It was 11pm. I rang directory enquiries and found a number for two Summervilles in Edinburgh. The first person shouted “Do you know what time it is?” asserting that he definitely was not the Summerville who’d been at Dulwich College in 1987.
I was lucky with the second number. Yes, the softly spoken man replied, he was the David ‘Jock’ Summerville who’d been a student at Dulwich College in 1987. And yes, he did remember me, Jack Lockwood. And no, I wasn’t disturbing him, he told me he was a night owl and was in the middle of doing a client’s tax returns and was pleased to take a break.
“This is going to sound crazy,” I apologised. “But I’m in serious trouble, and I need to know something which might be relevant. Do you remember, in the summer term of 1987, we were in the same boarding house?”
“Course I do, Jack. We were pretty good mates as I recall. Jock and Jack, they called us.”
“Yes, of course. Jock and Jack. Thing is, there was an incident that happened. Do you recall Ken Taylor?”
“Taylor? Chubby bloke with glasses? Bit of a loner?”
“That’s him. There was a fight between us – you and me. I can’t remember why we were fighting, but it was in the evening in the dorm, just before lights out.”
“A fight?” There was a pause for a while. “I think we had a few fights, or just friendly knockabouts more like. Now when was that exactly? Mebbe if I knew the time of year?”
“Summer. It was very hot weather.”
“Summer.” There was a long pause. “Oh aye, I think I’ve got it now.” He coughed. “Well, we were all lads, you know? I wouldn’t go thinking too deeply about it. We’ve all done things as kids we just forget about, eh? It’s just daft wee boys, the ridiculous things you get up to, then you grow up and forget about it. I don’t bear any grudges, Jack, my memories of you are as a good pal.”
“Thing is, there’s something I really need to know. Do you remember what happened before our fight?”
“Well, let’s see.” He didn’t talk for a while. “If I remember rightly, Pete Edwards and I had been mucking about outside – I think we’d been smoking some fags at the clump – you remember that circle of trees on the playing fields, where we weren’t supposed to go in the evenings? We’d sneaked out with the smuggled ciggies, were pretty scared of being caught, but we’d got away with it and were running back, full of the thrill of having done it, you know how it is? We ran into the dorm and found you and Ken together.”
“Together?”
“He – well, he was on top of you.”
“Go on.”
“And he was, well…”
“What?”
“We may have been mistaken. But it looked as if he was kissing you!”
“He was kissing me?”
“Pete and I were outside when we saw him come up to the bed, then he bent down, got on top of you and started kissing you. You leapt up and pushed him away, he fell on the floor. Pete and I were laughing and teasing the pair of you, you know? We thought it was all a daft game, which I’m sure it was, a joke he was playing on you. And if I remember right you socked me in the face, and gave me a bloody nose.”
“Sorry.”
“Water under a very old bridge, Jack. You didn’t remember all that?”
“Just part of it.”
“Aye well I’m an accountant, as you know, but I’ve read a wee bit about psychology. From what I remember at Dulwich none of us – our immediate group of friends – got up to any shenanigans like that, did we? Homosexuality was funny, not like today. It was comedians on telly with their mincing walks, Larry Grayson saying ‘shut that door’, it was a joke to us in our ignorance. We didn’t stop to think of the genuine folk for whom it was a way of life. Quite understandably you were shocked and very upset by what happened, and I suppose you buried the memory, because mebbe you couldn’t face it, you know? It was pretty awful for all of us. Afterwards Peter and I felt really bad about the whole thing. Quite frankly we were a wee bit embarrassed, you know? Not something you like to dwell on, or even remember. Afterwards it was okay. As if nothing had happened. You’d obviously completely eradicated it from your memory, and you and Ken were pals again as if nothing had occurred. Not that you ever were particularly close pals if I recall, but you got along okay, with no grudges or bad feeling of any kind. Such a silly little incident, I’m surprised I can remember it myself. I suppose I do remember because it seemed so weird at the time. I think it was quite a shock to me, frankly. Always a bit of a Billy-no-mates was Taylor, was he not? Did you ever hear what became of him?”
“He’s okay, I think.” Lying wasn’t easy, especially when I was terrified of what I was discovering. “Haven’t kept in touch.”
“I know, I’m just the same. I don’t keep up with anyone from school – don’t even take the magazine, what’s it called The Alleynian? Last time I looked at it, it was full of appeals for grants, fundraising, building projects they needed help with. As a true Scotsman I’ve an aversion to putting my hand in my pocket! Someone told me that Ken went into publishing, I do believe. Be good at that, old Ken, sitting around eating all those expense account lunches and chatting on the telephone.” He gave a brief chuckle. “Trust Ken to find himself a cushy number, he always was a lazy beggar, but harmless, and not a bad guy… Aye well, it’s really good to hear from you after all this time Jack, how are you? What are you up to these days?”
I muttered something about being in the building trade and times being tough. It was hard to concentrate, my thoughts were in such turmoil.
“Aye well Jack if you’re ever up this way we must get together, I’d love you to meet my family. We’d be delighted to put you up for a few days…”
I talked to Summerville for another few minutes about pleasantries, my mind not really on the conversation. He was a nice guy, I remembered he’d been a likeable boy, the type of boy who always tipped you off if a master was on the way and you were doing something wrong, and who once did my maths homework for me to get me out of trouble from a particularly terrifying maths master. I remember he once accepted a ten-page essay from a prefect for doing something he hadn’t done, just because he couldn’t bring himself to sneak on the boy who actually had been responsible. A good guy, a nice bloke, straightforward and decent; more importantly, he wasn’t a liar.
Ken.
My best friend. The mate who’d looked me up out of the blue a couple of years ago. Who’d spent hours talking to me, raising my spirits, doing his best to help me in any way he could.
Just how well did I know him?
And why hadn’t we stayed in touch after leaving school, as I’d stayed in contact with a number of my other old mates? It was so long ago, I couldn’t remember. I remembered us being fairly friendly at school, but, as Jock had reminded me, never actually best pals, or even running around with the same gang of friends. As he’d himself pointed out to me, there’d always been something a bit different about him, nothing you could put your finger on, just different. That had been why he’d never quite fitted in with the crowd. Ken had been a bit off-kilter, never quite in tune with the rest of us.
Then I remembered Giles Mander. His weird volte face towards me. When I’d first known him he’d been withdrawn, wary, uncommunicative, never responding to my suggestions of taking a working lunch, barely wanting to shake my hand. Then, when I’d last met him and he’d told me they’d changed their mind and would take the book, he’d treated me in a totally different way. And all that mysterious talk of his about misunderstandings that are cleared up and out of the way.
What misunderstandings?
I thought back over our discussion. I realised that his change of heart had been after he’d heard about Shelly’s death. But more relevantly after he’d heard about my sexual relations with Shelly, prior to her death, which ironically enough didn’t even happen, but the newspaper report assumed that they had. Had he previously assumed that I wasn’t interested in relationships with women? Why on earth would he do tha
t when he didn’t even know me? He only knew Ken, and that I was Ken’s close friend. Yet Ken was a married man with two children. Did Giles know something about Ken that I didn’t?
Other things. Eden Langford’s assumption that Ken and I were an item because he’d seen my friend in a gay club in Paris. My conclusion that going there was just symptomatic of Ken’s penchant for making mistakes.
Just supposing it hadn’t been a mistake?
And then, worst of all, DS Hollamby’s words rang in my ears.
“You’re connected with the deaths of both those women…”
If Ken nursed some kind of homosexual fantasy about me, what if, every time I found a woman, he felt impelled to destroy her? The idea seemed crazy at first, but with a growing realisation of horror I wondered if there could possibly be any truth in it. Ken had never once made any kind of sexual suggestion or even hint that he was interested in me except as a close friend. However Erotomania, or de Clérambault’s Syndrome, was a delusional fantasy, whereby someone has an emotional fixation with someone and genuinely believes that their love is reciprocated, despite all the facts to the contrary. An example might be a fan of a pop star she’s never met. Despite never having met her, an erotomaniac sincerely believes that the pop star was in love with her, and acts accordingly, surprised when she meets resistance. In the same way, while Ken knew I was not homosexual, he might believe that this was irrelevant to my feelings about him: in other words I did reciprocate his homosexual feelings but didn’t realise it, and the women I fell in love with along the way were merely a distraction, a heterosexual distraction that he felt impelled to dispose of.
Was the theory in any way feasible? Ken had been with me in Cornwall when Miranda Prowse had been murdered. Nikki had heard someone, possibly Ken, crying in the church that same night. And Shelly Hart? I’d phoned Ken that first night and told him how I was falling in love with her. And I’d given him Shelly Hart’s address, because at the time I wanted him to collect me from there, to drive me to the station, when I thought after my injuries it might be too painful to walk. But I’d phoned him to tell him I’d got home under my own steam.
And I had never been able to bring myself to tell him about the fiasco of our night together, it had been too embarrassing. Ken had assumed that she and I were an item, and, because I didn’t want to discuss it, he’d assumed I didn’t want to admit to falling for a woman so abruptly, because he would jeer at my naivety.
No. It was almost impossible to envisage.
But right now I had to apply the Sherlock Homes principle. When you’ve ruled out all the possible explanations, the seemingly impossible are the only ones that remain.
I paid to park for the night and managed to doze in the car until dawn, then went into the restaurant to have breakfast and go to the bathroom. The headache that had started last night had been growing steadily, so that now my head was throbbing. In the cold light of day the theory I’d come up with last night seemed too bizarre to entertain.
However there was one last thing I had to do while I was still near London. One piece of the puzzle that I had to find out if it might fit, before I faced the horrifying reality of Ken’s possible guilt.
I’d been with Shelly on the Friday night, the 21st of November, I’d spoken to her the following day, and from what the police had told me, she was murdered sometime between 5.30 and 9pm on the following Thursday, allowing for the period it would take me to drive home to be in Whitstable by 8pm, the time after which I had witnesses as to my whereabouts.
* * * *
Back in Sunnyvale Gardens I parked around the corner from Ken’s house. He was at number 17, and when he’d talked about ‘Gillian next door’, he’d looked towards the left. Meaning it had to be no 19.
I walked up the tidy path and rang on the doorbell. After a moment a large blonde-haired lady answered the door.
“Does Gillian live here?” I asked, looking down at a letter on the hall table and reading its addressee as Mark Townsend. “Gillian Townsend?”
The woman looked perplexed. “Yes,” she said guardedly.
“I’m a school inspector,” I replied, praying that she wouldn’t ask to see my identification. “I’m sorry to call unannounced like this Mrs Townsend, but it’s my job to investigate any cases of truanting, and some girls of Gillian’s age, in school uniform, were seen in the shopping precinct last week, and we have reason to believe Gillian was amongst them.”
“Our Gillian would never do that!” she said, all thought of checking my credentials forgotten in her outrage. “Besides, it’s her GCSE year, so on some days she’s doing her home study anyway, and I can assure you that on the days she does home study, she’s either at home or at the library doing her work.”
“I’m sure she is, I didn’t mean to accuse her of anything.”
God, I thought, a real schools inspector would be aware that Gillian had some days allocated to home study.
“The morning in question is Thursday, 27th November. Our records show that she wasn’t in school. Do you happen to remember where Gillian was on that day?”
“Almost three weeks ago? I’ll try and think back?” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Yes, I remember. Mr Taylor, next door, he had urgent business in London that afternoon, and Gillian sometimes babysits for the Taylors’ little ones when both of them have to be away. She took her books next door and sat in with them.”
“The girls were seen at the shopping precinct at 3pm.”
“Well Gillian wasn’t one of them,” she replied haughtily. “Mr Taylor called during the afternoon and asked if she could help out, and she went straight over at about five and wasn’t back here until ten in the evening. I remember, because I was off work myself that day, I had terrible toothache. Gillian wasn’t back here until ten, as I said. I thought it was a bit much really, but Mr Taylor was that grateful, and he’s such a nice man.”
“Thanks very much Mrs Townsend, that’s cleared it all up, and I’m very sorry to have troubled you.”
Back on the road.
I drove in a kind of daze, all the time with the growing realisation that the dreadful truth I’d uncovered was seeming more and more of a possibility.
* * * *
There was one person who might be able to solve this mystery once and for all. Someone who hated me. I found a parking slot in a side street and found a Wetherspoon pub, which fortunately had WiFi. Ken had once mentioned the name of the firm Natalie worked for: Stevenson’s. I looked up the firm on Google and discovered the address in Waterloo, on the south bank of the Thames.
I drove across town, and found a car park not far from the Millennium Wheel, and it took me twenty minutes to walk from there to Stevenson’s offices. It was an anonymous looking building with a glass front, between two huge banks. Inside, the large uniformed man on the reception desk looked up expectantly as I came in.
“Who have you come to see sir?” he asked.
“Natalie Taylor.”
“And have you got an appointment sir?” he asked as he dialled a number.
“Yes.”
“And your name?”
“Rupert Pendry.” I remembered the name of the man Ken said Natalie was having an affair with.
“Sign in please, Mr Pendry, and put the time if you would.”
He spoke on the phone for a few moments.
“She’ll be down in a minute, Mr Pendry, if you’d like to take a seat.”
I sat on the shiny brown leather seat and waited.
Shortly afterwards she appeared, stepping out of the lift. When she saw me, her face turned red and she stormed up to the reception desk.
“This isn’t Mr Pendry,” she snapped. “And he has no appointment.”
“Just listen to me for five minutes, Natalie, please. It’s important.”
The security man came out from behind the desk, squaring up to me.
“I think that we’re all in serious trouble,” I appealed to her. “Please, just let me talk to you. Wha
t harm can it possibly do?”
She nodded to the security man that it was okay, and walked towards me. “There’s a coffee shop along the road. Let’s go.”
We walked in silence, then entered the brightly lit café. Still in silence, we chose a table and sat opposite each other. I gave an order for two coffees and she shrugged.
“Natalie, please listen. You don’t know me, yet you dislike me. Why is that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“If it was obvious I wouldn’t have gone to all these lengths to see you alone.”
“You destroyed my marriage.”
“I what?”
“You heard me. Things were fine until Kenneth read about you in your old boys’ school magazine. The moment Kenneth saw that piece about you, he insisted on looking you up, and visiting you in that mental hospital. At first I was all in favour of it. What’s wrong with giving a bit of help and support to an old friend? That was the right thing to do. It was only later on that I realised the nature of his friendship with you. He never stopped talking about you. It was Jack this, Jack that, you were never off his mind. Then of course you know that.”
“No Natalie. No I didn’t know that. I’m only just beginning to realise it.”
“Come on Jack, do you think I was born yesterday? Cosy fishing holidays in Cornwall? Two men going away on a weekend in Paris? You hardly made a secret of it. And above all, this ridiculous book project, the unmasking of multinational companies who are supposed to be killing their own clients! I’ve heard all that nonsense ad infinitum. It was just a cover to mask why you were really spending so much time together.”
“You’re wrong.”
“My family said it would never work, but our marriage was fine at first, did you know that?” Natalie spoke as if to herself, as if she’d forgotten I was there. “Why was I so stubborn? I was on my own with the twins after Donald died. Donald and I had never been that close, in fact, but of course his death devastated me because I’d never lived on my own before. Then I met Kenneth. He was kind. We were so happy at first, at least I was happy, and Kenneth was so good with the twins, he really was so good with them. But Kenneth wasn’t really happy, not deep down. I knew that fairly early on, but I thought he’d change. Apparently there was another relationship he had before we were engaged that he kept secret from me. Eventually he told me all about it... But it had ended, and Kenneth said it had all been a mistake, ‘a stupid aberration’ were his words, and I believed him, more fool me. He said it was just a phase that he’d grown out of. I think he actually believed it himself at the time. Yes, I really think he did believe it. But you can’t change what you are, can you?” She passed a hand across her eyes. “I sometimes thought I’d go mad, trying to keep it all together alone. Maintaining this pretence.” She leaned closer to me, her mean eyes narrowing with malice. “It isn’t just you, you know. Recently he’s started going away on these weekends, with ‘old friends’ or so he says. But it’s not that. I’ve checked up the history on his computer. He looks up dating sites. Gay dating sites. That’s why I can’t bear to be near him anymore.”
Rock'n'Roll Suicide (Jack Lockwood Mystery Series Book 1) Page 27