The Telling Error

by Hannah, Sophie

  Bryn was shaking his head. ‘I’m not in the clear. You might be able to prove that someone using my Twitter ID was tweeting all morning from this computer, this kitchen, this house, but how can you prove it was me? It could have been anyone who knew my password and felt inclined to defend me for a few hours. My password is “cheating1”, in case you’re wondering.’

  ‘Did you kill Damon Blundy?’ Simon asked, reeling a little. The density of Bryn’s self-loathing was making it difficult to breathe. Simon wished Sam were with him.

  ‘No, I didn’t. But as Twitter’ll tell you from dawn to dusk three hundred and sixty-five days a year, my word’s not worth shit. So … when you don’t immediately find your killer, you’ll think about me, and how I was here on my own the day Blundy was killed, and you’ll come back and arrest me. So why not do it now? I’d rather get it over with.’

  ‘I don’t believe you killed anyone, so I’m not arresting you,’ Simon told him.

  ‘You’re not arresting me yet,’ Bryn said knowingly. ‘And yet, I’m so arrestable – I don’t know how you can resist. You’ll be back, I’m sure.’

  ‘He is no less dead,’ Simon said, making sure to speak clearly.

  Bryn frowned. ‘No less dead than what? What do you mean?’

  Well, that was one test passed with flying colours.

  He’s lied before, though, about his drug use … repeatedly, convincingly.

  ‘Who do you think might have killed Damon Blundy?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Keiran Holland,’ Bryn said without hesitation. He took a sip of what looked like cloudy apple juice from the glass beside his laptop.

  ‘You sound certain about that.’

  ‘No. I’ve no idea. You asked me who I thought might have done it. Keiran Holland’s a man without a shred of compassion in his soul. For all I know, he’s got a rock-solid alibi, but if he hasn’t … Lack of compassion, plus known hatred of Damon Blundy …’ Bryn shrugged. ‘If I were you, I’d have Holland somewhere very near the top of my suspect list.’

  ‘No Waterhouse?’ Detective Inspector Giles Proust looked disappointed. He pushed in between Gibbs and Sellers on his way to his desk as if they were inconveniently positioned items of furniture. Gibbs was familiar with the manoeuvre. Debbie often swept past him in a similar way, without looking at him.

  ‘Simon’s still with Bryn Gilligan,’ said Sam Kombothekra. ‘He wants to know if any kind of appointment diary for Damon Blundy’s been found from 2011.’

  ‘Not at the house,’ said Sellers. ‘There might be something on his computer, which is with the Tech guys. I’m going there from here, so I’ll ask. Why? Why 2011?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sam. ‘Simon didn’t explain, just said he’s keen to see Blundy’s diary from that year if it’s around.’

  ‘He’ll have a good reason,’ said Gibbs.

  Sam smiled. ‘One we won’t be able to work out, however hard we try,’ he said.

  ‘Have I interrupted the omnibus edition of a Simon Waterhouse tribute programme?’ Proust said icily, earning his ‘Snowman’ nickname, as he did reliably at least once a day. ‘Any chance the talking heads could talk about the investigation? What have we got from the scene? The killer took Blundy’s phone, we think, but did he leave anything? Any large helpful flakes of DNA?’

  Sam shook his head. ‘It’s not looking promising, sir. The protective suit he was wearing has scuppered us, I think. The good news is, we’re better off when it comes to possible suspects.’

  ‘A lot of people loathed Damon Blundy,’ said Gibbs. ‘Many are household names: Bryn Gilligan, Jacob Fedder—’

  ‘Super-Rabbi Jacob Fedder?’ Proust asked. ‘Hasn’t he got better things to do?’

  ‘One of the many bees in Blundy’s bonnet was the circumcision of baby boys,’ Gibbs told him. ‘You know, like Jews and Muslims do. Blundy thought it was child abuse and should be illegal. Bad as female genital mutilation, he said in several of his columns. He didn’t say it tactfully.’

  Proust snorted. ‘Some people like to make life difficult for themselves, don’t they? If I had a bonnet, I’d go to considerable lengths to avoid having that particular bee in it. So the rabbi was incensed, was he?’

  ‘Yep. So were lots of other Jewish and Muslim leaders – Fedder was the most vocal, but there were loads. They petitioned the Daily Herald, demanded that Blundy be fired. This was after he referred to “neurotic blade-wielding maniacs suffering from a collective obsessive-compulsive disorder, trying to appease an imaginary tyrant in the sky by lopping random body parts off their so-called loved ones”.’

  ‘I spoke to the Herald this morning,’ said Sam. ‘Off the record, I was told they were on the point of letting Blundy go when some equally determined free-speech enthusiasts started their own petition to save his column, even though many of them apparently despised Blundy as much as his detractors did. In the end, the free-speech lot won the day.’ Sam shrugged. ‘Despite being unpleasant and offensive, Blundy was one of the Herald’s main attractions. He shifted papers. Goodness knows why.’

  ‘No, Sergeant, goodness – as personified by you – has no idea why. Goodness of the unimaginative bog-standard variety looks at a man like Damon Blundy and can’t see the point of him at all.’

  ‘You liked his columns, sir?’

  ‘They weren’t written to be liked, Sergeant. Let’s get back to the Muslims and the Jews. We’re interviewing them, yes? All the … the main ones?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Sam. ‘Once we’ve got our reinforcement personnel from Silsford, which should be within the hour, we’ll be interviewing everyone who’s ever publicly expressed antipathy towards Damon Blundy. It’s going to take a while. That same circumcision column that Gibbs quoted from ended with Blundy asking how readers would feel if he hacked off the earlobe of the little girl who lived next door to him and justified it by claiming it was a sacrifice to a goblin living on a cloud that only Blundy could see. The girl’s mother took exception and sold a hatchet-job-from-next-door-neighbour’s-point-of-view on Blundy to the Mail, accusing him of leading a promiscuous and debauched lifestyle, which he happily admitted to – this was after ex-wife number two and before he married Hannah.’

  ‘So stick the little girl’s mother on the list,’ said Proust. ‘Who else? Any family? I’m not pinning my hopes on Rabbi Fedder or Bryn Gilligan. Both strike me as bland and ineffectual from what I’ve seen of them on TV. Damon Blundy’s murderer might be insane but certainly isn’t bland.’

  ‘Blundy’s parents and three sisters all live in South Africa and were all in Johannesburg when Blundy was killed, going about their normal business.’ Sellers answered the question Proust had forgotten he’d asked. ‘Relations were strained. Blundy’s parents had all but disowned him, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Why?’ Gibbs asked.

  ‘No dramatic reason,’ said Sellers. ‘They just didn’t like him, and he didn’t like them.’

  ‘Simon said something interesting about the killer’s character,’ said Sam.

  ‘Has the commercial break finished, Sergeant? Is this Part Two of the tribute programme?’

  ‘Sir, I think it’s worth repeating. I can’t remember Simon’s exact words, but—’

  ‘And you’re willing to risk paraphrasing? Won’t all the magic be lost in translation?’

  ‘Most murder scenes reveal either cold, pre-planned detachment or spontaneous chaotic passion,’ Sam persisted. ‘This one’s a mixture of the two – lots of planning involved, enough detachment to think about logistics and … image management, for want of a better term, but also, without a doubt, strong feelings. Whoever killed Blundy was passionate about him.’

  ‘According to Waterhouse,’ Proust added the qualifier Sam had omitted.

  ‘And to me,’ Sam said with uncharacteristic firmness. ‘It makes sense. Simon thinks whoever did it has difficulty openly expressing his or her emotions. So, feels things deeply, but is also a control freak with years of experience of preventing
unmanageable feelings from spilling out. A bottler-up. Someone who wouldn’t let passion emerge unchecked, but would craft it into something safe, structured and anonymous. He both wants us to know how he feels and doesn’t, so he conveys his message cryptically, half hoping we’ll guess, half hoping we won’t.’

  ‘That sounds consistent with the Damon Blundy murder scene to me,’ Gibbs said.

  ‘It sounds consistent with DC Waterhouse,’ said Proust impatiently. ‘Am I the only one who notices that all his quack profiles are thinly veiled descriptions of himself? Is it his secret ambition to get himself arrested for every murder we investigate?’

  ‘Simon thinks that room, that … display, with the knife taped to his face and everything – it’s an invitation to misunderstand,’ Sam said. ‘The killer’s saying, “Go on, prove to me that you can work me out – no one else has ever managed to.” When we fail, he wins, because he’s outwitted us, and loses because all his worst fears are confirmed: no one gets him; no one cares enough to make the effort. That murder scene is likely to be the first public expression of his feelings for some time – maybe his whole life.’

  ‘“When we fail”, Sergeant? Could you brainstorm titles for your autobiography some other time? I’d like you to pretend your motto is “When we succeed”, at least until you retire.’

  ‘Sir, I meant from the killer’s point of—’

  ‘Shall we stop playing Simon Reckons and return to work?’ the Snowman cut Sam off. ‘Who else hated Damon Blundy, apart from Bryn Gilligan, Rabbi Jacob Fedder, other Jews, some Muslims and a neighbour keen to protect her daughter’s earlobe?’

  ‘Paula Riddiough, ex Labour MP for Culver Valley East,’ said Sam.

  For whom Sellers had voted for reasons that had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with his pornographic fantasies about her, Gibbs remembered with a grin.

  ‘Blundy laid into her in one of his columns for sending her son to a state school and the two of them quickly became well-known enemies,’ Sam said.

  Gibbs waited for Sellers to make a joke about laying Paula Riddiough, who was indisputably hot, and not only for an MP.

  Nothing. Sellers hadn’t been himself for a while and seemed not to want to talk about it. ‘Just insist that he tells you,’ Liv had said on the phone last night.

  ‘You mean private school?’ Proust asked Sam. ‘Blundy laid into Riddiough for sending her son to a private school?’

  ‘No, she sent him to a state school,’ said Sam.

  ‘Isn’t that what good Labour MPs who believe in state education are supposed to do?’

  ‘You can read the column if you want, sir – we’ve got the collected works of Damon Blundy next door. Riddiough comes from pots of money and went to Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Blundy accused her of culpable negligence with regard to her child’s future prospects, said she was one of the worst mothers in the UK. He called for social services to take her son into care.’

  ‘On what grounds?’ Proust sounded curious rather than shocked.

  ‘On the grounds that all good parents, even flawed ones, want better for their children than whatever they had themselves,’ said Sam. ‘Blundy said Riddiough could have afforded the very best for her son, but she’d actively sought to ensure that he had an education that was vastly inferior to her own, in an uglier building with fewer resources, dragged down by the stress and hopelessness common to all teachers in what Blundy called “perkless institutions”, and surrounded by gangster-chavs-in-the-making rather than the intellectually curious children of scientific innovators and visiting diplomats – or something like that. He accused Riddiough of doing it purely to annoy her rich, Tory parents while hypocritically pretending it was some sort of left-wing principle.’

  ‘They’re proper aristos, the Riddiough family,’ Gibbs chipped in. ‘Seat in the House of Lords until recently.’

  ‘Until all the hereditaries were replaced by inarticulate cockneys from reality-TV programmes, you mean?’ Proust got angry suddenly. ‘Paula Riddiough didn’t kill Damon Blundy! I mean, if we’re going by Waterhouse’s nonsense theory about the inability of our killer to express himself openly in public – Paula Riddiough expresses herself in every perishing newspaper supplement I ever see, even now that she’s no longer an MP. Wasn’t it her oversharing that prompted the calls for her resignation?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sam. ‘And it seems that the more Blundy attacked her, the more she overshared.’

  ‘She and Blundy are two of a kind,’ said Gibbs. ‘Shock jocks. I agree, it’s unlikely she killed him, but I wonder—’

  ‘All right, talk to her,’ Proust cut him off. ‘You have to, don’t you? I wish Blundy had considered the inconvenience to us in the event of his murder. It’s going to take us until next year to interview everyone who might have wanted him dead, by the sound of it. Who else?’

  ‘Two ex-wives, Verity Hewson and Abigail Meredith,’ said Sam. ‘Referred to by Blundy in his columns as Princess Doormat and Dr Despot.’

  ‘Going back to Paula Riddiough …’ Gibbs decided to risk airing his thoughts. ‘What about Blundy’s computer password, Riddy111111? “Riddy” could be short for “Riddiough”. It was the first thing I thought when I heard her name.’

  ‘When you speak to her, ask her if anyone calls her Riddy,’ said Proust. ‘Continue with the list of enemies, Sergeant.’

  ‘A writer of horror novels, Reuben Tasker, and the journalist Keiran Holland. Both hated Blundy.’

  ‘Keiran Holland?’ Proust looked surprised. ‘The Britain-must-join-the-euro guy?’

  ‘I don’t think he does so much economic journalism these days, but—’

  ‘Talk to them both,’ the Snowman cut Sam off. ‘What about Hannah, the grieving widow? What do we think about her claim that Blundy can’t really have loved her?’

  ‘Simon and I both thought she believed what she was saying, but … I think that’s probably paranoia on her part. Low self-esteem.’

  ‘Not as ugly as she thinks she is?’ Sellers asked.

  ‘She’s not most people’s idea of attractive, and as she pointed out herself, Blundy was forever harping on about how he loved gorgeous women and hated plain ones, but … I don’t know.’ Sam shook his head. ‘To be honest, she sounded … well, a bit mad. She had no evidence – no sign that he’d ever had an affair, nothing she’d seen or overheard to back up her belief. And Blundy was a loving, devoted husband to her for the whole of their marriage. Could he really have faked it for so long? Why would he?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Proust. ‘Most married men have the opposite problem: they love their wives but find it hard not to behave as if they can’t stand them. Sergeant, please don’t look at me with the eyes of a rabbit dying of myxomatosis while Mr Garfunkel sings “Bright Eyes” in the background! It’s not sexism, it’s the truth! Gibbs and Sellers know what I mean.’

  ‘Since he was so keen on shocking people, Blundy could easily have written a column saying he could never love an ugly woman just to be provocative,’ Sam said, red in the face from the rabbit comparison.

  ‘Or he could have been using his love life as yet another rebellion opportunity, in addition to his column in the Herald,’ said Gibbs. ‘He was famous, well-off – he could have had anyone. Well, not anyone, but—’

  ‘Anyone who didn’t mind cruelty,’ muttered Sam.

  ‘Maybe he thought it’d shock people if he had an unattractive wife,’ Gibbs said. ‘If you want to shock and keep shocking, you can’t be predictable. So if you’ve written about your fondness for fit women—’

  ‘So then Hannah’s right,’ said Sellers. ‘He didn’t love her. He married her for her freak-show value.’

  ‘Hannah’s not a freak,’ Sam said emphatically. ‘I could be wrong, but I don’t find it plausible that anyone, however much they enjoyed shocking or rebelling, would deliberately choose a partner they weren’t attracted to just to create a certain reaction. Being plain, like Hannah, or even downright ugly, doe
sn’t mean no one would fall in love with you at first sight.’

  ‘Are you sure about that, Sergeant? I’m not. I think Hannah Blundy might have a point.’

  ‘Sir, it’s not as if people always agree about these things. Maybe Damon Blundy thought Hannah was beautiful.’

  ‘You’ve seen her and I haven’t,’ said Proust. ‘Could any man think she was beautiful? Is it within the bounds of possibility?’

  Sam looked confused. ‘It has to be,’ he said eventually. ‘These things are so subjective. Anyone could look beautiful to at least one person. Couldn’t they?’

  ‘No, Sergeant. Think of Superintendent Barrow. His head looks like a goitre, disfiguring a neck from an unusually elevated position.’

  ‘You should send your CV in to the Daily Herald, sir,’ Gibbs suggested. ‘Now that Blundy’s dead, they’ll be looking to fill their offensive-columnist gap.’

  Proust looked irritated. Then he grinned. ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ he said. ‘I wonder if I could notch up as many enemies as Blundy.’

  ‘More, I reckon,’ said Gibbs.

  The Snowman’s smile remained in place. He turned to Sam. ‘I assume you’ll be looking at the comments beneath Blundy’s columns, the digital versions?’

  ‘We’ve already started, sir. Any names that come up regularly are being noted, anyone who seems suspiciously keen or regular, anyone veering towards obsessive – whether they’re pro- or anti-Blundy. There’s stacks about him. And we’ll be doing more house-to-house as soon as—’

  ‘Put the Silsford team on that,’ Proust barked. ‘Waste of time! No one saw anything, end of story. No one looks at the world outside any more. We’re all glued to our tiny screens. Did you speak to Karen Sanderson?’

  An audible shudder filled the Snowman’s small glass-sided room. Every police officer in Spilling knew the name. A thirty-five-year-old chartered surveyor with a day-trader husband and no children, Sanderson was a good citizen of the obsessive kind who, for no reason that anyone could fathom, had taken it upon herself several years ago to crack down, personally, on drivers who parked unethically in disabled and mother-and-baby spaces. She’d been cracking down ever since and regularly turned up at the nick to harangue the police about their apparent willingness to leave it all to her.