by Simon Brown
I rushed home to tell Dorothy. Once I finished she let her head rest against the back of her chair and closed her eyes before speaking.
“So are we to surmise that Claudia and another came here to get revenge and claim back money from Mathew, and he then took out loans against your house? Fearing the wrath of a violent family, he gave them £10,000 a week in cash and then they killed him anyway. After which, still wanting to take revenge on you for having a relationship with Mathew, they sent you letters and attacked you.”
“And now want to kill me as they murdered Mathew,” I said with a shaky voice.
“And yet Claudia was not here when you were attacked and the same gun fired. Did she give the gun to someone else who disliked you?”
I waited as Dorothy sat still.
“Well, you met Claudia. Do you think she was so upset and resentful that she would go to all these lengths for retribution? Why didn’t she kill you when she had you on her doorstep?”
“Veronica did say she hated Mathew and I getting together. What if she complained so much to Claudia about it that one day Claudia snapped and decided to put an end to it all?”
“We humans are mysterious creatures, so it is possible.”
The next day I had arranged to meet Edwina in Welwyn Garden City for lunch. I wanted to travel early and spend an hour or two retracing my steps through the shops that formed such a big part of my old retail life. I caught the train from King’s Cross and enjoyed a compilation of all my shopping highlights. Once I was satiated, I met Edwina at an Italian restaurant she recommended.
She described her life living with Edward.
“I think Edward is still obsessed with you. He has a folder full of your pictures. I found him looking at your Facebook page yesterday. It’s creepy. The man has lost it, he needs therapy.”
Ironically it was Edwina who was getting the therapy. We talked about therapy until our food arrived. My curiosity had been piqued by her description of Edward. When I felt ready I steered the conversation back to him.
“He still goes to work. Now his feelings towards me are out in the open, he treats me like a friend. He is civil and polite in the home. He sleeps in another bedroom. He has hired a lawyer to helps us divorce. I would say he is very methodical. After twelve years together, he has no emotions. Just follows his plan as though he is selling off a subsidiary. He probably thinks of it as getting back to his core business – himself. Perhaps I am sinking stock he needs to quietly dispose of.”
“Do you feel he is dangerous?”
“I don’t know. Obsessive, yes. He even has a file on an acupuncturist called Henry, who he thinks you like.”
I shuddered. I found myself looking round the restaurant just to make sure he had not followed us.
“I found a list of characteristics he thought you might like about him and those you didn’t.”
“Oh no, that sounds so awful.”
I wondered what they were but stopped myself from asking. By the time we finished lunch, Edward was back at the top of my list of suspects. After waving goodbye to Edwina, I phoned Dorothy and told her.
“We only have Edwina’s version. Is it possible that she told you what she wants you to think?”
“Oh my God, Inspector Pride is walking straight towards me. I’ll call you back.”
The Inspector was pounding towards me in black trousers and a billowing blue top. I put my phone in my pocket and turned to look into the nearest shop window. I cringed at the thought of meeting her again.
“Amanda Blake?”
I turned and looked up.
“Oh hello, Inspector.”
Pride walked right up to me. She was too close, sandwiching me between her abdomen and the shop front. I smelt her familiar rose scent. I became slightly claustrophobic and panicked. I stepped to one side, suppressing an impulse to turn and run.
“It’s just Joan Pride now. I’m glad to bump into you here. I have felt bad about what happened and wanted to talk to you. Can I buy you a tea?”
Joan smiled. A memory of her sitting on my bed, consoling me flashed across my mind. I looked into her eyes for a moment. The aggression that frightened me, had been replaced with a vulnerability I had not seen in her before.
I nodded and followed Pride to a patisserie. We found a table to the rear. She squeezed between two tables pushing one across the floor with a loud juddering sound. We sat down. Pride ordered a cake and cappuccino. I remembered the various teas with biscuits or cakes we had shared. I ordered a herb tea and scones. Although the thought of this encounter had induced so much fear, I now felt relaxed.
“You’re no longer an inspector?”
“I was made an irresistible offer to leave and a very resistible option should I stay. So I retired and now work for charity.”
As Joan talked about her charity work, a couple of teenagers behind her distracted me. They were standing by the counter and clearly arguing. The girl in a stretchy top and skirt was pleading with the boy. He stood sullenly looking back at her with a look of resignation. She was making big movements with her arms and shuffling her feet slightly. He stood like a rock.
Pride explained how she allocated funds to single mothers. I flitted between Joan’s description of raising money from government agencies to watching the teenagers.
I imagined the girl realised she was not being heard and that the boy could not hear her because it was too painful for him. They both looked so unhappy. I had an urge to gather them up in my arms. The girl started crying and wiping her eyes with her hands. Perhaps they both realised they could not connect and understand each other.
Pride was asking me where I was living.
“Oh, up in London. I think I will stay there.”
The girl sat at a table at the far corner. The boy stood by the counter looking lost. I re-engaged with Pride and blurted out the question that had been in my head for so long.
“What happened? Were you going to arrest me?”
“It was a fishing expedition. I wanted to get you back to the station and interrogate you more forcefully. You know, see whether you would break down under pressure, make mistakes, contradict yourself.”
“What about trying to run me off the road by the woods?”
“I think I just panicked. I still don’t really know what happened that day. The police psychiatrist thought I had a nervous breakdown. I was a mess. When I got back to the station I started screaming at the team before bursting into tears. I was out of control. And so goodbye career, hello medication.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How English of you to apologise. It’s not your fault and I didn’t really enjoy the job. Far too much stress.”
I saw the boy walk over to the table with two cups.
I remembered James saying that she had been promoted because of a relationship. Perhaps it was too much too soon.
“So how are you, Amanda? Did you sort everything out? You’re still alive, obviously.”
“No, still chasing shadows, or should I say still looking to see who is hiding in the shadows. There is something else I want to ask you. Do you remember you became quite aggressive over the possibility that my starting a relationship with Mathew could have upset someone? For a while I wondered whether you had feelings for Mathew in the past.”
Joan burst out laughing.
“That you cannot accuse me of. My friend, Clare, met Mathew on a double date. Her sister was in a relationship with your friend James and they set Clare up with Mathew. They went out a few times and she became besotted with Mathew. She thought Mathew had feelings for her. After a few months you turned up and Clare’s phone calls went unanswered. Clare died of breast cancer during the investigation, and I supposed I reacted to that.”
“I think Mathew broke a lot of women’s hearts. I’m sure he was leaving me and stashing our funds out of my reach.”
“James wasn’t any better. I tried to convict him of repeatedly assaulting Clare’s sister, Jane, but Jane withdrew her te
stimony at the last minute. Those poor women really suffered.”
“So who was your main suspect?”
“I suppose now I am no longer involved, I can tell you that my gut instinct told me it was Mr Edwards. He had the motive, opportunity and means. I would have liked it to have been James but that didn’t fly. I looked forward to having him squirming in the interview room again. I heard they arrested Edwards but didn’t have enough hard evidence.”
“That was after he followed me and attacked my friend in Venice. He was reading my emails.”
I watched the teenagers leave. She walked out first pushing the door hard and the boy followed with his head down. I wondered if this would be their pattern in life if they stayed together. Do our early relationships set up behaviours that become lifelong automatic responses? Did Mathew trap himself in only being able to have a series of short-term relationships that focussed on him bettering himself? Perhaps he could only keep up appearances for a few years before starting again with a new woman. Am I caught up in repeatedly trying to find intelligent men to love me, like a moth flying into the candlelight? Joan broke my speculation.
“I have to say that you were a strong suspect. You would have had the motive, assuming you knew of his deceit, and opportunity. The mind can play extraordinary tricks and I did wonder whether you could have blanked it all out.”
I shuddered along my spine as I reconnected with that old paranoia. Did I send myself the grotesque letters? Had Edward unwittingly become entangled in my own insanity and become the suspect? My eye started to twitch so strongly I had to press my hand over it. Pride looked at me with an expression of surprise. I realised this must make me look guilty, as though she had literally touched a nerve.
I forced myself out of that pattern of thought by consciously taking a sip of tea and trying to sense it in as much detail as I could. My eye started to calm and I removed my hand.
“I don’t know why that happens,” I complained weakly.
Then Pride made an excuse and got up to leave.
“I hope it works out. Bye.”
I thought about James and Pride’s claim that he was violent. Then I thought about his last conversation with Mathew as I sat alone in the patisserie. I took a deep breath in and plucked up the courage to walk round to Stiletto. I could see James talking to one of the staff behind the counter. I stood outside wondering what to do. Surely I would be safe with people around.
I walked into Mathew’s old shop. Nothing had changed. I was struck by a memory of Mathew behind the till, talking to customers. James looked up and said something to his assistant.
“Amanda, how wonderful. Finally you have come out of hiding.”
“I really need to talk to you.”
“Sure, let’s go to my office.”
The office was a messy corner in the stock room next to the toilet. James offered me a seat but I chose to stand.
“James, I want you to be honest with me. I know you remember Mathew’s last conversation. It would help me to know what was happening in those last hours of his life.”
“I can assure you it has nothing to do with his murder or your situation. You must know me well enough to be sure I would tell you and the police if that was the case.”
“The more you resist telling me, the more important and mysterious it becomes to me.”
James looked down and fidgeted with a pen, flicking the ball point in and out of the housing.
“Okay, I will tell you, but this must remain confidential. Absolutely no mention of it to the police. Can I trust you?”
I nodded.
“Mathew wanted out. He knew I could not buy his shares. Why would I? The business was not worth anything. So he came up with a plan to stage a burglary of the cash and stock. Basically, he would steal a van, reverse it into the shop window at night, and we would throw the entire stock into the back of the van. Mathew would then drive off and dump it with a contact he had found. He would keep the proceeds of the burglary and I would get the insurance money.”
My legs felt weak and I sat down squeezing the plastic office chair armrest with my hands. Inevitably the nerves below my eye started to twitch, forcing me to rub my eye.
“Why? He had already taken so much from me. What could the stock be worth?”
“We were overstocked, so he thought he would get £30,000 or more. I don’t know why he was so desperate for the money. Perhaps he could not face walking away from the shop after all the time and effort he put in. Maybe he hated the idea that I would get his shares for free. I was glad to be rid of him. I made it clear that if he left, I would run the shop my way. He would just be a shareholder and taken off the payroll. He wasn’t much use anymore. He had begun to disappear regularly without telling me. Suddenly he was full of mystery and secrets. So he became desperate to find a way out in which he would give up his shares for some form of payment.”
“Where was he going?”
“I don’t know. He was very secretive. I thought it had something to do with a girl, but I cannot be sure.”
“So, is that what the phone conversation was about?”
“He said he would be ready for Saturday night.”
“I just don’t recognise this version of Mathew.”
“He was different with you. He took on this persona of the cultured, English gentleman but when cornered he reverted to a nasty, aggressive, greedy conman.”
I swallowed hard and felt very hot. How could I have not seen this side to Mathew?
“So now you have heard it all, does it help?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I felt shaken, disturbed and revolted by the depths Mathew would sink to, just to grab even more of other people’s money. I left feeling nauseous. I had to keep my mind focussed on each footstep, just to make it to the station.
CHAPTER 25
I excitedly told Dorothy of the day’s events and the new information. She listened to my theories intently.
“Could Claudia have tricked Mathew into believing she is in love with him, lured him away from me, shown him how to take my money and then when she has it, kills Mathew before returning to Veronica?”
“I suppose you think Claudia was the author of that card, using Cristelle as her pseudonym.”
“Yes.”
“It certainly does bring lots of strands together. It works logically. Now you would have to feel into Claudia, Mathew and Veronica as to whether they would have been capable of all this. You knew Mathew, and you have met Claudia and Veronica. I would sleep on it.”
“I am not sure I did know Mathew anymore,” I responded despondently.
“I imagine he has left his imprints inside you and those imprints may carry the DNA of the real Mathew.”
In the morning I walked across Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park into central London. The fresh air, nature and exercise helped clear my mind. I wanted to stop thinking about suspects.
I walked toward Oxford Circus feeling thirsty. As I started to look for a café I literally bumped into Henrique on the corner of Oxford Street and Regent Street. I was walking past a shop window looking at boots and he was reading a message on his phone.
Neither of us was in a hurry so we found a juice bar and sat down together. Once we had ordered and chatted for a while Henrique asked me if he could read something to me.
Henrique slid some folded pieces of paper from his coat pocket. He laid them out on the table pressing out the creases with the palm of his hand and began to read.
“Does having a brain made up of two opposing hemispheres mean we are destined to observe our world in digital, black and white terms of opposites? Do having two hands and walking on two feet reinforce this? We see our world with two eyes, hear it with two ears, feel the wind with two cheeks.”
I reminded myself he was reading his notes and not looking for any answers.
“Does our anatomy predicate us to seeing our world dualistically, blinding us to other possibilities? It seems that science, religion and new age thinking
keeps coming back to a dualistic, relative world built on good and bad, right and wrong and separation.”
Henrique looked up and smiled. I was having to concentrate to follow him.
“Even our language holds us to certain ways of thinking. Words primarily distinguish, separate and define. They explore how we perceive things as different, rather than the same. As we often think in language, does our thinking reinforce a dualistic perception of life?”
Henrique made eye contact. I felt compelled to respond.
“We do seem primed to argue and disagree.”
Henrique nodded and continued.
“To use the analogy of a computer, it is as though our hardware, in other words mind and body, combined with our software, or language, to keep us in a dualistic mindset.”
Herr Huber took a sip of his juice and looked down at his notes.
“I find it fascinating that in quantum physics our universe can only be described through maths, not language.”
“Really?”
Henrique nodded.
“Atoms exist in mathematical formula but not language. So do we need another way of thinking to begin to appreciate new possibilities?”
“I have read that people who speak different languages, have slightly different ways of thinking.”
Henrique smiled and nodded.
“Yes, and here’s the important part. At the same time we are the universe. Inside us are the particles, rhythms, cycles, energies that we seek to define on the outside. In that sense we know everything there is to know, as we are it.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, the water inside our bodies is made up of particles that could have passed through oceans, clouds, stream, rivers and ponds. Those same particles may have been through plants, all kinds of creatures and other people.”
I felt a superficial shiver of excitement as I considered that all that water inside me had been around the planet.
“Similarly the air particles that enter my lungs may have been through plants, animals and people. Our boundaries may be much more permeable than we think. Just in terms of the water and air we are constantly exchanging particles with the world we inhabit.”