by AB Morgan
Konrad deliberately kept a straight face and maintained full eye contact with Matthew. You’re not getting me this time, you bastard. I’m not going to bite.
‘I’m still no clearer on why you killed her, Matthew.’
‘I killed her, but I never wanted to. I know I killed her because I’ve seen the photographs; my fingerprints and my DNA were over everything at the crime scene, even on the bunch of flowers that I don’t remember buying for her. What I do know is that over time I became more confident and with confidence came more self-assurance that I could keep a woman like Helena. I had the stamina, I willingly accepted her challenges and her rewards, but, and there is a big “but” coming here, Mr Neale, don’t ever underestimate the pressure to perform. Helena had to be satisfied first and foremost. I was not permitted to orgasm before her.’
‘Not permitted?’ On screen, Konrad’s pupils had enlarged. He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat and frowned as he could not help himself from enquiring further.
‘Correct. The punishment if I did?’ Matthew asked as if guessing what the man opposite was thinking.
Got me with that one, he thought, and with a circular gesture he encouraged Matthew to answer his own question.
‘That varied depending on what mood Helena was in, but it was always disguised as a playful flirt with another man or woman, a game, a tease, or the next well-publicised charity challenge. I had eight hours a day at work to imagine what was coming my way when I arrived home. It could be pleasure, it could be pain, or it could be both. Are you beginning to understand how my life was changing?’
‘And yet you still married her?’
‘Are you mad? Of course I married her. My life with Helena was the best thing imaginable – paradise. I was obsessed with her, every waking moment at work and every night, even in my sleep. I couldn’t wait to marry her before she tired of me or I failed to please her. In the same way that she wanted me, I had to own her and possess her.’
‘Wasn’t there one niggling doubt?’
‘I had no reservations left. She adored Josh and he adored her, and the wedding was to be perfect, fucking perfect. We had to look flawless for the day, for the photos and for our public face of marital harmony and generosity to charity and do you know what? We looked sensational.’ There was a raw edge to Matthew’s voice and a creeping anger rising to the surface. Konrad took a chance and pushed for more of a reaction.
‘Did you pass the test on your wedding day? Did you behave like a good boy or did you incur a penalty?’
Matthew sneered. ‘I’m not a child, Mr Neale. I wasn’t her pet or a plaything, this was a serious relationship built on mutual trust. If Helena thought that she couldn’t trust me then she would react. Once that was made clear to me it was not hard to remain within the parameters. However, Helena was not the sort of person to be satisfied with the status quo. She would become bored without a threat or a challenge and that’s how I kept her interested in me. Do you see?’
Konrad shook his head. ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t see. What you describe is a game being played by two people who receive equal amounts of pleasure from the relationship.’
‘It was to begin with. But as I have just said, Helena would have been bored if our marriage had maintained the same routines. The special challenges for charity and her personal surprises provided her with a way of testing me even after we were married. It kept the excitement alive.’
6
Konrad hailed a cab at the station and sat back resting his head for a few precious minutes before putting on a brave face and greeting Delia with a bunch of expensive flowers and a loveless kiss when he strolled through their front door.
God, I hate this bloody house with its white walls and shining surfaces. It’s unforgiving, empty of character, like Delia.
‘Hello, darling. How long ’til you can be ready?’ Delia asked, bustling in her crispy dress as she hung her husband’s jacket up inside the sliding doors of the cloakroom. No shoes or coats, tennis rackets or umbrellas were permitted to be seen on display in Delia’s house, and neither was dust nor a cushion out of place.
‘Ready? Ready for what?’
‘Please say you haven’t forgotten. We’ve promised to go to Pippa’s book launch for nibbles and wine. We must be seen to be supporting her cause.’
Must we? I can’t stand Pippa and her simpering entourage. Bunch of morons, the lot of them. Give me strength.
‘What did you say, darling?’ Delia asked, and for a brief second, he thought he had accidentally spoken out loud. ‘Nothing…’
‘What do you mean nothing? When are you going to be ready?’ Delia swished past him again on a mission to put the flowers in water and to find her clutch bag.
‘I’m not.’
‘Not what?’
‘I’m not going to be ready because I’m not going. For a change, real life is beckoning me in the shape of a pint of beer in the pub. Not a cocktail or a glass of Prosecco with false people in a pretend world. Delia, I’ve had it with launch parties and luvvies getting married. Enough, do you hear me?’
Delia teetered back across the hall in her high heels and smiled. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I missed all that, what did you say?’
‘I can’t go, I’m shattered and I fancy a drink in the pub, Delia. Forgive me just this once, please.’
The smile on Delia’s face slipped away to be replaced by a scowl. ‘Do as you bloody well like, Kon. I’m trying to do my best to support your career and you throw it back in my face. If that’s your decision then I’ll represent us both, in style, and I do it willingly. Money?’ She held out the palm of her hand expectantly, onto which her husband placed a layer of mixed notes. She nodded when she thought he had handed over enough for her needs that evening. With her hair sprayed solidly in place and make-up checked, she left, taking his shining-clean white Range Rover, ignoring her Mini alongside it in the garage, and roared out of the drive to make her feelings known.
He couldn’t believe his luck. The sense of freedom he felt as he walked to The Valiant Soldier only served to remind him of the life he had wanted to lead with Lorna. He should have been walking along, going for a pint, holding her hand, but he wasn’t and it was his own stupid fault. He had been checking his phone all afternoon in the agonising hope that she would reply by asking to see him immediately. Nothing. Not a word.
‘Oi, dopey, wake up!’
A familiar voice roused Konrad from his self-pity. ‘Barney Ribble, as I live and breathe. Where have you been?’
‘I ain’t been nowhere, mate. It’s you that’s been missing. We don’t see you no more. She let you out for once, The Camp Commandant?’
‘Now then, Barney, that’s no way to speak about my lovely wife.’
‘She ain’t lovely and you know it. She’s a prize bitch and after one thing mate: your money. Come on, I’ll buy you a pint, you must be boracic if The Commandant has let you out, she’ll have fleeced you for that.’ Barney chuckled and clasped his friend by the elbow, dragging him through the doors of The Valiant Soldier. A cheer went up from the locals in recognition of Konrad’s appearance and Barney’s announcement that his mate had made a successful bid for a night of freedom.
The beers flowed as easily as the conversation, and Konrad wanted to stay in his local pub with his friendly neighbours forever, telling jokes and swearing, being lewd and revolting without having to worry one tiny jot.
Marvellous, fucking marvellous. I’m never going home again.
He caught the new barmaid sizing him up. She had a certain glint in her eye, he convinced himself.
‘Barney, what do you think? Sarah has the hots for me wouldn’t you say?’ Konrad waggled a finger rather rudely at the well-proportioned lady serving behind the bar.
‘No, Kon, me old mucka. I would say that is a trick of the beer. She’s not that desperate.’
‘Well, I am.’
‘You’re out of luck, mate; she’s taken, but I do know where you might have some chance of
clearing your pipes.’
‘Really?’
‘Genevieve’s massage parlour.’
‘Oh, piss off, Barney! I’ll catch a dose at that filthy whorehouse. If it were a classy joint I’d consider it, but I don’t want to have to pay if I don’t have to.’
‘No? I thought you already did?’
The pair of them chuckled into their beers and chatted amiably into the early hours about women, and their own love of things mechanical.
‘Good morning, Mr Neale. How are we today?’ George asked brightly as Konrad made his way towards the lifts.
‘Keep it down, George, there’s a good chap. I’m a bit delicate.’ He was late and had not been brave enough to take off his sunglasses or baseball cap, which were, in his opinion, preventing his throbbing head from physically splitting wide open.
‘Don’t you worry; I shall rustle you up a cure with my own hands. Always a pleasure, never a chore for you, Mr Neale.’ Pirouetting, George stepped through the office door at the back of the reception desk, shouting over his shoulder, ‘You pop along to the editing suite and settle yourself down, I shall be with you pronto tonto.’
Roughly an hour later, George received a personal phone call from Konrad Neale who failed to choose his words with care. ‘George, I could kiss you. Whatever was in that hangover cure, I want the recipe. It’s a miracle. I feel alive, thank God.’
The phone was instantly removed from his ear when a high-pitched squeal erupted from the receiver. ‘Oh my God! Oh my God! He wants to kiss me. My dreams have come true, Lillian. Thank you, Mr Neale. Can I expect delivery of my kiss at lunchtime?’
‘A small peck, George, if you’re lucky.’ Konrad hung up while he still had his hearing intact. As he looked up, he caught Annette having another fit of the giggles. ‘And you, stop laughing, this is a serious situation.’
‘You’re not kidding. You sure know how to make a catastrophe out of a cock-up, don’t you? From what you’ve said so far, not only did you stagger home in the early hours blind drunk, but your wife, she of the searing eyeballs, caught you piddling into her best vase, and then you had the gall to fall into her arms calling her Lorna and declaring your undying devotion. Your solicitor will be rubbing his hands together in anticipation. What a plonker.’
‘I know, I’m in the running for “prat of the year”. It’s actually worse than that. I deposited my shoes on the hallway floor and dropped my jacket in the lounge as I headed for her expensive ceramic-ware for a piss, all of which is “verboten” in our house.’
‘I think peeing in a vase is forbidden in most peoples’ homes, to be fair.’
‘Good point, well made. I might have got away with all of that if I hadn’t woken her up. You see, trying to find my way to bed, I knocked seven bells out of a full-length mirror thinking it was someone walking through a doorway.’
Annette let out a series of donkey braying laughs, splattering the digital equipment with jam doughnut before the story could be finished. ‘But in my defence, it was dark. That was the crashing noise that woke Delia. Still, at least it was quiet over breakfast this morning. The Camp Commandant is currently doing her impression of a faulty television set. Picture and no sound. It usually lasts for a good week. I’m not sweating it.’
‘You bloody-well should be,’ Annette warned.
‘No, the twins are home from uni this weekend, and she’ll put on a good show for them. She always does. She’ll soon forget about this small misdemeanour when I hand her more cash to buy a present for the returning children. They’ll protect me.’
‘That reminds me,’ Annette said. ‘While Slow Joe and Mike aren’t in the room, have you heard from Lorna recently? You know she’s moved, I take it. The pictures are on Facebook… Did you hear what I just said?’
Konrad’s heart had plummeted into his expensive boots, and he struggled to find a response. ‘No, you know I don’t do Faceache. Delia deals with the social media crap. When did Lorna move, and where’s she gone?’ His voice cracked.
‘You really didn’t know did you. I’m sorry, Kon, I thought she’d have told you.’ Annette’s face had softened even before she reached out to touch her colleague’s hand. ‘She took a promotional marketing job with BBC Wales, so basically she’s gone home. Haven’t you two at least stayed in touch?’
‘I sent her a text yesterday, but she hasn’t replied yet,’ Konrad answered Annette like an automaton, his head spinning with despairing thoughts.
Fucking hell. I’ve lost her. What do I do now? She’s gone back to Wales after all these years. Christ, I can’t not see her again.
7
He watched himself on the screen, trying to concentrate on the details of his interview technique, and in particular paying attention to Matthew Hawley’s body language. Reliving the interview, working, took Konrad’s mind away from the bitterness of losing Lorna, and allowed him to re-enter the fantasy world in his head where Helena Chawston-Hawley had taken up residence.
‘You say your workmates, and particularly Gary, wanted to please Helena, so they clearly liked her as a person. You also mentioned that Amy managed a friendly acquaintance with Helena allowing a smooth transition for Josh between the homes of both his parents at the weekends, I would imagine.
‘I mention this because we’ve accessed the Facebook accounts for you and for Helena, and the posts seem to support the prosecution’s assertions that you and Helena were fun-loving, happy and adventurous as a couple. There was not even a hint of animosity or distance between the two of you. But after your marriage, your friends do occasionally comment on how much you changed as a person. Indeed, the social circles in which you used to move in seemed to fade away, and become less important. How and why did that happen?’
When Matthew stared back, a slight twitch of the mouth occurred only fleetingly, but enough to alert Konrad to the fact that he had initiated a line of questions that could prove fruitful. Matthew bowed his head, and rubbed the palms of his hands together before replying, again choosing his words with care.
‘Yes, the social media aspect of our relationship was carefully managed, not by me, by Helena and sometimes by Naomi. Your research appears to have been more thorough on this aspect, Mr Neale.’ Konrad knew that it hadn’t. This was pure luck.
‘Are you confirming that Helena wrote her own and also wrote your Facebook posts and comments?’ There was a significant inflection at the end of that question.
Matthew nodded once, slowly and emphatically.
‘So, Matthew, you wish for us to believe that the Facebook interactions between you and your friends, your work colleagues and even between you and Josh, were mostly written by Helena. There is no way of proving that of course, one way or the other, but it does help your cause to convince us that it’s true.’
Konrad believed him. His wife Delia did the same thing. Facebook, Twitter, the social media nightmare needed a PR approach if not to prove fatal to his career.
‘You are also, therefore, leading us to believe that she somehow steered your social life. Allow me to return to the Facebook evidence; your honeymoon photos were plastered over it. An adventure to the icy wilds in Scandinavia followed by beautiful beaches with palm trees in Sri Lanka, for ten days, wasn’t it? A great choice for a late autumn wedding, and filled with thrilling adventures. How dreadful for you to endure.
‘Forgive my sarcasm, and explain to me, if you will, just why your legal counsel insisted in court that this was torturous, Matthew, because the pictures tell the story of a blissful honeymoon, and so do the Facebook posts.’
Matthew sat up straighter in his chair. ‘Of course they do. Mr Neale, I have nothing more to lose in life, and I certainly have nothing to gain by lying to you when my intention is to record the truth for the sake of my son’s future. I don’t want him to go on believing for the rest of his life that his father killed his stepmother out of a sick and twisted need for revenge or of jealous anger. I have to accept that I killed Helena but, as I have always insisted, I
did not carry out a wilful murder.’
There was a lengthy pause. ‘How can you expect people to believe that your wife’s death wasn’t wilful? You not only killed her but also disfigured her, and decapitated her as if it were fuelled by the most incredible rage. When did things shift from an exciting adventurous relationship to one that ended in death?’
Matthew Hawley gazed down at his feet for several seconds before he raised his head to look his inquisitor in the eye.
‘When Helena and I went on our honeymoon, I was the happiest man on the planet because we had arranged our two destinations to please each other. Mountains and fjords, lakes and snow excite me. The silence and the clean air are magical, as was the thought of sleigh rides and skidoo experiences – it was great. Of course, I hadn’t taken into account Helena’s habit of planning surprises for me, as well as the games she loved to play with my mind and, as it turns out, with my body.’
‘Go on.’
As Konrad watched himself on the screen in the editing suite, he noticed how his breathing had quickened when he encouraged Matthew to tell the story. As he viewed the events in front of him again, he closed his eyes. Knowing full well what was about to be revealed. He wanted to listen to the description again, and immerse himself in Matthew’s experiences of Helena’s game.
‘She organised a sauna again, but this time it was by a frozen lake, a short walk from a stunning farmhouse where we spent the night sleeping on fur rugs by an open fire in a log cabin annex. We had supper by candlelight and a hearty breakfast in the morning, provided by the owners. They were lovely genuine people who couldn’t do enough for us and yet respected our absolute privacy. I can smell the place now; fresh pine, candle wax and smoke from the log fire. The sauna was the treat, to help rebuild my faith in sauna doors I think.’ Matthew smiled and seemed to be living his recollections as he spoke.