A muted thwack as he slapped the steel rule against the palm of his hand again. From where I now stood, I couldn’t see Sydney anymore but I glimpsed Guinane. He was on one knee, a hand and elbow flat on the desktop, the knuckles of his other hand pressed against the floor for support. His head kept sagging as if too heavy to support. A trickle of blood ran from his hairline to his cheek.
“A risk for me,” Sydney continued, his shadow cast out into the corridor for a moment, “but the money we three would be paid makes all my cheating over the years seem petty, small change. Of course, because I’ll be the only one left of the partnership after tonight, my financial reward will be even greater. Are you interested in the risk the situation presented for me, Oliver? It doesn’t matter if you’re not, because I’m going to tell you anyway. I hope you’re not too groggy to take it all in. Did I hit you too hard when you surprised me at your desk? This piece of metal makes a dangerous weapon, wouldn’t you agree? I only used the blunt side so that there wouldn’t be too much damage, because that wouldn’t suit my purpose at all.”
I edged nearer to the open door, my legs beginning to droop under the weight they were carrying.
Sydney continued, “Now, where was I? Oh yes, the ‘merger’. Being one of the smartest agencies in town as well as the most profitable, Blake & Turnbrow would want to know exactly what they were getting and whether or not my forecasts for the next few years were exaggerated. ‘Due diligence’ it’s called. They will send in forensic accountants to inspect our books and look at our cost structure to make sure we are already operating efficiently. They’ll search for skeletons in the cupboard, tax or VAT fraud, that sort of thing, of which, as a matter of fact, we’re entirely in the clear—I’m neither stupid nor so greedy as to take such risks.”
I heard him stop pacing.
“It was bloody hard work,” Sydney said, “and I’m sure you noticed that I’ve been putting in even more overtime and weekends lately. Tonight, I finally put everything in place and as long as I’m around to answer any queries their team might make, everything will be fine. Teeming and lading, the allocation of future money against old debts, will take care of any discrepancies, so the books will look up to date. They’re bound to find little things that are not quite right, but they’ll consider them unimportant in the grand scheme. Blake & Turnbrow is too eager to take possession to let slight errors affect the buyout.”
When he spoke, Guinane’s words were sluggish, slurred, but they could be understood. “Why, Sydney? Why did you do this to us?”
“I’ve already explained. I’m in great need of money. The people I gamble with are a little impatient and a bit short on understanding; as are my ex-wives who are complaining about slow alimony payments. Buying cocaine in today’s over-inflated market doesn’t help the situation either. No, I’m rather desperate at the moment.”
He paused, as if reflecting on his next words.
“That’s why Jim had to die. He was in the way, he wanted to block the takeover. Fortunately, I had an acquaintance in the police force who unwittingly gave me an idea. One that’s been working out rather well, as a matter of fact.”
“You… you killed Jim?” Guinane was obviously beginning to recover from the blow on the head. Sydney must have grabbed the first heavy object that came to hand when Guinane walked into our office—the steel rule sometimes kept on my desk.
“Oh yes. I thought you’d realized that by now,” I heard Sydney say. “Detective Constable Danny Coates is my second wife’s brother, now my ex-brother-in-law. We’d always got on despite the bitch his sister turned out to be, and we’ve kept in touch even after the divorce. Like me, he enjoys a flutter on the horses, as well as blackjack and roulette. We frequent the same gambling clubs, as a matter of fact. He’s also not averse to the occasional coke wrap I supply him with from time to time.”
“Sydney… look, let me get up. Let’s stop… all this.” Guinane’s speech was still slurred and he sounded as if he was in pain, maybe concussed.
“I thought you wanted to hear? You know, it’s quite cathartic to get it off my chest, especially when you won’t be able to repeat it to anyone.”
“What do you mean?”
I heard noises as if Guinane was trying to get to his feet, but even as I peeked through the gap I saw him slump to the floor again, only saving himself from going all the way down by gripping the edge of the desk.
Sydney’s voice was soothing, yet it chilled me. “Hush, now. Be patient, Oliver. You want to hear the whole story, don’t you?”
Sydney appeared in the gap, his back to me. He was looming over Oliver, the metal rule held by his side, ready to strike.
“Yes, my cop friend gambles too much and has a penchant for cocaine. Not a fine endorsement for law and order, is it? Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in nowadays. Nothing’s clean anymore.”
Satisfied that Guinane was still weak and too dazed to be a problem, Sydney walked away, out of my line of sight. I crept closer to the opening, aware that it was becoming more and more difficult to maintain control over the body I occupied. If I was going to make a move, it would have to be soon, yet I had to hear more; I was still absorbed in these revelations.
“My ex-brother-in-law is chuffed to be detailed for such a high-profile case, the search for a serial killer who mutilates every victim. So much so, he can’t stop talking about it when we meet up for a spot of boozing and gambling. Bragging, I suppose you could say, because it made him look important. That’s why the plan to get rid of Jim True grew so easily in my mind. I could do the deed and make it look like the work of the serial killer. Jim would be put out of the way, no hindrance to the takeover. And who would suspect me of the crime? All I needed was the right opportunity, and you provided me with that, Oliver, when you rang me last Sunday night to tell me you and he had fallen out and you’d left the hotel. Leaving Jim alone. I was becoming pretty desperate by then, and your phone call was just the prompt I needed.”
“You couldn’t have…” There was shock and dismay in Guinane’s voice.
Sydney responded quickly, almost angrily. It was the first time his mood had tightened since I’d been listening. “Oh yes I could! I took my time after your call—forgive me for not backing up your story to the police, but by the time they asked me if you’d called that night as you’d told them, the plot had moved on. Now where was I? Oh yes, after your phone call I chose a suitable weapon—one of those short chef’s choppers from my kitchen that was not quite like the murder weapon used in the previous serial killings, but which served my purposes perfectly—blabbermouth DC Coates had told me about the real weapon. Incidentally, I got rid of it in the Thames the same night. I went to the hotel and used the keycard to your suite—you remember, I acquired a key for myself when I booked you both in, so that I could come and go as I pleased, check on your progress from time to time. I let myself in and, as I’d hoped, because it was so late, past midnight, found Jim asleep fully clothed on his bed. I think he’d hit the whisky bottle after your bust-up. And my, what a deep sleep he was in. You might have thought he was already dead, so shallow was his breath. It made him a nice easy target. I wore gloves and one of those terrible, old, gaudy shellsuits I thought were the height of fashion in the eighties and which I’d never thrown away, so blood wasn’t a problem. Any that splashed onto my face I washed away in the bathroom. I’d brought the shellsuit and gloves along in my briefcase, the chopper too, and that’s where they were returned to after the deed, just in case anyone saw me leave. Oh, and of course, the other weapon came in the briefcase too, but that was left at the scene of the crime. Danny Coates told me about the knitting needle—seemed to think it was common knowledge anyway even though it had been kept out of the media, by mutual agreement. You could easily have learned of it through one of your journalist friends. And by the way, another mistake the police think you made was to use the knitting needle on Jim after you’d killed him with the chopper. Their forensic expert worked that one out. That was just another thing that led them to believe a copycat killer was the perpetrator.”