Two Lovers, Six Deaths

by GRETTA MULROONEY

  They stood for a moment under the shifting clouds, the light spilling onto their faces as the sun moved around towards the western sky.

  ‘Will you tell me now?’ Swift asked.

  Power took a breath. ‘Let’s walk. It will be easier if we’re walking. This way.’

  A wooden gate at the end of the garden led to a stile with access to a path across fields. They kept to the left hand boundary, walking along a rough, stony track. The wind stirred the grasses and rustled in the thick hedges. They were the only people in the landscape.

  ‘I’ve got to know a fair bit about the area,’ Power said quietly. ‘I saw a Peregrine falcon last time I was down here. You probably know that the place is littered with fossils.’

  ‘I came to Lyme Regis once with my parents. We went fossil hunting. I was very excited when I found an ichthyosaur vertebra and a calcified ammonite.’

  Power’s voice cracked suddenly. ‘She told me the baby was mine. She said she was going to have it. She started by saying she wanted me to leave Louise. She threatened that she would tell her about us and the pregnancy if I didn’t. I didn’t know she’d had an abortion.’

  ‘When did it start, your relationship with Lisa?’

  ‘About eight months ago. She had always flirted with me but I never took much notice. It was just the way she was with any man she met. I found her attractive, of course. What man wouldn’t? But Dom was my friend — and I love Louise. It took me a long time to find her and we plan to marry next year, start a family. Oh, I don’t know why I got involved with Lisa, it just happened. She came into the shop one day, saying she wanted to set up an aquarium. It was just an excuse. I think she was attracted to my wealth rather than me. She knew I had made a fortune in the markets, Dom had told her. She looked so beautiful and . . . anyway, I have no defence to make. I knew deep down that it would cause trouble but she was reckless and I found it contagious. I was giddy, like a teenager again. She was so much fun. After a couple of months, I couldn’t deal with the deception, the furtiveness. I told her I wanted to end it. I was riddled with guilt about Dom. That’s when she announced the pregnancy. You know, I think she wanted to get rid of Dom and it was her way of doing it. She had seen photos of the cottage and asked me about it. She went on and on about how the two of us could come and live here, get away from everything in London, start a new life. She thought she had it all worked out, this other existence. It was utterly ridiculous, even if I had been tempted. Lisa wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the countryside. She was an urban creature. She was furious when I told her that and refused to bring her here. She was so used to getting what she wanted, throwing people away when she’d had enough of them. When I told her I didn’t want to leave Louise and I didn’t want a child with her, she turned nasty.’ He stopped on the track, his hands bunched in his pockets. ‘But she’d got rid of the baby anyway.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t believe Lisa intended to have another child. It was a bargaining tool.’

  They walked on, through a small coppice of ash trees and over another stile into an undulating meadow. A herd of cows were grazing in the distance, several fields over.

  ‘She was broke, you know, almost as broke as Dom,’ Power said. ‘There was some big problem with her business and she always spent like there was no tomorrow. I went to see her when he was at work, tried to persuade her to break things off. She said if I gave her twenty thousand, she would get rid of the baby and agree to say nothing more. I didn’t trust her. I thought she was lying. Lisa was greedy, greedy for affection, money, people, and things. There was an air of desperation about her, too. She was running out of options and it was making her act wildly. I’m wealthy but I could see a future of more demands for cash, and it all constantly hanging over me.’ He laughed. ‘Ironic really, I’d already given Dom money and she was after more. I can see now that she played me. I think a pay-off was always her goal but I didn’t realise that at the time.’

  ‘Did you go to her flat the night of the party, in the early hours?’

  His voice brimmed with emotion. ‘I hated her by then. I was obsessed by feelings of hatred, day and night. I felt so bad about Dom, about betraying him. She was set to ruin everything in my life, my friendship, my relationship. Louise is so kind and caring towards me, always looking out for me. Lisa had already caused Dom’s family awful suffering. I knew that she would tire of Dom and me and eventually move on to some other man and leave my life broken. That is what she did, it was how she lived. I don’t believe she ever thought about the hurt she caused. It just didn’t impinge on her. She thought she had a right to take whatever she wanted. That sounds as if I am trying to justify violence. I’m not and I know it sounds pathetic. In the end I was no better than she was, I deceived and lied. I brooded about it all. I cursed myself for having got involved with her. I persuaded myself that I would be doing Dom, me and so many other people a favour by getting rid of her. I even told myself that it might mean Dom would go to back to Georgie and his sons so it would be a bad means to a good end.’ He paused and rubbed at his forehead. It was glistening with sweat. ‘I got to her place about four a.m. I waited in the hall downstairs until there was no more noise. There’s a little recess under the stairwell. I knew they kept a key under the doormat but the door had been left open. I used one of my fishing knives. It was quick, simple. She was lying on the sofa, dead drunk and I could almost persuade myself I had just extended her sleep. She gave one groan, that was all. I felt such tremendous relief.’ He stopped again, gazed at Swift. He looked like a man who has been told he has a terminal illness. ‘I’m not a bad person. At least, I wasn’t. I know what I am now. Unspeakable.’

  They had reached a fallen tree trunk, a thick birch covered in moss and lichen. Power sank onto it and Swift sat also, sensing the man’s desperation.

  ‘At least you acknowledge that,’ he said.

  Power shuddered. ‘Don’t try to be kind. I don’t deserve it. I know I’m a monster. I feel like a reservoir of poison amidst all this beauty. I thought Lisa was still pregnant. I was prepared to kill an unborn child as well as its mother. I have left her other young child motherless. I have hardly slept since. I fled down here to try to work up the courage to hand myself in. I couldn’t look at Louise. I’ve been using the story of a virus to avoid her. I could hardly speak to Georgie and I should have been offering her comfort and support, helping her with the boys. I tortured my best friend, a man who had only ever shown me kindness and understanding. He had been through terrible turmoil, finding out about his parents and he killed himself for something I had done. And in the end, there wasn’t even a baby. Louise might have forgiven me for having an affair but a child . . . Dom would never have forgiven me and why should he have? A family left without a father. Oh God. How did this happen?’

  Swift gazed at the horizon. He could hear the sea, restless and booming, see foam flecks. They were high up here, they must be near the cliffs. There was more to be told, more that would add to Power’s grief but he would have to know and perhaps it would also relieve him of some guilt.

  ‘Finbar, Dominic didn’t kill himself just because of Lisa and his emotions about his parents. Something else happened that night, something connected to another man Lisa had been involved with. It meant that Harry Merrell was near Lisa’s flat on his scooter, helping a friend. Dominic saw him. He thought his son had murdered Lisa. I think that was his main motive for taking the blame and killing himself. He was in a state of great confusion and emotion. He felt overwhelming guilt for the course his life had taken. I believe he saw everything as a dreadful re-enactment of his father stabbing his mother.’

  Power said nothing. His gaunt profile lifted to the sky, his mouth hung open. Swift decided to say nothing for now about Harry’s death. The man could only absorb so much and he would find out soon enough. The baby might not even have been Power’s, he thought. Perry Wellings might have been the father. Lisa might not have been sure herself. Rooks were cawing and squabbling in a t
all oak nearby, then flew away, taking their racket with them.

  ‘That song, When a Man Loves a Woman,’ Power said after a while, ‘It was so true for Dominic. He could have written it. He was a good man who made the one huge mistake. All this, all this damage and hurt. Yet the sun keeps shining, the world spinning, and the tide rushing in and out.’ He pressed his hands hard against the rough bark beneath him. ‘Courage. It has to come down to courage. I have been trying to find it and failing until now. I’m glad you came, you’ve given me the spur I needed.’

  He gave Swift a sad, hopeless look, then sprang up and started running fast towards the horizon, yelling loudly, one long, savage note. No, not that, Swift thought and ran after him, not wasting his breath with shouting. His ribs protested as he raced. There was just grass now, slightly slippery from the sea spray. The breeze blew salt into his eyes as the ground tilted over a slight ridge and then downwards. The cliff edge was suddenly there in the distance, and the surging waves below. Power was at the edge. He stopped for a moment, looked up to the sky, then put out his arms as if preparing to dive, threw himself forward and vanished.

  Swift reached the edge and looked over. It was more than forty metres down to the base. Power lay face down on a small strip of scree and jagged rock. His head looked broken, his right leg bent and misshapen, both arms twisted. It was a fairly calm day, but the sea was powerful and massive looking. The pounding waves were near to Power’s head but as he watched, Swift judged that the tide was retreating. He rang emergency services, cursing the poor phone signal and huddling away from the snapping breeze. He described the location as clearly as he could, straining to hear and be heard. He had to repeat himself several times, shouting over the noisy tumult of the surf below.

  He looked at the shoreline. The strip of shingle ended on each side in an outcrop of huge boulders and pools, where the sea crashed and swirled. As the tide ebbed, it exposed glittering shards of rock. Along the cliff and its fringe of swaying grasses, he saw a small break about twenty metres to his right, with a narrow shale track winding down. It was steep with deep cracks and crevices. He knew that the cliffs in this area were unstable and prone to landslides. He knew too that Power was unlikely to have survived such a plunge but he had to check. He ran along and eased over the edge, crouching as he started to scrabble and slide down the rough, spiky limestone, catching at tufts of grass to balance. Half way down, his hand slipped and he braced himself against the friable shale underfoot, trying to dig his heels in but sliding uncontrollably. He travelled several metres, panic seizing him, desperately trying to find a foothold as dust and stones flew. His jeans ripped and he felt a stab of pain in his left calf as his skin tore. At last, he managed to grab a thin spear of rock. His face was damp with sweat and spray, his mouth dry. He tensed his leg muscles and continued down.

  Seagulls screamed and swooped overhead, mocking his clumsy descent. His hands were shredded and bleeding and his chest aching as he reached the bottom, falling on to the rocks. Sweat now covered his face and trickled into his eyes. Panting, he righted himself and walked to Power’s body. He saw that the head was smashed and badly lacerated, with bone and brain matter visible through a huge gash in the skull.

  He walked to the sea, dipped his hands in the water and threw some on his face. The salt nipped and stung his ripped skin but he was glad of it, exhilarated almost. He sat exhausted on the hard, damp scree. His leg was bleeding from a long graze and he wiped the blood away with a flap of denim from his jeans. For a moment on the cliff, he had thought he might die, that two bodies would be found. He closed his eyes and listened to the relentless sea music, glad to be breathing. He had dreamed about falling from a cliff, particularly after Ruth had left him. Terrifying dreams, tipping into the void and waking just before hitting the ground. He had read that such dreams symbolised feelings of loss of control or fear of failure. No such frights and nightmares for Power now.

  His phone rang, breaking his reverie. He was told that an air ambulance was ten minutes away. He explained that he had descended to the body and was instructed to stay where he was. He stayed by Power, watching the sea. The sky had clouded and the breeze was growing chiller in the late afternoon. He pulled his jacket close to his body, shivering slightly with tiredness and shock. Then he heard the approaching growl of the helicopter as it rattled from the left, traversing the sky. It was bright yellow, twin engine and as it came nearer and lower, the noise was deafening.

  Swift stood, watching as someone was winched down to the shore. It was a woman, in green overalls. She unclipped herself, glanced at the body and came over to Swift.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yes. I saw what happened. His name’s Finbar Power and he’s dead.’

  ‘Righto. I’m Marie. I need to take a look and call for a stretcher. Can you sit out of the way for now? We’ll winch you up soon.’

  He backed away and sat on a rock, watching as another paramedic was lowered, then a stretcher. They manoeuvred Power’s body on and strapped him down, signalling for him to be winched up. The tremendous noise of the engines vibrated through Swift and he felt suddenly nauseous and put his head down, concentrating on breaths. They winched him up next, then the two crew members, and the helicopter veered and climbed.

  Marie put a red blanket around him, looked at his hands and leg and took his pulse. She cleaned his skin with antiseptic wipes, telling him he needed to be checked over in hospital. He sat back and watched the sea glide below, the colour lightening as land approached and the helicopter’s shadow danced like a huge dragonfly over the fields.

  * * *

  Georgie Merrell was wearing a plaster on her left arm. It was a bright, jolly blue. She had tripped over Sid on the stairs.

  ‘So clumsy of me,’ she said.

  ‘Grief makes us clumsy. Forgetful, too.’ Swift had insisted on making coffee and put the cup in front of her.

  They sat in her kitchen. Adam was at school. Sid lay in his basket sleeping and snuffling. Georgie looked as if she was fading away, yet she had regained the composure Swift had witnessed at their first meeting.

  ‘At least it’s my left arm. I can draw and paint, carry on working. Keep myself sort of sane.’

  ‘It helps.’

  ‘Look at your poor hands, all scratched.’

  He had a few plasters over the worst tears and a bandage on his leg. ‘I’ll mend. The helicopter ride was the worst bit. It was the first time I’d been in one and I wouldn’t want to repeat the experience.’

  They had talked it all through, all the details. She needed to go over and over it.

  ‘No wonder Finbar didn’t come near us. It hurt, you know, that he stayed away, even after Dominic died. At the funeral he was remote, hardly said a word. I asked him if he would do a reading but he said he wasn’t up to it. I thought it was shock. I was fond of him and I knew how much he meant to Dominic. At our wedding, when he was best man, he said we were the perfect match, like a pair of bookends.’ She sipped her coffee, added several spoons of sugar. ‘If Lisa hadn’t contacted me, none of this would ever have happened. One animal portrait caused four deaths. I keep thinking it’s all my fault.’

  ‘You know that’s not true. You’re thinking that way because you are so tired and sad. Lisa was a catalyst. Finbar Power called her an angel and a devil. I know what he meant. She was a complex woman. She took a lot of risks and in the end, she ran out of luck. She had tired of your husband. She was in dire straits financially and Dominic couldn’t come up with any more money. Money drove her, as well as the need for admiration and a desire to get her own way. A lot of things weren’t working out for her. Her business was being sued and she must have known that would go badly. She had tried to get funds out of her husband but he wouldn’t play ball. Her father had told her he wasn’t in a position to sub her further. I think she was getting desperate for money by the time Finbar stabbed her.’

  ‘Poor Dominic. So much anguish. I wish he had come and talked to me. I would have t
aken him back. The debts, the secrecy about the adoption . . . none of that would have mattered.’

  ‘I think it was too late for him. He had gone to a very dark place. His mind was full of images of blood and death and he had been brooding on them for a while. He had been treading water for a long time and getting into difficulties with money. He must have known that Lisa’s interest in him was on the wane. Dominic was an intelligent man and he would have realised that he couldn’t hang on to her. He had thrown away his marriage, his compass in life. If he had found out the truth about the circumstances of his adoption when he was with you, he would have coped. But then, I think it was the rupture caused by leaving you that prompted him to seek information about his birth parents. People go searching when life is uncertain. You once said he was your north star but you see, I think you were his too. The way things came together for him was overwhelming. He sat in the basement of the Hays hotel and the events of his life merged in a terrible maelstrom.’

  ‘A kind of breakdown.’

  ‘Yes, devastating.’

  ‘That woman. She exerted so much of a hold. She played with Harry, too. Didn’t she have any conscience?’

  ‘I don’t believe there was any relationship other than friendship between her and Harry, if that’s of any comfort. I think she was a prima donna and that egotism overruled any moral qualms. She was certainly part of a strange, volatile network. Of course, no one forced those men to get involved. It was their choice. Hayworth took her money, two of the others said they would leave their wives for her and didn’t. One took her life. They caused their own anguish for themselves and their families. She was used as well.’