Woman with a Secret Page 19

  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.

  CHAPTER 6

  Thursday, July 4, 2013

  “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 a
nd 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 muc
h 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.

  Melissa frowned. “Lee’s right: I should have told him straightaway. He knows everything now. I’ve told him everything I know.”

  “It sounds as if Nicki might have wanted your help with a problem she was having,” said Gibbs neutrally.

  “I’m sure she did,” Melissa said with feeling, her face coloring. “I’m equally sure it was a problem entirely of her own making.”

  “And you think she might have made herself a new problem on Monday, by killing Damon Blundy?”

  “Lee thinks so. And I . . . Well, let’s just say with Nicki anything’s possible.”

  “Where were you and Lee on Monday morning between eight thirty and ten thirty?” Gibbs asked her.

  “I HOPE YOU ENJOY reading horror.” Damon Blundy’s first wife handed Sam Kombothekra a copy of her memoir, A Hole in the Stone. Sam barely noticed the title, or the subtitle: How I Survived the Marriage from Hell. He stared instead at the name on the jacket: Verity Hewson.

  Verity Hewson, Abigail Meredith, he recited silently in his head. Verity Hewson, Abigail Meredith. Not, as they had quickly come to be known by CID, Doormat and Despot. If he could get through this interview without slipping up and calling either of Damon Blundy’s ex-wives a “D” word, Sam would be a happy man.

  The inconvenience of Verity living in Lothersdale, a small village in North Yorkshire, was mitigated by her having Abigail Meredith as a houseguest. Sam would have preferred it if they’d arranged it the other way around, since Abigail lived in Oakham, which was nearer to the Culver Valley, but you couldn’t have everything. And although it was a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Spilling to Lothersdale, Sam was enjoying being back in Yorkshire, where he’d lived and worked for eleven years. As he’d driven through the unspoiled greenery on his way to Verity Hewson’s converted barn, he had finally been able to confirm something he’d long suspected about Yorkshire: parts of it were visually stunning, yes, but it didn’t have a kind heart in the way that, say, Devon did. The fields and trees of Yorkshire were not welcoming Sam home today, much as they had failed to greet him warmly when he’d first moved to Bingley, near Bradford, from London. If Lothersdale had been a person, it might have said to him, “Well, then. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say for yourself. I doubt we’ll be impressed by it, whatever it is.”