if they weren’t having an affair? As far as I know, she’s never gone in for online commenting, before or since.’
Gibbs reread the Intimate Links advert. He held it up. ‘The date on this is June 2010. You say Blundy replied and they started an affair – why wouldn’t Nicki start commenting on his columns immediately? Why wait till October the following year?’
‘Again, I’m not sure, but … my guess is that for quite a long time, she didn’t know who he was. I think they emailed back and forth and, at first, didn’t know much about each other. You’d have to build up trust, wouldn’t you? Especially someone in the public eye like Damon Blundy.’
That made sense. ‘And she stopped commenting on his columns in February this year?’ Gibbs asked.
Melissa nodded. ‘I suspect that’s when they broke up. She stopped mentioning him then too – until Tuesday, when she came round to tell me he’d been murdered, and asked me to lie for her.’
‘Hang on, rewind a bit,’ said Gibbs. ‘You say she mentioned him … Did she tell you they were having an affair, then?’
‘No, never. Nor did she ever tell me she’d posted an advert on Intimate Links.’ Melissa looked caught out. Guilty, even. ‘Nicki and I have been best friends since school. She used to tell me everything – all her secrets, all her lies. Then, a few years ago, I started going out with her brother. He and I are now married. I didn’t realise how bad an effect Nicki’s lying had had on him, his childhood, their family life … So I asked Nicki to stop telling me anything that I’d have to keep from Lee. He hates lying – absolutely hates it. Honesty’s more important to him than anything.’
She seemed to be waiting for Gibbs to say, ‘Quite right too.’
‘So … Nicki didn’t tell you she was having an affair with Blundy because she wouldn’t have wanted her brother to know?’
‘Right,’ said Melissa. ‘And I’d have refused to keep it from him. She knew that. But … she can be a bitch, Nicki. She hated me being with her brother – I think she regarded it as some sort of betrayal of our friendship. And she hated not being able to tell me things any more, so she found a way round it: she told me without telling me. One day she told me, out of the blue, about this website, Intimate Links. I’d never heard of it before. I asked her why she was bringing it up. She said, “Oh, no reason,” in an exaggeratedly innocent tone that told me everything I needed to know. “People advertise on it, for lovers,” she said. “Most of the ads are appallingly badly written. You should have a look – one or two are quite entertaining.” I knew exactly what she was telling me, and
she
knew I’d look and find her advert – it was obviously her: she’s always saying BBC4’s the only telly channel worth watching – and she knew I wouldn’t say anything to Lee because she hadn’t actually told me anything, and she could easily deny it if asked, and would have, most definitely!’