Silent Truths (69 page)

‘Have you been able to?’ Laurie asked.

‘Explore my other dimensions? Of course. Writers have to. You see, every character I create has come from inside of me.’

‘Even the aristocrats?’

She nodded. ‘Correct.’

‘What about inspiration? Doesn’t that come from outside of you?’

‘Of course. It can’t be otherwise.’ Her eyes seemed to drift off for a moment. Then, as though addressing an imagined dilemma, she said, ‘I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone, the way they hurt me.’ She looked at Laurie. ‘Do you know the reason they beat me with a whip? Would you like to see the scars?’ She was already lowering the zip of her dress and standing up to show her back.

One glimpse of the still-livid welts, cutting through the soft bronze skin of her back like angry red tongues, was enough to make Laurie wince and look away.

‘Not pretty, is it?’ Beth said, pulling her dress back up and sitting down. ‘Do you know why they did it?’

Laurie shook her head.

‘They did it,’ she said, ‘because they didn’t understand my book. They thought I was accusing them of murder, but how could I when I wrote it before Sophie Long died?’

Laurie’s heartbeat was slowing, but she said nothing, only waited for her to go on.

She laughed suddenly, almost bitterly. ‘What a comedy of errors it turned out to be,’ she said. ‘Them beating me for something they didn’t understand, me telling them the very last thing they expected to hear.’

‘Which was what?’ Laurie asked.

Beth’s eyes narrowed as she looked at her. ‘You’re not asking the right questions,’ she told her. ‘You should be asking why they were so concerned about an accusation of murder.’

‘OK,’ Laurie responded. ‘So why were they?’

Beth’s head went to one side, as though considering the answer. Finally she said, ‘They thought I knew about some approach they’d made to Colin, something that was going to make him fantastically rich. But I didn’t, not until that night. All I knew was that Marcus Gatling had far too much power over my husband, and I hated him for it. Colin would never admit it, of course, but it was true. He was a victim of his own ego. He wouldn’t allow himself to see how deeply he was in the pockets of men who wanted to control him for their own purposes, first as a reporter, then as an editor, then as a government puppet. They didn’t put him there because he was good; they put him there to serve them. Of course you’re recognizing all this from the book, aren’t you?’

Laurie nodded.

‘Well, obviously, I was drawing on Marcus Gatling and his cronies when I devised the aristocrats – cronies who were faceless to me until the night they did this.’ She was pointing over her
shoulder at her back. ‘But they weren’t the only source I had to draw on because there were Colin’s colleagues too, the ones who’d ridiculed and ignored me for years. Those who talked across me as if I weren’t there; never asking my opinion on anything, or just dismissing it if I gave one. They knew Colin was having affairs all over the place, so if he had no respect for me, why should they? And if I had no respect for myself, which obviously I didn’t because of the way I kept taking him back, then I wasn’t really worth bothering with at all. So the aristocrats comprise every one of them, his colleagues, his friends, his mentors, even his mistresses. But Marcus Gatling presumed I was referring only to him, that like the Hydra I’d given him many heads, but the body, the muse, was no one but him. That’s what guilt does, you see. It makes you lose perspective, confuses rationale. It’s an extremely uneasy bedfellow, and when you can’t sleep at night paranoia soon comes calling.’ She smiled and picked up her water. ‘Am I going too fast for you?’ she said. ‘Is it all making sense?’

Laurie nodded. ‘I think so,’ she answered, judging it best to hold back her questions for now.

‘So the killing of Carlotta’s spirit in the book,’ Beth continued, ‘symbolizes the killing of mine in life, because that’s what they’ve done to me: they’ve killed who I really am. They’ve treated me as though I don’t exist, so I’ve stopped existing. Beth Ashby died the day of Sophie Long’s murder, and Ava Montgomery was born, which sounds insane because it is. But that was how it felt, because, you see, the timing was so propitious. My husband was arrested for murder, and only a few
hours later I received a call telling me my book was going to be published. So on the one hand my nightmares were just beginning, while on the other a dream was coming true. Which would you have chosen? The disgrace of the man you love? Or the glory of the woman you’ve created? I wanted both, of course. I wasn’t just going to walk away and leave him. He needed me now in a way he never had before, and because I love him, the way Carlotta loves Rodrigo – with all my heart and soul – I wanted to be there for him. But he wouldn’t let me. He told me to go and make a new life, that he was divorcing me and didn’t want to see me again. The killing of my spirit wasn’t over. It was just going to go on and on. That was how it felt. No one loved Beth; no one wanted her, not even Colin any more. So why should I want her? Why should I struggle to keep her alive when Ava was so full of promise, had already received her first recognition that was in no way dependent on him, or because of him. I’d done it alone, and no one could ever say I was being published because I was his wife, because no one knew until after. They thought Ava Montgomery was a real person, which she was, because she’s a part of me, the part that had the courage and confidence to write the book, and believe in it enough to submit it. Beth couldn’t have done that. She was too timid, too insecure and dulled by Colin’s shadow. So it really was as though Beth started to die that day, as Ava came alive. Along with Carlotta and Sophie, Beth became the victim of the aristocrats.’ She used her fingers to mark quotes around aristocrats. ‘But of course I’m still here, you’re looking at me, listening to me,
you’re probably even slightly nervous of me. I don’t blame you. I’m afraid too, because I can’t sleep, and now paranoia has come calling on me.’

‘Is your paranoia driven by guilt?’ Laurie asked.

Beth nodded. ‘Yes. Essentially, yes.’

‘What kind of guilt?’

She sighed and seemed to think about that for a while. ‘The guilt of my husband,’ she answered, ‘the guilt of my own thoughts, my actions.’

‘Of writing something that then proved itself in reality?’

Beth stared at her hard. ‘Now you’re going to say that it was a fluke, that I couldn’t possibly have known, so it doesn’t make me responsible,’ she said.

‘The responsibility lies with the person who did it,’ Laurie responded.

‘Of course, and I have no intention of taking it away from that person. The girl was a sacrificial lamb, just like in the book.’

‘But Sophie Long wasn’t a dimension of some fictional character’s psyche,’ Laurie protested. ‘She was real.’

Beth nodded. ‘Yes, she was, that’s why they were so paranoid.’

‘They being Marcus Gatling and his wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know,’ Laurie said, ‘that they were at Sophie’s flat the morning she was killed?’

Beth blinked, then frowned and looked at her strangely. ‘How do you know that?’ she asked. ‘No one’s ever mentioned it before.’ Then after a pause, ‘Why were they there?’

‘I don’t know. Do you?’

‘Me?’ she laughed. ‘Why would I know?’

Laurie’s eyes were watching her very closely.

‘Why would I know?’ she cried, throwing out her arms.

‘You may not know
why
they were there, but you do know they were there, don’t you?’ Laurie challenged.

She didn’t answer.

‘Why are you protecting them?’

Her eyebrows flew up. ‘To protect myself, of course.’

‘From what?’

She looked at Laurie incredulously. ‘More of this,’ she said, indicating her back again.

‘What else?’ Laurie challenged. ‘There is more, isn’t there?’

‘You really don’t know what it is? After all I’ve just said, you still don’t know what it is?’

Laurie shook her head slowly, though in truth she thought she might. ‘How do you know they were there?’ she said.

Beth only looked at her.

‘You saw them, didn’t you?’

Her expression didn’t change.

‘That’s what you told them that night when they beat you, wasn’t it, that you’d seen them at Sophie Long’s the day she was murdered?’

Beth laughed softly. ‘A comedy of errors,’ she repeated.

Laurie looked at her, praying her fear didn’t show. She didn’t want to go any further with this now, for she knew absolutely where it was going to end.

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Beth told her. ‘I can see in
your eyes that you know now. So there you have it. Now you know the truth. Is it what you were expecting?’

Elliot was staring at Max Erwin. They’d been working together since eight that morning, connecting all their findings with those that were coming in from around the world, and only now had Beth Ashby’s name come up – and in such a way that Elliot couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard.

‘You’re telling me she confessed to killing the girl?’ he repeated. ‘That’s what they beat out of her?’

Erwin nodded. ‘Kleinstein just told me last night. They thought she knew something about the syndicate, might be planning some kind of blackmail or something, but Gatling was always scared he’d been seen coming out of the hooker’s apartment. And it turns out he was, but not by Mr Ashby, who’d then told Mrs Ashby, the way he suspected …’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Elliot muttered, grabbing for his phone. ‘Laurie’s up there with her now. Are you sure you’ve got that right?’ he demanded as he speed-dialled the number.

‘That’s what the man said,’ Erwin responded. ‘She confessed to killing the girl herself.’

‘Damn!’ Elliot swore as the automated voice told him the unit was out of range. He tried Stan and got the same response. ‘I’ve got to go up there,’ he said, and, snatching up his car keys, he ran to the door.

‘I’ll drive,’ Erwin said, coming after him. ‘I know the town better.’

As they sped along Lincoln, heading for the 10 Freeway, Elliot tried the number at Beth Ashby’s house. The machine picked up so he left a message for Laurie to call him urgently.

‘Step on it,’ he said to Erwin. ‘I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.’

‘
Shit!
’ Erwin swore, as the lights turned red on Venice. Swerving sharply to the right, he accelerated fast down a side street, made several more turns, then sped down the ramp on to the freeway.

Elliot was so tense he barely noticed where they were. The fact that Laurie was in a house alone with a killer was all he could think about. But Beth Ashby had no reason to hurt her, provided Laurie didn’t know the truth. Just don’t let Beth Ashby choose today to make her second confession! A thousand questions began pouring into his head. He had no answers, though he understood now what Gatling had meant when he’d said there wasn’t a damned thing they could do about it. Beth Ashby had confessed to the killing, but if Gatling had her arrested there wasn’t only how the information had been extracted to consider, there was what she could tell the police about Gatling and his wife being at the flat right before the murder. No matter that they hadn’t committed the crime themselves, the scandal and publicity would be anathema to people like them.

‘What the fuck was he doing there?’ he demanded of Erwin.

Erwin glanced at him. ‘The girl was a hooker,’ he reminded him.

‘So he was there, getting laid?’

‘Apparently. His wife dropped him off, then came back for him half an hour later.’

At any other time Elliot might have laughed. ‘So Beth Ashby commits a murder that’s got nothing at all to do with anything, except the fact that her husband’s screwing the girl, and now all this?’ he said, hardly believing his own words.

‘That’s the way I’m reading it,’ Erwin answered. ‘In fact, that’s the way they’re all reading it, Kleinstein, Wingate, Brunner, the whole lot of them.’

Elliot was still trying to get his mind round it. ‘So if the Gatlings hadn’t panicked and interfered with the police investigation –’

‘The euro would still be on a slow boat to extinction,’ Erwin confirmed, speeding across the flyover from the 10 to the 405, ‘and Mrs Ashby would very probably already be toast.’

‘And by the time they found out the truth – that she’d done it – it was already too late for them,’ Elliot said. ‘Why didn’t they have her arrested anyway?’

‘Were they looking for any more publicity?’ Erwin asked incredulously. ‘Besides, what the hell did they care who killed the girl, just as long as none of them was in the frame.’

‘Does she know anything about the syndicate?’

‘She might have pieced something together by now from the questions they asked, but from what Kleinstein tells me, it doesn’t seem like she had a clue before.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Elliot muttered, shaking his head. ‘To think of everything that’s happened … No one ever even suspected her, or not seriously … How the hell did she do it?’

‘That I don’t know,’ Erwin answered. ‘But what I do know, from the look of this traffic, is that we’re not going to get there any time soon.’

A bolt of fear shot through Elliot’s heart. If anything happened to Laurie, anything at all …

Laurie and Beth were still in the sitting room. Neither had moved nor spoken since Beth had admitted to killing Sophie, though the air had noticeably altered. Laurie guessed it was her own fear that had changed it, though Beth too seemed more tense, and even afraid.

In the end Beth was the first to speak. ‘You know one of the greatest ironies of all this for me,’ she said, ‘is how, by overintellectualizing my book, they’ve turned it into the weapon of their own destruction. Hoist with their own petard, you might say. If they’d just left me alone … But they couldn’t, could they? Guilty consciences and paranoia wouldn’t allow it. They have so much to hide – people like that always do. And all the time they were afraid of what I might know, it never seemed to occur to them that I might have seen them at Sophie’s. If it had, then they’d have had to wonder, wouldn’t they, how I had seen them? And if they’d asked themselves that …’ She paused, took a breath then said, ‘If they hadn’t been at Sophie’s that day, they wouldn’t have hampered the police investigation, and who knows what the police might have found, given a free rein. Did it surprise you to find that the police could be controlled? You must have noticed during your investigation.’