“Let’s get this straight,” Hollamby took up the questioning. “You met Shelly Hart in the morning, you were involved in the fire on the underground in the afternoon, and out of the goodness of her heart, she invited you back to her house that night. And that same night you almost had sex with her.”
“Yes.”
“Following which you left while she was asleep and never contacted her again?”
“Right.”
“Despite her phoning you at least 12 times and texting you 18 times?”
“Despite that, yes.”
“In fact you only spoke to her when you accidentally answered your phone, yesterday afternoon?”
“Correct.”
“And told her what exactly?”
“I can’t remember my actual words. I told her I’d ring her back.”
“But you didn’t?”
“I had a lot of problems. I meant to.”
“Tell me something.” Now it was Jane’s turn. “According to your website you’re an experienced forensic psychologist, and you talked to Shelly all evening – you must have gathered that she was a deeply troubled young woman. You must have noticed there were recent slash wounds on her wrist and drawn some conclusion from that.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Yet you were prepared to enter into a sexual relationship with her, then refused all subsequent contact with her except to fob her off, to make it clear that you wanted rid.”
“I felt I had to be honest.”
“Cruel to be kind? Abandoning her without a word of explanation?”
“I didn’t abandon her. I walked out of a horrifying situation that I didn’t understand.”
I looked from one to the other of them, trying to read their expressions: Hollamby, scowling and severe, Jane shrewd and assessing, as if I was a butterfly fluttering helplessly on a slab. “Tell me, please, how did she die?”
Hollamby shook his head. “If you remember anything you’ve got our number. By the way Dr Lockwood, I think you should be aware that Mrs Hart’s husband, Adrian Hart, has been away in Europe for the past fortnight. We managed to reach him this morning and he’s on his way home. A word of friendly advice, Sir. Try to avoid him if you can.”
“I’m hardly likely to invite him to join me on Facebook.”
“But he might want to talk to you,” Jane said, talking urgently. “Of course there’s no reason to suppose he has any idea of your involvement with his wife, we have no need to tell him. But unfortunately these things often have a way of leaking out. Adrian Hart is known to us. He’s a dangerous character. Served time ten years ago for grievous bodily harm.”
“Well sir,” said Hollamby, “that’ll be all, and thanks for giving us your statement. The constable will show you the way out, and the coroner’s office will be in touch about the inquest in due course.”
We all stood up.
“Just one thing, sir.”
It was Hollamby who spoke to me as I was leaving.
I turned back.
“I gather that You were a BIA not long ago? Just before you were admitted to St Michael’s psychiatric clinic as an in-patient?”
“That’s right.”
The expression in his eyes turned cold. “You’ve told us that you’re investigating a historic multiple murder, and Mrs Hart was the daughter of the woman whose reputation you’re trying to clear?”
“Yes.”
“As a BIA you’re obviously aware that there are strict protocols of only getting involved in police matters when you’re officially invited to be part of the investigative team. As a layman who isn’t even currently on the list of NPIA approved BIAs, you have no authority to be making enquiries about any police investigations, whether they happened way back in the mists of time, or last week. Is that clear?”
“So I’m free to go?” I asked, looking from one of them to the other.
“Yes sir, thank you for your help. We’ll be in touch.”
* * * *
That afternoon I spread all the contents of the three boxes I’d found in the loft of Clifftop Paradise on my kitchen table. The mystery of Shelly’s death was like a black cloud that wouldn’t leave me, and the only cure was to throw myself into my own investigation, and leave things to the police.
One box contained receipts and invoices dating back to 1970. The other two boxes held nothing but photographs, what appeared to be the various album covers that Barry had worked on. One file within the box was marked Maggi O’Kane. I looked through all the photographs twice, but there was definitely no sign of the Assassination shots that, according to Alfie Goldstein, would be near duplicates of the ones I had. I felt the beginnings of a stirring of excitement. Unless some other artist had designed the album cover for Assassination, it looked as if Alfie Goldstein was lying or misguided. My photos appeared to be genuine evidence of a crime, and now it certainly did look as if Maggi O’Kane had been murdered. And I was determined to prove it.
The following day I drove to Ramsgate and and took all Barry’s boxes of materials to Cedar Lodge, and he was absolutely delighted, poring over the old photos and papers in excitement. Each one had a story attached to it, and, incredibly his memory was spot on for things that happened in the 70s, while recent things in his life had gone by the board. When I asked him about Assassination, he frowned, as if it rang a distant bell, but apologised, saying that he just couldn’t remember, but that he would try.
* * * *
In the evening I went to see Ken at his home in Wimbledon. He took me into the cluttered breakfast room, clearing a space in the pile of papers on the table to make way for his speciality: bubble and squeak.
Before we started eating poor old Ken took off his spectacles and rubbed a hand across his eyes. It was clear that he was under a lot of stress.
I told him about Shelly’s murder, went over all the details, and repeated my memories of our last conversation.
“You can’t blame yourself,” he said. “Honestly, Jack, if she was into those violent sex games, well… Remember that MP who died through lack of oxygen when he was experimenting with some kind of mask? And Michael Hutchence, the pop singer who asphyxiated? I’ve heard that deprivation of oxygen, partial strangulation, is supposed to be a sexual turn on, and it’s possible, even if there are safety precautions… Well, apparently things can go wrong.”
“It’s all guesswork. I don’t know how she died.”
“So stop beating yourself up,” Ken said firmly. “I mean it Jack. It wasn’t your fault. There’s a chance she could have told someone about your investigations into her mother’s death, but as the police said, it seems very unlikely that something that happened so long ago could prompt a murder.”
“She said that every time she’d raked over the details of her mother’s death something dreadful always happened. I stirred this business up for her. I got her hopes up. We were on the point of making love and I just left her without a word of explanation. She must have felt as if I’d just used her to get information about her mother, taken what was on offer, and then abandoned her.”
“But you didn’t take it, did you? That’s the whole point. And just supposing she hadn’t done any rough stuff you’d have embarked on another doomed love affair.”
“Yes, I probably would have.”
“And it would have ended in disaster. A suicidal, half crazy woman, even ignoring her penchant for sadomasochism, is not what you need right now Jack. Not what you need at all. Besides…”
“What?”
“You’re lonely. You’re still thinking about her. Sooner or later you’d have felt sorry for her, gone to see her. She’d have sworn to you that she wasn’t into sadomasochism, that it was some kind of crazy one-off, and you’d have believed her. I know you, Jack. You and Shelly obviously had some kind of connection, whether you realise it or not, things wouldn’t have ended between you. You found her exciting. You fell in love with her. But Shelly wasn’t normal, Jack, we don’t know what was happening in her l
ife.”
“Well I–”
“You know virtually nothing about her work, her friends, her sexual partners. You didn’t even know she was married. It’s guesswork. Face it, Jack, she slept with you when she hardly knew you, she could have been having sex with half a dozen other guys – even strangers off the street. The way she came on to you, she was hardly a discerning shrinking violet, was she?”
“I liked her, okay? I liked her. Until I knew what she was like.”
“Just what I was saying. You knew nothing about her. And when you did…”
“Quite.” I was irritated, wanting to change the subject. “What about you Ken? How are things between you and Natalie nowadays?”
“I hardly see her.” he said between mouthfuls of food. I noticed a crumb of potato on his shirt front. “Natalie is either working, or always busy, doing the bits of housework that I can never seem to get on top of. We had a lovely au pair while I was working, a real looker actually,” he grinned conspiratorially at me. “Heidi did all the hoovering and stuff like that, looked after the twins. She had these amazing blue eyes and a sort of pout when she smiled, you know? And this dimple in her chin. Lovely girl.”
I smiled. That was Ken, referring to a girl and looking wistful, yet bizarrely, always talking about eye colour, facial expressions, and hair, even her clothes, never waxing lyrical about the more basic female attributes that most men normally referred to. Part of his old fashioned upbringing I supposed, his Bertie-Wooster reticence, a gentlemanly respect for women that stopped him descending to crudity.
“But now we’ve had to let her go. It was obviously common sense for me to bridge the gap at home – after all Natalie’s the only breadwinner now, as she never ceases to remind me. And if I complain that I see so little of her because of her doing overtime in the evenings she throws it in my face that she has to do all the overtime she can get because we need the money now. Money, money, money, it’s all she ever talks about nowadays.”
Ken’s chubby face had lost its warmth. Always one to look on the bright side, he’d usually managed to cheer me out of my darkest glooms, but now the tables had turned.
“And she keeps going on about Donald. What a wonderful man he was, how she misses him. Harking back to the accident, and the unfairness of life for taking away such a wonderful man. How glad she was that she had his children to remember him by.”
Donald Foster had been Nicola’s first husband, in fact he was the father of Hazel and Anthony, her twins. He’d been some kind of international lawyer, killed by a terrorist bomb in Mumbai not long after the twins were born. Ken had met her at a mutual friend’s party a year after Donald’s death, and provided a supportive ear for her troubles, and their relationship had grown from there. Friends had, apparently, advised her against her ‘marriage on the rebound’, as she now called it. The fact that the twins were not his own children was something that Ken never normally referred to, something he was ultra sensitive about. That he’d mentioned it tonight was indicative of the deep state of depression he was obviously in.
“I’m sorry Ken,” I sympathised. “When I think of how much you supported me when I was in St Michael’s. Visiting every week, always helping me to see the positive side of everything. If it hadn’t been for you I think I would have taken that job in Seattle.”
“You wouldn’t have liked it. It wasn’t your thing.”
Just before the Van Meer incident, after my car accident, I’d applied for a teaching job in Seattle, reasoning that my BIA career didn’t seem to be taking off, and it would be a way of utilising my psychology training, a method of establishing some kind of career. Then, of course, I suffered my breakdown. The original teaching vacancy had been offered to me, but I’d had to turn it down. By the time I was discharged from St Michael’s, the university wrote again, explaining that the candidate who’d taken the post hadn’t worked out, and if I hadn’t yet found a suitable position would I be interested? They were sympathetic about my mental health problems, prepared to take a chance on me. Of course I’d been tempted to start a new life. My wife Sarah had left me at about the time my breakdown began and we had no children, so there was nothing to keep me in the UK. But Ken had suggested the idea of writing the book, and persuaded me to turn down the Seattle offer for a second time.
“While I was in that hospital you really were my lifeline, Ken,” I said. “Visiting me all the time, listening to my problems. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
He replaced his glasses, wiping his forehead with a dishcloth. “Forget it, Jack.”
“You were there for me. And I’d like to be there for you.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Felt him tense up and move fractionally away. I realised how much stress he was under.
He left the room to check on the children. Hazel had a cold, and Ken wanted to make sure she was asleep.
When he came back I noticed the deep lines on his forehead, the bags under his eyes. Previously portly he was thinner now, the stress of the last months evident in his face.
“I think Natalie’s having an affair,” he said after he’d sat down again.
The shock of it was like a physical slap in the face “Has she said anything?” I asked.
“She doesn’t need to. She works most evenings now, barely speaks a word to me. And there’s something, I don’t know, different about her. She’s more lively, more, just, alive than she used to be. But then I can’t say I blame her. She keeps telling me that I have this aura of hopelessness, and that’s why no one will employ me. I tell you Jack, it can be pretty upsetting. Talk about feeling emasculated.”
I pictured dumpy frumpish Natalie, devoted wife and mother. Uncharitably I felt momentary astonishment that anyone had succumbed to her somewhat minimal charms. While not actually disliking her, Natalie was one of those people I’d never really warmed to. Maybe I sensed that, for some reason, she didn’t like me, and responded accordingly.
“Come on Ken. You’re probably imagining it.”
“Imagining it? When she hangs up the phone when I come into the room?” He was talking loudly now, a note of desperation in his voice. “When she shuts down the computer if I’m anywhere nearby? She used to leave her mobile around, but now she guards it like the crown jewels.”
It was hard to know what to say.
“Have you asked her about it?”
“You know me, Jack, I can’t stand any kind of confrontation.”
“Don’t you think you should talk to her?”
“I just keep hoping it’ll fizzle out. That one day she’ll come home, and throw her arms around my neck and tell me that she loves me, and she’s sorry she’s been so distant, and can we start again. And I’ll never mention what I suspected, because if I mention it, it becomes real.” His voice was hoarse and cracking, and I could see he was on the point of tears. “And I can’t stand the thought of it being real. I even know his name: Rupert Pendry. She hung up the phone quickly one time, then went out. I picked it up and dialled 1471, and pressed three to be put through. He said his name: Rupert Pendry. Rupert bloody Pendry.”
He reached amongst the pile of papers on the table, and found a packet of cigarettes taking one out and lighting it.
“You never used to smoke!” I said in amazement.
“I never used to wait for the post, hoping I could find her phone bill to see if there were any regular numbers she was calling. I never used to dread her telling me she was leaving me and taking the children. I never used to have a sickening pain in my stomach from morning till night. Frankly, Jack I’m bloody well at my wits’ end.”
We sat in silence for a long time, Ken smoking his cigarette like a naughty schoolboy behind the bike sheds, the rapid puffs of a novice rather than the heavy indrawn lungfuls of the habitual smoker.
“Do you ever think about school, Jack?”
“Never. I hated school, couldn’t wait to leave.”
“I hated it too, most of the time. But Dulw
ich wasn’t all bad. For instance when Chris Morris was beating me up and you came to my rescue.” Ken’s eyes were alive at the memory. “That was one of the first times we’d ever spoken. After that you looked after me – no one else ever dared to bully me again.”
“Is that so? I never realised.” I was surprised that he remembered something I’d completely forgotten. And then thought of Natalie’s description of him having an ‘air of hopelessness’.
“I’ve often wondered,” I went on. “Why do you think they did bully you?”
Ken shrugged. “You remember what Dulwich College was like. If you’re hopeless at rugger and useless at cricket, you’re hardly Mr Popular. And if they discover you actually like poetry and they can get away with teasing you. And that you won’t fight back if anyone picks on you…”
“That’s how it was.”
“Small wonder I wasn’t murdered, really.”
I remembered Shelly’s words about how lonely she’d been at school. At the memory of her sadness, and the knowledge of her death, tears pricked at the back of my eyes.
“But other boys hated sport,” I said, taking the journey back to my schooldays and trying to remember. “Tim O’Reilly always played the female parts in drama productions. He even had a funny walk and his voice never broke properly. Yet no one picked on him. Why do you think it was you they always went for?”
“Natalie says I’m a born victim. She should know, since that’s the role I’ve played for most of our sham of a marriage.”
I hadn’t got a clue what to say.
Ken was still lost in his reverie. “Funny we were friends Jack. As a rule we never did speak to boys who weren’t in our own class, did we? Sort of unwritten rule.”
“Unless it was another boy in a club you belonged to,” I agreed.
“All the unspoken rules and agreements that nobody wrote down, you just sort of knew instinctively. Sometimes I think I understood things at school in a way I’ve never understood them since. I hated it, but I understood it. All the rules somehow made me feel secure in a way I’ve never quite felt since. You grow up and nobody tells you that it’s always the people with money that just go on getting more, and wherever you go people are always out to stab you in the back. That you have to be so bloody defensive all the time. Or maybe that’s just publishing, and I’ve never worked in any other field.”
Rock'n'Roll Suicide (Jack Lockwood Mystery Series Book 1) Page 12