by Susan Moody
‘Not in the least.’ It seemed a bit pointless to carry on this conversation. Nonetheless, I continued. ‘I was hoping you could give me some clue as to who might have been responsible, that’s all.’
‘Other than your friend, you mean?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Are you from the fuzz?’
I had a nano-second to decide whether to lie or not. I opted for the truth, but only because I figured he would be more receptive. ‘If you mean the police, the answer’s no.’ Close to, I could see that he was nearer thirty than twenty. But still at least ten years younger than his deceased spouse.
He stayed irresolute at the open door, then stood aside. ‘You’d better come in.’
I walked into a shiny hall painted a very pale pink. There were Victorian tiles on the floor and many gold-framed mirrors on the walls. An elaborate florist’s arrangement of half-dead pink roses and white carnations stood on a gilded shelf. The house smelled of some expensive air freshener and stale beer.
‘I’m Mark Sheridan, by the way,’ he threw over his shoulder. ‘Or the late Mr Amy Morrison, if you prefer.’ He sounded like the stuff he was drinking: bitter.
I wanted to say that I thought he was a brave man, to have married Amy, but decided this was not the ideal moment. I followed him into a sitting room with more pink paper on the walls, and facing each other on either side of a fireplace, two of the linen-covered, white-piped sofas, one of which I’d seen from outside. A wall had at some time been knocked down since the room stretched from the front of the house to the back. French windows gave onto a walled garden full of shrubs and flowerbeds, all in winter mode. A silver birch hung gracefully over a white-painted garden bench set against the far wall, and a small fountain featuring a nymph of some kind stood nearby.
It was an attractive and charming room, rather let down by the beer cans stacked on the coffee table, the pizza boxes in the empty fireplace, the newspapers strewn over the expensive oriental rugs, and the pervasive stench of feet. An antique side table held a collection of small boxes: hand-painted Russian palekhs, elaborately carved wooden stamp-boxes, enamel snuff-boxes, silver ones, from elaborately chased to a plain modern square. An antique Delft plate was hanging on the wall. Books were stacked in the bookshelves built into the alcoves on either side of the fireplace. Some of them were leather-bound … I recognized one as being an edition of Amy’s Masaccio book, produced by a firm which specialized in presentation copies. An identically bound book sat on my own shelves.
‘You must be devastated,’ I said, sitting down and watching while he got himself another beer and opened it, having waved it at me in a do-you-want-one gesture.
‘What about?’
‘Well … losing your wife.’
‘Woman was a complete fucking bitch,’ he said. He raised the beer can. ‘Three cheers for whoever did the dirty on her, saved me the trouble, because I sure as hell would have done her in myself, sooner or later.’
‘The word on the street is that you’d left her some weeks ago.’
He stared at me. ‘Where’d you hear that from?’
I shrugged. ‘Here and there.’
‘Yes, well, I came back, didn’t I?’
In time to claim your inheritance? I wondered. ‘Why was that?’
‘It was here or my parents’. Didn’t fancy the latter, the constant nagging on about getting a proper job and all that baloney. General Sheridan does not take kindly to a wastrel son, no siree.’ He was trying to feign insouciance and not doing a very good job of it.
I was getting a strong message, whether it was intended or not, about Mark’s background, and it wasn’t the usual one for casual labour, apart from the holiday jobbers and the work experience brigade. ‘I’m assuming you have an alibi for the time of your wife’s murder,’ I said.
He laughed, showing well-tended middle-class teeth. ‘And if you’re not the cops, what right do you have to be questioning me?’
‘Good point.’
I had no right whatsoever. Not for the first time, I devoutly wished that I hadn’t turned in my badge when I ‘retired’ from the police force. I now spent my life looking at pictures, examining their artistic integrity, teasing out the innuendoes they presented to their audiences and then weaving text about them. I was good at it. But I had been equally good at my job as a detective. And in many ways, the two of them were similar, needing persistence, expertise and, above all, an eye for detail. ‘And if my friend hadn’t gone missing, I wouldn’t be here at all.’
‘Do you realize I don’t even know who you are?’
‘Quick,’ I said. ‘Alex Quick.’
His face changed. ‘And your friend’s name?’
‘Doctor Helena Drummond.’
‘Oh my God! Baby, Baby,’ he said. For a confused moment I thought he was coming on to me, until he continued: ‘Watch This Space.’ He swept a hand around at the untidy room. ‘If I’d known I was going to be so honoured, I’d have made a bit of an effort to tidy up.’
‘How do you know about my books?’
‘Doesn’t everybody?’
‘I thought you stacked shelves in the supermarket. Though,’ I added hastily, not wanting to be accused of elitism, ‘there’s no reason why shelf-stackers shouldn’t look at arty books, is there?’
‘Yeah, well … a person has his pride. I’m not into being a kept man, but an art history degree doesn’t really qualify you for much.’
Which explained how he had recognized my name. Mystery solved. At least, a tiny portion of it, though by no means the whole. ‘So, Mr Mark Sheridan, can you think of any reason why anyone would brutally attack your wife?’
‘Scores of reasons spring to mind. There can’t be anyone who ever met her who liked her, but—’
‘You married her,’ I couldn’t help pointing out.
‘Yeah, well, that’s another story. But I was going to say I cannot imagine anyone actually picking up a weapon and smashing in her skull. Not anyone I know, that is.’
‘Have you ever attacked her?’
He stared at me incredulously. ‘Me? Hit a woman?’ The General would have been proud.
‘So that’s a no.’
‘Of course it is.’
‘Maybe it all comes down to motive.’
‘Ah well: motive. Of course the police are going to see me as a prime suspect, since I stand to inherit all this.’ His hand swept around the room. ‘Or so Amy led me to believe. But that might have been just another of her lies. And quite frankly, I don’t really want to live here. It’s not my scene. Snooty neighbours, always whingeing on about something or other, trying to get you to sign some poncey petition or join one of their do-gooding charities or run a fucking marathon for Jesus. It’s as bad as living back at bloody Broadlands.’
‘Broadlands?’
‘Oh …’ He seemed embarrassed. ‘My parents’ place.’ Any signs that he had drunk too much had completely evaporated.
I’d seen it before, a public-school-type trying to give himself a bit of street cred by pretending that he came from some inner-city sink estate. I gave myself a mental shake. ‘We’re getting off the subject,’ I said.
‘The subject being …?’
‘Do you have an alibi for the night your wife was murdered?’
‘Last Monday, right?’
‘Right.’
‘I absolutely cannot see what concern it is of yours, but yes, I do. Actually.’ There was a pause.
I said, ‘Are you going to tell me?’
Another pause.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘My only concern is to establish the innocence of Doctor Drummond. I don’t really care if you were shagging half the sheep in Scotland or robbing the Bank of England. I’m not concerned about motive here. All I need to know is who did kill Amy Morrison, since it sure as hell wasn’t Doctor Drummond, and if it wasn’t you either, then I can cross you off my list.’
He held up his hands, palms towards me. ‘Okay, okay.’ Looking thoroughly
miserable at having to admit to taking part in such a middle-class activity, he said, ‘I was skiing with my parents and sister. At Val d’Isère. We go every year, rent a chalet, have a ball.’
‘Leaving your wife behind?’
‘Obviously. Or she wouldn’t have been getting herself murdered near Canterbury, would she? No, Amy didn’t go in for outdoor sports.’
‘And she was happy to let you go without her?’
‘Completely. Apart from anything else, it meant she wouldn’t have to flirt with my father.’
‘So that lets you off the hook.’ I stood up. ‘Just as a matter of interest, how did you come to team up with Amy? You don’t seem to be kindred spirits.’
‘I’m not absolutely sure, to tell the truth. One moment I was stuffing packets of Pampers on to shelves at the supermarket, the next I was in bed with this customer, enjoying the best shag of my life.’
A dagger of pure physical jealousy stabbed me. Why couldn’t I be more predatory, less choosy? Was I old enough, at nearly thirty-four, to be labelled a cougar, and if so, should I be acting accordingly? I told myself I had too much self-respect … but there was no question that I sometimes wished I didn’t. The Maiden Aunt, that was me. Almost the Virgin Aunt.
‘And getting married? Seems a bit of a leap from one to the other.’
‘My father, the General, always calls me a wimp, and I guess he’s right. I was swept off my feet, to be honest. Carried away by the sheer strength of Amy’s determination.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘I’m not proud of myself, believe me. And let me say, here and now and forcefully, I’m really sorry about what’s happened. I didn’t love Amy but I wouldn’t have wished such a death on her. On anyone.’
‘I believe she might have been in Doctor Drummond’s house with another man.’
‘I’m not surprised. She wasn’t looking for love, poor woman. She was looking to be loved. And I’m afraid that for a number of reasons, she wasn’t very loveable.’ He swallowed. ‘Poor Amy.’
‘Do you know anything about her background?’
‘Nothing at all. I know she had been married two or three times before, but I don’t know who to. She never spoke about her previous husbands. Though I wouldn’t have put it past her to be seeing one – or all – on the sly.’
‘So none of this cleaving only to him sort of stuff,’ I said.
‘Fidelity wasn’t in her vocabulary,’ Mark said. ‘It was sex she was after. The rougher the better. And because that’s not my scene, I’m afraid I was already scheduled for the chop.’ He drew his hand across his neck in a throat-cutting gesture.
‘How do you mean?’ Was a possible motive rearing its ugly head? On the other hand, if he was skiing with his family, it would have been practically impossible for him to be Amy’s killer.
‘I’m not into the kind of depraved stuff she enjoyed. I don’t mind admitting I’m not a super-stud. I know I didn’t satisfy her. Couldn’t. So every time we got it together, I could hear the sound of the tumbrils, the rustle of divorce papers. It was only a matter of time.’
‘You might have got a substantial pay-off.’
‘Indeed I might. And had I done so, I can tell you it would all have gone to help abandoned children in Guatemala. There is so much poverty and corruption out there, successive governments totally uninterested in the social difficulties. Thousands of kids live in slums where there’s no running water, no medical help, no education.’ He drew a deep breath in through his nose. ‘I’m planning to go out there in the next three or four weeks. Try to tackle some of the problems. Even the slightest help must be better than no help at all, right?’
‘Right.’ I got up. Stepped between the beer cans and over the strewn newspapers. ‘Would you allow me to have a quick glance round your wife’s office?’
‘Go ahead, be my guest.’ He waved at the hall. ‘Up the stairs and turn left, last door you come to.’
‘I assume the police have already been here.’
‘Yes. They took away her computer, but otherwise, it’s more or less as she left it.’
I went upstairs. All five doors leading off the small square landing were open. I could see into what was evidently a guest room, with a rumpled single bed and a pile of clothes lying in a heap on the floor. I deduced that this was where the bereaved husband was now sleeping, especially as the next room contained what must have been the former marital bed, neatly made and untouched. I poked my head in, walked quietly across to a series of built-in wardrobes. Good clothes, carefully arranged. Shelves containing shoes, expensive leather handbags, hats, folded silk scarves, cashmere cardigans and sweaters. I stepped back into the passage. A bathroom came next, then a separate WC, and at the end, Amy’s office.
A complete contrast to my own, Amy’s was meticulously ordered. Art books on the shelves, precisely aligned, instead of being randomly returned after consultation of their contents. A printer swathed in a plastic cover with a neatly lidded box of paper beside it. A bright red filing cabinet, all the drawers closed, unlike mine where the drawers were often only half pushed in. With the absence of her computer, the room conveyed the impression that this was not a workspace at all but a Hollywood mock-up of what an office ought to look like. I could see nothing that might direct me either to her killer or to the whereabouts of Helena. I quietly opened a drawer or two but the contents were in apple-pie order, almost as if she did her real work somewhere else and this was just a showroom.
I returned to the hallway. Mark Sheridan was still sitting on the pink sofa. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Sheridan,’ I called. ‘And good luck with your enterprises.’
He got up, a trifle unsteadily. He smiled at me, and I knew that if I passed him in the supermarket with his cartons of crunchy peanut butter or boxes of vegetables, I too might have been tempted to drag him home with me, along with the groceries.
At the front door, I turned. ‘Which gym did Amy go to?’
‘Bodyshapers. I think it’s somewhere in the Essex Road.’
NINE
Bodyshapers was a ten-minute walk from Amy Morrison’s house. It advertised itself with a flashing set of neon stick-people doing press-ups. From the outside, it looked very upmarket, despite the tattoo parlour next door and the Burger King two doors down. Three or four yummy mummies in pink tights and pink-and-white trainers, wet hair pulled back into pink scrunchies, were coming out when I appeared, talking volubly in little-girl voices. They didn’t hold the door for me.
‘Thank you, ladies,’ I said, as I pushed open the heavy glass doors and was met by the same old smell I was so familiar with from the gym I no longer attended: elderly coconut matting, rubber shoes, sweat and testosterone.
An ant-like creature in a pink workout suit with bodyshapers embroidered above her heart sat behind a desk, painting her nails a sparkly shade of green. Christmas was coming, but the glitter in it added very little to the imminent festivities. She looked up, displaying a complexion so perfect that I wanted to tear it off her and slap it onto my own face. ‘Can I help?’ she asked. The planes of her insectoid features moved gently as she spoke.
‘I’m looking for Jason,’ I said.
‘Which one? We have three working here.’
‘Did one of them recently … was one of them married to a woman who’s … uh … just been murdered?’ The question was a bit direct, but I couldn’t figure out how else to put it.
It didn’t seem to faze her. ‘That would be Jason P,’ she said, adopting an Oh-poor-poor-Jason expression. If she had possessed antennae, at this point they would have waved in a commiserating manner.
‘And where would I find Jason P?’
‘He’ll be in the judoka.’ Keeping an anxious eye on the fresh nail polish, she pointed greenly to a swing door from behind which came muted voices mingled with sudden cries and muffled grunts. I pushed open this second set of doors and the gym scent intensified. Someone raised interrogative eyebrows at me and I asked for the judo room. I
was offered another pointed finger, and found myself passing a bunch of sweaty guys groaning as they raised huge metal circles set on iron bars, or lay on plastic-covered benches pushing weights above their heads with grotesquely muscled arms. The stench of effort was almost overpowering.
A man-tub rolled in my direction. He was shorter than me, but probably twice as wide. Solid muscle, including his shaven head, parcelled in coffee-coloured skin. He wore a judoga loosely tied round the middle with a black belt, displaying his massive barrel chest. ‘Hello there, little lady,’ he said winningly, showing a lot of perfect teeth. He sounded American.
He was never going to win me, or any right-minded woman, with that chest buffed with baby oil and on plentiful display, but hey, you have to keep on trying, don’t you?
‘Hello, there, little man,’ I said. He must have been carrying several hundredweight of steel in the form of body piercings, most of it on his face. I wondered if I was still skilful enough to throw him.
He stopped smiling. ‘And what can I do for you?’
Lose the soul patch and the lost-tribe-of-Africa plug set into the left earlobe, for starters, I thought. ‘Are you Jason P?’ I asked.
‘Yep.’
‘I wanted to ask you about Amy Morrison.’
‘And you are what?’
There were a number of answers I could give. I settled for a lie. ‘I’m investigating her death,’ I said, hoping he would leave it at that.
‘I don’t see how I can help,’ he said.
‘You were married to her, weren’t you?’
‘Back in the day, yeah. But that was like, years ago. Four, at least.’
‘Did you like her?’
‘I married her, didn’t I?’ He gave a snorting kind of laugh which set veins crawling on his arms like demented worms. ‘Mind you, both of us were stoned out of our skulls at the time. But to answer your question, no, I didn’t like her much. Reason being, she wasn’t very likeable. But there were no hard feelings on either side, far as I could tell. I mean, c’mon, life’s a narrative, a series of encounters, isn’t it? You stop for a while, you move on, you continue the journey, am I right?’