Woman with a Secret Read online

  I’m not fast enough. He’s gone in a screech of tires before I’m halfway across the street.

  From: Mr. Jugs

  Date: Tue, July 2, 2013 15:47:08

  To:

  Subject: Re: Distress signal

  Nicki,

  Forgive me. I don’t know if you understand, or misunderstand, the full extent of what I’m asking you to forgive me for, but . . . forgive me.

  I would forgive you anything.

  I will even forgive Damon Blundy for being a bad man, if you ask me to. Evil is a strong word, but I do believe he was toxic. I assume it’s all right for us to disagree about this?

  The only person I know whom I can never forgive is my wife. I’ve never told anybody this, but shortly after we got married, I found out something about her that I couldn’t get past. (No, it wasn’t that she’d cheated on me. She’s never done that.) I pretended to forgive her, but I never truly could, and in my heart I knew things were irreparable between us from that moment on.

  If she righted the wrong of her own accord, without prompting by me, then maybe . . . but I know she never will.

  In spite of this, I couldn’t, and can’t, leave her because I know how much she loves and needs me. I couldn’t do that to her. You see, she’s done nothing wrong. Nothing at all. What is a grave wrong in my mind and heart is not, in her eyes and in the eyes of the rest of the world, wrong at all.

  It was my inability to forgive her that drove me to the Intimate Links website.

  G.

  “I’M NO CHEAT,” SAYS MAN WHO ADMITTED TO CHEATING—A LATERAL THINKING PUZZLE

  Damon Blundy, September 20, 2011, Daily Herald Online

  When I spoke up for disgraced sprinter Bryn Gilligan in my column two weeks ago, I expected to be set upon first by the Times’s Keiran Holland, Inspector Javert to Gilligan’s Jean Valjean, and then by all the Usual Cesspits. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The attack, when it came—the preposterous threat of legal action, no less—hailed from an unexpected quarter: Bryn Gilligan. Yes, that’s right: the same Bryn Gilligan I’d risked the opprobrium of decent folk like you in order to defend. Bryn Gilligan condemned me for expressing my support for Bryn Gilligan. (Warning: the rest of this story is the logical equivalent of a painting by Escher. I hope some of you can get your heads round it, because I can’t.)

  Why is Gilligan so angry with his solitary supporter? Well, apparently because I called him a cheat and besmirched his good name, even though he no longer has one. In a letter to this newspaper that has to be read to be believed, he accuses me of trashing his character and claims that he is not and has never been a cheat—not even while he was cheating, apparently. On the contrary, he says, he is a principled man to whom professional propriety was, is and evermore shall be of the utmost importance. With specific reference to his “mistake” (and to clarify, he is here referring to his ingestion of prohibited performance-enhancing drugs over a period of at least five years) he asks us to believe that he was in some kind of fugue state each time he fucked up by guzzling the ’roids and illegally winning a race. In his own words, “I had become detached from myself. My actions no longer had any connection with the honorable man I know myself to be.”

  You see how it works? Gilligan cheated, but he wasn’t a cheat when he cheated. He was a noncheat from whom some uncharacteristically devious behavior had emanated. He had great respect for the rules even while the detached unscrupulous bit of him was breaking them.

  If you say so, Bryn. In fact, it was Keiran Holland, not me, who described Gilligan as a cheat and a liar, as I’m certain my column made clear. I don’t intend to withdraw my support simply because Gilligan is no admirer of mine. To remix Groucho Marx, I’d hate to speak up for any cause that would have me as an advocate. I still believe Gilligan has learned his lesson and that his ban should be revoked, however unconventionally he might express his regret. Who could fail to learn, and learn hard, from the experience of being a newsworthy pariah for an extended period of time?

  Keiran Holland has of course seized on Gilligan’s latest public statement, holding it up as evidence of the sprinter’s dishonesty, and proof of what Holland knew all along: that none of Gilligan’s apologies have been genuine. Once again, I’m afraid, Holland has missed the point as desperately as a man confined to a Siberian gulag must miss the comforts of home.

  Gilligan cheated and he knows it. I assume he has no desire to be ridiculous as well as reviled, so why is he objecting to the use of the word? Could it be because idiots like Holland keep forgetting the crucial distinction between sin and sinner, and trying to persuade anyone who’ll listen that Gilligan is not merely someone who has cheated, but “a cheat”—innately and irreversibly, as if it’s in his DNA and he can never change? If we create a climate in which anyone who does something wrong must be branded a scumbag forever, can we really blame those who lie and cheat—which, by the way, is all of us from time to time—for pretending that they haven’t, even after admitting that they have?

  Think about how hard, not to mention ineffective, it would be to stand up in public and say, “I did something unforgivable that only a scoundrel would do, yet I’m not a scoundrel and you must forgive me.” It sounds like a paradox, doesn’t it? Well, it’s one we must embrace if we are to make any progress as a species, because we all do the bad things that only bad people would do, as well as the good things that only good people would do, which is why we mustn’t hold anything against one another. If we want better apologies, we need to be more forgiving—it’s as simple as that.

  If Keiran Holland wants to hear Bryn Gilligan say, “Yes, I cheated and I’m truly sorry,” he ought to think about what he himself needs to say first. I suggest something along the following lines: “I’m not going to condemn you, Bryn. You cheated, but we all do—especially me, on my wife, with former Labour MP Paula Riddiough—and so I’m not going to write you off and call you ‘a worm with minimal integrity,’ because you’re probably a decent guy, or else you have the potential to be one, and I believe in you. You’re a talented sprinter who must have been under a lot of pressure when you made the mistakes you made, and I think you deserve a second chance.”

  Speaking of second chances, I wonder if the delectable Paula Privilege is on the verge of deciding to award one to Holland. Does she regret ending their affair, and is she hoping that by attacking me, she might win him back? In a blog post two days ago, she described me as a “vile, shameless hack.” My crime? Making “needlessly personal and hurtful comments about the journalist Keiran Holland.” Notice her distancing use of “the journalist” rather than, say, “my ex-lover, who cast aside his wife for me, only to be ditched and left stranded.” Perhaps she would care to explain why it is “indefensible” that I should sneer at Holland in my column while it’s perfectly all right for her to discard him like a pus-stained plaster when the better option of a fling with an American movie director presents itself.

  Paula, shall we ask Keiran Holland to tell us which of us has hurt him more? I see a pattern emerging here, old bean. Have you forgotten the time you lashed out at me for “maligning” your son’s “educational experience,” obliging me to point out that while I, a stranger, might have maligned it, you, the boy’s very own mother, had been actively sabotaging it over a period of years?

  I don’t like to hurt people unnecessarily, but I do like the truth, apart from when it might get me into trouble. And I hate hypocrisy, always. Sometimes the truth stings. Horror writer Reuben Tasker took to his website last week to express his anger and sadness at my casual dismissal of his novel Craving and Aversion, winner of a Books Enhance Lives Award. Tasker made a fair point: I ought not to imply that his book is rubbish without having read it. I apologized in the comments beneath his blog post and promised to make up for my sloppiness by buying a copy. I have now read it. It’s rubbish: badly structured, pretentious and violent in the way that only a perverted author’s sexual fanta
sies tend to be. One central character has her “waist-hugging ropes of flaxen hair” cut off and stuffed into her vagina, for example, before the end of Chapter One. “Waist-hugging”? Does this woman’s hair grow downward from her scalp like traditional hair or horizontally from her stomach? It makes no sense that this novel won a prize, until we consider that one of the judges was Keiran Holland. How tragic that a man as judgmental as Holland should possess such poor judgment.

  CHAPTER 4

  Wednesday, July 3, 2013

  DID MOST MEN HAVE female gatekeepers? Simon wondered. So far this morning on the Damon Blundy case, he’d interviewed a rabbi and a plastic surgeon, both of whom had been protected by a woman-barrier who would only let him through after a thorough interrogation—a wife in the rabbi’s case and a PA for the surgeon.

  Bryn Gilligan’s gatekeeper was his mother, Jennifer: a tough-looking woman with muscly arms and three small diamond earrings in each ear, who lived in a strange kind of bungaloid mansion: very flat—only one story—but covering roughly the same square acreage as a large hospital might.

  Simon was struck by the contrast with his own mother, her house, her behavior. Kathleen Waterhouse, throughout Simon’s childhood, had refused to open the front door of their three-bedroom redbrick semi at all, let alone block it with her body to protect her son. Not that anyone had ever come to the house who posed a threat to Simon; apart from the parish priest, no one had come to the house at all.

  Jennifer Gilligan’s aim in barring the entrance to her ultramodern concrete-and-glass detached bungalow was not simply protective. She wanted to brief Simon before he came into contact with Bryn. “I don’t think he should be interacting with these people all day long,” she said urgently, in a whisper. “Most of the time he’s in front of his laptop, and when he has to be away from it, he’s got his iPhone. Fine, if he were using them to communicate with friends, but he’s not! He’s spending all this time with people calling him names and telling him they hope he dies. It’s not doing him any good.”

  “No,” Simon agreed. “It sounds . . . unhelpful.”

  “He doesn’t just read them, which’d be bad enough—he insists on answering every damn single one of them! He thinks if he engages with them, they’ll see he’s got a good heart, but the worst ones aren’t capable of seeing, because they haven’t got hearts at all! They want to carry on hating—it’s their hobby. Avoiding them, ignoring them, disconnecting—that’s what he needs to do. I’ve said all this till I’m blue in the face, and he nods and says I’m right, but nothing changes.”

  Simon hoped she was just letting off steam, but feared it was more than that. As Jennifer’s forehead creased, and she opened her mouth to speak again, he knew what was coming. “You couldn’t . . . ? I mean, I know you need to ask him about Damon Blundy . . . who he didn’t touch, by the way. I know my son. He wouldn’t harm any living creature, believe me. I’ve seen him run along the hall with a spider to throw it out the front door instead of killing it. But . . . if there’s any way you could talk to him about this horrible Internet obsession, I’d be very grateful. He might listen to you.”

  Sam Komobothekra, in Simon’s place, would agree without question. As Sam himself had admitted, he was better suited to hand-holding than to police work. Charlie would say, “If I see him doing it while I’m talking to him, I’ll mention it—how does that sound?”

  Simon found himself unable to respond directly to the question. Helping people to live happier lives wasn’t his job; solving murders was. He wanted to say, “No,” but that would have sounded too harsh.

  “Can I come in?” he said instead.

  Jennifer nodded and moved aside so that he could pass. She pointed down the hall. Simon looked and saw the two of them reflected in the largest mirror he’d ever seen. It took up a whole wall. “Bryn’s in the kitchen. Straight down to the end, turn right, then left, straight along again—it’s at the far end of the house. Do you want me there or not?”

  “I’d rather talk to him alone if that’s all right,” said Simon.

  “Fine. If he forgets to offer you a cup of tea, ask for one. He’ll probably forget. Oh, one thing.”

  “What?”

  “If he asks you what you think about what he did, what’s happened to him, whether he should be banned from sprinting for life, what’s your answer going to be?”

  “I’ll say I’m not here to discuss that.” Simon saw that this wasn’t enough for her. “Or I’ll tell him the truth—I know nothing about competitive sport and what the rules should or shouldn’t be. I don’t have a view. I’ve never thought about it.”

  “If he tells you he’s changed and that he wouldn’t do it again, what’ll you say to that?”

  “I’ll say . . . that’s good—I’m pleased to hear it?”

  Jennifer seemed to relax. “Thank you,” she said. “Maybe a positive response in real life’ll count for more than all the haters online. I hope so.”

  The huge mirror, it turned out, was part of a collection. Simon passed at least twenty more, on his way to the kitchen. It was the Hall of Mirrors—not in Versailles but in Norwich.

  Bryn Gilligan didn’t look up as Simon walked into the room. He was hunched in front of a laptop computer, tapping away at the keyboard. His pale ginger hair was wet, and he was wearing a gray terrycloth bathrobe. “Sorry,” he said, looking up. “I meant to get dressed before you arrived, but . . .” He nodded at the screen in front of him. “Are you on Twitter?”

  “No,” said Simon, thinking that Bryn Gilligan was one of those rare people who looked much younger than he was. He would probably always have the face of a teenager.

  “Very sensible. I’d stay well away from it if I were you.”

  Not much point giving him the warning he’s just given me, Simon thought. Bryn evidently knew his mother was right, but had difficulty putting the theory into practice.

  “So, you’re here to ask me if I murdered Damon Blundy,” said Bryn, his voice taking on a hard edge. “Yes, I probably did.”

  “Pardon?” Without asking permission, Simon pulled out one of the chairs from under the kitchen table and sat down.

  “I probably killed him. Let’s see: I’m an evil cheat and liar with no integrity; I don’t care about the rules, don’t care about anyone but myself. I took Blundy to task for misrepresenting me once, even though he was trying to stick up for me—September 2011. I was in crazy defensive mode, lashing out at anyone who mentioned my name. One of those people was Blundy, and I attacked him for defending me. It was a stupid thing to do, nearly as stupid as doping for years and thinking I wouldn’t get caught. Whoever killed Blundy did a stupid thing too—they’ll probably get caught.” Bryn smiled. “It’s sounding more and more like me, isn’t it? The killer has my psychological profile. And I was here in the house on my own on Monday morning, so I’ve got no alibi—therefore, yes, I probably did murder Damon Blundy.”

  “Did you tweet or email anyone from that computer between eight thirty and ten thirty on Monday?” Simon asked. “If you did, we can prove where those communications came from. If it’s a server in Norwich, two hours from Spilling, then you’re in the clear.” Was it a server he meant or a router? No—definitely not a router.

  Simon’s IT knowledge was limited. The other day, Charlie had laughed at him for not understanding what “the Cloud” was. He glanced down at his watch. It was eleven. He was meeting Charlie for lunch at one. He needed to set off now, ideally. This morning he’d been up at four to fit in the rabbi and the surgeon. He’d left tired behind hours ago and was now approaching shattered.

  Bryn was shaking his head. “I’m not in the clear. You might be able to prove that someone using my Twitter ID was tweeting all morning from this computer, this kitchen, this house, but how can you prove it was me? It could have been anyone who knew my password and felt inclined to defend me for a few hours. My password is ‘cheating1,’ in case you’re wondering.”

  “Did you kill Damon Blundy?” Simon as
ked, reeling a little. The density of Bryn’s self-loathing was making it difficult to breathe. Simon wished Sam were with him.

  “No, I didn’t. But as Twitter’ll tell you from dawn to dusk three hundred and sixty-five days a year, my word’s not worth shit. So . . . when you don’t immediately find your killer, you’ll think about me, and how I was here on my own the day Blundy was killed, and you’ll come back and arrest me. So why not do it now? I’d rather get it over with.”

  “I don’t believe you killed anyone, so I’m not arresting you,” Simon told him.

  “You’re not arresting me yet,” Bryn said knowingly. “And yet, I’m so arrestable—I don’t know how you can resist. You’ll be back, I’m sure.”

  “He is no less dead,” Simon said, making sure to speak clearly.

  Bryn frowned. “No less dead than what? What do you mean?”

  Well, that was one test passed with flying colors.

  He’s lied before, though, about his drug use . . . repeatedly, convincingly.

  “Who do you think might have killed Damon Blundy?” Simon asked.

  “Keiran Holland,” Bryn said without hesitation. He took a sip of what looked like cloudy apple juice from the glass beside his laptop.

  “You sound certain about that.”

  “No. I’ve no idea. You asked me who I thought might have done it. Keiran Holland’s a man without a shred of compassion in his soul. For all I know, he’s got a rock-solid alibi, but if he hasn’t . . . Lack of compassion, plus known hatred of Damon Blundy . . .” Bryn shrugged. “If I were you, I’d have Holland somewhere very near the top of my suspect list.”

  “NO WATERHOUSE?” DETECTIVE INSPECTOR Giles Proust looked disappointed. He pushed in between Gibbs and Sellers on his way to his desk as if they were inconveniently positioned items of furniture. Gibbs was familiar with the maneuver. Debbie often swept past him in a similar way, without looking at him.