by M. B. Shaw
‘Why didn’t you or Dom go to the police, if Rachel really was blackmailing him?’
‘Dad wanted to,’ said Marcus. ‘I wouldn’t let him. We fought about it all the time. We had the same argument the day he died.’ He welled up then, swallowing hard to try and choke back the tears. It was the first vulnerability he’d shown Jenna since the whole nightmare started and she responded instantly, reaching across the table and taking both his hands in hers.
‘I love you,’ she told him. ‘It will be all right, Marcus.’
He looked back at her gratefully. ‘I just knew it would kill Mum to find out Dad had been having an affair. Whatever else was going on, I felt he owed it to her to protect her.’
‘And if Dom wouldn’t, you would?’ Jenna prompted.
‘Something like that. Yes.’
Later that night, in bed, they made love for the first time in months. It was emotional for both of them, not so much an erotic experience as a healing one. Afterwards, when Marcus was deeply asleep, Jenna snuck down to the kitchen and emailed Iris.
I have to step away from this now.
I’m not saying Marcus has told me the whole truth. I know there are still pieces missing. There were rumours about plagiarism, hidden things in his father’s past that he’s chosen to ignore, or at least not to tell me. But I think he’s trying, and I know he didn’t have an affair. For now, that has to be enough. I don’t want to lose my marriage, Iris. I hope you understand.
Good luck,
J.
* * *
‘Iris? Did you hear what I said?’ Greta Brun, Iris’s agent, waved exaggeratedly at her client, like someone trying to bring an errant plane in to land. ‘The National Portrait Gallery have been calling me. Now, I know you’ve been shown there once before, but let’s not get cocky. This is still a very big deal. Huge. Iris?’
‘Oh, I know, I know. Sorry.’ Iris turned away from the window, where she’d been watching an arthritic duck hold up traffic as it tried to waddle slowly across the road. Greta had a stunning Victorian villa overlooking Clapham Common, and she and Iris were meeting over tea and ginger biscuits in the house’s grand drawing room. Snuggled into one of her agent’s upholstered Edwardian armchairs, gazing out through the original sash windows, Iris felt as she always did at Greta’s, like a character from Downton Abbey, some minor player in a rarefied, perfect, long-lost life.
Today her feelings of other-worldliness were intensified by the way her mind kept wandering back to Graham. Kissing Graham. Talking to Graham. Holding Graham. Lying in bed with Graham. Surely any moment now someone would pinch her and she would wake up to a world of nothing but doll’s houses and divorce papers, debt and doom.
‘Ordinarily I’d assume that all the ghoulish tabloid salivating over Dom Wetherby’s murder was behind a request like this,’ Greta went on, determined to hold on to Iris’s attention for a full minute at least. ‘But David Bone, the new curator there, is far too much of a purist for that. He must simply love your portrait.’
‘But he can’t have seen it,’ Iris protested. ‘It’s still propped up against the wall in Ariadne Wetherby’s bedroom.’
‘Someone sent him a photograph.’ Greta smiled conspiratorially. ‘A fellow named Feeney. He’s a family friend of the Wetherbys, apparently, and a donor to the NPG. Do you know him?’
Iris blushed like a schoolgirl.
‘Yes. He’s a friend. I’m meeting him for lunch today, funnily enough.’
Greta Brun’s eyebrow shot up. She had good antennae for this sort of thing.
‘Hmmm. What a small world,’ she teased. ‘Well, he must be quite a friend, to get you a gig like that.’
‘He’s lovely,’ Iris admitted. ‘But this isn’t a done deal, Greta. The painting belongs to Ariadne. It will be entirely up to her whether to show it or not. And to be honest, I’m not sure I’m top of her Christmas-card list at the moment.’
‘Why ever not?’ asked Greta.
Iris looked out of the window again. ‘It’s complicated. I liked Dom, and I’m not convinced … I don’t think his wife is quite what she seems.’
Greta looked puzzled. ‘In what way?’
Iris shrugged. ‘Maybe she was involved.’
Greta’s eyes widened. ‘In what? You don’t mean in Dom’s murder, surely?’
Iris stared down at the road, to the spot where the duck had been a few moments earlier, almost in a trance.
‘Maybe,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But weren’t they madly in love?’
‘Maybe,’ said Iris again, adding thoughtfully, ‘The problem with being madly in love is that you’re mad. And mad people do all sorts of terrible things.’
‘Well,’ Greta said robustly. ‘See if you can get her to agree to exhibit the portrait before you accuse her of bumping off her husband. A show like this now, with all the Grimshaw publicity … It could make your career, Iris. Really take you to the next level.’
Iris smiled. Greta Brun was a lovely woman, but she was also an agent to the very marrow of her bones. What was a small matter of murder compared to a really splashy exhibition?
Not that Iris was complaining. She was grateful to have Greta in her corner, and even more grateful to have Graham.
Two hours later, at lunch off Piccadilly, she told him as much.
‘One night of passion and you’re already pimping me out,’ Iris teased him, over a delicious plate of chilled oysters at Hartley’s on Swallow Street.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Graham purred, unable to tear his eyes away from Iris’s.
‘I would,’ laughed Iris. ‘I’ve got David Bone calling me. He’s asking me about showing my work. That’s not normal. And it’s all thanks to you.’
Graham flashed her a smile of deep, profound contentment, mixed with more than a little wonder. How on earth had he managed to get a woman this beautiful, not to mention this talented, to fall for him, a plodding, awkward, ageing barrister? He was well aware that he didn’t have a fraction of Dom Wetherby’s charisma. Whatever modest good looks Graham may once have possessed had long since faded. True, he was well off. But Iris wasn’t the sort of woman who gave a fig about money. And yet she was here, with him. Somehow, out of the tragedy and anxiety and stress surrounding Dom’s murder, Iris had materialised in Graham’s life, a shining, perfect pearl glinting through the shit, calling to him, ‘Take me. Have me. I’m for you.’ And he had. For once in his life, Graham had been bold and impulsive and he’d reached out and grabbed her. And now here they were. Together. Happy. Eating oysters.
Magic.
They chatted for a while about the possibility of exhibiting Dom’s portrait, then moved on to Ian, and his latest salvo in what was already becoming an increasingly bitter divorce.
‘You realise he won’t succeed?’ Graham tried to reassure Iris. ‘No family court judge on earth is going to give him the entire flat and your joint savings. It’s a nonsense. The worst that can happen is that he’ll waste a lot of both your resources trying.’
‘I don’t care.’ Iris waved a hand breezily. ‘He can have the flat. And the savings. I can always earn more. At this point all I want is my life back.’
‘A noble sentiment, but a foolish one,’ Graham upbraided her. ‘And if I may say so, something only a woman would say. Of course you care about the flat! It’s valuable and it’s half yours.’
It was nice to be able to talk to Graham about this stuff, Iris thought. About Ian, and the divorce. She hadn’t realised until now quite how lonely and isolated her life had become. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a friend socially, or even called someone for a long chat. When she lived in London, she used to drop in on Annie regularly, for coffee or just to talk. But ever since she took the lease at Mill Cottage, and started spending so much time in the country, the sad fact was that Iris had become a virtual recluse, letting all those old friendships drift. Graham was the first person she’d felt close to in a very long time. It felt
good to have another human being around who was truly and wholeheartedly in her corner.
‘I got an email from Jenna yesterday,’ she told him, changing the subject as the second round of cocktails arrived.
‘Oh?’ Graham slurped down another sweet Kumamoto oyster.
‘Things seem better between her and Marcus.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Graham.
‘She said she met up with Rachel Truebridge. Asked her flat out if she and Marcus had had an affair.’
‘Goodness! That was brave of her,’ spluttered Graham. ‘I’m assuming the answer was no?’
Iris nodded, taking a sip from her cocktail. ‘She told me some very interesting things, though. Rachel and Dom were having an affair.’
‘No big surprise there.’
‘No,’ agreed Iris. ‘But Rachel and Marcus each told Jenna a different version of events. According to Rachel, Dom fired her from Grimshaw out of spite once he’d ended their affair. He tried to erase her completely from his life, which made her angry.’
‘I can see how it would,’ Graham observed mildly. ‘Dom could be a shit when he wanted to be.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Iris. ‘But according to Marcus, Rachel getting booted off Grimshaw’s Goodbye was nothing to do with the affair. He says she was blackmailing Dom.’
Graham raised a curious eyebrow. ‘Threatening to tell Ariadne, you mean? About the affair?’
‘Worse.’ Iris shook her head. ‘Apparently Rachel claimed to have evidence that Dom had plagiarised the very first Grimshaw book.’
‘What evidence?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Iris. ‘But Marcus told Jenna that Rachel had asked Dom for money, a lot of money, to keep quiet about it. And when he wouldn’t pay up, she threatened to ruin his reputation. I mean, can you imagine? If Dom really had stolen another writer’s work and made all that money from it? He’d stand to lose everything, wouldn’t he? His fortune, his royalties, not to mention his good name. Anyway, I suppose one must conclude that there was no smoking gun in the end, otherwise all this stuff would have come out before Christmas when … Graham? Are you all right?’
For the first time Iris noticed Graham’s colour. His skin had gone from normal to white to a ghastly, almost translucent blue. His eyes were wide, and he had a hand on his neck, his throat, as if he were struggling to breathe.
‘Graham?’ Iris stood up, panicked. ‘He needs help!’ she shouted to the nearest waiter. ‘Something’s wrong!’
A nearby diner rushed over. ‘I’m a doctor,’ he announced, bending over Graham and immediately loosening his collar and tie. ‘Can you breathe?’
Graham nodded, clearing his throat, then coughing profusely. ‘I’m OK,’ he said, looking anything but. Sweat poured from his forehead and had begun to soak through his shirt. ‘I just feel … I think I’m going to be sick.’
Staggering up from the table, he ran into the gents’, followed by the doctor and two restaurant staff. Iris sat at her place in shock. A few moments later the doctor emerged looking reassuring.
‘He’s all right. He’s thrown up, but he already looks a lot better. I suspect it was food poisoning. Shellfish can get you like that.’
The manager ran over to Iris’s table, his arms flapping, like a bird trying to escape a forest fire. ‘I can assure you it was not food poisoning, madam. With respect to your medical training’ – he nodded angrily at the doctor – ‘our oysters are a hundred per cent fresh and we have never, never had a single case of poisoning.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Iris, who really couldn’t care less what it was as long as Graham was OK.
‘Take him home and give him lots of fluids,’ the doctor told her, ignoring the manager, who was now literally hopping from foot to foot, offering to waive Iris’s bill while stressing ‘very clearly’ that he did not admit liability, in any way. ‘He’ll probably throw up on and off for a few hours,’ said the doctor. ‘If it’s more than that, you might want to swing by A&E. But I don’t think it will be.’
* * *
In the bathroom, Graham waited for the waiters to leave. When he was finally alone, and sure there was nothing left in his stomach to expel, he made his way to the washbasins and splashed ice-cold water on his face. Looking up into the mirror, he saw a ghost staring back at him. His complexion was white and deathly. He looked a hundred years old. Like a man in shock.
Iris is out there. Waiting at the table.
The best thing that ever happened to you is out there, waiting.
Pull it together, Graham.
Get a grip.
He waited until his breathing had calmed and the last wave of nausea had subsided. Then he rehearsed the conversation he and Iris would have back at the table in his mind as he dried his hands.
‘I feel mortified. It all happened so suddenly.’
Then Iris would say something reassuring about food poisoning and how it could happen to anyone. And Graham would change the subject back to Marcus and Rachel, and Iris would let him, and he’d be as calmly dismissive as he should have been the first time around.
‘Of course Rachel Truebridge must have been making it up. Sounds like classic woman-scorned stuff to me. If there were a smoking gun about Dom’s authorship of Grimshaw, the press would have found it by now. They’ve dredged up everything else, after all.’
By the time he walked back into the restaurant, Graham looked and felt like himself again. But as soon as he sat down at the table, he saw that it was Iris who’d now become the ghost and knew that his rehearsed spiel would have to wait.
‘What is it?’ he asked, concerned.
Iris took a deep, steadying breath.
‘Has something happened?’
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ said Iris.
‘What?’ asked Graham, really worried now.
‘I just received a phone call from Hampshire Police.’
Graham waited.
‘Ian … my Ian’s been arrested.’
Graham stared at her. He didn’t like her use of the expression ‘my Ian’, but this didn’t seem the time to say so. ‘What? Why? What for?’
‘They’ve arrested him on suspicion of Dom Wetherby’s murder.’
Chapter Twenty
‘Interview resumed ten fifteen a.m. Present are the suspect, Mr Ian McBride, Mr McBride’s solicitor, Mr Thomas James, DI Cant and Sergeant Trotter of Hampshire Police.’
Cant eased his ample backside into the hard plastic chair and leaned back confidently. He’d had a fractured night’s sleep – the arrest of McBride was the biggest break in the case so far and his mind was racing – but he was prepared to bet he’d had more rest than the suspect. Ian looked terrible. His hair was dishevelled, his eyes bloodshot and hung with enormous bags that made him look every day of his fifty-seven years. It was hard to imagine this wreck of a man as Iris Grey’s husband.
‘Let’s talk about the emails,’ Cant began.
‘What emails?’ Ian shot back nervously.
‘The threatening emails you wrote to Mr Wetherby, after your wife accepted the commission to paint his portrait.’
Ian glanced shiftily towards his lawyer. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Sighing deeply and dramatically, Cant reached into his briefcase and pulled out a small sheaf of printed pages, passing them across the table towards McBride and the solicitor.
‘For the tape, I am showing Mr McBride and Mr James hard copies of emails retrieved from Dominic Wetherby’s computer, sent anonymously from the same Internet café on Wandsworth Bridge Road in November and December of last year. You know, it would speed things up a lot, Mr McBride, if you would stop lying. We have both credit-card records and CCTV footage from the café consistent with the times these emails were sent, as well as logged server information proving that you wrote them. Quite apart from the multiple references made to your wife.’
Ian leaned over and whispered something to his lawyer, who frowned, then nodded.
‘Yes,’ said Ian morosely. ‘I didn’t like him, OK? I didn’t like the way he was sniffing around Iris.’
‘I’d say that was obvious,’ said Cant.
‘But I didn’t kill him,’ Ian blurted. ‘I swear! I never touched the guy.’
‘On the first of December you wrote, and I quote, “Leave her alone or suffer the consequences. You can consider this a final warning. The time for words is past.” What did you mean by that?’
‘Nothing!’ Ian sounded desperate, close to tears. ‘I wanted him to leave her alone. That’s it. That’s all!’
‘Except it wasn’t all, was it, Mr McBride? You continued sending threatening notes for a further twelve days. But when those, too, failed to have the desired effect, you carried out your threat to take action. You hired a car, a silver Volvo XC90, from Cathedral Cars in Winchester on the thirteenth of December, a car you did not return until almost midnight on the twenty-fifth of December, the day of Dom Wetherby’s murder. Is that true?’
Ian put his head in his hands. ‘Yes, but—’
‘Unfortunately for you, witnesses saw you park that car on a remote stretch of Rowan’s Lane in Hazelford on the afternoon of Christmas Day, just hours before Mr Wetherby was drugged and dumped in the river to drown. You had followed Mr Wetherby and were seen approaching him in a field. You became violent—’
‘No!’ Ian interrupted. ‘I was angry. I thought he was sleeping with my wife. But I never hurt him.’
‘We have witnesses who say otherwise,’ said Cant. ‘Somehow I find their version of events easier to believe than yours, Mr McBride. Perhaps it’s because only yesterday, you sat in this very room and swore blind you spent Christmas Day in London. That you were nowhere near Hazelford.’
‘I panicked, for God’s sake!’ Ian snapped. ‘You’d just arrested me for murder. I was frightened.’
‘You should be frightened,’ Cant growled ominously. ‘Shall I tell you what I think happened, Mr McBride? I think you’d convinced yourself that Dom Wetherby was to blame for the breakdown of your marriage. I think you threatened him, and when that didn’t work, you stalked him, just like you stalked your wife…’