Black Widow (26 page)

His mouth fell open.

‘I … And you said nothing? Rather than ask me what happened, you let this simmer and you've spent all the intervening time thinking I'm a liar?'

‘You
are
a liar. You weren't there. The whole building was deserted and the car park was empty.'

‘Jesus Christ. I went out to PC World because I needed a part. A fan had broken down on one of the mainboards.'

‘What, at eight o'clock at night?'

‘Yes. They're open until nine.'

I felt the ground drop, my assumptions suddenly revealed to be foolish and paranoid. There was brief euphoria in there too, in my relief that it wasn't true, but the essence of euphoria is that it is fleeting and false.

I might have been wrong about one incident, but that failed to change the most crucial thing: I didn't trust the man I had married.

He wasn't merely secretive about that laptop: he was defensive. And sod the bloody NDA: nobody involved in that would ever know or care whether I had caught a glance of some email or whatever. Which was why I instinctively began to suspect that it was something else entirely that he didn't want me to see.

A horrible, haunting thought began to take shape: a fear that went to the heart of everything I had been afraid of since first meeting him. It was the same fear that flashed through my mind outside the Ironworks: that his interest in me had something to do with my blog. Given all that had happened, I knew it sounded even more insane now than it had then, but its very awfulness was what made it impossible to completely dismiss.

What didn't Peter want me to see? Had he been lying when he said he knew nothing about the whole Bladebitch thing? Surely his colleagues would have mentioned it when he was dispatched to help me that day. I thought back to the way he had been thrusting into me that night, after the funeral: that had felt like anger, like vengeance.

I had so many questions regarding what Peter might be concealing about himself, the biggest of which concerned his marital history. But perhaps a bigger question still was what was I capable of doing about it?

There is a moment in every James Bond novel in which Bond and the villain first meet, giving them the opportunity to size each other up. Much is mutually understood but nothing is overtly declared or conceded. According to Auric Goldfinger, the first such meeting can be considered happenstance. The second is coincidence. The third is enemy action. Parlabane's first encounter with Diana Jager did little to evoke the grand theatre of Caribbean hotels and Riviera casinos, taking place as it did in an Inverness hospital car park, but he would have occasion to look back and ponder the retrospective significance of it.

He was there to talk to a couple more names on Lucy's list, and as a pretext to hand out a few cards so that anybody who wanted to talk about the story could easily get in touch. He'd had a batch of them printed a few months back, bearing his contact details and a QR code. At the time he had suspected it was a pointless extravagance, as most of his income these days came from churning out copy that didn't require him to speak to anyone. Maybe he wanted a physical object he could touch that still said his name with the word ‘journalist' underneath.

She was striding out through the main hospital entrance as he was approaching it from the forecourt. In retrospect he might have kept his head down, more deliberately chosen his moment to confront her, such as when he had more of a hand to play. He had only a fraction of a second to decide, and instinct urged him not to let the opportunity pass.

‘Dr Jager?'

His enquiry caused her to stop and look up. Her eyes narrowed, taking him in, scrutinising him intently.

He caught a scent of perfume now that she was close, welcomed by his nose out here where the desperate smokers sought respite and shelter immediately beyond the doors. The bouquet was warm and complex, something more expensive and sophisticated than all the samey-smelling brands that pumped so much money into hilarious TV spots every December.

He proffered one of his business cards.

‘My name is Jack—'

‘I know who you are. Austin warned me that you were sniffing around.'

Parlabane wondered whether ‘warned' would have been Austin's description of it, or whether she was trying to psych him out by implying that Austin's loyalty to her as a colleague trumped any Parlabane thought he enjoyed as a friend.

‘I'm just looking for the real story here. Human emotions tend to be more complex than the Hallmark card version the tabloids are punting.'

‘I know what you're looking for, Mr Parlabane. I know what you are.'

He expected her to walk away at that point, but she stood her ground. Interesting.

‘I've spoken to someone who believes your husband was under a great deal of stress before the accident. Intolerable pressure, in fact. Is that something that you were aware of, or that you'd care to comment upon? Were you concerned about his state of mind?'

He hated himself for doing this, given that in all probability this woman had done nothing wrong and had recently received a crushing and extraordinarily painful blow. He never liked being that doorstepping ghoul, getting in the face of a hunted-looking subject and asking them questions he didn't expect them to answer. In this case, it was nonetheless a valid move. It was about letting her know she was on his radar, and seeing how she reacted to that information.

She looked at him like she could see all the way down to how small he felt right then. And when she spoke, her voice was quiet, searching: like she couldn't decide whether he was stupid or insane, but neither could excuse it.

‘Why would you think someone in my position would possibly answer that?'

Then
she walked away, though not without taking his card.

It's terrifying to consider what can hang upon the smallest quirks of happenstance: how much might be different but for the most minor confluences. I have no way of knowing for sure – we can't run the events a second time and compare – but there is a strong case for saying that I would not have ended up where I am now but for a paper jam in a printer. I might have gone on deluding myself until it was too late, and might never have deduced what I so crucially did about my husband: the revelation that made previously unthinkable actions my only choice.

It was a Thursday evening. Peter was still at work (and had taken to calling me to say so; partly as a considerate reassurance and partly as a gentle dig). We had made firm plans to have a sit-down meal on Friday come hell or high water, as I was on call Saturday and he was going to London ahead of a meeting with his investors on Sunday morning.

I was preparing a seminar for the surgical trainees, and trying to print a bullet-points hand-out to distribute, but got an error message telling me there was a paper jam. The printer was a wireless beast Peter insisted on buying to replace the ‘coal-fired museum piece' I had owned since about 2002. It sat under a table in Peter's den.

I slid out the tray and sighted the crumpled end of an A4 sheet caught between the rollers. I pulled it free with a firm but smooth tug, mindful of the consequences should it rip. There was nothing important on it: it was one of those infuriatingly wasteful second sheets bearing one line of meaningless blurb that got spat out if you wrongly assumed a document only ran to one page.

Once I slammed home the feed tray again, the print-heads hummed into life. I waited for my hand-outs to slide forth, but there was an outstanding job in the print queue. It was a ticket for rail travel, followed by a second wasteful blurb sheet. Peter had printed an extra copy by mistake, presumably because the printer had been set to produce two copies of the previous job.

I lifted it from the tray so that it didn't get mixed up with my hand-outs, and I was placing it on Peter's desk when I noticed the date and destination. It was a ticket to Glasgow departing Saturday, when he had told me he was flying to London.

I felt those same horrible pangs of paranoia as had plagued me before, but this time I recognised them for what they were. I wasn't going to make the same mistake again.

When he came home, I waited until he was settled in front of the TV and brought it up casually.

‘There was a sheet jamming the printer earlier, by the way. I cleared it all by myself.'

‘Worrying times. You women will be opening jars next, and that'll be the end of my gender.'

‘It was a train ticket for Glasgow on Saturday. I left it on your desk. I thought you were going to London. Has it changed?'

His eyes widened.

‘Eh, no. I mean, yes, but the other way around. I mean, initially the meeting was going to be in Glasgow, but they changed their plans and by that time I had already booked the train. They said they'd reimburse me, but you know what it's like: they need receipts for everything, so I was printing out the ticket to give them on Sunday.'

‘Okay.'

There you go. I got my explanation, and it was innocent and plausible, same as before. So why was I not reassured? Why did I not believe him?

My calmer voice cautioned against extrapolating, and it had one strong argument in its favour. There was no reason to lie. If Peter had business in Glasgow, even if it was not the business he claimed, there was no need to make me believe he was going to London.

However, they say when you're telling the truth, you keep your answer brief, and you don't give out more details unless pressed for them. The more detail you volunteer, the more it betrays that you are trying to convince, and Peter had been conspicuously elaborate in explaining that ticket. But mainly what had troubled me was something more instinctive: that tiny initial response, that brief moment of alarm in Peter's eyes. There was something here that he wasn't expecting. Something he had overlooked.

The accidental second copy.

My calmer voice's argument could be turned in on itself: lying when you don't need to is a very bad sign.

Sunday morning was an odd time for a business meeting, was it not?

And suddenly I
could
think of a reason to make me believe he was in London. He hadn't known my rota when he made his arrangements. If I hadn't been due to work Saturday, perhaps I might have suggested we go to Glasgow together and have a night out and a stay in a nice hotel. Would that have been inconvenient? Was there a reason he wanted to travel alone?

I had a horribly restless night. I know I slept a few hours because there were unquiet snatches of dreams, but I never felt like I was deeply under. All night and throughout the next day, I changed my mind as to whether I believed him, speculating sometimes soberly and sometimes outlandishly as to what might be going on.

Perhaps I was over-reacting again. That look of alarm in his eyes didn't have to mean what I had inferred. It could simply have been Peter thinking: Oh Christ, here we go again. The same went for his over-elaborate answer. Perhaps he was ladling on the reassurance because of my track record. And indeed was it really that over-elaborate?

Perhaps it was as well I was on call Saturday, because if I had been free I might have concocted some embarrassing scheme to follow him.

We had dinner on the Friday night as agreed. I tried to act normal but all the time I was scrutinising what he said, his body language, anything that might give me more clues one way or the other. I had no idea how corrosive suspicion could be.

The unspoken subtext of us having dinner was that we would have sex later, another tilt at the so-far elusive prize of pregnancy. At my age I feared it was unlikely to happen swiftly, so I had to skew the odds by making sure we did it during the right time in my cycle. That weekend fell smack in the middle of the most fertile time, hence the importance of that Friday night, but there was no way I could let him inside me while I was feeling this way.

I worried that he would ask why I wasn't in the mood, but in the event, he didn't make anything in the way of overtures. Despite my efforts at covering up how I was feeling, maybe he sensed that something wasn't right.

He was still asleep when I got up for work on the Saturday morning. He stirred just enough for me to give him a kiss and wish him a good trip. I faked it like a pro, running a hand through his hair as my lips lingered on his. I was hedging my bets. If it turned out he was telling the truth, I wanted to conceal my suspicions; but if he was lying to me, I wanted it to be the full Judas.

Weekend on-call can be a real lucky dip. Sometimes there's cases backed up from the night before, so you're busy from the moment you walk in the door. Occasionally it's quiet, which I hate, because although it allows me to go home, I can't settle to anything because I know the phone could ring at any moment to summon me back in a hurry.

On that particular Saturday morning, there were only two cases lined up. When I examined the patients I was satisfied that neither was particularly complicated, so I was happy for the trainee, Calum, to take them, and he was happier still for the practice.

I supervised the first case, which he handled with competence, if rather ponderously. The second was particularly straightforward, and I couldn't face the prospect of sitting in the passenger seat as Calum carried out another procedure at the same excruciating pace, so I decided to head home.

I will confess that another motivating factor was the opportunity to be around to observe Peter's departure. Annoyingly, the train and flight times were close enough to require him to leave the house around the same time for both, but there had to be clues, didn't there? His choice of clothes, for instance: Peter opted for trousers that didn't need a belt when he was flying, and sneakers rather than boots, to cut down on the number of items he'd have to ‘remove at the security area in tribute to Allah,' as he put it.

I didn't see or hear him when I stepped into the hall and hung up my coat. That generally meant he was in his den, so I popped my head around the door, which was unusually ajar. His laptop was on, with the screen upright and the browser running, but his chair was empty.