Woman with a Secret (23 page)

“It’s none of your fucking business what Adam said. Generally, I tend not to discuss my private life with people who inform on me to the police when I’m innocent.”

I hang up and sit still in my chair, waiting for my feelings to catch up with what’s just happened. It will take a while. I must make the most of this numb time to get as much done as possible.
Preparations
.

Will Adam ask for a divorce? Is this the true beginning of my life falling apart?

I must do whatever it takes to extricate myself from being suspected of murder. If that means telling the police my real reason for making a quick getaway on Elmhirst Road on Monday, so be it. I’m not a coward like my mother. I’ll do what I have to do.

I pick up the phone and call Adam at work. When he answers, I say, “I need you to come home.”

AN HOUR LATER, ADAM
and I are in our bedroom with the door closed. Downstairs, the TV reassures our children by producing its usual comforting early evening burble of voices. Sophie and Ethan have no idea that they might soon need more comforting than usual. Hopefully, if I handle this right, they will never find out how close they came to having their world shattered.

“So . . . what is this?” Adam asks. “Don’t tell me you’ve dragged me home from work to show me three colored glass angels?”

I’ve laid them out in a neat row on the bed. The duvet’s plain white and they stand out nicely. “I need to tell you something you’re
not going to like at all,” I say to Adam. “But first I want to tell you a story about when I was a child, and I want you to tell me what you think about that story.” Without waiting for his agreement, I start to tell him.

I stole the three angels from my playgroup when I was four years old. One is pink, one green and one yellow.

At age four, I didn’t realize I’d stolen them. I simply saw them in the toy tin at playgroup, loved the way they looked and decided to take them home with me. When I showed them to Mum, excited about my haul, she didn’t say a word, but she looked at them as if they were capsules containing ricin. She went to get Dad, who bellowed at me until long after it got dark—about serious crimes and punishment and bad people getting their hands chopped off.

The next day, Mum stood over me at playgroup while I recited the apology she and Dad had made me learn by heart and practice in front of them several times over breakfast. It contained none of my own words. Neither of them had smiled at me even once since my semi-accidental confession the day before; both were still as angry as they’d been at the moment of discovery.

I returned the angels to the tin and did an excellent job of pretending I didn’t care. Inside, I was screaming,
But I need them!
By this point, I’d decided that I preferred the three angels to my parents. The woman who ran the playgroup kept telling my mum that it wasn’t important, and Mum kept contradicting her and saying that it was. After Mum had gone home, the nice playgroup owner said I could have the angels as a present, since I liked them so much. I remember thanking her, and thinking,
You’ve no idea, have you?
There’s no way I could ever take them home and let my parents see them, no matter what story I tell them—not even if they’re accompanied by a letter from you insisting that you want me to have them and that it was your initiative, not mine.

Being four, I didn’t phrase it to myself quite like that, but I understood the impossibility of taking the three beautiful angels home. I
also understood that the kind playgroup woman didn’t understand, which was even more distressing.

On the other hand, I had to have the angels. I had to risk it, even if something unimaginably terrible happened to me as a result. My liking for them had turned to deep love. I would have risked anything. So I said thank you and put them in my shoe. From that day until the day I left home, the day after my eighteenth birthday, I kept those angels safe in my parents’ house. Mum and Dad never found out I had them. They still don’t know. I often wonder if they’d recognize them if I pulled them out of a jacket pocket one day and said, “Look.”

I tell Adam that I can’t face seeing or speaking to my parents without having the angels hidden somewhere in my clothes. “I’ve never told you before because I was scared you’d think I was crazy.”

Adam frowns. “It
is
a bit weird, Nicki, you’ve got to admit. I bet there’s no one else—I mean, not even one other person on the planet—who can only speak to their parents with secret angels concealed about their person.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I say. “Any other comments on the story?”

“Um . . .” He looks caught out. “Maybe you should try and find a way to
not
need the angels when you see your folks? Stupid superstitions like that—why keep them going? Why not choose to behave rationally instead?” Seeing my face, Adam changes tack and says, “Though I suppose it’s a harmless enough ritual, and if it makes you feel better . . . I’m not quite sure what you want me to say.” He frowns. “Lovely of the kindergarten lady to let you keep them—very shrewd of her.”

“Why shrewd?” I ask.

“Well, she obviously twigged that your mum was guilt-tripping you above and beyond what the situation required. She felt sorry for you and probably thought being allowed to keep the angels would cheer you up.”

I can’t be bothered to ask him any more questions. “I’ve been unfaithful to you,” I say quickly, to have it over and done with. “I
need to tell you about it because it’s connected to a murder investigation. I wouldn’t have told you otherwise. I did it because there’s something in me . . . I mean, it’s nothing to do with you or our relationship. I’d have been unfaithful to anyone I was married to. I love you just as much as I always—” I stop with a gasp.

Just as much as
. . .

He is no less dead. He is just as dead
. The meanings are interchangeable.

I know what it means. Exactly what those words mean. And, though I still don’t know who killed him, I know that Damon Blundy’s death is my fault.

Mine and King Edward’s.

SPONTANEOUS MEDIA COMBUSTION
Damon Blundy, November 1, 2011,
Daily Herald Online

What can I say? I was wrong. It happens sometimes, and when it does, I admit it. In an
exclusive interview
with the
Sunday Times,
Saint Paula of Privilege has finally revealed her true reason for sending her son Toby to a failing state school when she could easily have afforded to send him to an excellent private one. (Toby is mentioned by name in the feature, incidentally, and his photograph also appears; let’s hope the boy has no yen for privacy.)

It seems that Paula wasn’t, as I
once suggested
, motivated by the desire to score political points for a rotten cause at the expense of her only child’s welfare and future. Nor was her decision, as I later
playfully posited
, a passive aggressive one-in-the-eye for her aristocratic Tory parents who sent her, our very own Paula of the Proles, to an exclusive all-girls boarding school where she suffered the torment of receiving a world-class education. No, gentlest reader, none of the above. Our Paula sent young Toby to Gorse Edge School because she was having an illicit affair with its deputy head, Harry Bowers.

I’m sure Bowers and his wife, Julie, would rather you and I didn’t know this, but, thanks to Saint Paula’s obsessive desire to prove me wrong, we do. We and all the other
Sunday Times
readers, and all their friends and families, have the
full story
, in Paula Privilege’s own words. I particularly like the parts that refer to me specifically. I get no fewer than four mentions, which proves that I am currently the person uppermost in Saint Paula’s mind. I pity poor Mr. Privilege. How’s he coping with all this media attention? By “poor,” I of course
mean unfortunate; last time I looked, Richard Crumlish was just about managing to scrape by on his heir-to-colossal-diamond-fortune private income.

Still, a vast fortune is no substitute for a faithful wife, one could argue, and this
isn’t the first time
that Saint Paula’s adulterous exploits have spilled over into the public sphere. Remember Keiran Holland? I try not to, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Remember the mediocre American movie director whose name I have forgotten? Both Crumlish and Labour let those two indiscretions pass, and no doubt for the same reason: hotties like Paula are few and far between. Will Crumlish stand by his woman again, now that she has cheated on him a third time and freely shared the full details of her betrayal with a national newspaper? It’s early days, and, while we remain glued to every facet of their unfolding marital misfortune, we can only speculate: will it be stick or carats for Saint Paula?

Whatever happens to her marriage, her political career is over, or very soon will be. Charitable as it is in allowing the likes of Eds Miliband and Balls onto its front benches, the Labour Party’s goodwill cannot possibly stretch as far as retaining an MP who announces to the country without a hint of regret that she chose a school for her son with a view to sneaking into the stationery cupboard with her tastiest constituent seconds after she’d dropped off little Toby at his classroom door.

Just in case Labour are feeling especially lenient about both infidelity and exhibitionism at the moment (you never know—they might have heard that the Tories are making moves in that direction and be keen to follow suit), Saint Paula made sure to add another choice revelation to her spontaneous media combustion:

If Damon Blundy wants to add luster to his sad little life by trashing me week after week in his column, can I suggest that he judges me for the shoplifting problem I had as a teenager that lasted into my early twenties? Oh, sorry, I forgot—Blundy doesn’t know
about that because I never got caught. Perhaps he’d like to admit that he has no idea what kind of person I am—good, bad or indifferent—just as I have no idea what kind of person he is, though I do know, as we all do, that he chooses to behave for much of the time like a vile bigot. But we mustn’t let his bigotry, disgusting though it is, blind us to his foolishness. It is tempting to assume that those who offend and upset us are telling hard truths that we can’t stand to hear, but sometimes, as in the case of Blundy, they are as wrong as they are unpleasant. Only a fool would imagine that my decision to send my son to a state school was in any way controversial or a matter of public interest. Thanks to my relationship with Harry, I was in the fortunate position of knowing enough about Gorse Edge and its staff to trust it completely, but even if that hadn’t been the case, I would have sent Toby to his local state primary school because I believe in state education.

I choose to behave like a vile bigot? Oh, Paula, that’s not fair. No one chooses how to behave—not you and not me. Free will is the greatest lie we’ve ever been sold as a species. If humans have free will, why would Bryn Gilligan spend
all day and night on Twitter
, engaging at length with creep after creep on the subject of whether or not he ought to end his life? Why would Reuben Tasker imagine there’s any point in his
forbidding me to read any more of his books
since I evidently don’t appreciate them? Why would Keiran Holland
attack me
for lobbying to strip Tasker of his
Books Enhance Lives Award
? Having done no such thing, I’m a little baffled. I thought I’d been arguing to give Bryn Gilligan back his Olympic medals, and merely using Reuben Tasker as a convenient analogy. I’m equally baffled as to why Holland should feel the need to explain to me in
such detail
the difference between Olympic sprinting and a horror novel. In case any of you have been waiting for clarification on this point, here’s a small extract from his lengthy treatise on the subject:

A novel is the product of a process; it is not the process itself. Reuben Tasker’s artistic creation is his novel, not his ability to write a novel, whereas Bryn Gilligan’s product is his ability to run fast and nothing more than that. In competitive sprinting, product—the sprint sprinted—and process are interchangeable. A race does not last through the decades or the centuries, and so is inseparable from the ability to run, which is why that ability mustn’t be chemically enhanced. In the case of a novel, we do not and should not care how it came into being, only about what it is.

I can think of other differences that Holland omits to mention. Sprinting requires a pair of sneakers and a can of Lucozade. Horror novels can manage without both. Sprinting involves moving fast. A book doesn’t necessarily have to move fast (read Reuben Tasker’s if you want proof). On the other hand, horror novels and Olympic sprinting have some features in common: both can make you sweaty, whether from fear or exertion. Both have a competitive aspect—there are sprinting prizes and book prizes. If illegal drugs are a bar to winning in one, why not in the other? After all, the cash prize goes to the law-breaking drug-taking writer, not to the book itself. Books do not have bank accounts. Keiran Holland has yet to offer a persuasive reason why Bryn Gilligan should be deprived of his medals while supernaturally stoned Reuben Tasker should get to hang on to his.

“NICKI CLEMENTS IS A
liar,” Melissa Redgate told Gibbs. “She always has been.”
Unlike me, you and all decent people
was the clear implication.

Speak for yourself, thought Gibbs. Though, of course, Melissa hadn’t spoken the words out loud. Gibbs couldn’t prove—yet—that she was a self-satisfied moral-majority type. It was just a sense he had. He wasn’t enjoying being in a small interview room with her. What kind of person contacts detectives, unsolicited, and says, “You might want to suspect my best friend of murder, even though I have no proof”?

Nicki Clements hadn’t murdered Damon Blundy, unless she was far cleverer than she appeared to be. The secretary of Freeth Lane Primary School had endorsed her alibi: Nicki had been on the phone to the school, on her landline, on and off all morning. She wouldn’t have had time to drive to Elmhirst Road, kill a man and drive back home between phone calls.

Having heard Robbie Meakin’s account of his meeting with Nicki, Gibbs couldn’t help but pity the woman. She sounded more like a desperate idiot than an evil genius.

Melissa handed Gibbs a blue box file that she’d brought in with her. “There’s a printout of an advertisement in there that Nicki posted
on a casual-sex website called Intimate Links. I’m fairly sure Damon Blundy answered and the two of them started having an affair.”

Gibbs flicked through the pages in the box. “There’s a lot more here than one advert. Are these . . . ?”

“A selection of Damon Blundy’s newspaper columns, plus comments sections. I printed them out to save you having to look them up on the Internet. And there are plenty more, if you’re interested. Those are just a random sample. Between October 2011 and February this year, Nicki commented on nearly all of Blundy’s columns—always sticking up for his point of view, however craven it was, and attacking other commenters for attacking him. Why would she do that if they weren’t having an affair? As far as I know, she’s never gone in for online commenting, before or since.”

Gibbs reread the Intimate Links advert. He held it up. “The date on this is June 2010. You say Blundy replied and they started an affair—why wouldn’t Nicki start commenting on his columns immediately? Why wait till October the following year?”

“Again, I’m not sure, but . . . my guess is that for quite a long time, she didn’t know who he was. I think they emailed back and forth and, at first, didn’t know much about each other. You’d have to build up trust, wouldn’t you? Especially someone in the public eye like Damon Blundy.”

That made sense. “And she stopped commenting on his columns in February this year?” Gibbs asked.

Melissa nodded. “I suspect that’s when they broke up. She stopped mentioning him then too—until Tuesday, when she came around to tell me he’d been murdered, and asked me to lie for her.”

“Hang on, rewind a bit,” said Gibbs. “You say she mentioned him . . . Did she tell you they were having an affair, then?”

“No, never. Nor did she ever tell me she’d posted an advert on Intimate Links.” Melissa looked caught out. Guilty, even. “Nicki and I have been best friends since school. She used to tell me everything—all her secrets, all her lies. Then, a few years ago, I started going out
with her brother. He and I are now married. I didn’t realize how bad an effect Nicki’s lying had had on him, his childhood, their family life . . . So I asked Nicki to stop telling me anything that I’d have to keep from Lee. He hates lying—absolutely hates it. Honesty’s more important to him than anything.”

She seemed to be waiting for Gibbs to say, “Quite right too.”

“So . . . Nicki didn’t tell you she was having an affair with Blundy because she wouldn’t have wanted her brother to know?”

“Right,” said Melissa. “And I’d have refused to keep it from him. She knew that. But . . . she can be a bitch, Nicki. She hated my being with her brother—I think she regarded it as some sort of betrayal of our friendship. And she hated not being able to tell me things anymore, so she found a way around it: she told me without telling me. One day she told me, out of the blue, about this website, Intimate Links. I’d never heard of it before. I asked her why she was bringing it up. She said, ‘Oh, no reason,’ in an exaggeratedly innocent tone that told me everything I needed to know. ‘People advertise on it, for lovers,’ she said. ‘Most of the ads are appallingly badly written. You should have a look—one or two are quite entertaining.’ I knew exactly what she was telling me, and
she
knew I’d look and find her advert—it was obviously her: she’s always saying BBC4’s the only TV channel worth watching—and she knew I wouldn’t say anything to Lee because she hadn’t actually told me anything, and she could easily deny it if asked, and would have, most definitely!”

The anger in Melissa’s voice was unmistakeable. “Then, a few months later, she started to mention Damon Blundy, and how interesting and clever his writing was. Again, the mock-innocent tone: ‘I hope you don’t mind me mentioning Damon Blundy so often?’ she’d ask, all wide-eyed. ‘It’s just that he’s my new favorite columnist. It’s so important to have a favorite columnist, isn’t it?’ I read his columns, and there was Nicki in the comments thread every time, sticking up for him. I’d asked her not to tell me about what she was getting up to—this was her way of saying, ‘Fuck you, I’ll do what I like, as
always.’ I snapped one day and said, ‘I get it, Nicki—you’re sleeping with Damon Blundy. Bully for you.’ She pretended to be shocked: ‘What? Where have you got that from? I’m not, and even if I were, I wouldn’t tell you, would I? You’ve asked not to be told.’ Trust me, she was having an affair with him. Why else would she suddenly leave London and move to Spilling? She’s not an escape-to-the-country sort of person. She loves London. But Damon Blundy moved from London to Spilling, so she had to follow. She made Adam ask for a transfer at work so that she could be nearer to Blundy.”

“Did you tell Lee what you suspected?” Gibbs asked.

“No. Not until Tuesday, after Nicki asked me to lie to the police. That brought home to me how serious it was. Before that . . . no. Lee’d have told his mum and dad, and they’d have told Nicki’s husband, Adam—everything that happened when I told him on Monday would have happened a lot sooner. I don’t actually want Nicki’s life to fall apart, or Adam’s, and since I didn’t know for sure—”

“Hold on,” Gibbs stopped her. “On Tuesday, you told your husband that you suspected his sister had been involved with Damon Blundy and . . . he told their parents?” Why would he do that? Anyone sensible would want to keep the parents out of it, surely. “And they told Nicki’s husband?”
Nice family
.

“They told Nicki they were going to. She said there was no need—she’d already told him. I don’t know if that’s true or not. If I know Nicki . . . I think she might have told Adam something, knowing her parents would otherwise, but not the whole truth. No way.”

Gibbs leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “All right, so let’s say Nicki was having an affair with Damon Blundy. Does that mean she killed him?”

Melissa looked confused. “No, of course not. But . . . it means she might have done, doesn’t it? Lee thinks so, and he’s her brother. If she’s got nothing to hide, why’s she asking me to lie to the police for her?”

“Where’s Lee today? Why didn’t the two of you come in together?”

“He’s at work. He asked me if I’d be OK on my own and I said I would.”

“What does he do for work?” Gibbs asked.

“He’s a speech writer. For the Home Office.”

And for his wife: a speech called “Why You Should Convict My Husband’s Sister of Murder.”

“And you? What’s your job?”

“I work from home,” said Melissa. “I do the admin for a mail-order company that sells herbal remedies and health supplements. I’m also doing a part-time law degree. Why do you want to know all this?”

“I just do,” said Gibbs. It came out more aggressively than he’d intended it to.

“Look, I sincerely hope Nicki didn’t kill Damon Blundy,” Melissa said, no doubt sensing his antipathy toward her. “I’m not saying she did it, but it’d be irresponsible of me not to come to you with my concerns, especially knowing that she’s a . . . well, she’s basically a pathological liar!”

Gibbs said nothing. He sensed that Melissa hadn’t finished.

“She doesn’t only lie to get herself out of trouble, like most people. She lies for fun. It’s her hobby. She commits crimes for fun too. Once, she stole a pair of shoes, kids’ shoes, at a soft-play center. They belonged to a toddler who’d been mean to Ethan. Nicki stole his shoes, as revenge, and threw them in the trash on the way home. Once, she contacted the local paper—this was while she still lived in London—and bad-mouthed Sophie and Ethan’s primary school. When a critical article appeared, instead of telling the head, ‘Yes, I was unhappy with the school so I dished the dirt to a newspaper,’ she pretended . . .” Melissa stopped. She looked embarrassed. “It’s so flagrantly implausible it’s almost funny. She denied flat out that she’d gone to the press. She told the head she’d been discussing it with a friend, privately and responsibly, and the deputy editor of the local paper had happened to be standing behind them at the time—in the
supermarket, she said—and he’d then gone off and used it as a story without her permission or knowledge, the
bastard
.” Melissa shook her head. “I heard her on the phone to the head. She actually called the guy a bastard, then burst out laughing as soon as she’d put the phone down. ‘Did that sound OK, in a so-implausible-it-must-be-true kind of way?’ she asked me.”

And I bet you laughed along with her, didn’t you? I bet you were more fun before you hooked up with Lee
.

“There are probably stories like that about most people,” said Gibbs.

“Not me,” said Melissa. “I’ve never stolen anything. I don’t lie habitually like Nicki does. I’m sure you don’t either.”

Gibbs’s confidence in her judgment shrank to less than zero. “Tell me about Tuesday,” he said. “Nicki asked you to lie to the police?”

“She didn’t have her car with her. She turned up, uninvited, and that was the first thing I noticed: a set of car keys in her hand that didn’t belong to her. She said her car was missing a mirror and the trains were messed up, so she’d rented a car. Then she told me Damon Blundy had been murdered, without sounding particularly shocked or upset about it. She sounded as if that were a minor detail and not what she’d really come to talk to me about. Then she asked me to lie.”

“About?”

“Two Sundays ago, she and I went to an auction together in Grantham. She said detectives investigating Damon Blundy’s murder might contact me, and she asked me not to tell them that her passenger-side mirror was missing that day.”

“She asked you
not
to tell the police that the mirror was missing?” Gibbs straightened up in his chair. Nicki had told Sam and Simon it had been missing when she and Melissa had gone to Grantham, and that Melissa would verify this.

“Nicki thought she was being clever. She wanted the exact opposite of what she asked me for. I was supposed to object to the proposed dishonesty and insist that, if questioned by the police, I’d tell
the truth. Only one problem: it
wasn’t
the truth. Her side mirror
wasn’t
missing that day. It was definitely there. It was a warm day and I had my window down most of the way to Grantham. I looked at my reflection in the side mirror, several times.”

“You’re sure?” Gibbs asked.

“A hundred percent. The car was a dump, as always, and so full of crumbs you could have stuffed a cushion with them, but all the mirrors that should have been there were there.”

As Gibbs was writing down this new information, Melissa said in an aggrieved voice, “Damon Blundy wasn’t the first time Nicki had cheated on Adam, and Tuesday wasn’t her first encounter with the police.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gibbs. “About the police,” he clarified. “I don’t care if Nicki’s slept with four men or forty.” He was still annoyed about Melissa’s casual categorizing of him as someone who wouldn’t habitually lie, when he lied to his wife, Debbie, every single day of his life.

“A few weeks ago, Nicki turned up at my house—again, unannounced—and said something terrible had happened; this was the worst day of her life; it was something to do with the police—”

“When?” Gibbs interrupted. “Do you know the date?”

“Yes. I looked at my diary yesterday and worked it out. It was Wednesday, June fifth, about two o’clock. The bell rang; I answered the door. Nicki barged in and said she had to talk to me, it was an emergency, and I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, not even Lee. She was pretty hysterical. I think she thought it was big enough and serious enough to sweep aside my reservations about hiding things from my husband.”

“Did it?”

“No. The opposite. If it was something important, I was even more determined not to have to lie to Lee about it. I explained to Nicki that she’d have to find someone else to confide in and discuss her . . . problem with. I tried to be as sensitive as I could, but . . . she didn’t take it well. Things got a bit out of hand.”

“Did she become violent?” Gibbs asked.

“No, nothing like that. Just . . . nasty.”

“In what way?”

Melissa sighed. “She said that when I lost my heart to Lee, I really did lose my heart—altogether. I’m heartless, apparently, because I’m not willing to be drawn into her lies. Then . . . I don’t know, just a load of rambling stuff designed to mess with my head and manipulate me. She said she didn’t know who she was anymore, or if she could bear to be that person for much longer, but at least there was no danger, thank God, that she’d ever end up like me, and how overwhelmingly grateful she was for that . . . that kind of thing. I asked her to leave. She had one more go at persuading me: I was the only person who really knew her; I’d known her for years; only I could help her . . .” Melissa shuddered. “I just wanted her out of my house. I didn’t mention it to Lee because I couldn’t bear to think about it, once it was over.”

It’s called feeling guilty. With good reason
.