by Susan Lewis
Elliot was staring at Max Erwin. They’d been working together since eight that morning, connecting all their findings with those that were coming in from around the world, and only now had Beth Ashby’s name come up – and in such a way that Elliot couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard.
‘You’re telling me she confessed to killing the girl?’ he repeated. ‘That’s what they beat out of her?’
Erwin nodded. ‘Kleinstein just told me last night. They thought she knew something about the syndicate, might be planning some kind of blackmail or something, but Gatling was always scared he’d been seen coming out of the hooker’s apartment. And it turns out he was, but not by Mr Ashby, who’d then told Mrs Ashby, the way he suspected …’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Elliot muttered, grabbing for his phone. ‘Laurie’s up there with her now. Are you sure you’ve got that right?’ he demanded as he speed-dialled the number.
‘That’s what the man said,’ Erwin responded. ‘She confessed to killing the girl herself.’
‘Damn!’ Elliot swore as the automated voice told him the unit was out of range. He tried Stan and got the same response. ‘I’ve got to go up there,’ he said, and, snatching up his car keys, he ran to the door.
‘I’ll drive,’ Erwin said, coming after him. ‘I know the town better.’
As they sped along Lincoln, heading for the 10 Freeway, Elliot tried the number at Beth Ashby’s house. The machine picked up so he left a message for Laurie to call him urgently.
‘Step on it,’ he said to Erwin. ‘I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.’
‘Shit!’ Erwin swore, as the lights turned red on Venice. Swerving sharply to the right, he accelerated fast down a side street, made several more turns, then sped down the ramp on to the freeway.
Elliot was so tense he barely noticed where they were. The fact that Laurie was in a house alone with a killer was all he could think about. But Beth Ashby had no reason to hurt her, provided Laurie didn’t know the truth. Just don’t let Beth Ashby choose today to make her second confession! A thousand questions began pouring into his head. He had no answers, though he understood now what Gatling had meant when he’d said there wasn’t a damned thing they could do about it. Beth Ashby had confessed to the killing, but if Gatling had her arrested there wasn’t only how the information had been extracted to consider, there was what she could tell the police about Gatling and his wife being at the flat right before the murder. No matter that they hadn’t committed the crime themselves, the scandal and publicity would be anathema to people like them.
‘What the fuck was he doing there?’ he demanded of Erwin.
Erwin glanced at him. ‘The girl was a hooker,’ he reminded him.
‘So he was there, getting laid?’
‘Apparently. His wife dropped him off, then came back for him half an hour later.’
At any other time Elliot might have laughed. ‘So Beth Ashby commits a murder that’s got nothing at all to do with anything, except the fact that her husband’s screwing the girl, and now all this?’ he said, hardly believing his own words.
‘That’s the way I’m reading it,’ Erwin answered. ‘In fact, that’s the way they’re all reading it, Kleinstein, Wingate, Brunner, the whole lot of them.’
Elliot was still trying to get his mind round it. ‘So if the Gatlings hadn’t panicked and interfered with the police investigation –’
‘The euro would still be on a slow boat to extinction,’ Erwin confirmed, speeding across the flyover from the 10 to the 405, ‘and Mrs Ashby would very probably already be toast.’
‘And by the time they found out the truth – that she’d done it – it was already too late for them,’ Elliot said. ‘Why didn’t they have her arrested anyway?’
‘Were they looking for any more publicity?’ Erwin asked incredulously. ‘Besides, what the hell did they care who killed the girl, just as long as none of them was in the frame.’
‘Does she know anything about the syndicate?’
‘She might have pieced something together by now from the questions they asked, but from what Kleinstein tells me, it doesn’t seem like she had a clue before.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Elliot muttered, shaking his head. ‘To think of everything that’s happened … No one ever even suspected her, or not seriously … How the hell did she do it?’
‘That I don’t know,’ Erwin answered. ‘But what I do know, from the look of this traffic, is that we’re not going to get there any time soon.’
A bolt of fear shot through Elliot’s heart. If anything happened to Laurie, anything at all …
Laurie and Beth were still in the sitting room. Neither had moved nor spoken since Beth had admitted to killing Sophie, though the air had noticeably altered. Laurie guessed it was her own fear that had changed it, though Beth too seemed more tense, and even afraid.
In the end Beth was the first to speak. ‘You know one of the greatest ironies of all this for me,’ she said, ‘is how, by overintellectualizing my book, they’ve turned it into the weapon of their own destruction. Hoist with their own petard, you might say. If they’d just left me alone … But they couldn’t, could they? Guilty consciences and paranoia wouldn’t allow it. They have so much to hide – people like that always do. And all the time they were afraid of what I might know, it never seemed to occur to them that I might have seen them at Sophie’s. If it had, then they’d have had to wonder, wouldn’t they, how I had seen them? And if they’d asked themselves that …’ She paused, took a breath then said, ‘If they hadn’t been at Sophie’s that day, they wouldn’t have hampered the police investigation, and who knows what the police might have found, given a free rein. Did it surprise you to find that the police could be controlled? You must have noticed during your investigation.’
‘No, it didn’t surprise me,’ Laurie answered.
She nodded. ‘Colin used to hate that,’ she said, ‘the fact that power could be wielded over the law. He knew it was naïve to think it couldn’t, but he was honourable, in his way. He liked things to be right. It was only with me that he kept getting it wrong, but whoever cared about me?’ She smiled sadly and looked down at her hands. ‘They knew they were the aristocrats,’ she continued, ‘and the fact that they were at Sophie’s that day, and were afraid of it coming out, was enough to make them destroy my book and now the film. So they’ve taken my husband, my spirit and now my dreams. They have so much and I wanted so little.’
‘What about what Sophie wanted?’ Laurie asked quietly.
Beth looked confused. ‘What did she want?’ she said.
Her life, Laurie wanted to say, but didn’t quite dare. ‘Wasn’t she an innocent victim?’ she said.
Beth nodded sadly. ‘Yes, she was,’ she answered. ‘The sacrificial lamb, as Mitzi called her. That’s how it became confused. The murder in the book, which appeared literal at first, turned out only to be symbolic, so they didn’t know what to make of it. Was I talking about Sophie Long? It could hardly be likely when the book had obviously been written before, but the questions it might throw up for a discerning reporter …’ She looked at Laurie and inclined her head, almost graciously.
‘But when Georgie asked about the sacrificial lamb you told her to ask Colin, or Gatling,’ Laurie said.
Beth smiled. ‘Of course.’
Yes, of course, Laurie conceded. It had been a way of keeping the attention focused on them and away from herself. Whatever else Beth Ashby was, she was very far from stupid.
‘I expect, what you’d really like me to tell you now,’ Beth said, ‘is why I killed Sophie. Why she had to be the sacrificial lamb.’
Laurie waited, her eyes reflecting as much unease as intrigue.
Beth’s breath shuddered slightly as she inhaled. ‘I killed her,’ she said, ‘because he was going to leave me.’ As she spoke her veneer of bravado, the bluster of being a writer whom everyone had praised, seemed to crumble.
‘For Sophie?’ Laurie said.
Laurie frowned.
Beth watched her for a moment, then said, ‘I knew about Heather long before it was in the paper. And Jessica. And Sophie. I knew about them all. He couldn’t keep anything secret from me, not where his women were concerned. Half the time he didn’t even bother to try. It was just the way he was, he used to tell me; he couldn’t help it. It’s like that for some men; they can’t resist the opposite sex, but it doesn’t really mean anything. I was his wife; he always came home, so I should understand that I was loved above all the others. And I did understand. He did love me, but it still tore me apart every time I knew he was with another woman. I wanted to be enough. I needed to matter so much that he’d never want anyone else. It seemed such a simple thing to want, when so many other women had it, but with Colin it wasn’t possible.’
Laurie watched her as the mask fell away some more and she stared down at her empty glass. It was like watching an unhappy child emerge from the sophistication of a woman’s defences.
‘Of course I should have left him,’ she said, still staring at her glass. ‘Any normal woman would have. But I’m not normal, am I? I can’t be to have put up with what I did.’ She looked at Laurie. ‘Do you have any idea what it’s like to love someone so much that it’s as though your whole life depends on it, and then have him treat you as though you’re just there to be walked over, on his way out to someone else’s bed? I hated him for that. It made me so angry. I’d even attack him physically, but he always managed to win me round in the end. He knew I loved him, and he loved me too, so it was like a game to him. Even after I’d thrown him out and told him I never wanted to see him again, he’d always come back, knowing I wouldn’t say no, because I couldn’t. How could I when life without him was an even worse hell than life with him? That’s what being in love is like, you know? Hell. At least it is for me.’
The phone rang in the kitchen, but she made no attempt to get up and answer it, merely waited for the machine to kick in, then whoever it was to leave a message. Someone did, but from this distance it was impossible to hear who.
Laurie said, ‘How did you find out about Heather?’
Beth’s eyebrows went up, though she was staring down at the glass again. ‘I followed him,’ she answered. ‘It was last summer, a year ago. He was going to a conference for the weekend, he said. I knew it was in Cornwall because it was written in his diary, “Cornwall”. Can you imagine following someone all that way, knowing that you’re going to have your heart broken at the end of it? Was I mad for doing it? Yes, of course. Would I have been mad to stay at home and believe his lies? Yes, of course. Whichever way, I was mad because I couldn’t stop loving a man who couldn’t stop loving other women. What difference was it going to make when I caught him? It wasn’t as though he’d never done it before. And I’d forgive him, because I always did. But this time it turned out to be different. This time, when he got to the house that I later found out he owned, with her, there wasn’t only a woman sitting outside on the grass, there was a little girl too. I knew, even before she ran into his arms that she was his. I could see the resemblance. They were all so wrapped up in each other they didn’t even notice me. Such a happy, loving little family scene.’
Laurie’s heart was responding with compassion, for she could easily imagine how devastating it must have been. She could even see it now, in the way Beth was holding herself. ‘Did you ever actually meet Heather?’ she asked.
‘No. Never,’ she whispered. Then in a slightly stronger voice, ‘We spoke once on the phone, quite recently actually, but we never met.’
Laurie wondered what the call had been about, but didn’t ask.
‘I kept waiting for him to tell me about her,’ she said, ‘but he didn’t. It was only a matter of time, though. I knew that. He was going to leave, he had to for the child.’
‘So did he tell you, in the end, that he was going to?’ Laurie said, when she stopped.
‘No. I just knew he would.’
‘But if you were convinced he was going to leave you for Heather,’ Laurie said, ‘why did you –’ She broke off, not wanting to say the word.
‘Kill Sophie? Two reasons: I couldn’t deprive little Jessica of her mother; and killing Sophie would make him more mine than he’d ever been.’
Laurie frowned. ‘How could it do that?’
‘If he went to prison there couldn’t be any more women, could there? And I’d always know where he was.’
Oh my God, Laurie was thinking, she really did plan it. She really knew what she was doing. ‘So how …? What happened?’ she heard herself ask.
‘It wasn’t hard,’ she answered. ‘I mean, arranging it. Doing it was horrible. I hated that.’ She put a hand to her head, as though to block out the image. ‘She’s always there. She never leaves me, no matter how hard I try to tell myself Colin did it, she keeps coming back to remind me he didn’t.’ Her head came up; her eyes were swimming in tears, seeming to plead for understanding. ‘I had to convince myself completely that he was guilty,’ she explained. ‘I had to tell myself that I’d never heard of Heather, or Jessica, or Sophie, before that day. I couldn’t allow even my thoughts to wander into areas of danger, in case I ever said anything to give myself away. I was sure, if I tried hard enough, it would become like the truth – that Colin did it so he deserved to be where he was. And sometimes it worked. Of course, it helped being Ava. She allowed me the freedom of being someone else completely, who didn’t care about Colin, or the other women, or what had happened. It was all nothing to her. She didn’t consider him, just like he’d never considered me. It’s strange how once you’ve stepped on to the other side of the law the whole world looks different. Nothing is ever the same again. There are no barriers any more, nothing to say how far you can, or can’t, go. It’s like falling through space, there’s nowhere to land. You don’t belong anywhere any more, and there’s no way to turn back.’ Tears were spilling into the dust on her face, while her hands were clenched around the glass in her lap.
Laurie watched her eyes blink sightlessly. It was as though she was in another place, another time, somewhere remote from her conscience, yet still connected to the pain.
‘I don’t understand how you did it,’ Laurie said after a while. ‘You had an alibi. The cleaner, the receipt for the paper …’
Beth’s head came up and as she stared off into the distance she made a dry, sad sound in her throat, like a sob, yet like a laugh too. ‘The cleaner was easy,’ she said. ‘There’s a door to the outside from my study, so I often used to go out and come back without her knowing. She hardly ever knew what was going on anyway. And I got the paper just in case anyone else saw me – I could give it as my reason for popping out.’
Laurie thought about the loud, harassed woman she’d interviewed, who had sworn Mrs Ashby ‘never leave the house, except for two minutes to buy paper’. Yes, she could imagine the woman being so wrapped up in herself that she might not notice what else was going on around her. ‘What about Sophie’s flat?’ she said. ‘There’s no evidence to say you were there.’
‘I’m sure there is, considering the sophistication of today’s techniques,’ she responded. ‘But everything pointed to Colin, and because the investigation wasn’t allowed to go any further, the fact that I wore his tracksuit and trainers, and kept my hair tied up in a scarf, worked. I knew he was seeing her that day, because it was in his diary. “Sophie”, it said. Just like it had said “Cornwall”. “Sophie” – no attempt even to disguise it. Does that tell you how little respect he had for me? He didn’t even care that I knew. I’d told him to get out a few days before, so I knew he was staying with her, or Heather – it didn’t really matter which. He had an arrangement to see Sophie at twelve on that particular day. Everyone else’s husband eats during their lunch break – but that’s what mine does. So I called her in the morning and told her I wanted to surprise him by being there too, ready for a threesome when he arrived. I offered to dou
ble her fee, which she agreed to, and then I told her what his real fantasy was, to make sure she had everything to hand. Then, when the time came, I went over there.’ She took several breaths, as though she’d been running. Her hands were clamped tightly together now, the glass had slipped to the floor.
‘I stayed outside at first. I was across the street, in my car, pretending to sort out paperwork, in case anyone was watching. That was when I saw Marcus come out of the building. Then Leonora pulled up and drove him away. I guessed he was one of Sophie’s clients, and I knew that Leonora was tolerant, so I wasn’t really surprised. Besides, I was there for my own reasons and they were all I could think of.’
She inhaled deeply, shakily, then continued. ‘I went inside and we both got undressed,’ she said. ‘She was a sweet girl. Pretty. I could see why he liked her. She was very malleable, obliging, but nervous, I suppose because it was me. To make her feel more at ease, I pretended, in my mind, that I was Colin, and kissed her and fondled her. I was intrigued to know what a woman would feel like to him.’ She bowed her head, then her shoulders began to shake as she cried.
‘She lay down on the bed,’ she continued, ‘and I handcuffed her to the four little posts. Then I picked up her tights …’ Her breath was coming in short, harsh bursts, and as she gasped for air, tears began streaming fast down her cheeks. ‘It was horrible,’ she choked. ‘She was so afraid, and her eyes were looking back at me, getting bigger and bigger, so I had to turn away. She didn’t deserve to die, but it was the only way I could make him stop.’ She dashed a hand over her face. ‘It was Colin,’ she cried in despair. ‘If it weren’t for him I’d never have done it. So it was his fault. If he’d been faithful, if he’d loved me enough … He deserves to pay. Don’t you see that? He killed her as surely as I did, so the guilt is ours to share. I would have stayed faithful to him all the time he was in prison. I would have visited him and written to him. He would have been mine then.’
Though appalled, Laurie’s eyes shone with pity too, for the tortured rationale wasn’t really that hard to understand. However, the image of the poor, terrified girl who’d lost her life in a struggle she had no way of understanding was turning her heart inside out. ‘What did you do after?’ she finally asked.
