The Telling Error (32 page)

‘I love this one. It’s the only one out of about a hundred that shows us as we really are. The others were all ridiculously glamorous, and that’s
so
not us.’ Paula Riddiough took the framed wedding photograph from the mantelpiece in her lounge and placed it in Simon’s hands, which weren’t ready. Why did he need to hold it when he’d had a perfectly decent view from where he was standing? He couldn’t allow himself to worry about dropping it or else he would.

‘Fergus looks so bemused,’ said Paula fondly ‘As if he’s thinking, What’s happening? Who are you, and why are you pointing a camera at me?’ She laughed.

‘What I was actually thinking, after the four hundredth photograph, was, Any minute now this protracted smile will ossify on my face and I’ll need a chisel to get it off,’ said Fergus Preece, who stood immediately behind Paula and Simon. He’d been sitting down, but had leaped up at the mention of the words ‘wedding photo’, keen to take part in the viewing of an object that lived in his house and that he could presumably look at every day if he wanted to.

Odd. Though Simon had to admit that his own attitude to wedding pictures would be regarded as odder by most people. He and Charlie had only a couple of photographs of their wedding, which Chris Gibbs had taken. Neither had ever been framed. In one of them, Charlie was yawning and laughing at the same time. Simon had no idea where the pictures had ended up. His best guess was the drawer in the kitchen where the phone chargers lived, and the snarled cling film that had been there for years and was completely unusable. Every time Charlie tried to throw it away, Simon fished it out of the bin, rinsed it under the tap and replaced it in the drawer, determined one day to find a straight edge that would enable him to detach useful lengths of film from the roll. Not that he and Charlie ever generated leftovers that needed to be covered up; the idea that cooking might involve more than putting something in the microwave was one that neither of them was prepared to entertain.

‘Photographers – a strange breed,’ said Fergus Preece. He was a short man with a tanned face, white hair and a large stomach that created portholes between the buttons of his shirt. Simon knew that Paula was thirty-nine, and guessed that Fergus was fifteen years older, perhaps more.

Like their marriage, the living room of their home blended the historic and the contemporary. There were many ornately framed portraits on the walls, all of which looked like antiques and made Simon think of words like ‘ancestry’ and ‘lineage’, but the large red, green and white rug covering the stone-flagged floor had a modern, jagged pattern on it that was as ugly as it was cleverly designed: the effect was rather as if someone had dropped red and green glass onto solid ice from a great height. Simon wouldn’t have believed it possible to render such a thing in wool if he hadn’t seen it first-hand.

He wondered how soon he could replace the wedding picture on the mantelpiece between and in front of half a dozen framed photos of Paula’s son, Toby. This mantelpiece had a two-tier display system; indeed, the whole room suggested that Fergus and Paula were passionate about partially covering things with other things. All three sofas and the two chairs had throws draped over them, and on one there was a large golden-haired dog asleep on top of a smaller black and white dog. Simon could see that they were different types, but didn’t know the name of either; he’d never had a pet and knew nothing about dogs apart from that Dalmatians had spots.

There were blinds at the windows with only their central portions visible behind the swags and pelmets of the curtains. Wherever there was a cushion, there was a smaller one leaning against it, if not two. Near the door, there was a nest of three rectangular wooden coffee tables with intricate carvings on their legs, tucked in one beneath the other. They looked too old and heirloomy for the slamming down of mugs of instant Nescafé. On the surface of the top table were magazines in a fan-like arrangement, covering other magazines. Simon could see the beginnings of many titles:
Country Li
,
Vog
,
Bucki
,
Horse &
,
Psycholo.
Only one title was fully visible:
Private Eye.

The colour scheme was one Simon couldn’t have lived with for more than a couple of days without wanting to set fire to the room: as many shades as possible, as bright as possible, all jumbled up together. One of the throws was an almost luminous tangerine orange. The cushions were red, turquoise, lime green. Bright pink for the curtains, yellow for the blinds. Confronted with a colour clash on this scale, one could hardly blame the ancestors on the wall for their haughty, disapproving expressions; sallow-skinned and muted, they were the outsiders in the room, and Simon identified with them more than with any living person present.

He put the wedding picture back on the mantelpiece. Paula didn’t seem to notice. She was ogling her husband appreciatively. ‘You should hear Fergus on the subject of photographers,’ she said. ‘He can’t
bear
them, so they’re banned from the house. Making my husband happy is my new full-time job. I take it very seriously – as seriously as I used to take my political career.’

‘She does,’ Fergus agreed enthusiastically. ‘She’s
extremely
conscientious.’

Paula giggled for several seconds longer than was necessary.

Mentally, Simon turned his back on the innuendo and the flirtatious laughter. He didn’t see why people couldn’t behave like grown-ups, especially when visited by the police. If Simon had owned an eight-bedroom farmhouse and 120 acres of Buckinghamshire, he would have conducted himself very differently. He hoped his straight face and lack of response had made it clear to Preece and Paula that he was here for a more serious purpose than to snigger at dirty jokes, though it was evident from their forthright, gregarious demeanour that they were used to setting the agenda, not having it set for them by a man whose only noticeable asset was half of a mortgaged terraced house.

‘Being a devoted wife is
so
much less stressful than politics,’ Paula said so loudly that Simon flinched. ‘God, I’m glad I’m out of all that! I escaped at exactly the right time. Life for MPs is only going to get harder. These days, people
want
to hate politicians. I’m sick of hearing about lack of trust, disillusionment, hand-wringing, what can be done about it, blah, blah, blah. The electorate doesn’t want politicians it can believe in – God forbid anyone should be forced to abandon their cynicism! What everyone wants is a group of convenient patsies, to be sneered at and blamed. They’d find a way to hate whoever was in charge at the first tiniest suggestion of a policy that didn’t read as if it was drafted solely with them in mind.’

‘This is my wife’s idea of leaving all that nasty politics stuff behind.’ Fergus chuckled. ‘You can see how detached she is, can’t you, DC Waterhouse? Oh, she couldn’t care less! That’s why she’s on Twitter all day long: Cameron this, Clegg that.’

Paula smiled. ‘I’m afraid I have a serious Twitter addiction,’ she said. ‘And, of course, I’m still interested in politics. I always will be.’ She lifted her thick dark brown hair with both hands, then let it fall, tilting her head back. Simon felt as if she were offering him, with this gesture, the opportunity to notice how stunning she was. For once when Charlie asked him, as she did about every woman he met, ‘How attractive was she?’, Simon would be able to answer without equivocation. Paula Riddiough was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen close up. Superhumanly attractive, even in scruffy jeans and a shirt that looked like a man’s and was clearly several years old. It was a bit like standing in a room with an alien; Simon didn’t feel he belonged to the same species, and was keen to get away from his feelings of inadequacy as quickly as possible. First, though, he had questions to ask. Starting with Paula’s marriages past and present had been a mistake. Simon hadn’t realised it would lead to sentimental reminiscences and the showing of photos. He was keen to make up for lost time. ‘Shall we make ourselves comfortable?’ he said. ‘There’s quite a bit more I’d like to ask.’

Paula shrugged. She walked over to the sofa with the sleeping dogs on it and perched cross-legged on its thick, square arm, looking as if she might levitate. Fergus followed. He positioned himself more conventionally on one of the seat cushions, between his wife and his dogs.

‘Ask away,’ said Paula.

Simon was momentarily distracted by her multi-coloured toenails: red, pink, green, blue, silver – on both feet, but with the colour order varying. ‘Where were you on Monday morning between eight thirty and ten thirty?’ he asked.

‘Walking the dogs on Hankley Common in Surrey. We’d stayed with friends there the night before. Do you need their contact details?’

‘That would be helpful, yes.’

‘Stephanie Coates and Eva Patterson,’ said Fergus. ‘The Old Butchery, Elstead. They’re in the phone book.’

Simon made a note of it. ‘Thanks. Ms Riddiough, I’m going to need to—’

‘Mrs Preece,’ Paula corrected him with a smile.

‘I’m going to need to ask you some quite personal questions. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather talk in private?’

‘We are talking in private, and please call me Paula. Fergus is my husband and this is our home. I’m happy for him to hear everything we say. I’m guessing your first question’s going to be, was I having an affair with Damon Blundy?’

‘Why do you think I’d want to ask you that?’ said Simon.

Paula grinned. ‘Everyone I’ve met since my very public war with Damon has asked me. A lot of people thought we’d be a match made in heaven: both good-looking, both shameless self-publicists. It was hilarious. We obviously hated each other, but no one let that put them off! They insisted on seeing sexual tension where there was none.’

‘So, are you going to answer the question, then?’

‘I thought I had, but if you want me to do so more explicitly: no, I did not sleep with Damon Blundy. Ever. We weren’t having an affair.’

‘Yet you met him at least twice,’ said Simon. ‘In 2011, on 26 October and on 11 November.’

‘I met him
only
twice.’

‘On those two dates, correct?’

‘I can’t remember. Didn’t you contact my assistant, Gemma?’

‘Yes. Those were the dates she gave me.’

‘Then those were the dates.’ Simon heard a steel edge in Paula’s voice that he hadn’t heard before. Fergus Preece might as well have been a spectator at a tennis match; he was turning back and forth to look at his wife, then at Simon, as each one spoke. He would injure his neck if he didn’t watch out.

‘I don’t think you were entirely honest with me,’ Simon said. ‘You told me you couldn’t remember exactly when you and Damon Blundy met, but I don’t think you’d have forgotten arranging to meet him on 11 November 2011. Particularly since the time of the meeting was eleven minutes past eleven a.m.’

‘Oh yes!’ Paula laughed. ‘So it was. Well, you’re wrong, as you can see, because I did forget. Completely forgot until I heard you say it.’

Simon gave himself a few seconds, wondering where to go next. Confident outright denial was the hardest kind of dishonesty to deal with. ‘I’m trying to imagine the conversation you and Blundy must have had,’ he said. ‘One of you must have suggested continuing the elevens theme from the date to the time. Sounds like a memorable conversation to me – a memorable diary appointment. How often is it possible to make an arrangement like that? Once a year, maximum? This year, it’s not possible at all, is it? There’s no thirteenth month.’

‘That’s a good point,’ said Fergus. ‘Let’s see, a set-up like that wouldn’t work again until …’ He broke off, scratched his head. ‘Hmph,’ he concluded.

‘The first of January 2101,’ said Paula. ‘We’ll all have followed in Damon Blundy’s footsteps by then and shuffled off to oblivion. A dispiriting thought.’

Simon was determined not to be sidetracked. ‘You only met Damon Blundy twice, you say. Once was at eleven minutes past eleven on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of this century, and you expect me to believe that that detail slipped your mind?’

Paula inclined her head, raised her eyebrows and gave Simon a look more patronising than anything the Snowman had ever produced. ‘DC Waterhouse, when I was an MP, more details slipped my mind than didn’t, if they weren’t work-related. The job filled my head, to the exclusion of all else. My poor son never had anything he needed for school; I never had clean matching socks, or paid a bill on time; nothing ever got done in the house; I neglected my husband …’ She shrugged as if to say, ‘Point proven.’

‘You didn’t neglect several other women’s husbands,’ Simon couldn’t resist pointing out.

‘Yes!’ Paula chuckled. ‘I did. The affairs were a by-product of the stress I was under from work, and, yes, I
totally
neglected those men. There was none of me left for a relationship, let alone several concurrent relationships. I was in danger of seriously burning out and I couldn’t see it. I was a fool until Fergus saved me, DC Waterhouse. A very clever fool with a PhD, but no less a fool. I can’t
tell
you how much happier I am now.’ Fergus reached over to squeeze her thigh with his thick-knuckled fingers. Paula stroked the back of his hand, smiling down at it as if it were a favourite pet that had leaped up onto her lap. Meanwhile, the larger of her two real pets had started to snore.

Simon could see that nothing he might say would rile Paula. She had every corner of her polished act sewn up. He still didn’t believe her.

‘All right, so tell me about you and Damon Blundy,’ he said. ‘I know he used his column and blog to attack you, and I know you fought back sometimes. Why the two meetings?’

‘Both were at my instigation,’ said Paula. ‘His columns about me really upset me, and they upset Toby, my son, even more – that was the part I couldn’t live with. People at school were either teasing him or commiserating with him for having the worst mother in the country. I emailed Damon to ask him ever so kindly and politely to desist, and he replied saying he wasn’t prepared to discuss it via email. If I wanted to talk to him, I had to meet him, he said. He told me when and where. There was no consultation process; he issued me with an order. I turned up, tried to be as diplomatic and reasonable as I could. We got on better than I expected, actually, and when I left, I thought we’d agreed that he would lay off. There was only one problem.’