OLIVER: “I don’t understand.”
DS SIMMONS: “In the first three cases, all the victims were dead some time before their bodies were mutilated. Although there was a certain amount of blood spilt because of the mutilations, it hadn’t travelled far. Their blood didn’t gush, for want of a better word. Whereas, in James True’s case the mutilation took place either immediately after death, or, more likely, just before, as far as we can tell. That’s why there was more blood spillage than with the previous three—his heart was still pumping it through the veins and arteries. It hadn’t begun to coagulate.”
OLIVER: “So presumably the killer would also be covered in blood.”
DC COATES: “You… I mean, the guilty party would have had plenty of time to clean himself. All night, in fact. And of course, he could have been wearing covering clothes—a plastic mac, gloves, things that could easily be hidden or thrown away afterwards.”
OLIVER: “Look, are you charging me with murder? If so, I’m saying nothing more without the presence of my solicitor.”
DS SIMMONS: “We’re not charging you with anything, Mr Guinane. At least, not for the time being. But we will be questioning you again in the next day or so, probably at New Scotland Yard, so if you feel you will need a solicitor, then I suggest you contact one as soon as possible.”
OLIVER: “This is preposterous! It’s completely insane!”
DS SIMMONS: “Just make sure you’re available to us, Sir. That’s all for now.”
Finding Oliver and Andrea together in a clinch had devastated me, left me weak (and there was worse to come); now, hearing Oliver more or less accused of my murder left me completely stunned. It wasn’t possible! Not Ollie. Not my best friend. No! Couldn’t be right! Yet… he’d betrayed me with Andrea. There was I, a few days cold, and he was passionately kissing my wife in my own home. How long had their affair been going on? A couple of weeks, a few months—a year? I had no idea, hadn’t noticed any signs. Andrea wouldn’t do this to me. Would she? She’d loved Oliver before me, so maybe the flame had never truly died. Oh dear God, how much more did I have to take? Had she ever been true to me?
I was literally drooping, my knees bent, shoulders hunched; I would have collapsed had I carried the weight of my physical form. I felt drained, my energy dissipated. But the two detectives were leaving and I wanted to hear more from them. I wanted to hear what they had to say to each other when they were out of earshot of the suspect. I followed them from the house, walking close behind as they made their way to their car parked further down the road.
“How did you know about the drugs?” I heard Simmons ask.
“The old Ruby,” Coates replied. His black hair was close-cropped. His frame was stocky and he looked tough, but not quite as hard as his stone-faced companion.
“Come on, Danny. A Ruby? We both know that’s rubbish.” Simmons, his beaky nose as sharp as a hatchet, was obviously impatient with his lower-ranking officer.
“Inside info,” Coates told him. “But I couldn’t let Guinane know about that.”
“You’ve been to the advertising agency?”
“You could say.”
“Without me? We’re supposed to be a team. Shit, we’re supposed to be part of a team.”
“I’ve got a connection, Nick.”
“Don’t be playing silly buggers with me. What about this business between Guinane and True’s wife? Some more inside gossip?”
“Well I wouldn’t call it gossip.” They had reached their car and Coates was fumbling inside a trouser pocket for the key. He was grinning across the roof of the Vauxhall at Simmons.
“Okay, that’s enough, Danny.” Simmons was not at all amused. “You got me to come here after the funeral to talk to Guinane and we’ve had to hang around for hours. I’m not fucking about now—what’s going on?”
“Well it turns out that True’s wife used to be Guinane’s girlfriend before she married True.”
“Yeah, we know that. So?”
“My source tells me the affair took off again shortly after the marriage. And it’s still going on.”
“Christ. Another reason for Guinane to resent his business partner.”
“Right. That and the merger dispute. And, of course, we know that True’s murder didn’t follow the same pattern as the others.”
“What, the weird stuff the first three victims got up to before they were topped?”
“That’s it. Two of ‘em—the men—visited prostitutes before they died, right? Something that apparently was totally out of character for them. And we got that from close friends of both. We only found out that they had used brasses when we retraced their movements before death.”
“A lot of people have dark secrets that nobody else knows about.”
“Sure. We can’t be certain that neither one had done it before. But both were successful, good-looking guys, professionals, one an insurance broker, the other a lawyer. The first one had a gorgeous-looking wife, remember?”
Simmons nodded as he rested an arm on the car’s rooftop.
“Would you wander if you had someone as stunning as her to come home to?”
“Probably not. But y’know, the old adage—a bit of rough now and again. Change is the biggest aphrodisiac.”
“Okay. Could happen. But what about the second guy?”
“Again, maybe something different.”
“Going off with a rent boy when the guy wasn’t even gay?”
“As I said, dark secrets.”
“Yeah, but his partner—another great looker, by the way—told us there was nothing bent about her live-in boyfriend. Quite the opposite, as it happens. According to his friends he’d been quite a stud man and only ever looked at women. A bit homophobic, too—and don’t tell me that’s a sign of latent homosexuality because we both know that’s crap.”
“All right, I know all that. As you say, out of character. But we’ve both been in the business long enough to know people can do some surprising things.”
“Okay. So then there’s the third victim, the woman.”
“Oh yeah. Now that was a bit weird.”
“Weird? It was fucking ridiculous. She was an attractive thirty-year-old, married to a wealthy banker, fashionably dressed and, by all accounts, bright and socially gracious. Why the fuck would she suddenly prostitute herself? We found witnesses who said she’d been making a nuisance of herself around Shepherd Market, near where her body was eventually dumped. Shit, the local brasses were complaining because she was trespassing on their turf.”
“I know. Makes no sense at all.”
“Y’think?” Coates raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.
“Well, they all engaged in some bizarre activities, things that might have put them in danger.”
“All except James True.”
“Yup, doesn’t follow the pattern. He was working for his agency the whole weekend and, as far as we know, he never left the hotel, nor did anything exceptional. And no hookers of either sex went up to his suite—again, as far as we know.”
“The only thing that fits the pattern was that he was youngish, good-looking and successful, and the same kinds of murder weapon were used, but in a different order of usage. The point, though, is that his business partner, this Oliver Guinane guy, didn’t know about that, nor the peculiar activities of the previous three victims. No one did, we kept it to ourselves.”
“SIO’s orders. Partly because we didn’t want the closest relatives to suffer more over the publicity it would have caused, but mainly because we want to keep the similarities to ourselves for now.”
“Right. The public wasn’t made aware through the media because we put a block on it. Guinane certainly wouldn’t have known. I think that’s where he slipped up, not that he could have done anything about it, anyway.”