‘Shall we tell them, Peter?’ West asked, with no trace of emotion in his voice and faces fell around the room, shoulders drooped.
Andrews waited a beat before he replied, in sombre tones. ‘I suppose we’d better, sergeant.’
‘I know you all worked hard,’ West spoke firmly, looking around at each member of the team. ‘You did the best you could, put in the hours and days without complaint.’ The room was silent, a depressed gloom settling around as his words started hitting home. ‘And all that hard work...’ West looked at each of them again before continuing, ‘...has paid off.’
It took an uncomfortable minute for this to sink in and whoops of excitement swept around the room. West and Andrews grinned widely accepting congratulations from the men and offering praise in return.
Inspector Duffy came from his isolated office and offered his congratulations in turn. The advent of the signed statement led to another cheer and sighs of relief from those who had seen retractions in the blink of an eye.
‘Ok, everybody,’ West called for a hush in the room. ‘Drinks in the pub are on me.’ He checked his watch, ‘I think we can fit in a couple before closing!’
The room emptied in minutes and a noisy trail led through the station to the exit with congratulations thrown at them from various people on the way. Their local was already busy with off-duty station staff and before long a full blown party was in progress. West left money behind the bar with a bewildered, but agreeable, bar manager then, with a brief word to Andrews, he made a quiet exit.
Andrews didn’t question West’s unusually quiet and quick departure. He had a good idea where he was going, wasn’t sure he approved, decided it wasn’t his business. The sergeant was all grown up, he thought with a smile watching him go. He turned back to the boisterous group of men at the bar and ordered himself a Heineken.
THIRTY-ONE
Kelly Johnson was lounging on the comfortable hotel bed when her phone rang. She watched it as if it had suddenly come to life, fearful of what it would do next. It rang several times and stopped. She swung her legs around, feet now firmly on the ground, ready for flight. When it rang again she was less startled but more fearful and reached a tentative hand out for the handset.
‘Hello,’ she ventured carefully and then breathed a long sigh of relief as she heard Sergeant West’s measured voice.
‘Ms Johnson? It’s Sergeant West. I’m down in the lobby, could we have a word, please.’ A sudden realisation struck him that he was asking for an invitation to her room and he rushed into speech again. ‘Down here,’ he added awkwardly.
Kelly held the phone close a moment, waiting for elaboration but heard nothing except the soft hiss of static. ‘Sergeant West?’
‘I should have phoned, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just turned up. Without calling first.’ God, he thought, how pathetic do I sound? ‘Listen, it’s ok. I’ll ring you tomorrow from the station and fill you in, ok?’
‘You’ve come from Dublin?’ Kelly asked, puzzled.
West had. He had stood in the pub listening to the happy chatter of his team and knew where he wanted to be. He didn’t stop to think, with a quick goodbye to Andrews he had returned to his car started the engine and driven.
Two hours later and here he was, making a fool of himself in the foyer of the Cork International Hotel.
‘I had some things to clear up here,’ he lied quickly. ‘I’m heading back to Dublin now, just thought I’d fill you in first.’
He heard her laugh for the first time since they met and he smiled in automatic response at its warm earthiness. He felt something inside him click and he knew he was gone.
‘Sergeant West,’ she said, the laugh colouring her voice. ‘I would love to come down, just give me ten minutes. It will be so good to get out of this room, even for a little while.’
He waited in the lobby, just near enough to the lifts to see her when she arrived, feeling an anticipation he didn’t want to explore too much. People passed to and fro before him, ordinary people, he thought, doing ordinary things, eating, drinking, falling in love. I could do with some ordinary he mused, checking his watch for the fourth time. Before he had registered the time the lift opened and she stepped out, smiling expectantly, seeing him immediately.
He stepped forward, holding out a hand in greeting. She reached him, hand held out and they stood there, hand in hand for longer than the requisite time, exchanging greetings as if they were old friends. Both rushed into speech at the same time and laughed together when they both stopped abruptly.
West searched ineffectually for the right words and failing miserably settled for, ‘You look nice,’ immediately wondering why he couldn’t have found a word that was less banal. Nice, he mentally kicked himself. Nice!
She smiled. She had hastily taken off the white tee shirt she had been wearing when he rang and put on the silk camisole, tucking it into her jeans and using the gossamer blouse as a cover-up, tying it in a knot at her waist. Her hair, freshly washed that morning, hung loose around her pale face and, as he looked at her, he had an almost irresistible urge to put his hand out, brush her hair back, draw her close. He wondered what her reaction would be, imagined his fingers touching that soft, silky skin.
Then he remembered the marks that Fletcher had left on her throat, and imagined her flinch as he touched the bruises that lingered, that would linger for days yet. Yes, that would be a really smooth move.
Instead, he returned her smile and indicated the hotel bar with a nod. ‘We can find a quiet seat. Can I get you a drink?’
‘Just a white wine, please,’ she replied as they headed to a corner seat in a quiet corner of the fairly quiet bar, lit more for ambience than clarity. She liked it, she decided, soft lighting, comfortable chairs, a handsome man sitting beside her. It could almost be normal and God she could do with normal, she really missed normal. She leaned back and closed her eyes, feeling the prickle of tears that had come to be the norm for her, and allowed the soft plush of the chair to offer a moment’s comfort before facing what it was the sergeant had to say.
He watched her a moment silently, seeing the shadows that told of sleepless nights and restless days. Feeling his eyes on her she opened hers and met his gaze, holding it silently. For a moment he was mesmerized, knew he was captivated beyond the mere moment. He knew now, acknowledged now what he had begun to realise days before, he would be forever in thrall to this woman.
Interruption came in guise of a waiter looking for an order which was quickly given and just as quickly delivered and West tucked the moment away, to take it out at a more auspicious time and examine it for relevance, content and reality. Again, again and again in the days to come. Now, he took a steadying mouthful of cold Guinness, as she reached for her wine. They sat, almost companionably, for a moment, the silence a pleasant, undemanding backdrop.
‘This is the most relaxed I have been in some time,’ Kelly ventured at last with a smile that quickly dimmed. ‘I suppose I am hoping you have come with some good news, have you?’
With a sigh, West stepped reluctantly but firmly back into the box marked Garda Siochana. ‘I felt you should know the news immediately, although it’s not yet been released,’ he began, his voice more officially clipped than usual.
Kelly sat forward, suddenly tense, afraid of what she was about to hear.
‘We arrested Adam Fletcher this afternoon for the murder of Simon Johnson and Cyril Pratt.’ She collapsed back with a cry of disbelief. West continued, more gently. ‘He has signed a statement confessing to both so it’s pretty straightforward for us now.’
‘He confessed?’ She whispered in a strained voice. Unable to believe it was at an end. ‘He actually confessed?’
West hunched his broad shoulders. ‘We had concrete forensic evidence for the murder in the graveyard, Kelly, he had no way out. Our evidence for your husband’s murder was more circumstantial but he didn’t know that.’ He hesitated. ‘He seemed to take an inordinate pleasure in recounting
his deeds, Kelly, it worked in our favour.’
Kelly remembered the cruel look in his eye and nodded. ‘He is a monster, sergeant.’
West remembered the way he had spoken about stabbing the hapless Simon and strangling the foolish Cyril and silently agreed. ‘We had proof he had been manufacturing and supplying illegal drugs, Kelly,’ he continued. ‘He was under the impression he could do a deal with us, give us names of his contacts in return for some kind of leniency in the murder charge.’ West grimaced. ‘I’m afraid he had so little regard for either of the two victims that he thought it was an even trade. A few names for two lives. We let him dream on while he filled us in on his dealing with Simon and Cyril. We’ve no authority to offer a deal on murder. His solicitor would have known that but he fired him and refused any replacement.’
He quickly and simply told her everything Fletcher had told him. ‘It seems as if Cyril got involved with Fletcher purely by accident.’
‘You don’t think he was involved in illegal drugs, sergeant?’
‘No...’ West hesitated, ‘...at least, not to our knowledge. He seems to have stumbled on the money, almost by mistake, and, well...he just kept it. It wasn’t difficult. The money would have been in used notes. Pratt was involved in enough scams and cons to have had a pretty good idea that the money was the result of some nefarious activity. He thought he was safe. Fletcher didn’t know who had taken it and could hardly report it missing.’
‘And Simon...Cyril...used it to buy our house?’
West nodded.
Kelly sat silently, sipping her wine, then put the glass down and said sadly, ‘He conned that poor man Simon out of his money and got him killed, didn’t he?’
West shrugged and drained his glass. ‘For an intelligent, educated man Simon Johnson was incredibly gullible and naive. He trusted the wrong man twice; it was the second time that got him killed.’ He tilted his glass at hers in silent invitation and she nodded. The waiter responded quickly to a raised finger.
‘Another white wine and an espresso, please.’ West ordered, knowing he would need the caffeine for the long drive home.
‘Can you tell me more about Cyril Pratt, Sergeant West? I mean, about who he was before I met him? I’m finding it so hard to believe that he and the man I married were the same person. I really need to understand. Otherwise I’m going to start believing in conspiracy theories!’
West looked her questioningly.
‘You know, like Elvis still being alive somewhere and the Royal family having Lady Di killed?’ she said with a smile.
He gave a short laugh, ‘So, what are you thinking? You think that your husband and Cyril Pratt were really two different people and we have some disreputable reason for saying otherwise?’
‘There are people who think Elvis is still alive.’
‘Do you?’
‘No,’ she admitted
‘Do you think Cyril Pratt and your husband were really two different people?’
‘I’d really like to believe it,’ she admitted. ‘I’d like to believe that Simon, my Simon is going to walk through that door any minute and tell me it was all a mistake, that it was all a misunderstanding; that none of this, not the murders, not the chasing around Cornwall, not this,’ she brushed her hair back from her neck exposing the livid marks and bruises. ‘That none of it really happened. Then I would like to get back to the life I had, happy, married, normal.’
The white wine and espresso arrived with a flourish.
‘If I knew more about Cyril Pratt, it might help,’ she continued, sipping her wine. ‘Can’t you tell me something, anything? I think it would help, you know, might help me see why. Might help me understand a bit. He’s beginning to slip away from me, you see. My Simon. The last time we met, in that place in Cornwall, he was so unlike the man I married, almost a stranger. Then I found out that, in fact, he was a stranger. He was Cyril Pratt in Cornwall, you see, not the Simon Johnson I married.’ She looked at him pleadingly. ‘Do you understand?’
He thought he did. So, quietly, he told her everything they had learned about the man she had married. She listened, asking the occasional question, nodding with silent encouragement when he hesitated.
‘He reinvented himself, didn’t he?’ Kelly asked, raising teary eyes to him, ‘My fault. I went on and on, that first time we had coffee, about the things I liked, and what I wanted.’
‘It’s not your fault, Kelly. His wife, Amanda, said he was addicted to celebrity magazines. To how the rich and famous lived. He was living in a small council house with an uneducated, overweight battleaxe of a wife and two noisy children, working in a dead-end job as an office cleaner. His various scams had netted him prison time but little else.
‘Out of the blue, he worked a scam that gave him money and access to a wardrobe of designer clothes, allowing him to dress like the celebrities he envied. Then, he got his hands on Adam Fletcher’s drug money. So there he was, good looking, Armani clad, money to spend and then...well then he met you.’
West’s gaze slid over her, as Cyril Pratt’s probably had done a year before, taking in her quiet elegance, her confident poise despite all she had gone through. ‘You were just what he wanted,’ he said softly, looking at her. ‘Just what he needed to complete his dream. A beautiful, intelligent, and charming woman. The antithesis to what he had married. He listened to you talk of the things you liked, heard the things you wanted, the things you dreamt of and suddenly he wanted it too – you, your dreams, the house; the whole package.’
Kelly gulped back a cry. ‘But did he did love me, sergeant? He was attentive, loving, caring but was it all an act? A part he was playing, in a movie he was directing, where only he knew the plot and the ending? In the last couple of days I have relived our time together and, do you know, I cannot trust one of those memories. When he was telling me he loved me was he really wondering how much more he could get away with? When we made love was he remembering to sigh my name and not his wife’s?
‘The man I thought I loved...he never really existed, did he? The well-dressed engineer who loved Victorian architecture as I did? The man who liked the same music I did, the same movies I did? My God, how stupid! His name, occupation, clothes, money, ideas, all stolen.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘At least now I know why he never wanted to go abroad, that always puzzled me. The one thing he couldn’t steal was that poor man’s passport.’
They sat in silence a moment. The waiter, keen to end his shift, came and cleared the table reminding them quietly that the bar was closed.
‘We’ll just be a moment,’ West murmured dismissing him. ‘You know, Kelly, I think this time Cyril Pratt’s scam was different.’
‘Different, why?’
‘Con artists are usually so aware of swindles that they are immune to them, but Cyril seems to have conned himself, as well, if not better than you. He became Simon Johnson; I think he forgot for a time that he wasn’t. I believe he fell in love with you, maybe because you represented all that he wanted, but that’s not unusual or wrong – to fall in love with someone because you love what they are or what they do. He fell in love with you and then because he loved you he was stuck living a lie, stuck in his own scam with no way out. Ok, he might have been able to repay Simon Johnson the money he had taken for the apartment but the five hundred thousand he stole from Fletcher, that was a different ball game. Of course, whether or not he sorted it out was always a mute point because he didn’t know how you would feel about the bigamous marriage you were embroiled in.’
‘He told me, in the cottage, before he left, that marrying me was the best thing he ever did, and that he hoped I would understand what it was he had to tell me.’ Kelly regarded West over her wineglass. ‘I don’t think I would have understood. I don’t now. How can he have loved me, how can you say he loved me,’ she looked at him accusingly, ‘when it was all a lie from the very beginning, every aspect of it. There was nothing that was sacrosanct.’
A wave of bitterness emanated from h
er and West knew it would corrode and destroy not just her past but her future. ‘You’re wrong,’ he started, knowing he had to get it right. ‘It wasn’t a lie, it was a dream. Cyril Pratt wanted, his whole life, to be somebody else, and for a while, despite how he did it, he was the man he wanted to be, the man you wanted him to be.’
Kelly smiled sadly, the bitterness melting like candyfloss, leaving an aftertaste that lingered and would come back to her in quiet moments and nudge her. She knew he was right. Lies, dreams who was to tell?
She stood, holding out her hand. ‘Perhaps we both lived a dream for a while, Sergeant West.’
With a nod, he took her hand and shook it, noticing with a sharp pang that she took hers back swiftly this time.
‘One last question, Sergeant,’ she said as they walked through the hotel lobby. West raised his eyebrow and she continued. ‘If Adam Fletcher didn’t know Cyril had taken his money until Simon Johnson came home, why did Cyril disappear three months ago?’
West looked momentarily embarrassed. ‘To be honest, I don’t know. Nothing that turned up in the investigation threw any light on that, I’m afraid.’
She looked momentarily amused. ‘You hadn’t thought about it, had you?’
He shook his head in agreement. They hadn’t considered it. A piece of the jigsaw that got left aside and now, well now it just didn’t fit. Why had he gone missing three months ago, become a pushaway? It wouldn’t affect the arrest and prosecution of Andrew Fletcher but he knew he would puzzle over it for a long time.
Kelly stood, with slight amusement curving her lips, and West did what he had wanted to do for hours; he raised his hand slowly and touched her bruised neck, softly running his fingers over the damage, feeling, even still, the small indents in her skin. ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked gently.
‘It’s just a bruise, Sergeant West,’ she answered, drawing away from his hand. ‘It will heal, fade away and be forgotten like a rainy day.’
That One May Smile Page 29