Two Lovers, Six Deaths

by GRETTA MULROONEY

  ‘Did you offer sympathy?’

  ‘No. She got huffy with me because I told her she should stop playing games and she needed to stick it out this time, face reality. The guy had left his marriage and his home for her, the least she could do was see him through the bad times. She both liked and disliked me because I didn’t indulge her. As far as I could make out, her own father always gave her everything she wanted, so I was a novelty, the bad cop to Daddy Eastwood’s good cop.’

  ‘A man called Perry also left his wife for her.’

  ‘Perry Wellings, yeah, but only briefly. He works part-time in the therapy business, doing massage. He was at that last party and I had the idea that she was sniffing around him again. I’m not sure he would have gone for her a second time, though. He has a fiery daughter who gave him hell about his playing away the first time, threatened never to speak to him again etc.’

  ‘How about the other members of Brainscan? Did Lisa have any personal involvements with them?’

  ‘Unlikely. Brad and Gary are gay and Rhoda is straight and married.’

  ‘Did you see Lisa argue with anyone at the party?’

  ‘No. She was drunk and high but the vibe was all okay. I left about three and it was still going strong.’

  ‘Was Perry Wellings still there?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. I was pretty wasted by then.’

  ‘Lisa had an abortion shortly before her death. It wasn’t your baby?’

  ‘Absolutely no way.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  He held his hands out. ‘Dominic’s, I guess. But with Lisa and her complicated life . . . I can tell you, she wouldn’t have wanted more kids. She didn’t have much time for Tamsin, the one she had. Her idea of mothering was to visit Tamsin now and again with presents. Hit and run. You know, man, you’ve got your work cut out if you really think Dominic didn’t kill her.’

  Sometimes cases resolved through dogged questioning and following threads, sometimes because of a lucky break. Swift had no sense which way this one might unravel.

  ‘It’s beginning to feel that way. Thanks for your help. Have you been in Brainscan for long?’

  ‘I started it five years ago. Keeps me sparking and involved and it’s as different as can be from the world of management science and organisational behaviour. I write all the songs, spend my evenings messing about with my guitar.’

  Swift nodded. ‘One last question. Do you ride a motorbike or scooter?’

  ‘I wish. I used to have a Harley but I sold it years ago. My easy rider days are behind me. I’m in a hatchback now, domesticated and neutered, driving to the supermarket for the weekly shop.’

  ‘Do you know any of Lisa’s friends who owns one?’

  ‘Harry Merrell has a scooter. She rode on the back of it that time she wanted me to try him out on the drums. I tell you, he was pretty pissed off when I turned him down. I think Lisa had spun him a line that it was pretty much a done deal, so I had some sympathy. He reminded me of some of my students when I fail their work. One of those young men who looks like an adult but hasn’t quite left adolescent moping behind.’

  He smiled, laughing to himself, and tapped his keyboard to wake up his computer.

  * * *

  Harry Merrell was loping down the road in front of Swift, hands deep in the pockets of his bomber jacket, rucksack bumping against his broad back. He was talking to a girl in tight grey jeans and a short cream wool coat with a fur collar. Strands of thick cherry red hair fell about her shoulders. They parted company and she headed up a side road. Swift quickened his pace and caught up with Harry before he reached home.

  ‘Hi there, can I have a word?’

  Harry turned. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I just wanted a chat with you. I’ve been talking to quite a few people about your dad.’

  ‘So?’ He looked at the ground.

  ‘So I was curious,’ Swift said mildly. It was worthwhile taking a stab in the dark, and Harry’s truculence was beginning to grate on him. ‘Why were you at Lisa’s the night she died?’

  He hefted his rucksack. There was a distinct flinch. ‘You what?’

  ‘You were there with your scooter. Were you at the party?’

  ‘No, I fucking well wasn’t. I wasn’t anywhere near that fucking bitch.’

  ‘Oh, she was a bitch? I didn’t know you felt that strongly about her, Harry. Although Adam did say you called her a fake.’

  A silence fell. There was an ambulance wail from nearby and a window cleaner across the street rattled a ladder. Swift kept a steady gaze on Harry’s flushed face.

  ‘I know you gave Lisa a lift on your scooter at least once, when you were turned down for a try-out with Brainscan. Why was she a bitch, Harry? Did she come on to you? You’re a good-looking young man and she liked to flirt. Or maybe it was just that she fed you a line, made promises about an opportunity with the band that she couldn’t keep. That would be pretty annoying and disappointing. I wonder, did your dad know about your little outing together? Maybe there was more than one outing.’

  ‘You can take your half-baked ideas and shove them where the sun don’t shine. I wasn’t anywhere near her.’

  ‘Where were you the night of the party?’

  ‘At a friend’s.’ His eyes were cloudy with pain.

  ‘Can I have their name?’

  Harry’s fist was clenching in his pocket, his jaw muscles working overtime. ‘No. Now fuck off.’

  He walked to the house and opened the garage door. Swift followed, watching as he threw his rucksack in a corner, flicked on an electric wall heater and sat at his drum kit. He stretched the fingers on each hand, palms facing away, pulling them gently towards his body, then took a drumstick with both hands and rolled it up and down.

  Swift propped himself against the Vespa. ‘I’m not sure about your rudeness and your foul language, Harry. It seems like a front. I think there is a pleasant young man hiding in there. I would say he’s frightened, worried. I know you are grieving. My mother died when I was a bit younger than you and it’s hard going. But I reckon you know more than you’re saying. I think it is possible that your dad didn’t murder Lisa. Surely you want to help your mother and help me if that might be true?’

  Harry turned away, arched his huge feet against the wall and leaned into them.

  ‘Maybe you’re protecting your mother,’ Swift added. He ran his hands over the scooter’s handlebars. ‘Maybe you don’t want her to be hurt anymore, and truth hurts. That girl you were just with, is she something to do with Body Balm?’

  The young man took a drumstick and brought it down with a crash on a cymbal. ‘You’re wasting your time, Mister Detective. I’ve got nothing to tell you.’

  ‘Not even that Lisa had had an abortion?’

  Harry stared at him, a confused but challenging look, then took both drumsticks and launched into a deafening roll.

  Swift considered the handsome cleft chin, then exited the garage and rang the doorbell. Georgie Merrell answered after a second ring, looking tired and distracted. She was wearing jeans, woolly socks featuring Spiderman, and an old check shirt with streaks of oily crayon on the sleeves.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I wasn’t expecting you. I’m just in the middle of some work and I’ve got a deadline . . .’

  ‘It’s okay, I apologise for disturbing you. I just wanted to ask you two questions, if that’s okay. I don’t need to come in.’ The puppy had appeared behind her, barging against her legs.

  ‘Oh, you’d better or Sid might get out and then all hell would break loose. Come up to my studio, and then we’ll escape the worst of the drumming too.’

  Her studio was in the smallest bedroom, at the back of the house and on the opposite side to the garage. A faint thudding could still be heard below the Bach she was playing. Sid had followed them up and sat obediently in a bed under a bookcase. Animal portraits of all sizes and in a variety of frames filled the walls. Cats seemed to predominate but there were dogs, horses, ponies,
rabbits, sheep, goats, hamsters and birds.

  ‘Do you work in different mediums?’ Swift asked.

  ‘I can pretty much turn my hand to whatever’s wanted so I provide water colour, oils, pastels, pencil drawings.’

  ‘I saw the portrait you did of a guinea pig for Lisa. She gave it to her downstairs neighbour.’

  Georgie pulled a wry face. ‘Ah yes, the start of my downfall.’ She picked up a stained cloth and rubbed her fingers on it. Her easel held a work in progress, three sleeping Alsatians in oils.

  He started with what he thought would be the least stressful question. ‘Was your husband adopted?’

  She held the cloth and stared at him. ‘What an odd question! Unexpected, too. He never mentioned that he had been, no. What makes you ask?’

  ‘I saw the photo downstairs of your wedding. Dominic had a cleft chin, which Harry has inherited. Neither of his parents had a cleft chin.’

  ‘What does that mean? You’ve lost me.’ She sat on her adjustable stool, the fine skin on her forehead wrinkling.

  ‘I consulted a friend who confirmed that although two parents without cleft chins can have a child with a cleft chin, it’s rare. So I thought maybe Dominic had been adopted. I’ve been hearing that he had discovered some family secret which might lend itself to the theory.’

  ‘Well . . . I just don’t know. He never said anything about any of this. You would think he would have mentioned something in all the years we had been together . . . I mean, it is an important thing in life. His parents never hinted at it either. Unless he didn’t know. Maybe his adoptive parents never told him and he found out somehow.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But even if he was adopted, how is that relevant to what has happened?’

  ‘It might not be. It’s just part of the picture, possibly.’

  ‘Surely it can’t be true? It’s the kind of thing you’d talk about.’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps some people wouldn’t think it important.’

  Sid gave a soft bark, more like a grumble, his ears up.

  ‘He knows it’s nearly time for Adam to come home,’ Georgie said.

  Swift moved and looked out of the window on to the back garden. Part of the neighbour’s fence was broken and was leaning in. The next-door garden was unruly, filled with ground elder, weeds, a stack of plastic chairs and a rusting lawnmower. He turned round. Georgie was polishing a silver frame. The smell of the liquid she was using reminded him of his mother. She used to clean a pair of antique candlesticks every Christmas, in preparation for their annual outing onto the dinner table. His mother had rarely worn make-up but she used to put on a dark red lipstick in the winter months to cheer up the gloomy days. He could see her, the dash of colour on her lips, blowing her hair back from her forehead as she polished. He felt ambushed by the flash of memory and moved by it. He touched the edge of Georgie’s desk to bring himself back to the present.

  ‘I’ve found out that Lisa had an abortion shortly before she died,’ he told her.

  She looked at him, fresh sorrow in her eyes, then returned to her rubbing at the frame. She took her time replying. ‘Well, it can’t have been Dominic’s child. He had a vasectomy after Adam was born.’ She shook her head. ‘I wonder if he knew. That would have been shocking for him, an awful betrayal.’

  ‘It would. If he found out, he might have been very angry. Proof of disloyalty only a couple of years into the relationship. Maybe he knew and that’s why he seemed depressed.’

  ‘I just don’t know, Mr Swift. I was no longer his confidant. Poor Dominic.’

  ‘One last thing. The night Lisa died, was Harry at home?’

  She shook her head. ‘He was staying at a friend’s that night. He came back around mid-morning the following day, I think.’

  ‘Do you know which friend?’

  ‘No. Harry is old enough to come and go as he pleases. Why do you ask?’ She stood fidgeting with her shirt cuffs, looking worried.

  ‘I just wondered. I’ve asked lots of questions but he doesn’t want to communicate with me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. He has been like a different person in the last couple of years. We used to laugh and joke . . . now he behaves as if I’m invisible and I barely get a nod from him. I don’t have the energy to challenge him about it. I have no idea what he is thinking or doing. Dominic struggled too, I know. I hold on to the fact that his studies are on track. I’ll be relieved when he goes away to college later this year. I think it will be good for all of us. Does that sound terrible?’

  He looked at her drained expression. ‘I suspect lots of parents feel the way you do. Going away will do him good. He needs to assert himself, grow into himself fully. And you’ll get a break from the drums.’

  She smiled a weary smile. ‘It’s just that when you’re on your own with no one to discuss your worries with . . . they multiply, cluster around you. No one to tell you you’re being daft, getting things out of proportion.’

  He didn’t know if her worries about her eldest son were daft or warranted. He hoped the former.

  ‘Adopted . . . surely, that can’t be the case.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘Dominic seemed so close to his parents, they had a real bond. I can’t believe that he wouldn’t have shared something like that with me.’

  ‘I don’t know if he was,’ Swift told her. ‘It’s worth looking into, that’s all.’

  He left her tidying her studio. As he went downstairs, he paused and looked again at the wedding photo, wondering if it held explosive secrets.

  On the way back to the station, he rang Finbar Power to ask if Dominic or his parents had ever mentioned adoption. It took a long time for the call to be answered and he was about to give up when Power picked up. He sounded jaded and puzzled, asking him to repeat the question. Then he answered slowly, his voice strained. No, he said, he had never heard any suggestion of adoption, no hint at all. As far as he knew, Dominic had been brought up by his birth parents and had been close to them. “They were a tight, united unit,” he added.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Parterre in Notting Hill was Nora Morrow’s favourite bar. She had told Swift she liked its Eastern bazaar décor, battered leather armchairs with escaping shreds of stuffing and the low lighting. The scuffed floorboards creaked authentically and the patchy, velvet-covered benches had plump gold cushions with tassels. Swift had not been sleeping well, thinking of Ruth and the baby and how they were going to work things out, if at all. Emlyn Williams was making the right noises but the reality of living with a child who was not his might alter his tune. Swift had lain awake in the early hours, his mind racing, not least of which was would he be any good as a father? He knew nothing about babies, except that they were fragile, demanding and a huge responsibility.

  Swift had a blister on his right hand from his recent row and he rubbed it gently as he waited for Nora. He was tempted to stretch out on one of the benches with a cushion under his head. Jazz was playing softly, the upbeat kind that you heard on the soundtracks of sixties films. He sipped his merlot and read an email from Donald Eastwood:

  Hi Mr Swift, I’m back in Cape Town. I’ve got quite a headache here. I’ve found out that Body Balm is in a load of trouble. I’ve been copied into a solicitor’s letter. Someone got badly injured during one of the treatments and they’ve got themselves a lawyer. They’re going to sue. I wish Lisa had told me about this. Seems she kept a lot from me. To be honest, I’ve taken a look at the books and the business hasn’t been doing anything like as well as I thought. I reckon any damages in a court case would wipe it out. I’ve been trying to get hold of Isabella Alfaro but she hasn’t come back to me about it. Anyways, I don’t know if this is relevant but I thought I’d let you know.

  Troubles certainly followed Lisa and Merrell. He was spoiled for which one to focus on, theories crowding his brain. Lisa was fascinating and elusive. She’d had her fingers in many pies and had blazed a trail through plenty of lives and marriages. There were a number of player
s in this drama. He needed to order his thoughts and made a list while waiting for Nora:

  Dominic Merrell: Debts and something troubling about his family. Depressed. Out of his depth with Lisa. May have known Harry was hanging out with her. If he knew about abortion, angry. Maybe adopted but how is that relevant?

  Lisa: Caused conflict and desire. Business in trouble. Rowed with Isabella and Hayworth. Tired of Merrell. Pregnant by someone. Involved with Harry or Perry Wellings or yet another man. Wanting money back from Hayworth.

  Any of these could be a reason for wanting her gone.

  The party. Isabella, Molina and Wellings were there and could have used the opportunity.

  Nora appeared, dressed in her usual work apparel, a smart grey suit and one of her collection of quirky string bow ties. Tonight it was indigo with a pattern of tiny crescent moons in a lighter blue. She kissed him on the cheek, slung down a laptop and rucksack, unlaced her smart black trainers and kicked them off as a waiter approached.

  ‘Shall we have a bottle?’ she asked Swift.

  ‘Is it that kind of evening?’

  ‘Certainly is.’ She told the water to bring a bottle of whatever Swift was drinking and some nibbles. She loosened her tie and smiled at him, her grey-green eyes clear and glowing. ‘Been looking forward to this,’ she said. ‘Give me a glug from your glass while we’re waiting.’