“Something like that.”
“The stupid woman.” There was both bitterness and resignation in his voice.
“Why is it a problem?”
“It gives me a motive for killing him.”
This was new. Curtis was telling me he thought he was in line to become a murder suspect. But why? All the evidence pointed elsewhere. I said, “Nobody’s accusing you of that, are they?”
“Not yet, maybe, but if you start spreading that story about Rob cancelling our deal, they’ll get round to it. I did it in a fit of uncontrollable rage – that’s what they’ll say. I’ve read enough of the books we deal with to know the way these things go.”
I looked at him, puzzled. “Did you kill him then?”
“You tell me.” He reached into a pocket and drew out a packet of cigarette papers and a tobacco pouch. He started to shape a roll-up, but the breeze kept thwarting his efforts. He abandoned the task in disgust.
I said, “If you killed him, how did you get back into his house to do it? From what I’ve been hearing, there’s no evidence at all to indicate that you were even there on the day he died.”
He made a tetching sound. “I don’t know what you mean about going back there. I just went there once. The police know about that.”
“That’ll be from the webcam video on the day before he died.”
“Yup.”
“So why is that a problem?”
“They must have worked out that I knocked him down – and half his computer equipment with him. Eventually they’ll put two and two together.”
I should have thought more carefully before responding to this, but immediately I said, “I don’t think anyone actually knows what happened while you were there. From what they’ve told me, all they know about is a noise and raised voices.”
“Is that right?” He was suddenly alert, and a calculating look was creeping into his eyes. “And they don’t know Rob pulled out of our deal?”
“Possibly not.”
“Unless you tell them.”
I looked at him uneasily. “I don’t understand why you’re so concerned. They’ve pinned the killing on someone else. They’re not looking at you.”
“Not at the moment, perhaps.” He straightened as if squaring up to me. “You’re obviously missing the point here. You can’t have been reading the right kind of book. You’ll get there eventually – and no doubt you’ll be sharing what you know with your mates on the force.”
There was still a hint of resignation in his voice, but it was now overlaid with something more sinister. I glanced out at the landscape around us. It would be frighteningly easy to pitch someone over that parapet. You would just need to take them by surprise. In his present unpredictable mood, perhaps this man might just be rash enough to attempt it. Instinctively I took a couple of steps back.
He said, “Ah – so you’ve got the picture at last, have you?”
“No, not really. I just think it’s time I was leaving.”
I took a few paces in the direction of the stairwell, but he thrust himself away from the parapet and followed me. “Don’t go yet. This is just getting interesting.” He put a hand on my arm in an urgent bid to hold me back.
I wheeled round and freed myself. He was partially blocking my way, so I set off again in a different direction. He continued to follow me and put a hand on my arm again, this time much more firmly. He said, “Has your life ever turned to shit in front of your eyes? No, of course it hasn’t. D’you know the worst thing? It’s when someone holds up a solution to your problems, then snatches it away at the eleventh hour.”
I shrugged my arm free and turned to him. “I’m sorry things have gone so badly for you – and I’m sorry I’ve come here and upset you and your wife. It was a bad idea.”
“I won’t disagree with you there.” There was now an unmistakably malevolent look in his eye.
To give him something new to think about I said, “I suppose you know Rob Openshaw was a crook? He piggybacked on another company for his reader database, but they found out, and that left him in a fix. If he was going to buy you out, it must have been to acquire your database. That’s really what he was after.”
He took a moment to absorb this, then said, “Wouldn’t have mattered to me. His money would have been as good as anybody else’s.”
As he spoke he started crowding in on me, and for the first time I had a sense of real menace. With good reason, I soon found. Abruptly he lunged forward to grab my arm again. I made a move to step back, but when I lowered my foot there was nothing under it. I was standing on the edge of a drop and I was about to go over the edge.
My arms flailed wildly, and I managed to grab Curtis before I lost my balance completely. Glancing around, I realised we were at the rim of an open area cut into the concrete floor – a kind of atrium about thirty feet square. It looked as if it extended a couple of floors downwards.
There was a frozen moment of indecision. Curtis could rescue me or he could shove me over edge. I could almost feel his muscles tightening and relaxing as conflicting instincts tugged at him.
His malevolent side won out. He started pushing at me, trying to nudge me over the edge. I shouted, “For Christ’s sake!” and grasped at his jacket. For a long moment we pirouetted in a bizarre embrace, but slowly I felt myself slipping backwards. All the while he was hammering at one of my arms with his fist, trying to force me to let go of the jacket. Finally he must have hit a nerve, and instantly I felt my grip relax. I was about to go over.
That should have been the end for me, but it wasn’t. He jerked his body round to shake himself free of me, and as he did so the other side of his jacket swished out. I didn’t even see it, but I felt it and clutched at it again in desperation. Amazingly, I was able to grab it by the zip, and I clung to it with all my strength. He realised too late what had happened. By then he was falling with me over the edge.
* * *
But we didn’t fall far. Almost at once we thumped down on what felt like a wooden surface.
For a moment I didn’t move. I was too stunned at finding myself still in one piece.
Curtis was on his feet first. For a fleeting moment I wondered if he would pause to reflect, but no – he lunged towards me with both arms while I was still floundering, and flung me back on to my knees. Before I recovered he lunged at me again, but this time I managed to duck to the side.
The surface we’d landed on was solid but unstable. I found it difficult to keep my balance. Gradually my eyes adjusted to the reduced light and I realised we were on some sort of platform. It was only about twelve feet square, and Curtis was determined to push me over the side.
We tussled for several seconds. I found myself on my back, close to the edge. There was no guard rail or lip – nothing to stop me from falling. He loomed over me and shoved me with his foot. Somehow I managed to hold my position. He lifted his foot and shoved me again, but this time I grabbed his ankle and clung to it. At the same moment the platform lurched and tilted slightly, as if it was settling somewhere far below. The sudden movement unbalanced Curtis, and he pitched over me with his arms flailing. Instinctively I released his ankle so that he could brace himself, but it was too late. As if in slow motion he disappeared over the edge.
For a moment I simply lay there, hardly daring to move. Finally I rose gingerly to my feet. The surface of the platform was now sloping slightly, but not enough to prevent from me from moving around cautiously. I glanced upward, and found to my relief that the edge of the concrete ceiling was only a foot or so above me. With an effort I was able to hoist myself up over the rim and back on to the floor where we’d been standing.
I ran over to the stairs and took them two at a time. Two floors down, I stepped out of the stairwell and glanced around to get my bearings. In front of me was a tall scaffolding platform – a free-standing structure with wheels at the base. That was what had saved me from the fall. Simon Curtis was lying motionless next to it. He was breathing but uncons
cious.
I groped for my phone and called for an ambulance. They told me how to make him superficially comfortable, but added, “Don’t do anything else. We’ll be with you in minutes.”
I looked back at Curtis, wondering what would lodge itself most firmly in my memory – the danger I’d been in, the cry of anguish as he’d tumbled over the edge, or the definitive thump when he’d hit the floor below.
Chapter 86
DI Pat Evans called round at the flat the following morning, and immediately launched into me.
“What the hell did you think you were doing, going and hassling that man Curtis?”
“You didn’t seem to be in any hurry to follow him up. I just thought I’d try to find out a bit more about him.”
“What made you think you could second-guess what we were doing? You must have realised we would have got round to him in the end. If we had, he might not be lying in the hospital in a coma.”
I attempted to look contrite. “I was trying to help.”
He stared impassively at me and said nothing.
I said, “Curtis didn’t seem like a violent man. Volatile, maybe, but he didn’t give me the impression that he would lay into me.”
“You can’t make snap judgements like that. If I’ve discovered anything in this job, it’s that people will constantly surprise you.”
He told me to run through the previous day’s events for him. I said, “I explained the whole thing to your colleagues yesterday after I was taken to the hospital in Greenwich.”
“So I understand. If you ask me, you were lucky they let you go in the end.”
I sighed. “I still have to give them a full statement.”
“And in the meantime, you can tell the story to me – including everything that was said.”
So I recounted what Curtis and his wife had told me as closely as I could remember, and then progressed to the events in the high-rise building. I concluded, “Curtis seemed terrified that you would link him to Rob Openshaw’s death, yet he still didn’t give me any reason to think he was there at the time.”
He sat back in his chair, looking a little calmer. He said, “I suppose the one thing we’ve learned from this is that Rob Openshaw had withdrawn his offer to buy Curtis’s business. That presumably means the investment from Nicholas Hathaway had also been withdrawn.”
“But if that’s true, surely you must have found emails between them about this? I assume you checked?”
He gave me a contemptuous frown. “Of course we checked their emails.” He reflected for a moment. “There wouldn’t necessarily be any data trail. Let’s say Hathaway telephones Openshaw, tells him out of the blue that the deal is off. Openshaw phones Curtis, passes on the good news. Curtis then heads straight round to Openshaw’s house to argue the toss with him. Later Hathaway hears that Openshaw is dead, so he doesn’t need to put the cancellation in writing. The deal is off by default – and nothing has been written down.”
“That all makes sense.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Finally Evans said, “In the absence of any other evidence, what does your great mind deduce from all this?”
It was time to articulate what I’d probably suspected for a while. I said, “Could Openshaw’s death have been a delayed reaction? We know he and Curtis got into a tussle the previous day. Could Curtis have struck the fatal blow without knowing it?”
“You’re getting there at last.” He sat back and looked at me, assessing. After a moment he said, “You’re going to work this out in the end, so I might as well fill you in now. After I saw you the other day I had a word with the pathologist. I asked him to look again at Openshaw’s postmortem findings, then talk me through various possibilities. Which he did.”
“And?”
“Have you ever heard of an epidural haematoma? It’s a closed head injury – that’s what they call it. An internal haemorrhage caused by trauma such as a violent blow. There may not be any visible evidence, and the victim doesn’t always know there’s anything wrong at the time. He or she might have headaches later in the day, but they wouldn’t necessarily connect them to the injury. But then hours later, or even the next day, the full symptoms manifest themselves. If the condition hasn’t been treated by that point, it tends to be fatal.”
“And you think that’s what happened to Rob Openshaw?”
“It’s a possibility. The pathologist won’t put it any more strongly than that. Normally this kind of injury would come out in a postmortem, but apparently that might not necessarily be the case if it’s relatively mild, and if subsequent injuries have masked the original one.”
“But surely the symptoms would still be there? Are you saying they would really be missed?”
“He says it would be extremely unusual, but it’s not inconceivable – especially not if the postmortem was rushed and they weren’t looking properly.”
“And was that the case here?”
“I couldn’t comment, but I do know they were under immense pressure that week. They were short-staffed, and they were dealing with this death alongside that triple murder in Hackney.” He gave me an evasive look. “Off the record, one of their team might be facing disciplinary action, so you can draw your own conclusions.”
I thought back over the sequence of events at the house. I said, “Could the victim survive without treatment for as long as Openshaw did?”
“Ah, that’s the main flaw in the logic. It seems that the time lag between injury and acute symptoms is usually no more than eight to ten hours. But longer time lags have been recorded, so it’s not out of the question.”
I said, “I wonder why Simon Curtis was so worried that this would come out? It’s taken you months to work it out, and you might never have worked it out at all.”
Evans shrugged. “You and I weren’t there when he had his fight with Openshaw. We didn’t see what kind of blow Openshaw suffered. Curtis presumably did – and he probably knew in his heart of hearts that there must have been serious damage.”
“I can probably offer another angle here,” I said. “Curtis spends his life promoting thrillers. He must have encountered dozens of plots where things like this happen. When he found himself in the middle of all this, he was conditioned to expect the worst. He was probably waiting all along for you guys to come up with the right answer.”
As Evans prepared to leave I asked him, “What happens now?”
“Officially, all I can say is that we have some more thinking to do.”
“Unofficially?”
“Well, if this theory stacks up, we’ll be looking at prosecuting Simon Curtis – assuming he recovers from his injuries.”
“What sort of shape is he in?”
“Both legs broken, several fractured ribs, severe concussion, and various internal injuries.”
“Will he pull through?”
“Apparently he might. I don’t know if you realised, but he landed on some folded tarpaulins. They saved his life. But if he does survive, we probably have to regard him as the true killer.” He paused. “We could also consider charging him with attempting to murder you, but to be honest, we only have your word for that.”
“So where would all this leave Graham Bulwell and Ellie Openshaw?”
He shook his head. “It’s not up to me to decide, but it’s possible that Bulwell could be released. I was never convinced that he caused Openshaw’s injuries, but I couldn’t see who else could have done it. Now we have an answer to that, and arguably it lets Bulwell off the hook.”
“And Ellie?”
“Well, in a way she finished him off, to put it bluntly. She shoved him on to the floor and left him for dead. But if we’re right, he was probably beyond saving at that point, so it wouldn’t have made much difference what she did. We can pass all this on to the folks in America next time we’re in touch.”
Chapter 87
Meriel School man found dead after new questioning
Graham Bulwell (53), a former schoolteacher who was
questioned during the Meriel School scandal of the 1990s, has been found dead at his home in south London.
Mr Bulwell had been on remand in connection with the so-called ‘bookman’ murder this summer of Robert Openshaw, who worked in the electronic book publishing industry. Earlier this week Bulwell, who was a self-published author, was released after the police concluded that there was no case to answer, but the following day he was taken in for new questioning.
No charge was ever brought against Mr Bulwell following allegations of sexual misconduct made against staff by pupils at the Meriel School. However, the publicity surrounding the bookman affair has prompted a former pupil at the school to come forward, claiming to have new evidence. It is thought that she was encouraged by the “Me Too” movement that has emerged in recent years.
We understand that Mr Bulwell was questioned for several hours at a police station in south London, then released without charge pending further investigation. His body was found the following morning. The police have said they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident.
I sat at my desk for a long time, staring at my computer screen in shock. I was much more affected by this news than I had been when Nick Hathaway had so spectacularly killed himself, or when Simon Curtis had nearly fallen to his death in Greenwich. Graham was someone I felt I knew, and had come to like. I might not have admired his book, but I had a grudging respect for the man himself – for his energy, his gusto, his self-belief. There was a bluff warmth about him that I’d found unexpectedly endearing.
I couldn’t dismiss the irony of this outcome. It was partly in Graham’s defence that I’d put myself through so many hoops this year, trying to find out who really killed Rob Openshaw. In the end the effort had paid off, and Graham had been released – and yet he’d barely had a single day to enjoy his freedom. It felt profoundly and irredeemably unfair.
The Concrete Ceiling Page 36
