by Paul Charles
“Just to get this clear...would this have been before or after she married Richard?” McCusker asked slowly.
“Oh most definitely afterward,” Jaime said. “Mind you, he said nothing happened – they were friends, she’d just drank too much and couldn’t drive home. He claimed she slept on the sofa, but I was jet-lagged out of my brains and got up a few times during the night to get a drink of Coke and I can tell you she most definitely wasn’t on the sofa when I went through the lounge.”
O’Carroll scribbled furiously in her book.
“Look, it’s most likely nothing,” Jaime Whitlock said, a wee bit self-consciously. “I had words with him and told him it didn’t really matter what actually did or didn’t happen; no, I told him it would be more important to his well-being what the husband imagined might have happened. But Adam wasn’t in the slightest bit concerned about it.”
“Okay,” McCusker asked, thinking there had, thanks to Jaime’s honesty, just been a bit of a breakthrough on the case. “Anything else you can think of?”
“There’s really not,” Whitlock Junior said. “I really wish I could help you more, if only to get my father off of this. He’s thinking about nothing else at the moment and…listen McCusker, I will admit to you he’s got some of his mates from way back in the day running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to solve this. The sooner you guys break this case, the sooner I can get him home and allow him to start his grieving. I mean, I know he doesn’t look it, but he is a very old man and I fear what this will do to him.”
* * *
Five minutes later McCusker and O’Carroll were waiting for the pedestrian lights just outside the door of the Europa to change, so that they could cross the road to the Crown Bar side of Great Victoria Street. “We’re not far from the Beeb – do you fancy nipping around and having a wee chat with Angela Robinson?” McCusker asked.
“Count me in,” O’Carroll replied, but quickly revealed her mind was elsewhere. “This Cindy Scott thing...I’m not so sure her brother Bing would get over her death that easy.”
They cut through Amelia Street, left into Brunswick Street past Belfast Metropolitan College aka ‘the College of Knowledge,’ and then took a quick right into James Street, an area well developed since it’s early days as a hooker haven.
“You think Bing could hold Adam Whitlock responsible for his sister’s death?”
“It wouldn’t be too big a leap of the imagination to land on that particular leaf.”
“But surely to go from there to murdering him for revenge would be too big a leap?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” O’Carroll replied, as they crossed Bedford Street at the Franklin Street junction, to the front steps of the historic Ulster Hall, the spiritual home of guitarist Rory Gallagher. “It really depends on the mental state of Bing Scott.”
“Okay then, let me ask you this: if say you lived in the States and you thought someone was responsible for the death of your sister, would you want the state to execute your sister’s murderer?”
“No,” she replied, totally surprising McCusker.
Then after a short pause she continued, “I wouldn’t want the state to do it – I’d want to flick the switch myself and put the a-hole out of his misery.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“We started out on Bushmills and soon hit the harder stuff,” was Angela Robinson’s opening line when they eventually got to see her. McCusker had quickly confronted her with the fact that they knew she was having an affair with Adam Whitlock.
They’d been shown through to her small office on the third floor of Broadcasting House because she was, another producer noted, “on air for another seventeen minutes, then I take over.”
In the intervening seventeen minutes – which had then dropped to fifteen and a half minutes, according to the large, loud, ticking clock over the door facing her desk – DI Lily O’Carroll had negotiated her way through Angela’s Blackberry to discover, with some degree of excitement and pride, that the producer did not have her husband registered in her speed-dial list; equally telling was the fact that Adam Whitlock was included in her most used list of telephone numbers.
“We’d started out on Bushmills...” she reiterated, staring straight into McCusker’s eyes and looking close to tears herself. “We made out the first night we met. We were in the student’s union bar and of course I’m talking American standards here where making out is heavy petting and nothing more.”
She searched around in the bottom drawer of her desk until she produced a small bottle of Bushmills whiskey and three small plastic cups she’d nicked from the stash by the water cooler in the communal area. She poured herself a stiff one, which she gulped down before bothering to pour one each for McCusker and O’Carroll and another one for herself. With her second one she toasted: “To Adam, I miss you and may you forgive me for what I’m about to tell a pair of coppers.”
McCusker raised his cup to Angela and then to his mouth, barely letting the fine brew kiss his lips. He knew it was unacceptable to be drinking with a witness, but he felt that if at least Angela thought they were joining her in a drink she might be more inclined to talk freely. With a case as light on leads as this one, he needed someone talking freely. O’Carroll also seemed to sense this and followed his lead, although she appeared to take a generous gulp.
“We got on great from the first time we met. Our common bond was our love of movies and we agreed it was much better to fail while going for the big things in life than to succeed in domestic bliss. Perhaps that was our downfall.”
“I made it clear to Adam that I wasn’t interested in anything other than ‘making out.’ And he was fine with that. He felt there was something noble about waiting for someone special; someone so special you’d be happy to spend the rest of your life with them rather that shagging the first person you meet at university. He was also helped by the fact that he wasn’t a doctor – I can’t abide doctors. Adam was a clean-cut kid and he’d been to college too. We became great friends though, more a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid than a Bonnie and Clyde. Just in case you are wondering, I was the Sundance Kid by the way.”
“After a few months we were still into our heavy petting and he never hassled me to go further. I’d met Richard and Craig by that stage we’d all go to the union together, and then Adam and me would stagger home to the shoebox the four of us shared – separate rooms, of course, as far as the rest of our flatmates were concerned. I remember this time – it would have been mid-term because most students had disappeared home. Adam and I had stayed in Belfast because he hadn’t wanted to go back to Boston. I stayed over in his room one night, again we were just kissing. Adam never pushed the issue with me, he was a good guy. That’s why we grew to be such great friends. He was such a gentle guy and he’d no hidden agendas; everything was out on the table for all to see.”
“One of the things he put out there – on the table as it were – totally flummoxed me at the beginning. He admitted that he felt that sexually speaking he was very inexperienced and he wanted to do something about it. He’d obviously thought through the subject beforehand in a very academic manner. He pointed out that we were both clean, both very hygienic in fact, and that we could both use each other to gain our sexual experience without compromising my virginal state, as it were. He felt that we could both teach each other how to pleasure the other in every way possible, although he stated he was only interested in wholesome pleasures, nothing perverted. You know, that admission of his was probably the single fact that encouraged me to allow myself to embark on our sexual adventure.”
“Like friends with benefits?” O’Carroll, who seemed just as intrigued as McCusker by the admission, suggested.
“Well yes, I suppose,” Angela said, “although today I believe that phrase usually means friends who can bonk each other’s brains out without any emotional commitment while they continue to seek and date prospective life partners. Our benefits were to pleasure each other
, where we both felt, I believe, that pleasuring each other wasn’t second best.
“I can’t believe I’m talking to you about this,” she said nervously as she took another large swig of Bushmills and topped up her own cup again. “But I think it’s important you know exactly the basis of my relationship with Adam.”
McCusker noticed that not once in the conversation so far had the BBC producer spared O’Carroll more than a passing glance.
“Okay, this is the difficult bit for me, but here goes…off into the blue wild yonder,” she said, taking yet another gulp from her cup. “Soon we were stealing away at every single opportunity to continue our education in the art of pleasuring a partner. Oh my God! Now here I have to tell you that it became very, very clear that Adam was thinking about our new subject quite a bit, I mean a lot more than I was. I was enjoying it of course, as much if not more than he was, but I was thinking about it, about the pleasuring, whereas he, like a true academic, was preoccupied with the theory of the subject. He felt mystery, romance, creativeness, thoughtfulness, and care were the main ingredients required for the final pleasure. Adam liked to play-act, where we would do things we’d done before but add variations and pretend like it was our first time. Some of those adventures were just truly unbelievable.
“But it wasn’t always him leading the way. Sometimes as we lay blissfully exhausted in each other’s arms he’d say ‘Okay Booth – that’s my maiden name by the way – next time you come up with the fantasy.’ And next time he’d be the willing participant in my soft porn script.”
“None of your friends ever knew you were enjoying this kind of a relationship?” O’Carroll asked.
O’Carroll’s use of the word “enjoying” seemed to make Angela take note of her because, for the first time, she looked at her, the respect obvious in her eyes. “No, no one had a clue,” she said. “Not even to this day.”
“Adam’s brother, Jaime, guessed,” McCusker admitted, laying some cards of his own on the table.
“Oh ri-ight,” Robinson said, visibly betraying that the penny had dropped. “That’s how you knew...the sleepover. I told Adam it was a bad idea and that Jaime hadn’t fallen for me being drunk and sleeping on the sofa. Mind you,” she continued, looking wistful, “from my memory of a relationship with lots of highs, that night was a particularly amazing and unforgettable one. Maybe the danger of being discovered by his brother lying a few feet away added the extra element.”
“But that night occurred, if I’m not very much mistaken, after you and Richard were already married,” McCusker offered.
“Yes, right, of course, so you’d be the detective then,” she said, the fresh swig of whiskey following the previous, which was now clear in her eyes. “I was getting to that. And now, as we say in radio land …back to the music, actually back ‘to face the music’ might be more apt in my case. Adam and me, how should I put this...were thoroughly enjoying ourselves – lots of adventures, but he insisted we avoid making it a regular habit, claiming it would be much more exciting and consequently rewarding if we didn’t know when, where or even if it would happen again. I think, but equally I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think Adam was the first of us to get a proper partner. She called herself XL Rose, a rock chick from Bellaghy; more Mama Cass than Cher, but I think she amused him as much as anything else.
“Then he shocked me when he told me that just because he was seeing someone else, he didn’t think it was necessary for us to stop our ‘adventures,’ which was a blessing for me because I can’t describe to you how absolutely exquisite our wee explorations had become. He explained that our friendship was healthy, if somewhat occasionally erotic, but never emotional. Then I started dating a boy. I’ll tell you a story. By this point we – Adam, Craig, Richard, and I – had all moved into a new flat together up on Fitzwilliam Road – and Richard was always hitting on me. I mean, he was never obvious about it; he always behaved in that uncharming kind of way of dating. You know, Inspector,” she paused as she looked only at DI O’Carroll. “Where a man who you can’t avoid, though your instincts tells you that you should give them a wide berth – a very wide berth – continuously finds something to talk to you about and they talk and talk and after time they get a wee bit over familiar with you – never enough to drive you away, mind you – and before you know it you wake up one morning and you find you’re sharing a pillow with them. Richard was one such man, and he’d made a unilateral decision to attach his person to my wagon. I figured if I had a ‘boyfriend,’ Richard would leave me alone. So I dated Rune Lem, a sweet Norwegian boy, and at the same time Adam and I continued our adventures.
“Adam changed girlfriends a lot, after XL Rose was Sam, then…oh I forget now. I, on the other hand, changed boyfriends once, well…maybe twice at the most. I initially liked the second one a lot but he became a pain and eventually he started to scunder me a bit....more about him later. Now sometimes Adam and I wouldn’t see each other for an adventure for months but that’s what always made it very exciting!”
“And during all of this time you and Adam never…never made love?” O’Carroll asked.
“We never, ever made love,” she replied flatly.
“Did you never, you know…feel like you’d like to try it with him, even just once?”
“You see Inspector, I know exactly where you are coming from on this. Undoubtedly you feel that our adventures were always second class to the main event. But all I can tell you is that some of the experiences I had with Adam in our play-acting, our experimental sessions, were the best I ever experienced in my life to this day. If they could make a drug that made me feel like that again I know for sure I’d be a junkie.”
O’Carroll shook her head slowly, not in disbelief, McCusker figured, but out of amazement. He hoped that O’Carroll wouldn’t want to try something similar with him and then he wondered immediately why that thought had even entered his mind.
“Time passed, Adam moved back to Boston, and I woke up one morning and, yes, you’ve guessed it, I was indeed sharing a pillow with Richard. I still don’t know to this day how he pulled it off. I’d always viewed him as someone with one foot in the grave, the other on a banana skin. The only thing I will say is that the contrast between Adam and Richard was incredible in that Richard never, ever even pretended to be interested in my pleasure: wham, bam and (not even) thank you ma’am.
“In my defence, I will say that it is my belief that should Adam have remained in Belfast, then Richard and I would never ever have hooked up, let alone get married. Adam, believe it or not, even came over for the wedding. He stood in for my dad, who died when I was seven, and gave me away,” Angela said dropping to a whisper. She looked through her glass door to see if anyone was outside. Happy to see they were alone, she took another swig of Bushmills and said, “He was entitled to give me away – I was his to give. He turned up at the stag do the night before the wedding, but since he’d never really got on with Richard, he left after half an hour and was waiting for me back at the hotel when I got back from my own hen do.
“Now, before I tell you what happened that night I need to give you a bit of background. First, I hadn’t seen Adam for nearly a year; second, I was on the verge of not going through with the wedding; third, Richard is, well…he loves to go to bed…but just to sleep, and finally, your honour – and you too missy – I will admit to having had a lot to drink. I wasn’t plastered but I was flying, and so when I got back to the hotel and saw Adam in the bar I sat with him for a while. I asked him to give me fifteen minutes for good decorum before following me up to the room.
“We didn’t discuss the rights or wrongs, we just fell into our play-acting routine, one I’d come up with, where this bride-to-be is having doubts about her husband, and so meets an ex for one last night of passion. The ex says no, but my role was to seduce him using one of our favourite routines. The secret to the success of this one was his strength to resist me and my ability, without being slutty or gross, to tempt him.
&nbs
p; “Anyway, I’ll leave the rest of the details to your imagination but because I felt it was our last time, I begged and begged him for full intercourse. He refused and I got upset, saying my wedding was a farce and that I couldn’t possibly go through with it.”
“Sorry, forgive me for interrupting you,” McCusker said to Angela who by now was visibly tipsy. “I will admit that I’m a wee bit confused now, was that last part about you and Adam not having full intercourse and you not wanting to go through with the wedding...was that real or was that also play-acting?”
“No, that bit was real, Inspector,” she replied sweetly.
This was most definitely not one of those occasions to stop and correct the girl on his job title. “Right,” he said.
“So Adam talked me down,” Angela said, and then went a wee bit solemn. “He said he’d a special surprise for the wedding. I assumed he meant he’d got me something special for us as a wedding present. The next day, Richard and I were married. He was completely oblivious to everything. A few hours after the reception had started I was quite merry. I bumped into Adam. He appeared to be quite drunk as well, which was very unusual for him. I asked him about his surprise. He said the day was yet young. He’d a room at the same hotel as the reception, the Culloden out at Bangor. Richard never knew this but Adam paid for the entire reception. His logic was that he had the money, I didn’t, and, as he was standing in for my dad, he had to pay for it, with it being a father’s responsibility. A few hours later Adam passed out and Richard and I saw Craig and Ross carry him out, his feet trailing along the floor. I assumed they were taking him up to his room to sleep it off.
“A few hours later I go to my room to change from my wedding dress and into my going-away trouser suit, you know, just before the bride and groom’s grand exit.
