by Tim Adler
Chapter Twenty
The rest of the day, Kate felt as if she was standing on a scaffold waiting for the drop.
She hooked her bra together and looked in the bedroom mirror. Paul had given her this Agent Provocateur underwear for her birthday. The trouble was that it never stayed on for very long, so she supposed it had the desired effect. The hangers jangled as she pulled out her black catsuit from the wardrobe. Once it was on, she pinched the material this way and that, adjusting in the mirror. If this didn't turn him on, nothing would. The catsuit zipper was crying out to be pulled down, while the bra pushed her boobs up, making them even more succulent. She slipped her feet into her stilettos before taking one last look in the mirror. Too tarty?
A bottle of wine was sitting on the kitchen table. She grabbed it and made final adjustments to her hair in the hall mirror. Kate had taken off her glasses and inserted her contact lenses, hoping for a sultry Vampira effect. It wasn't too late to back out and put everything in the hands of the police. Leave it to them to find out who John Priest really was. Yet an iPhone photo blown up to the point of incomprehensibility wasn't much by way of incriminating evidence. "Oh, and I believe that he had something to do with my husband's murder," wasn't going to play well with DI Sumner.
Kate felt stupid the moment Priest opened the door. He was dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, and he wasn't even wearing socks. She felt ridiculously overdressed.
"Hi, come in. Wow. You look fantastic."
"Here. I brought you this."
He glanced at the label as she handed over the bottle. "Looks expensive. I haven't even started making dinner yet. I got back home late. A customer changed his mind after buying a car and tried to return it."
"Does that happen often?"
"Buyer's remorse, we call it. Happens all the time."
You had to admire how he stuck to his story, even though it was all a pack of lies. Priest said he'd go and open the bottle. His flat was the same layout as hers – a long corridor with rooms running off it and a sitting room at the end. Priest banged about in the kitchen while Kate looked around. "Mind if I use the loo?" she called out. Go ahead, he said, turning his back as she walked down the hall. The bathroom was on the right. Instead, she gripped what she guessed was the doorknob of the second bedroom, turning it as gently as she could. Her ears strained for any noise and her heart was beating madly. It was locked. This was not how she had imagined things going. What was inside the bedroom that he didn't want anybody to see? Part of her wanted to ask straight out what he'd been doing in Tirana; another voice urged caution. Softly softly catchee monkey, her nan used to say. Kate busied herself in the toilet, flushed the loo and washed her hands. The whirr of the extractor fan couldn't disguise the vague smell of damp.
Priest almost collided with Kate on her way out. He was holding two glasses of wine.
The main room was bare except for a squashy black DFS sofa, a coffee table that was too big for the room and an ugly plasma TV set. Nothing on the bookshelves apart from an iPod dock. Nowhere to hide a bedroom key. The background jazz playing was so smooth it was almost spreadable. Priest set both glasses down. The sitting room appeared primed for seduction, and Priest dimmed the lights even further. Kate's mouth was dry with apprehension. They clinked glasses, and suddenly she didn't think she could go through with it. She felt like a little girl who'd raided the dressing-up box and was clomping about in her mother's shoes.
"So how was your day?"
"Pretty awful. My husband's business is facing bankruptcy and I had to gather the staff together to tell them we were going out of business. Looking at all those faces, I just couldn't do it. There we were, about to pull the plug, and half a million pounds appears in our company account."
"From where?"
"The bank doesn't know. It's trying to trace the payee. Wherever it came from, it had something to do with my husband."
Priest ignored her lead to talk more about Paul's death. "Could you still get somebody to buy the company?"
"A couple of years ago, maybe. But we've been in the red since then. There's not much value left in the lease either. They're going to tear down the building and put up another office block."
Priest smiled sympathetically and placed his large brown hand over hers. Kate hated herself for doing this, but she had to find that bedroom key. She was convinced that the solution to Paul's death lay in that spare room.
Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed Priest. His lips tasted soft and pulpy.
"Wait," he said, pulling away. "This isn't a good idea."
"I want to," Kate said thickly.
This time he returned her kiss and their lips parted, the tip of his tongue searching for hers. Now they were kissing hungrily, and she felt him pull her zipper down. "You smell wonderful," he said, burying his face between her breasts. She stroked the kinky frizz of his hair. You can do this, Kate, she told herself. It helped to picture what she was doing at a distance, as if she was watching somebody else. She saw them sitting on the sofa, as if she was high up in a corner looking down, as one hand dropped to his crotch, where she could feel his erection straining against his jeans. Then, Christ, what was she thinking? Her husband's ashes were strewn less than a ten-minute walk away.
A kettle started whistling in the kitchen, shrieking as it came to a boil. Priest pulled away and laughed. "That's how I feel," he said.
"Perhaps we should take this into the bedroom," Kate said. "Can you give me a minute?"
"Sure. I'll go and turn everything off."
Watching him pad down the hall, she panicked, wondering how she was going to get into that spare bedroom. A few more minutes and she would have to go through with it.
Priest's bedroom was next to the sitting room. She heard him coming back down the hall. "John, why don't you get the bottle of wine from the kitchen?" she called out. The room itself was spartan. Monkish. How fitting, Kate thought, except that John Priest probably wasn't his real name at all. He had invented an identity to inveigle his way into the lives of her and her husband. But why? A duvet was casually thrown over the double bed and there was a desk in the corner opposite a built-in wardrobe. Blood roared in her ears. Carefully she slid the desk drawer open and felt the splintery wood with her fingers. Nothing. All she was conscious of was the sound of her own breathing. He could walk in any second. Kate pulled the wardrobe open and saw a row of grey and blue suits. My God, his cover was deep. Beside his underwear and balled-up socks was a brown leather drum – just the place to keep a key. Her fingers scrabbled inside the box but felt only cuff links and plastic collar stiffeners. Desperate now, Kate reached into the pile of folded-up shirts and touched something hard and metallic – the burnished metal edge of a laptop. Kate pulled it out to get a better look at it. So she had been right, Priest was the one who'd burgled her flat.
"What are you doing?" he said behind her.
Her heart contracted with fear.
"Finding out more about you," she said, pulling out the first thought that came to mind. She dangled the tie from her fingers. Priest was holding their glasses of wine, and you could see the question on his face. She didn't think he believed her for one moment. He set the glasses down. "What did you find out?" he said. Playfully she touched his chest, pushing him down into the chair. Priest laughed as she walked round the back of it, pulling his hands through the support strut. "That you're a very bad boy," she breathed into his ear, touching his earlobe with her tongue. "I wouldn't have thought you would be into the kinky stuff," he said. "You don't know anything about me," she replied. Roughly, she tied his hands together. He laughed again, a little nervously this time. His hands weren't tied together strongly enough. This time she yanked the knot hard. "Hey," he yelped. Slinking round to the front, Kate stood over him.
"So, who are you really?"
"I dunno what you're talking about."
"I went to the car showroom where you told me you worked. They said they'd never heard of you."
"Where
did you go?"
"The one on Parsons Green."
"I told you, I don't work in that one. I cover the South East, Kent and Sussex. Could you untie me please? I'm not enjoying this."
"Why were you in Tirana on Friday night? You were watching our bedroom. Why? What did you have to do with my husband's death?"
"I dunno what you're talking about." He yanked at the tie. It wasn't going to hold him; a couple more tugs and he would be free.
"Just tell me the truth. Why was my husband murdered? Who pushed him off that balcony?"
"You need your head examined."
"You were the one who broke into my flat. You stole my laptop."
"I'm not listening to this anymore." This time he jerked his shoulders hard, struggling to free himself. The tie was coming apart.
"Here," she said, pulling the wardrobe door open. "I found my laptop you stole."
"That's not your laptop," he said flatly.
"No? Well it certainly looks like mine."
"Why don't you start it up, then?"
Priest looked almost amused as she set the MacBook down and turned it on. Together they watched the colour sundial spinning, and she felt deflated as the desktop appeared. Clearly this was Priest's own MacBook.
"Now," he said coldly. "Are you going to tell me what's going on?"
Chapter Twenty-One
"So who did you think I was?"
"When we were in Tirana, a man was watching our room from a balcony the night my husband died. I thought it was you."
"Why on earth would you think that?"
"I told you. I was taking photographs. A friend at Paul's work blew them up so I could see the man's face." Kate put her head between her knees and exhaled deeply, as if she was coming up from under water too quickly and had the bends. She looked up. "A line is stretched so tight in my head that it's about to snap."
"I don't even know where Albania is. Is it somewhere near Russia?"
"There's another thing. I think I'm being watched."
"Who's watching you?"
"It's a feeling I get. As if somebody had walked over my grave."
Priest paced the floor while Kate sat on the candlewick bedspread. She had never seen him angry before. "Look here, your husband died only a few days ago. You're in shock. When Kelly died, I didn't want to speak to anybody. You've gone straight out and tried to get help, and that's good. But you're putting two and two together and coming up with five. It's like I told you, sometimes things don't make sense."
"But there are so many things that don't add up." Kate banged her head with her fist in frustration. "My husband getting that text. My downstairs neighbour in the square. The man on the balcony ... I swear, he's your double. It's all connected somehow."
Priest said sharply, "For God's sake, give it up."
"I went to visit that nail bar in Streatham, by the way, the one where my husband's lover worked." She practically spat out the word "lover". "The girl doing my nails flinched when I showed her Paul's picture. She knew who he was for certain."
"I told you before. These are not nice people. Even if it is a knocking shop, what would happen if they found out who you were? Leave this to the police."
"I suppose you're right."
The car salesman stopped pacing and placed both hands on her shoulders. "Kate, look at me. Forget about all this. What you need is a decent meal and an early night. Come on, I'm going to show you how to make a soufflé."
"A soufflé?" she repeated dumbly. A soufflé represented the furthest shores of culinary ambition, beyond which lay only meringues and profiteroles.
Kate stood under the vaguely dehumanising kitchen light watching Priest deftly crack eggs into a bowl with one hand. The strip light overhead was strobing ever so slightly, just enough to bring on a headache. "There's a whisk in the drawer. Can you pass me it?" he asked. There, lying in a jumble of knives and spoons and kitchen oddments, was a silver key, a key that looked as if it might fit the spare bedroom. Her fist closed around it. Here you go, she said. The key's teeth bit into her palm flesh. There was a clop clop clop as Priest beat the eggs before saying he needed the toilet. "Here, you take over," he said, showing her the bowl.
She made sure he was safely locked in the toilet – she heard him switch the light on and lock the door – before she crept out along the corridor. The key slid into the spare bedroom lock. The tumbler mechanism was so loud, she feared he must be able to hear it. Inside was another cell-like room, empty apart from a couple of computer screens on a cheap pine desk. It was just how she had imagined. The screens showed Kate's flat from different angles: divided into quadrangles, there was the entrance hall, her empty bedroom, the sitting room and the study.
So Priest had her under surveillance.
Her legs turned to water. Priest was the one who had overturned her flat, as a distraction for installing spy cameras. He must have been watching her, seeing her get undressed. This was the man who'd been watching them from across the square, the man who'd sent Paul the text. The man who had condemned her husband to death. The thought of staying here for another minute disgusted Kate.
Priest's cooking was predictably excellent. He refilled Kate's wine glass while she pushed the gossamer-light soufflé around her plate. It was ashes in her mouth.
"Tell me more about your parents," Kate said. The wine was making her reckless.
"There's not much to say, really. Me mum was a cleaner who worked in the local hospital. Me dad was a bit of a rude boy when he was younger. He played in ska bands around Brum. Then he fucked off with another woman. I was too young to understand what was going on. We never saw him again … no wait, that's not true, I did see him again. He was living about one street away and I saw him staring out of a bedroom window. He looked straight at me and then he turned away. All through my childhood, he was only living in the next street. Makes you think, dunnit?"
"Makes you think what? That everybody has a secret?" Careful Kate, you're pushing this too far.
"Dunno about that. I think I'm a pretty boring person, to be honest. What you see is what you get. How about you? Do you have secrets?"
"Paul and I made a promise to each other on our wedding day not to keep any secrets, no matter how bad they were. If you can't trust each other, then the whole marriage collapses."
"But your husband was keeping a secret, wasn't he? Sorry. It's none of my business."
"You're right. It is none of your business."
Priest's fork tined the last of his soufflé before he scraped his plate clean. "You're not eating much," he said.
"I'm not very hungry."
"Well, if you're not eating it…" He reached across, tipping what was left on her plate onto his. He said between mouthfuls, "Have you ever thought he was trying to help this woman?"
"Help her how?"
"Like he knew she were in trouble and he wanted to help her."
Kate thought about what he'd said for a moment. "Where would he have met her, though? My husband spent his whole time in the office. It was the only thing we ever rowed about."
"Hotel bars are full of them. Maybe he met a client in the West End and they got talking."
"Sounds a bit far-fetched."
"I'm trying to make you feel better."
"I know, and I thank you for it." Now was the moment she could get out of there. The idea of being alone with this voyeur made her skin crawl. She scraped her chair back on the wooden floor. "I'm really tired. Now that I know it's over, I feel exhausted. I was fine the first few days. Now I feel as if somebody's hit me over the head."
"I felt the same way. Here, I can walk you home if you like."
"There's no need. Really."
They stood in his hallway, and Kate flinched when he tried to kiss her cheek. The touch of his skin was almost unbearable, and she almost fell over herself in her hurry to get out. Priest stood in the doorway looking bemused. "Thank you again for today, I'll call you at the weekend," Kate said, pulling the garden gate behind her
.
So, she had been right all along: Priest was the one who had been watching her. Her brain churned as her heels clicked on the pavement. She racked her brains trying to think of what Priest wanted, of what possible interest she could be to him.
That was when she realised she was being followed.
She could see a man's shadow just out of the corner of her eye. Suddenly the thought gripped her that this was her burglar, that he was about to grab her and push her onto the railings, a metal spike going through her eye.
She stopped to confront her attacker, and the footsteps stopped as well. Relief flooded through her. For God's sake, Kate, you've got to stop being so paranoid. You've become frightened of your own shadow.
Her car was parked up ahead, and her car keys were in her bag. It was still fairly early. Kate knew that another piece of the puzzle lay in that nail bar, and that she needed to see the manicurist again, the one who'd done her nails. Kate was certain that Phuong had recognised Paul in the photo. The car lights flashed as she blipped the car open. Kate reckoned it would take about forty minutes to drive to Streatham at this time of night. She thought about what Priest had said, about Paul wanting to help Tran An Na. It was true that Paul did have a social conscience: he'd run a marathon once to raise money for Middle Eastern refugees. She remembered cheering him on as he staggered past on a windswept East Sussex beach. But the idea of him trying to save fallen women sounded unlikely. It must be something else, it had to be.
Of course, the nail bar was shut by the time she arrived. Some lights were on upstairs.
Did Kate think she was just going to ring the doorbell and be let in? Inventing some cock-and-bull story about leaving her mobile phone behind wouldn't work. She imagined the suspicious flat-faced matron telling her to wait on the pavement while she searched inside. No, that wouldn't do. Kate was thinking about going home when another car slid into a parking space up ahead. The nail bar manageress struggled out holding LIDL shopping bags. She dumped the bags and pressed the doorbell before waddling back to her open boot. The lights came on and the tough who'd done her nails came out. The two of them hefted the bags into the shop and Kate saw them go through the beaded curtain. They must live upstairs.