The Telling Error (40 page)

I tell myself I’m being paranoid. No one’s followed me here. No one knows where I am and what I’m doing apart from King Edward. I told Adam I was going to London to try and sort things out with Melissa. I even told him which hotel I’d be staying in and that I didn’t know exactly when I’d be back; perhaps I’d need to stay overnight. ‘I’m not going to her house,’ I said. ‘I want to be absolutely sure I don’t run into Lee. I want to invite Melissa to
my
territory to talk, instead of being on hers like I usually am – where she can kick me out whenever it suits her. This time, I’m going to set the agenda and do any kicking out that needs to be done.’

Adam believed me. I believed myself. It sounded plausible because it’s the truth. I’m going to make it true. When I get to my room – if I ever get there, if Mr Uskalis ever stops wittering on – the first thing I’m going to do is ring Melissa and invite her to meet me and talk, but only if she’s willing to pack a suitcase and leave Lee at the same time, having told him she wants a divorce. She will, of course, refuse. I can then text Adam and tell him she’s refused to meet me, but that I’m going to stay at the hotel and have another try later.

I am a truly great liar. Legendary.

Finally, the tedious guy has released the receptionist. ‘I’ve reserved a room,’ I tell her.

‘Thank you for your patience. Sorry I kept you waiting. Name?’

‘Kate Zilber. Z-i-l-b-e-r.’ I think about Gavin’s – King Edward’s – disdain for Damon Blundy, his suggestion that Blundy was evil. Is that why he chose his name to hide behind when he was behaving badly, for the same reason I’ve chosen Kate’s? As a kind of revenge? I’ve given the Chancery Hotel all of Kate’s details and none of my own.

‘Yes, we’ve got you here,’ the receptionist says. Superior Double for one night?’

‘That’s right.’ When I hand over my credit card as an advance against my minibar costs, she doesn’t look at the name on it, just hands me the machine to key in my PIN.

I sign where I’m told to sign – Kate’s name – and I’m given the key to room 419. The hotel lift is nearly as narrow as the bar: it would accommodate no more than two people. Its four mirrored walls don’t make it look any bigger, only crazier: dozens of clones of a hollow-eyed, paranoid woman with unbrushed hair.

I didn’t bring a hairbrush, make-up, perfume. I didn’t even have a shower this morning. I don’t care what I look like or how I smell. I’m not here for romantic or sexual reasons, not this time.

Once I’ve rung Melissa and texted Adam, I will email King Edward and give him my room number and a time, as agreed. I look at my watch: 12.50 p.m. Yesterday, he said anytime after two. I’ll tell him three o’clock. That will give me enough time.

To leave the door slightly ajar with the ‘Do not disturb’ sign displayed. To take off my clothes, climb into the bed, tie the blindfold securely in place and wait.

He’s not going to kill me. He wouldn’t do that. He’s done terrible things to me, and he’s maybe killed Damon Blundy, but he wouldn’t kill me.

Tomorrow evening, I’ll be at home again, with Sophie and Ethan. And Adam. If I can just get home safely, I’ll never cheat on him again – never. I won’t flirt, won’t look on Intimate Links, won’t do anything I have to lie to anybody about.

The lift doors open at the fourth floor. I pull my phone out of my bag as I walk along the corridor to room 419, suddenly feeling an urgent need to remove any trace of myself from the Intimate Links website. Deleting my ‘I Want a Secret’ ad won’t undo anything that’s happened, but symbolically it will help me, make me feel I’ve disconnected from something horrible.

Will my advert still be there, buried beneath all the more recent ones? Maybe they delete them automatically after a year or so.

In my room – also red and grey – I throw my rucksack on the bed, trying not to think about the bed itself. I’ve brought nothing with me apart from my phone, the blindfold, spare underwear and a toothbrush and toothpaste.

I’m not going to have sex with him. He won’t insist on it. He could easily make it a condition of his telling me the truth about Damon Blundy’s murder, but he won’t. I don’t care if he wants me not to utter a word, like last time. He’ll soon find out that I intend to speak as much as I want to.

He cares about me, about what I want.

Then why has he deceived you twice, in such a damaging way?

All right: I’ve no idea if he cares or not, or what caring even means to a man like King Edward. Do I trust him? No. But I want something from him: information.

If I have to have sex with him in order to find out who killed Damon Blundy, I’ll do it. I’ve had sex I didn’t want plenty of times – never against my will, always by choice, to make the other person happy. This time, it would be for my own satisfaction, because I need to understand how exactly my life ended up entangled in a murder investigation.

On my phone’s screen, I bring up the Intimate Links site and go to ‘Personals’. In the search box, I type, ‘Secret’. There’s no way it’ll still be there after all these years.

Several results appear. None of them’s my advert. They’re all too recent. I click on the most recent one, from 4 July, last Thursday. It’s headed, ‘Looking for a Woman with a Secret’. I start to read it, at first because I find it puzzling. The writer claims to want neither a long-term relationship nor casual sex.

I gasp when I see the words ‘pale blue and brown jukebox’. Damon Blundy had a blue and brown jukebox. He wrote a column about it, and mentioned it in a couple of his other columns. What’s …

Oh God. Oh fuck.

This isn’t a personal ad; it’s a description of Damon’s murder. A knife – sharp, sharpened at the scene, but he wasn’t stabbed …

Oh Jesus Christ.

I wish I hadn’t read it, wish I didn’t know how precisely Damon Blundy was killed, because now that I know how, I know why.

You knew already. Don’t lie to yourself. Lie to other people if necessary, but not to yourself.

As soon as you worked out what ‘He is no less dead’ meant, you knew …

A man’s been murdered because of something I said.

I almost know who killed Damon.
Almost.
Trouble is, there’s more than one person it might be. The likelihood of the police working it out, any of it, is zero unless I tell them everything I know.

I can’t do it. Or rather, I could, but I know I never will. If there were a murder trial, it would all come out, be made public. It would be in all the papers. No, I can’t let that happen, no matter what.

I reread the ‘Looking for a Woman with a Secret’ advert five times to check I haven’t missed anything. Beads of cold sweat have appeared on my upper lip. I feel as if I might faint.

It’s for me. This ad is directed at me. It must be – there’s no one else who could make any sense of it. Its author has been waiting for a response for five days.

I press ‘reply’.

Keiran Holland
@KeiranBHolland

Happy publication day to my better half @IonaDennis73! #proudhusband

07:50am - 27 June 2013

Damon Blundy
@blunderfulme

@KeiranBHolland If her book sells more than 500 copies, I’ll treat you to lunch at the Ivy.

07:58am - 27 June 2013

Keiran Holland
@KeiranBHolland

@blunderfulme You really are the lowest of the low, aren’t you, Damon? You’re turning your venom on my wife now?

08:02am - 27 June 2013

Damon Blundy
@blunderfulme

@KeiranBHolland No venom, just opinion. Just so we’re clear – are you accusing me of treating your wife badly? #onemanhypocrisyepidemic

08:04am - 27 June 2013

Anne McSorley
@lilorphanannie

@blunderfulme You are a nasty, rude man, Damon Blundy! @KeiranBHolland

08:10am - 27 June 2013

Damon Blundy
@blunderfulme

@KeiranBHolland Who’s treated your wife worse, you or me? Let’s recap …

08:15am - 27 June 2013

Damon Blundy
@blunderfulme

@KeiranBHolland You: make vows to wife to love & cherish forever. You: shag Paula R on the sly for months, leave wife for her, go back only …

08:19am - 27 June 2013

Damon Blundy
@blunderfulme

@KeiranBHolland … when dumped by PR, lie to world and wife by pretending you always loved wife more & it’s not just a rebound take-me-back.

08:21am - 27 June 2013

Damon Blundy
@blunderfulme

@KeiranBHolland Me: never met your wife or made any vows to her. Owe her nothing. Suggest on Twitter that her tedious book won’t sell.

08:24am - 27 June 2013

Damon Blundy
@blunderfulme

@KeiranBHolland Which of us has treated @IonaDennis73 worse, Keiran – you or me?

08:25am - 27 June 2013

Damon Blundy
@blunderfulme

@IonaDennis73 Iona, who has hurt you more, me or @KeiranBHolland?

08:26am - 27 June 2013

Bryn Gilligan
@sprinterbryng

I’m no fan of Damon Blundy, but he’s right to say Keiran Holland’s a hypocrite.

08:42am - 27 June 2013

Bicester Mister
@bicestermister

@sprinterbryng Fuck off lying cheating asswipe. No one cares what you think.

08:44am - 27 June 2013

‘He’s a novelist,’ Simon shouted into his phone, hoping he’d be heard over the wind and the rushing of the river. ‘He writes supernatural-horror kind of books. He lives opposite your school, on Gaywood Road. I just wondered if you’d ever had any contact with him.’

‘None whatsoever,’ said the improbably named headmistress whose voice he could barely hear. Nastia Grekov was obviously of Russian ancestry, or something similar, though she sounded very English. Having a name that sounded identical to the word ‘nastier’ when you worked in a school couldn’t be easy, thought Simon.

‘I’d never heard of him until I got your message,’ she said. ‘Do you mind telling me what this is about? Do I need to worry about this man?’

‘No, not at all.’ Having heard the answer, he was impatient to end the call. He was supposed to be meeting Hannah Blundy at her office five minutes ago, was standing outside it, and had been about to press the buzzer when his phone had started to ring.

‘You say “not at all” and yet you’re a police detective, and you say he writes horror, so … I’m a little concerned,’ said Mrs Grekov. ‘What can you tell me to put my mind at rest? Has Mr Tasker committed a crime? Is he suspected of a crime? I’m responsible for the welfare of several hundred—’

‘Your pupils aren’t in any danger,’ Simon told her, hoping to God that he was right. A few more abstract reassurances and he was able to extract himself.

Why did Reuben Tasker hate the school opposite his house so much? And only since Damon Blundy’s death, according to Gibbs, who had spoken to Tasker’s wife, Jane, about it. It surely must have something to do with the murder, but how could it possibly be connected?

Simon pressed the buzzer. The ‘21’ beside the door was so subtle that, even with the sun shining directly on it, Simon almost missed it. Hannah Blundy’s psychotherapy practice was obviously doing well if she could afford space in this large white stucco-fronted townhouse, the middle one of a wide, regal, terraced block of three on the riverfront in Silsford.

‘Yes?’ a crackly voice emerged from the intercom on the wall. Hannah’s?

‘DC Simon Waterhouse, to see Hannah Blun— Hannah Yeatman.’ At work, she called herself by her maiden name. Simon didn’t understand why anyone would allow themselves to end up in a situation where they had two names. Having one was bad enough; he’d always hated saying his own out loud.

The crackly voice said something he couldn’t make out. It was followed by a deeper buzzing noise, which Simon took to mean that he should push his way in. He had to apply his full weight to the shiny black front door in order to get it to move.

Inside, he expected to see a person, or something that hinted at the presence of a person or people nearby, but there was nothing – no visible reception area, no sound of voices or movement. Simon was standing in a wide, elegant hall with mustard-coloured walls and one of those zigzag-patterned wooden floors, dark and shiny. Ahead of him were two doors, one on either side: one ajar and one closed.

He moved forward and looked into the room that was open. It looked like a waiting room, waiting for people to wait within it. There was a display of glossy magazines on a rectangular table with wooden legs and a thick marble slab-like top, three armchairs that looked as if they’d been designed for a royal court, a backless pink sofa that reminded Simon of a rolled-out tongue, and two tall, rubbery-leafed plants in large terracotta pots.

Surroundings so ostentatiously flawless made Simon suspicious. The inside of the building smelled of new paint and new carpet. He pictured waves of crimson blood flowing down the curved staircase in front of him, rushing towards him like a curling red ribbon.

He shook his head to banish the image. ‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Anyone in? Hannah?’

A pair of legs appeared at the top of the wide staircase in front of him. ‘Sorry!’ It was Hannah’s voice.

Simon was embarrassed by how relieved he was to hear it. The building had a bad vibe. He wouldn’t have liked to be in it alone.

‘Sorry,’ Hannah said again. ‘I had a patient on the phone and couldn’t disentangle myself easily. Come on up.’

Simon followed her to her office on the first floor and did a double take as he entered the room.

Incredible.
Someone had covered the whole floor with a painted Chinese landscape. It was mainly blue and white, with touches of pale green and pale pink here and there. Like an intricate china-teacup pattern, but on the floor.

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ said Hannah. She was smiling, but her eyes were red and swollen, her face pale. ‘My friend did it for me. She’s a genius.’

On the far wall, above a filing cabinet, there was a framed quote that must have been chosen for its psychological relevance: