Woman with a Secret

by Sophie Hannah

  “Proust,” said Simon.

  “Or Sellers in a bad mood. Do you know what’s up with him?”

  “Yeah, and I wish I didn’t. He deserves his bad mood and worse.”

  “Tell me,” said Charlie eagerly.

  “Later. Tell me about the pathologist’s report.”

  “It’s everything you know already. Blundy’s airways were blocked by a combination of the knife and the tape. He suffocated, after first being knocked out with the knife sharpener. The knife was sharpened at the scene. No identifiable fingerprints in the room apart from Blundy’s and his wife’s. Some unknown prints too, but you’d expect that.”

  “So tell me again who’s alibied for sure: Rabbi Fedder, Nicki Clements . . . ?”

  “Doormat and Despot,” said Charlie.

  “So that leaves Keiran Holland, Bryn Gilligan and Melissa Redgate without a decent alibi.”

  “And Hannah Blundy.”

  “Maybe Reuben Tasker too, depending on what he’s telling Gibbs now.”

  “What about Paula Riddiough?” Charlie asked.

  “She was with friends. I’ve no doubt her alibi’ll be watertight, whether she murdered Damon Blundy or not.”

  Charlie smiled to herself. “You’ve met her, then?”

  “I’m outside her house now, in Buffler’s Holt.”

  “That sounds like an arcane sexual practice.”

  “Paula Riddiough denies she was having an affair with Damon Blundy,” said Simon. “She’s lying.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The elevens thing. The fact that he chose to make it his password.”

  “I’m not sure that alone—”

  “I am,” Simon cut her off.

  Charlie wasn’t in the mood to be trampled underfoot. “And I’m sure you’re wrong, unless Blundy had two bits on the side,” she said. “I think Nicki Clements was the one having the affair with him, and I’ve got solid reasons for thinking so. All you’ve got is a meeting arranged at an aren’t-we-clever time of day.”

  “Let’s hear it, then,” said Simon.

  “The tit photo Nicki Clements was taking when Meakin snuck up on her was to send to a man she’d met online, on Intimate Links—a man called Gavin. She told me she answered his ad in February. Also in February, she suddenly stopped commenting on Damon Blundy’s columns. I think that’s when they broke up. She went looking online for a new lover and found this Gavin person. And before you say that’s pure speculation—yes, I know it is, and that’s why I did a bit of digging around, to put my theory to the test. I dug up some interesting facts. Nicki and her family moved from London to Spilling in December last year. Damon Blundy made the same move on November 5, 2011—”

  “That’s only six days before November 11, 2011,” Simon interrupted. “So Blundy traveled from Spilling back to London for his meeting with Paula Riddiough, six days after moving in the opposite direction. Would he do that if he weren’t having an affair with her?”

  “Simon.” Charlie laughed. “Spilling’s an hour and a half from London by train. Of course he’d nip in for a meeting if there was someone he needed to meet, whether he was screwing them or not.”

  “Really?” Simon sounded doubtful. “I wouldn’t want to revisit the place I’d just moved away from. Not immediately.”

  “Yes, well . . . you’re a freak and a hermit, aren’t you? Can we concentrate on Nicki Clements? Why did she decide to move to Spilling? It wasn’t for work reasons—she wasn’t working then and isn’t now.”

  “Husband’s work?”

  “Ah! Thought you’d say that. No. Her husband, Adam, had an army IT job in London, and they reassigned him to the Culver Valley, but he asked for the transfer. I’ve spoken to them, confidentially. Adam told them he wanted to transfer because his wife had her heart set on relocating round here.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” said Simon. “The Culver Valley’s a beautiful place. Who wouldn’t want to live here?”

  Charlie was surprised. She’d never heard him say anything like that before. She’d had no idea it was how he felt; normally, apart from needing things to be tidy wherever he was, he seemed oblivious to his physical surroundings.

  “It proves as much as a meeting at eleven minutes past eleven does,” she said. “But if you want more proof . . . I called a few local real estate agents to see if any of them remembered Nicki Clements. If you’re planning to move to a different part of the country, chances are you’d call a Realtor in your target area and tell them what you were looking for, right? And it was just about recent enough for someone to remember, I thought. Unfortunately, no one remembered anything, but it didn’t matter. Two separate Realtors still had Nicki Clements’s wish list stored on their systems. Guess what she told both of them she was looking for?”

  “Go on.”

  “A four-bedroom house in Spilling within ten or fifteen minutes’ drive of Elmhirst Road, but not on Elmhirst Road and not too near to it.”

  “You’re kidding? No way!”

  It wasn’t often that Charlie managed to impress Simon. When she did, she often felt for days afterward as if she were glowing from within. It was pathetic, she knew. “Seriously,” she said. “Now, what possible explanation could there be for that, apart from that Nicki was having an affair with Blundy and wanted to be close enough but not too close—not dangerously close to where he lived with his wife.”

  “If I wasn’t so sure Blundy was having an affair with Paula Riddiough . . .” Simon’s voice was barely audible. It was more like listening to thoughts than words—ideas powerful enough to make themselves heard, but only just. “He was obsessed with her. Read his columns. He went on about her constantly. Like him, she’s famous, spectacularly good-looking, an egotist who loves to be in the public eye—the perfect match for him. Look, you said it before, and maybe we shouldn’t dismiss it: what if he was having two affairs? Paula Riddiough and Nicki Clements. That’d give three women a motive to kill him—both of them and Hannah, his wife.”

  “It’s possible,” said Charlie. “I think I could believe anything about Damon Blundy, he was so outrageous. You need to get the phones and personal computers of all these people looked at: Paula Priv, Nicki Clements, Damon himself—”

  “Blundy’s is getting the treatment as we speak, I hope.”

  “—Melissa Redgate, Keiran Holland, Reuben Tasker if you think he’s a serious contender—perhaps he was sleeping with Damon Blundy as well.”

  Silence. Then Simon said, “That’s an interesting idea. Paula Riddiough and Reuben Tasker . . . Paula, Reuben . . .”

  “What? You think Blundy might have been bisexual and having affairs with both of them?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  There was no point waiting for an explanation of why, in that case, Simon had found the idea interesting, not unless she wanted to sit with her phone pressed to her ear for a week. Simon never explained until he was ready.

  “You know what bothers me most about all this?” he said. “The timing. Everything’s so close together. Blundy first writes about Paula Riddiough in October 2011. He meets her twice—once in October and once in the first half of November. He also moves from London to Spilling in the first half of November, and meets his future wife, Hannah, at the end of November. Around the same time—September, October, November 2011, Blundy’s busy making enemies of Reuben Tasker, Keiran Holland, Bryn Gilligan, and Nicki Clements decides she’s going to start commenting regularly on Blundy’s columns. It’s a lot to be happening in such a short time, involving so many of our key players. We need to find out what connects these people that we don’t yet know about.”

  Charlie smiled at her phone. “That’s what life is—things happening, constantly. I’m not sure what you’re suspicious of, exactly.”

  Simon made a dismissive noise. Work frustration always made him more unreasonable; he expected Charlie to know what was in his head without his having to tell her. “Paula Riddiough married Fergus Preece in Janua
ry this year,” he said. “She only met him in August 2012. On November 11, 2011, she was still unhappily married to Richard Crumlish. In November 2011, Damon Blundy was single and available. If he and Paula fell in love, why didn’t they marry each other?”

  “Because they weren’t in love, and you’ve just made that up?” said Charlie. “They hated each other. If you loved someone, would you constantly flay them in your newspaper column?”

  “That’s what Paula Riddiough and Reuben Tasker have got in common,” Simon said. “I knew there was something. They both publicly attacked Damon Blundy. Because he attacked them.” Simon’s voice was getting louder. Charlie wished she could work out what he was excited about.

  “Can I ask you something personal?” he said.

  “I would think so, yes. We’re married, so . . . go ahead.” And I’ll try to forget the extremely impersonal question you’ve just asked me. Sometimes it was hard not to lose hope.

  “Why do you stay with me when I hurt you?”

  “What?” Charlie pushed her chair back from her desk. “You don’t hurt me. Not deliberately. What do you mean?”

  “Hurt’s the wrong word. But . . . before, when I called and asked you to find out about Melissa Redgate’s driving . . . I knew I had no right to ask. I wanted a fight, so that it could end.”

  “So that what could end? Our marriage?” One day, that’s what he might mean. Not today, if I’m lucky.

  “No, the fight,” said Simon.

  “You wanted a fight so that the fight—the same fight—could end?” Never assume you know what Simon Waterhouse means. Even if it seems obvious.

  “I think so.” He sounded uncertain. “I do that, don’t I? I provoke you, knowing you’ll kick off, because I want to be forgiven. That appeals to me. Not starting a fight in the first place—that doesn’t have the same appeal.”

  “Hmm.” Charlie wondered about taping all her conversations with Simon from now on, to play to a shrink at some future date. “Well, I didn’t kick off, did I?”

  “Having fights and forgiving each other afterward—that’s what normal couples do,” said Simon. “I think I like it because it makes me feel we’re more normal.”

  “Really? I’m not sure we’ll ever be normal, but who cares? I’d rather be married to you weirdly than to someone else normally.”

  “You’re missing the point. What if Paula Riddiough and Damon Blundy loved each other and wanted to be together, but for some reason couldn’t be? They can’t have a proper relationship, so they attack one another in newspapers and online so they can have at least one thing that real, proper couples have—the ability to hurt and forgive each other, endlessly. It’s not true closeness, but it makes them feel closer.”

  “OK, now you’ve hurt me,” said Charlie quietly.

  “No, I didn’t mean . . .” Simon broke off. “Don’t take it the wrong way.”

  “Don’t give it the wrong fucking way! You’ve just basically told me you like hurting me and being forgiven because we’re not truly close and it’s the best you can hope for.”

  “I was talking about Paula Privilege and Damon Blundy.”

  “But not only about them. Before, you said—”

  “I’m not having a row with you now, Charlie. I just meant . . . those emotional highs and lows—attack, forgive, attack, forgive—they’re a form of passion, aren’t they?”

  Charlie said nothing.

  “I need you to find out some more things for me,” said Simon.

  “No.”

  “Find out if Adam Clements, Nicki’s husband, has got an alibi for Monday morning. Also, you know I said find out about Melissa Redgate’s driving and if she’s got a car? Don’t ask Melissa herself—ask Nicki Clements. Let me know how she reacts. And then—”

  Charlie missed the end of his sentence. That’ll happen if you hang up on someone, she thought. Oh well.

  She clicked on the Safari icon on her computer screen and typed “Intimate Links” into the search box when it appeared. She’d had an idea. Well, two, really. She could advertise for a new husband: must be a genius detective, appallingly insensitive, badly dressed but, crucially, sexually uninhibited.

  And . . . Or . . .

  She could write and post an advertisement that would make sense to no one but Damon Blundy’s killer, or to someone who knew something about the murder. Would Proust or anybody at the station find out she’d done it? Hard to say. It was unlikely that it would attract any useful information, but it was worth a try. And to do it without Simon’s permission . . . that would be nearly as much fun as advertising for a hornier husband, and less marriage-threatening.

  The “Men Seeking Women” section of the site was the right place to put her advert, she decided. Hannah Blundy, Melissa Redgate, Nicki Clements and Paula Riddiough were all women. If they were looking on Intimate Links at all, chances were this page would be where they’d look.

  Would they be looking, though? It was impossible to know. Nicki and Melissa had both looked in the past . . .

  It was the longest of long shots, but Charlie felt like giving it a try. She felt like doing something different. And—yes—something she shouldn’t do—risky and utterly forbidden.

  Fuck Simon.

  Charlie clicked on the “Compose a Personal Ad” button and a new box appeared. In the subject heading, she typed, “Looking for a Woman with a Secret,” and found herself grinning. She was going to enjoy this.

  “WAS YOUR FATHER REALLY a professional gambler?” Gibbs asked Reuben Tasker, casting his eye over the “About the Author” paragraph on the jacket flap of Craving and Aversion. “I mean, was that his day job?”

  They were in the attic room at the top of the house, where Tasker wrote his books. It was a warm day, but up here the heat was stifling. Gibbs wished nevertheless that Tasker would put on a shirt. The sight of his bare chest was off-putting. Still, he was clean, not obviously stoned, and so far, if you didn’t include his initial refusal to open the door, he had been courteous and articulate.

  There was nothing in his writing room apart from books and, immediately beneath the dormer window, a desk with a hard right angle of a chair positioned in front of it. No cushion. The remainder of the space was devoted to emptiness that most people would have filled with a couple of chairs, or a large TV that doubled as a PlayStation. On the desk, a computer and a printer stood side by side. There were no lamps, no pictures, no rugs, no plants. Just cork tiles on the floor, white walls with brown patches here and there from water damage, and Tasker’s writing station. Gibbs had seen more homely prison cells.

  A glaring neon light, attached to the ceiling, was on. The window was still completely covered with sheets of black paper.

  “My father’s gambling wasn’t a day job so much as a night job,” said Tasker, standing in front of a wall of his books in at least seventeen languages. “I can remember him going out to work as Mum put me to bed, and getting back as she gave me breakfast. That was before he left us, when I was eleven.”

  Gibbs glanced down at the author biography again. “For . . . ‘an Afro-American jazz singer who was arrested for the abduction and murder of a child in 1983, then released without charge a week later’? Really?”

  “Really.” Tasker folded his arms as if expecting to be challenged. “She had nothing to do with the boy’s murder, though Mum and I wished she had. Everything in my novels is true. Even the fiction’s true—truer than the truth, sometimes.”

  “I’m not doubting you. I just . . . I’ve never read an ‘About the Author’ like this one.” Before Olivia, Gibbs had never read an “About the Author,” period. Recently, in her company, he had been reading quite a few bits around the edges of books, though not many actual books. Liv tried to force novels on him occasionally, but the titles were usually enough to put him off: Leopards with Pink Umbrellas, The Cartographer’s Biographer . . . Gibbs couldn’t understand why an author would give a book a title that bored people before they’d even opened it. It was daft
.

  “You were arrested for shoplifting at age thirteen, gave a false name, then escaped from the police station?” he asked Tasker. “You lived for three weeks on your mother’s boss’s boat and he never found out?”

  Tasker nodded. “I often wonder why other authors’ biogs are so dull,” he said. “Interesting things happen to everybody, so why not mention them if you’re writing something about yourself that’s going to be read all over the world? The least interesting thing about me is that I’m forty-seven and live in King’s Lynn with my wife, so I don’t bother mentioning it.”

  “You could spice up the biog for your next book by adding that you killed Damon Blundy,” Gibbs suggested. Unprofessional. Fuck it.

  “Except it wouldn’t be true. Blundy was murdered on Monday morning, wasn’t he? I was here, at home, with Jane.”

  “Doesn’t Jane have a job?”

  “She works for me.”

  “Doing what?” Gibbs asked.

  “Admin. Fending people off, mainly. Answering endless emails that if I answered them myself, I’d never get a word written. Not from readers,” Tasker clarified. “If someone’s read one of my novels, I always write back myself—even if they’ve written to say it’s the worst book they’ve ever read, which some do. Jane deals with my agent, the festivals, the media, the accountants, my travel and hotel arrangements if I’ve got an event coming up—all the practical stuff.”

  All the boring stuff. His wife was his slave, working to promote his product. Instead of developing any interests of her own, personal or professional, she had chosen to devote her life to making Tasker’s life easier. How likely was she to say, “No, Reuben, I’m not going to lie to the police for you and pretend I was with you on Monday morning”? Not very, Gibbs concluded.

  “Here.” Tasker handed him a copy of Craving and Aversion. “This is my novel that won the prize. Damon Blundy thought it was a pile of pretentious shit. You might agree, or you might not. Either way, I’d be interested to hear what you think.”