“Well, you are going to be finishing the book but it’ll be my book instead of Kip’s so that’s answered that question. You won’t need to go back to Long Island because I can tell you everything you need to know from now on.”
“Except I’ve left my fiancé over there,” I said, “and he doesn’t sound very keen to come back. I may have to go back and drag him across the Atlantic.”
“My goodness,” she said, “when’s the wedding?”
So then of course I had to tell her that it hadn’t happened and there was no firm guarantee that it would.
“Man trouble,” she sighed and opened the kitchen door, beckoning me to follow her. “A woman without it in her life is a woman who can get away with murder. And now you’ve got Max Austin to add to your problems.”
Now it was my turn to stare at her.
“You blushed bright red when you said his name,” she said and laughed. “Come on, let’s go flop in the living room, and have a girly evening together.”
If there was anyone with whom I could feel less comfortable about spending a girly evening it was Angie Marriott but I followed her meekly out of the kitchen.
And then I gasped.
We were in a glass-roofed passage leading across a courtyard to a totally separate house—a town house, four stories high. She laughed again when she saw my face.
“You didn’t think I lived in that little hovel?” She jerked her head back to the kitchen we had just left. “No, that address is just a front for deliveries. No one ever gets to see beyond the kitchen. And the entrance to this house in the street around the corner is boarded up. It looks as if no one lives there. I only let my nearest and dearest through to where I really live.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this.
“Don’t look so surprised, Lee. We may not know each other very well yet but I’ve told you the biggest secret of my whole life, haven’t I? The one I’ve been carrying around for fourteen years. If that doesn’t make you eligible to enter my private domain, I don’t know what does.”
She unlocked a tall iron security gate that led to the front door and let it clang shut behind us so loudly I felt as if I was entering an episode of Law & Order.
“When I’m in here no one can reach me. No one even knows I’m here.”
She was almost purring but to me it seemed as if she were making herself a prisoner in her own home. She led me into a sumptuous room, wood-paneled and rich in color with tapestries and velvet-covered sofas and heavy curtains complete with corded tiebacks. The atmosphere was almost medieval except for a giant flat screen TV in a prominent position on the far wall.
I looked around the room. There were photographs of Sean everywhere, in silver frames, in wooden frames, and some just snapshots propped up on the bookshelves. As I took in the poignancy of this display of the son she had not raised and would never see again, something registered with me. These were all recent photos of Sean. Sean as a young man, clearly taken in the last two or three years. Who had sent her these pictures?
“Have a seat,” she said, flopping down onto one of the sofas. “So, this is a little weird. I guess you know all about me from Kip by now. So what did my old man have to say about our marriage?”
She wasn’t stupid. Talk about blunt and direct! Okay, so she was determined to be in control of the proceedings from the word go. What should I tell her about my meetings with Shotgun? Well, the truth would be the simplest route to go. Not only that but past experience had taught me that the more forthcoming I was, the more that approach persuaded my interviewee to open up.
Only right now I wasn’t quite sure who was interviewing whom.
“He told me everything.” Let her make of that what she wanted.
“All about his other women? All those little girls on the road and then the real threats that came along once I started drinking? Can’t blame him, I suppose. I wasn’t much use to him in those days.” I saw the unmistakable pain in her eyes before she carried on without giving me a chance to answer. “Oh, I’m sure he didn’t tell you the whole story. In fact, I know he didn’t, otherwise he’d be locked up by now. And it’s my own fault. I could have picked up the phone and told the police everything I know any time I wanted.” She looked hard at me. “But I didn’t, did I? Because I still love Kip, as you’ve probably guessed, and I couldn’t do that to him. That’s why I want to do a book. It’s the only way I’ll ever be able to tell the truth, that I went round to the apartment that night because I wanted to be with him and I walked in on him with a girl—just as I had so many times before. Only this time he was holding a pillow over her face, smothering her. He looked at me the whole time—while he was squeezing the life out of that poor girl, Lee, he was looking at me. I saw her legs twitching, her hands. She was lying there on the bed putting up a pathetic struggle but she was a tiny little thing. She was no match for him.”
It took a moment for me to register what she had just told me and I began to feel slightly sick at the thought of having to accept once and for all that Shotgun was a killer. But the intensity with which she had just described the killing told me she really had been in the room.
“You saw him and you didn’t call the police?” I looked at her.
“Terrible, isn’t it?” She nodded her head several times, agreeing with me. “But I could never have done that. What you have to understand is that Kip and I loved each other with an intensity you just wouldn’t believe and that’s why I had such a hard time turning a blind eye to his other women. He always said they didn’t mean a thing, they were just evidence of a weakness in him and he had absolutely no feeling for them, they were just about sex. But I couldn’t handle it.”
“You’ve lived with it all this time?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve been in my own form of hell.”
“You left Shotgun—”
“I couldn’t stay with him after that—”
“But you left your son. How could you leave Sean—with a murderer?”
“I told myself I wasn’t leaving him with a murderer. I was leaving him with his father. Because Kip gave me no choice. He said he was taking Sean as a hostage; if I ever breathed a word of what had happened, he’d—”
“He wouldn’t harm his own son?”
“I had no way of knowing what he would or wouldn’t do but he said if I tried to get custody of Sean, he’d drag up all my drinking and prove I was an unfit mother.”
“But he let you go—that night. And he stayed—with the girl?”
“Probably sounds weird that he didn’t get as far away as possible but we agreed he would appear less guilty if he stayed and said he’d found her dead beside him when he woke up. And that’s when we made the pact to keep quiet about what really happened. Forever.”
“But you left later on, because you weren’t there in the morning.”
“Right,” she said quietly, “I went back and said good-bye to Sean. I mean I didn’t actually say the word ‘good-bye,’ I just crept into his room and sat by his bed watching him sleep. In any case it was sometime after that that I actually relinquished him. We wanted to make it seem like a natural turn of events prior to a divorce, like it tied in with Kip moving to the States. But I think that night was when I forced myself to acknowledge that I would be losing Sean. I’ll tell you something”—she looked hard at me for a second—“but I don’t want this going in the book. Okay?”
I nodded, wondering how many more off-the-record revelations there would be.
“It wasn’t that hard. It wasn’t like I was a born mother. I was selfish—still am, actually—and I resented the demands a child made on my time. I think there are probably quite a few women who feel this way only they’d never admit it.”
She turned to face me head on and she was smiling at me, appealing to me. You agree with me, don’t you? We’re becoming friends, right? I felt edgy. I had no desire to bond with Angie Marriott. I was here on a professional basis. I wondered how close she had become to Cath. Ha
d Cath been invited back to her hidden retreat?
“I loved my son,” said Angie, “I really did—but at a distance. I had a baby for Kip. I loved him. I would do anything for him and that’s what he wanted—a child. I’ve thought a lot about it and I’ve worked it all out. I remember one awful moment when I was pregnant. I actually found myself thinking of Sean as a fashion accessory—you know, got the rich rock star husband, got my own successful career, got the perfect house, all I need now is a baby. And when he arrived I was proud of him, he was such a beautiful little boy. Delicate. People went ooh and aah when they saw him and he had impeccable manners. I’m a disgusting person, aren’t I?” Again she seemed to be imploring me to condone her view of herself. “I’m really telling you everything. I don’t know why, Lee, but I need to open up to someone. Just hear me out, will you?”
Her eyes were filled with tears but her voice was still strong.
“You have to understand that I’m telling you how I was then. But when he died, when I first met you in that store right after the funeral, I discovered something about myself. I realized that of course I loved Sean, I mean really loved him, even though I didn’t know him. I cared about him in retrospect. Isn’t that awful? I didn’t know myself back then and I just slotted him into a compartment in my emotions. I didn’t acknowledge what he meant to me. But since then I’ve come to terms with who I am, with everything that’s happened to me, the gang rape, Kip, everything. I’ve learned to accept myself and somewhere along the journey I realized I had to get Sean back. You understand what I’m trying to tell you, don’t you?”
All I understood was that I felt nauseous. There was something appallingly claustrophobic about being shut up in this private retreat with Angie intent on baring her soul. I needed to get out for some air if only for a few seconds.
“Could I use your loo?” I smiled to show I was sorry to be interrupting her story.
“Out the door, down the passage, and it’s the first door on the left at the bottom of the stairs,” she said without getting up.
But the door was locked and from the inside I could hear water running. Someone was in there.
I should have waited but I was pretty desperate. So I tiptoed upstairs assuming I’d find another bathroom. And of course it gave me a chance to nose around a bit.
I glanced through a door at the top of the stairs and saw a bedroom. In fact it was more like a wood-paneled womb with richly textured fabrics and a four-poster bed piled high with velvet cushions. I saw a bathroom leading off it and rushed in.
Coming back into the bedroom, I flicked on the light switch and stopped dead.
The room was a shrine to Shotgun. Every inch of the walls was covered with photographs and memorabilia. Shotgun on stage, microphone in hand and standing in a pool of spotlight. Shotgun with the band, arms around their shoulders. Shotgun with celebrities. I moved closer to scrutinize each picture. His eyes gave him away. He looked trapped, nervous, uncomfortable.
I turned to the photos in frames on the various surfaces. On each of her bedside tables she had giant portraits of him smiling wistfully at her. Smaller heart-shaped frames showed him cradling Sean as a baby, kicking a football to him as a young boy.
It was an old house with generous sash windows and the deep sills were the perfect place to display pictures. I crossed the room to study the group amassed on the far windowsill and found they were all—predictably—of Shotgun but here there was a difference. Like the ones of Sean downstairs, they were recent pictures taken on Long Island—and it was clear he had not known he was being photographed. I recognized the beach below Mallaby and here and there a shot of him in the woods near the house itself. When had these been taken? When she was over there for Sean’s funeral? But as I looked closer, I could make out Sean in some of the long-distance shots hovering near his father with Mallaby in the background. Whoever had taken these pictures had been spying on them from the woods.
There was a wooden frame at the back hidden behind the others and I reached for it. This was an older picture, a blurred amateur image of two girls in school uniform.
“We haven’t changed a bit, have we?” said a voice behind me and I turned around to see Martha Farrell smiling at me nervously.
And behind her stood Angie with a twelve-bore shotgun hanging loosely in the crook of her arm.
CHAPTER 19
IT’S OKAY, I'M NOT GOING TO SHOOT YOU.” ANGIE’S smile was almost gracious. “At least not in here. Think of the mess! If I used this thing in this confined space you’d be splattered all over the room.” She actually laughed. “Martha heard you come upstairs and actually it’s rather cozy in here. Martha, why don’t you go down and get our drinks. We’ll have a little party right here in my bedroom.”
I couldn’t move and I couldn’t speak. All I could do was keep my eyes fixated on the barrel of the gun. I didn’t know anything about shotguns. I didn’t know anything about any gun. I had no idea how to tell if it was loaded. When Martha began to walk across to the door I was convinced the vibration of her weight on the floorboards would cause the thing to go off.
“I had a secret nickname for her when we were at school together,” said Angie when Martha had left the room. “You know what it was? Putty. Because that’s what she was in my hands. I could get her to do anything I wanted. In an instant. All I had to do was throw her a smile every now and then. And here she is today, alive and well and still ready to do whatever I ask her.”
I wanted to ask her if she knew about Martha’s novel because as Angie was speaking I had realized instantly that the fictional monster Martha had created in Iona was of course based on Angie. But I dared not move, not even to open my mouth. I was like a statue planted in the middle of her bedroom.
“You know I was all set to do a book,” Angie went on, “I really was. I knew I had to point the finger at Kip before he broke his silence about me. I knew it was only a matter of time before he told someone even if he did it inadvertently.”
No, I wanted to cry out to her, no, he protected you to the last. He thought he’d be able to tell what really happened but at the last minute he backed out and now I know why. He still loves you. He’ll keep your pact to the end, I know he will.
But I had convinced myself that if I opened my mouth it would cause the gun to go off, so I maintained my rigid and silent stance and the only change was that I was now blinking away tears of terror.
“And then it would just be a quick step and a jump to him telling the world how I smothered the groupie in his bed. I’m telling you, if it hadn’t been her it would have been another one. I’d had enough. I knew Kip took girls back to that flat. I got up that night after the concert and went round there. I assumed I’d find Kip there with someone and I was just going to confront him. But he wasn’t around, there was just this girl asleep in his bed. I was enraged—” Angie paused and shifted the gun to her other arm and I knew the true meaning of the expression I thought I would die.
“At first,” she said, shrugging casually in reflection, “I think I just meant to hit her but then her eyes opened and she began to sit up. I grabbed the pillow from under her head and smashed it down on her face. I held it there—she was a tiny little thing, too skinny to be attractive, but Kip had all sorts of girls, you know? He told me it was all in my imagination, his womanizing, but I kept thinking about it, seeing him with them, and the images would fester in my mind, Lee. Have you ever been jealous?”
She was appealing to me and coming toward me with the shotgun. I wondered why I did not faint with fear, my knees were shaking so hard and my teeth were clacking away like a rattle.
But she moved past me to stand the gun against the wall as Martha came back into the room and handed her the pomegranate juice. I burst into tears in relief and Martha put her arm around me.
“Poor duck,” she said, “here, sit down and drink your wine. It’ll calm you down. You’re in a real state, aren’t you?”
“Leave her be, Martha. I’m telling he
r about that groupie nightmare. It’s true, that girl really did look as if she were asleep. I got out of there fast, leaving a mass of evidence, I imagine. Which is why I was so amazed when they went after Kip. Everything I told you downstairs, about the two of us making a pact to keep quiet, was a bunch of lies. I never saw him there. He must have come back, found her dead, got rid of everything that would incriminate me, like the pillow I used to smother her. He must have known it was me because I was the only other person with a key to the place.”
She took a sip of pomegranate juice. It was dark red, almost black, the color of dried blood.
“But he would never—ever—talk to me about what happened. When I saw him he said right away he did not want to discuss it. All he did was make me promise that I would never tell anyone. And he said he wouldn’t either. But it was an order from him, not a mutual pact. And then he left and took Sean. We agreed that he would say that I was leaving him but of course it was the other way around. And that was where we left it until Bettina started nosing around. They had no firm evidence that Kip had killed that girl, no witnesses, and both the policeman and the Australian had seen him outside the flat around the time of death.
“So,” she said, flashing me a grim smile, “when you told me you knew about Bettina’s meeting with the Australian, I realized it was all over. You knew I went to the flat that night so you were going to be a problem. Just like Bettina, you had to go too far, didn’t you? It’s a shame you had to blow it because up to then I could have let you go. I know Kip didn’t tell you anything. I’ve got the disk of all your transcripts. Quite touching, some of it.”
I stared at Martha. It was she who had taken my disk from the cabin, not Shotgun.
“You know, I always thought I’d get Sean back one day but when Martha told me Bettina had arrived on the scene I realized things were going to get rough. I remembered what a nightmare she had been the first time she’d tried to do a book with Kip. I knew if she got another chance, she’d dig deep and I couldn’t allow that to happen,” said Angie. “So we hatched a little plan, didn’t we, Martha? When Kip decided to go and bury himself in the back of beyond out on Long Island, Martha was the first person I thought of. She was living in Manhattan, trying to make a go of it on Broadway or some such fantasy. Total waste of time, she was a useless actress. Don’t look at me like that, darling, you were hopeless, you know you were. I told her to stop trying to achieve the impossible and move to the Hamptons to keep an eye on my son for me. We thought about changing her name in case Kip heard about her, but in the end we decided it would be too much aggravation. Martha and I had been friends at school but, although we kept up by phone and letter, we didn’t really get together that often once I was in London. She was never part of my life with Kip. I don’t think he even met her.” She looked at Martha, who shook her head. “I did the right thing, I sent her money. Well, she couldn’t live on what she made from those silly wedding dresses, could she? And she sent me news of Sean as he was growing up, pictures.
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