The Adulterer's Wife: a breathtaking psychological thriller

by Leigh Russell

  I don’t know how I kept my voice steady. ‘What do you mean you weren’t the only one? Was Paul sleeping with other women as well as Bella and you?’

  ‘I expect so,’ Amelie replied casually. ‘That's why he went to the World’s End. To meet girls. Paul and I agreed right from the start that we weren’t going to be exclusive. And Bella wasn’t either, because I heard he was married to someone else all the time she was in a relationship with him. And then she had the cheek to complain about him seeing me. Talk about hypocritical! Anyway, he stopped coming to see me after she found out, and she stopped talking to me. Next thing I heard, she’d been murdered.’

  Just in time I remembered that I was pretending to be a friend of Bella’s. ‘How did she die?’

  Amelie shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did she know her life was in danger?’

  ‘I told you, we stopped seeing each other a few months ago. I’ve no idea what she knew or didn’t know.’

  ‘You stopped seeing her because of Paul, but she carried on seeing him?’

  ‘Yes, he told me they had an open relationship and were both free to see other people if they wanted. It was all perfectly straightforward, or at least it should have been. But she made a fuss about it, so he told me he wouldn’t see me anymore. And not long after that I heard she was dead.’ She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘If you ask me, he did it. He got fed up with her being so possessive and they had a row and he killed her. He probably didn’t mean to kill her, but he did. That’s what I think happened, anyway. I was sorry when I heard it, of course, because I liked Bella. She was a good friend before all this happened. But she never forgave me for sleeping with her boyfriend.’

  ‘No,’ I muttered. ‘I don’t suppose she did. What about his wife?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Did she ever find out about Bella?’

  ‘Not when I was seeing him. He told me his wife never suspected anything. He said he was too smart to be caught out, but Bella saw us together, so he wasn’t that smart, was he? It wasn't his fault she came home early, just bad timing, but even so, he wasn’t as clever as he thought he was.’ She gave a sour laugh.

  ‘What a shit,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t his fault. He was a real goer, if you know what I mean, and for a man like that to be stuck with a frigid wife, well.’ Amelie shrugged. ‘He only did what any man worth his salt would have done.’

  I nodded, momentarily too choked to speak.

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  36

  There didn’t seem to be much point in knocking on more doors to speak to other random people living nearby. In any case I was too sickened by what I had just heard to face anyone. In a daze, I caught the train back to Harrow, doing my best not to think about what Amelie had told me. I managed to control myself until my front door shut behind me, and then I burst out in a wail that seemed to erupt from my entire body. My legs shook, and my ears rang with my howls.

  All this time I had been kidding myself that Paul had fallen in love with another woman. Difficult though that was to deal with, it was at least understandable. Such things happened. But learning that he had been a serial adulterer, sleeping with women younger and prettier than me, made me feel as though I had been punched in the head. For the best part of twenty years, I had been married to a man who was a stranger to me. I don’t know how long I stood there, bawling, but at last I sank to the floor, exhausted, and lay whimpering into the carpet.

  My snivelling was interrupted by my phone ringing. By the time I found it in my bag, it had stopped ringing. Checking, I saw Ackerman’s number. The only person I wanted to speak to was Dan, but when Ackerman rang again a few minutes later, I answered his call.

  ‘What?’ I snapped.

  ‘Hello to you too,’ he said. ‘I have some good news.’

  My gasp must have been audible down the phone. ‘Is Dan coming home?’

  ‘What? No. It’s nothing to do with your son, not directly anyway. I’ve got some money to give you, and I’ve been speaking to your insurers.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You didn’t lose your son’s laptop, and the police deny all responsibility, so we can only conclude your son lost it somewhere.’

  ‘What? No, he didn’t. You know perfectly well what- ’

  ‘You can make a claim,’ he interrupted me. ‘If you say your teenage son lost his laptop, your insurance company are willing to pay out a proportion of the replacement cost.’

  ‘There’s no point. His grandparents have already provided him with a new one.’

  He sighed. ‘You want the money, don’t you?’

  ‘Not like this. I’ve already profited from my son’s laptop, as have you. And anyway, there’s an excess of five hundred pounds on our policy. It’s not worth claiming.’

  ‘It’s your choice.’ He sounded rattled.

  ‘Yes, it is. And can I remind you what you’re being paid to do? You’re supposed to be finding out who killed my husband, not grubbing around selling off my property so you can share the proceeds.’

  There was a pause. ‘You came to me,’ he said curtly, going on to tell me that he had been working hard to look into what happened to my husband. ‘And you've hardly been paying me.’

  ‘What about the deposit?’ I said. ‘Anyway, let’s get back to the reason we’re talking to each other at all. What have you managed to find out? Was my husband seeing anyone else, apart from Bella?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m asking what you’ve found out about my husband. Well?’

  ‘I’ve found out that the police are still trying to pin these murders on you. The key point in your favour is that traces of the drug were found in two glasses in your house the morning after your husband was killed. They had been rinsed and were standing upended on the drainer, but forensics can detect the smallest trace and whoever washed the glasses didn’t do a thorough enough job. Probably they were in a hurry.’ He paused.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘If it weren’t for that, and the fact that you were nowhere near Bella at the time of her death, as far as they have been able to ascertain, all they have to go on is motive and the fact that you were in bed with your husband on the night he died. It’s not quite enough which is why the court allowed you bail. You haven’t been charged with Bella’s murder. The police are still beavering away, searching for anything that can place you at the scene, but I’m fairly confident they won’t find anything.’

  ‘Because I wasn’t there.’

  ‘If there was any evidence, they would have come across it by now. The longer this goes on, the colder the trail becomes.’

  ‘You’re talking as though you think I killed her.’

  ‘Not at all. But it’s worrying that the police won’t let it go. It’s time they threw up another lead.’

  ‘There was at least one other woman I know about,’ I said.

  ‘Another woman?’

  Briefly I explained that my husband had been seeing Amelie, and possibly other young women as well. It seemed to me that any one of them might have been involved in one or both of the murders. At least it was worth considering.

  Ackerman sounded impressed. ‘You’ve been busy,’ he said.

  ‘The thing is, Amelie’s flatmate told me they used to go to this club in Camden, so we could try to find out who else he met there, if he went there regularly, at least before he met Bella.’ I paused, remembering the Friday nights he had been home late, bright eyed and reeking of alcohol, after a works outing. He used to complain about the amount of corporate entertaining he was expected to attend.

  ‘It sounds like fun,’ he used to tell me, ‘all eating and drinking and making conversation, but when it’s work it’s... well, it’s just work and bloody boring.’

  Furious, I recalled how sympathetic I had been, while all the time the creep had been out picking up young women.

  ‘Are
you inviting me to go clubbing with you?’ Ackerman gave a bark of laughter.

  He knew very well I couldn’t go anywhere after six o’clock. I think we were both relieved that he would have to visit the clubs on his own. It was way out of my comfort zone.

  ‘You’ll fit right in as a dirty old man,’ I told him, and he laughed again.

  ‘I can be discreet,’ he said. ‘No one will even know I’m there. And if they do, they’ll think I’m a cop. I have that look about me.’

  It was tempting to retort that he looked more like a tramp than a policeman, but this was no time to argue with him. He still had a job to do for me.

  We agreed Ackerman would ask around in the club Paul had frequented, while I planned to visit Paul’s office and find out how much evening work he had really been doing. It didn’t matter, but I wanted to know all the same. Either Paul or Amelie had been lying to me, and they had both seemed very convincing. For my own satisfaction, I just wanted to establish the truth, whatever that might be, although I already knew the answer. There was no reason why Amelie would have lied to me.

  Having spoken to Ackerman, I felt a lot better. At least we now had a concrete plan in place, and I was no longer casting around helplessly, looking for clues on my own.

  As I was making myself some lunch, there was a ring at my bell. Hoping Dan had come back but fearing the police had returned to arrest me again, I opened the door. There was no point in pretending I wasn’t home. If it were the police, they would simply return at six.

  My hopes and fears were both confounded by my friend, Katie. Her ginger curls looked unkempt, and her face was unusually pale. She gaped at me for a few seconds, panting as though she had been running.

  ‘Katie, what’s up? You look terrible.’

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ she gabbled. ‘I have to say it before I lose my nerve. Can I come in?’

  37

  It was just like Katie to build things up to sound far more dramatic than they actually were, so I was curious rather than worried, expecting what she was about to tell me would be a distortion of the truth, whatever that was. Following me inside, she perched on a stool in the kitchen and sat there in silence, looking anxious. I was quiet too, waiting for her to say something, so neither of us spoke while the kettle boiled.

  With the tea made, and still without exchanging a word, we went into the living room where we settled down in armchairs with a tray of tea and biscuits on the table between us. Finally, I nodded at her to begin, but she continued staring silently at the floor.

  ‘You came here to tell me something,’ I said at last, smiling to hide my impatience. ‘What is it?’

  She looked at the plate of biscuits and selected a chocolate one. I watched while she finished her mouthful and washed it down with a gulp of tea before she answered.

  ‘This isn't going to be easy for either of us.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Katie? What’s not easy? What’s going on?’

  For the first time I suspected this could be something serious. It crossed my mind that she might be leaving her husband. I had only met him a few times, but he had struck me as a dull man, with virtually no conversation, and no sense of humour. Nearly as short and tubby as Katie herself, he wasn’t even good looking. But she had just said this might be hard for me as well, and problems in her marriage would hardly affect me. I found her coyness irritating rather than intriguing and told her so.

  ‘Okay, I’ll come straight out with it.’ She twisted her fingers together and I watched them writhing in her lap as she went on. ‘Bella wasn’t the only woman Paul was seeing.’

  ‘By ‘seeing’, you mean...?’

  ‘Yes, having sex with, if you want me to spell it out for you.’

  This came as no surprise, and I couldn’t understand why she was making such a big deal of it. Paul was dead. Why would Katie care that he had been sleeping around? I didn’t.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ I asked.

  She heaved a sigh. ‘I don’t just think it, I know. And you have a right to hear about it too.’

  ‘But how come you know about it?’

  ‘I saw them together and it was pretty obvious something was going on, so I asked her straight out, the next time I saw her, whether she was screwing him, and she told me she was. She didn’t seem embarrassed or ashamed of what she was doing, but she made me promise not to tell you.’ She reached across the table and put her hand on my arm. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have told you before this. I should have said something straight away. Or maybe I shouldn’t have told you at all. This must be so awful for you.’ She was nearly crying. ‘I didn't know what the best thing was to do.’ I glanced down at her fingers lying on my arm like a row of fat worms.

  ‘That’s okay,’ I lied, thinking how weird it was for me to be comforting her in this situation. ‘This is nothing new. And even if it were, there’s no need for you to apologise. You’ve done nothing wrong. This is all Paul’s fault. He’s the one who should be feeling guilty.’

  ‘But I ought to have told you sooner.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter either way. He’s dead now anyway.’

  I would have liked to look him in the eye and challenge him about his behaviour, but instead there was only Katie. ‘How could he have done it?’ I burst out, suddenly losing my self-control and raising my voice. ‘He lied to everyone. Our whole life together was a lie.’

  ‘What he did was disgusting.’

  ‘How long have you known about it?’

  She shook her head and heaved another sigh. ‘Since Christmas.’

  ‘Christmas? That’s over six months ago.’

  ‘When I challenged her about what was going on, she didn’t even try to deny it, although there was no way she could have pretended it was anything else. I’ve no idea how long it had been going on by the time I found out.’

  ‘It stopped some time ago, because Bella found out and forced him to give her up,’ I told her.

  ‘Did Bella tell you that herself? Because it’s not true. I guess Bella threatened to tell you, but he was still seeing both of them right up to the time he died. She said you’d never suspect her.’ She looked at me sadly. ‘She said you trust her because she's your friend. That's what makes it so despicable.’

  This conversation was taking a very weird turn. Amelie was no friend of mine and I didn't understand how Katie had come across her in the first place.

  ‘I don’t get it. How did you meet her?’ I asked.

  Her eyebrows shot up. ‘What do you mean, how did I meet her? We’ve been friends for years. We were all at school together.’

  ‘Were we? I don’t remember. She’s so much younger than us. She can’t be more than thirty.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  We stared at one another, simultaneously realising that we were talking at cross purposes.

  ‘I’m talking about Amelie.’

  ‘Who’s Amelie?’

  ‘One of Bella’s neighbours.’

  I explained how I had gone to question all of Bella’s neighbours to see if they could tell me anything about Bella and Paul.

  ‘I only wanted to find out anything that might help to establish who killed them,’ I added, seeing her puzzled expression. ‘I wasn’t interested in hearing about his relationship with Bella. Only I found out more than I bargained for, because one of Bella’s neighbours told me she’d also been sleeping with him. Anyway, her name’s Amelie, and guess what? She’s young, and she’s pretty.’

  I failed to conceal my resentment, but I didn’t care.

  Katie looked horrified. ‘You can’t be serious. Paul was sleeping with one of Bella’s neighbours as well?’

  ‘Yes. She met him at the same time as Bella did, in a club in Camden where he went to pick up young women.’

  ‘No.’ She let a strangled yelp of laughter, although her expression was troubled, and her face had gone almost white. ‘I don’t believe it. Who told you all that?’

/>   ‘Amelie told me herself.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she repeated.

  ‘Why would she lie about it?’

  ’You’re telling me Paul was going to clubs to pick up young women? And you’re seriously saying that he was conducting affairs with both these women? And all that while he was married to you?’

  I shrugged. ‘If he was sleeping with both of them it can’t have been for long because Amelie told me Bella saw them together and forced him to stop seeing her. So after that he just continued his affair with Bella, until he was killed.’

  Katie looked stricken. ‘I wish that were true,’ she whispered. ‘But he was seeing someone else as well. That’s what I came here to tell you.’

  ‘Yes, you came here to tell me something. Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than what I just told you.’

  But from what she had told me, I thought I already knew the answer to my question. I recalled her telling me once that her husband had seen Paul with a dark-haired woman, and now she had as good as told me he had been seeing one of my friends. There was only really one person I could think of who might fit the description, the only friend who had always been there for me, a friend who had been incandescent with rage, and then inconsolable with grief, when her own husband had left her. I remembered how pleased Katie and I were when Nina had finally accepted being divorced, and how adamant she had been that she was finished with men for good.

  ‘Was it Nina?’ I whispered.

  Katie nodded, her eyes shimmering with tears.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I mumbled, ‘I’m fine, really.’

  But Katie could see that wasn’t true. Shaking and tearful, I let her make me another cup of tea, and then she sat quietly with me, giving me time to digest the horrible news that I had lost not only my husband and my son, but my best friend as well.

  ‘I’m sorry to have been the one to cause you so much distress,’ she said at last. ‘As if you haven’t had enough to deal with lately.’

  ‘How could she?’ I hissed. ‘My best friend. How could she have done that to me? She must have known I’d find out in the end.’