Black Widow (27 page)

A possibility presented itself and I brushed the trackpad to ensure the laptop didn't go into screen-saver mode.

I walked on soft feet towards our bedroom, but before I reached it I heard the sound of water running in the shower. I didn't know how long he had been in there, but it was less than the two minutes it took for the laptop to go to sleep. Peter was usually under the spray for at least ten, and that was before he shaved.

I checked my watch and returned to the den, leaving the door open so that I could listen out for signs of Peter emerging from the bathroom.

I went to his internet history first. If he was paranoid about what I might catch a glimpse of when I came in without knocking, then I figured he would be at his least guarded when he thought I was out of the house for the day.

I honestly can't say what I expected or even feared I would find, but in the event there was nothing to raise an eyebrow. He had been browsing sci-fi fan forums and watching a video-game reviews podcast, which made me jump because it started blaring from the speakers when I clicked the link. I hoped the water was still running in the bathroom to drown out the sound of theme music mixed with explosions.

Opening the full history and scrolling backwards chronologically, I saw little among the web addresses that was concerning or informative. Why was he so protective about it then?

I searched the list for hotel sites, hoping to find out whether he had made a booking in Glasgow or London, but nothing leapt out at me amidst the endless sprawl of forum pages and YouTube videos.

I looked at my watch. I had been on for three minutes. I listened carefully to the silence from the hall, realising it sounded slightly different. The boiler had been firing and now it wasn't: a low background white noise one only noticed when it ceased.

Shit.

I opened his email client and scrolled his inbox for the few seconds it took me to realise this was a task that would require hours, even if I knew what I was looking for. Was there any way to copy this, I wondered. I had a USB stick in my bag, but I recalled the time I backed up my email folders, and it had taken about forty minutes to export them.

In a moment of either desperation or inspiration, I ran a search for all files or programs accessed that day, in the hope that I would maybe turn up a PDF with hotel details or a Word document listing Peter's travel itinerary. London or Glasgow, I couldn't say at that point which I would have preferred to find.

The search results listed several image files and two videos, the most recent of them accessed only minutes before I got home. I clicked on one of the jpegs and the screen filled with an image of a woman sitting on a bed, naked. Her back was resting against a headboard, her legs slightly apart. The shot was cropped so that she was only visible from the neck down. I clicked the forward button and the image was replaced by a picture from presumably moments later. The composition was the same, but her legs were slightly wider, a hand resting on her stomach with her fingers brushing the top of her thin strip of pubic hair.

I almost laughed that the explanation should be so prosaic. He was just checking out porn: not every time my presence caused him to shut the laptop, I sincerely hoped, but this morning, when he knew for a fact I was out.

I clicked on one of the video files. The screen now showed an almost identical shot, but in motion this time. The colour was slightly washed and the definition lower, it being video, but it appeared to be the same session. The woman's head was still out of shot. She fondled her own breasts in that way no woman has ever done except on-camera for male pleasure, then spread her legs slowly. I turned up the volume but only heard background hiss. I thought maybe there was no sound, but then she moaned as she began to masturbate.

That was when I asked myself why Peter would be looking at one faceless cropped woman for his jollies when he had the entire internet at his disposal. A knot formed in my stomach as I remembered the time he asked if he could film us. He promised to keep my face out of shot so that I couldn't be identified. Both of our faces, in fact.

Peter had taken these pictures. Peter had shot this video.

I clicked on the other video. It was from a different occasion, maybe a different room, but though her head was still cropped out, I was sure it was the same woman: same breasts, same navel, same landing-strip pubes. She was sitting on a table or a desk this time, having sex with an also headless male who was in a standing position as he thrust away. There was no question but that it was Peter. I didn't need to see his face: I was familiar enough with all the other parts that were in shot, and with the sound of his pleasured moans and grunts.

I reduced the video window and right-clicked on one of the jpegs to see when the file was created. I braced myself for what it might disclose, but bore in mind that the data might merely show when the image was copied to this laptop.

It indicated that the photo was taken almost two years ago, and the first video displayed the same date. The second video was older by three months. This was someone he'd been with before he met me.

I experienced a moment of relief that lasted only until I asked myself what he was doing poring over this stuff now. Was this someone he still wanted? Was this something that wasn't over? Was he going to meet this woman in Glasgow, today, tonight?

I was shaken from my thoughts by the sound of the bathroom door opening down the hall, and reacted automatically. I shut the video window and stepped out of the den, just as Peter was stepping from the bathroom. He had a towel wrapped around his waist, rubbing at his hair with another. He bridled at the sight of me, shock in his expression and a wave of fright causing him to shudder. I remembered that he didn't know I was home.

‘There you are. I thought you were in your office,' I said, by way of explaining my own emergence from the den.

‘Jeez, the fright you gave me. I didn't hear you come in.'

‘Sorry. Things were quiet at the hospital so I decided to pop back, see a bit more of you before you go.'

I followed him into the bedroom as if keen to talk, though it was the last thing I wanted right then. It was my attempt to seem natural; the desire to act natural, of course, only coming when one fears one is acting suspicious. It was once I was in there that I remembered I hadn't put the laptop into sleep mode, which was how Peter would be expecting to find it by the time he was finished his ablutions. I knew it was unlikely, but nonetheless it was possible that he might head back there before getting dressed, maybe to check his email or type out a note. I had seen him do both such things in a towel before, some thought having struck him while he was in the shower.

I started prattling about my morning, pouring out all manner of uninteresting guff so that he couldn't politely leave the room for the next two minutes. But even as I spoke, all I could think about was that faceless woman, and the fact that the man in front of me had been watching himself fuck her moments before I came home.

Had he been jerking off in the shower thinking about her? Was that why he'd been playing those videos right then?

The thought compelled me in the oddest way. I strode across to where he was standing and put my hands around his waist.

‘Sorry, I'm wittering away here while you're standing in nothing but a towel. A shocking waste, especially as you'll be away all weekend.'

I pulled myself against him, running a hand over his chest, delicately stroking his nipple. I gave him a long kiss and slipped my hand slowly down beneath the towel, cupping his balls then running my fingers along his penis, which was rapidly in the process of becoming erect. This told me he hadn't been masturbating over the images, because I knew he couldn't get hard again so soon. I found this strangely reassuring. It changed the complexion of what I had seen. There could have been other reasons why he was looking at these old images. I was the one he wanted to be with now, for God's sake. I was the one he had married.

But then that word reared up at me, tapping into all that I didn't know. Was I the
one
he had married? Was this woman in the pictures his first wife? Was this woman someone he
wished
was his wife?

Then the worst of it hit me. Of course he wouldn't
be masturbating over pictures of someone if he was going to meet up with her for real – for sex – a few hours later.

I watched him dress, looking for clues. He eschewed the linen trousers he generally favoured for flying, instead pulling on a pair of black jeans. However, I noticed that they were held up by a belt with a plastic buckle, the unusual material allowing for the clasp to be in the shape of some video-game logo. The belt wouldn't need to be removed at security, and nor would the sneakers he pulled on at the front door, suggesting he was flying after all.

He gave me a warm kiss goodbye, then climbed into a waiting cab. If he was deceiving me, right to my face, then he was doing a coolly convincing job of it. I didn't detect anything strange in his manner, and remembering how conspicuously fervent I had felt after looking on his laptop, I realised this was not something easily achieved.

I told myself to stop searching for things that weren't there, but after an hour of self-counselling and attempting to rationalise, I still couldn't think of anything but the woman in those images.

I called the taxi firm and got the dispatcher to give me the mobile number of the driver who had recently picked up from my address. He answered after two rings, easy listening music audible in the background.

‘Hi. You picked up someone from my house a short while ago. I've just realised he's left his phone here and I was hoping to catch him up before he gets too far. Can you tell me where you took him?'

‘A Mr Elphinstone, was it?'

‘That's right.'

‘Aye, dropped him at the station about forty minutes ago.'

Parlabane was sitting in his car just down the street from the hotel, thumbing through emails on his phone, when a well-honed instinct began to whisper a warning that someone was watching him. There was an older-model black Porsche parked on the other side of the road, lights off inside and out, a solitary figure sitting at the wheel in the dark. He had been there since Parlabane got into his own vehicle, and Parlabane hadn't paid him much heed, but years of experience had told him to trust his gut on things like this.

He had checked out of the hotel upon returning from the hospital, figuring it was quiet enough to check back in if he decided there was reason to stick around. He had one more thing to look into – involving a sit-down with a former colleague of Peter's – but unless it turned up something remarkable, he would be driving back to Edinburgh later that night. He wasn't meeting the guy for more than an hour, so he decided to go for a spin, see whether the Porsche followed.

Sure enough, no sooner had he pulled away than the headlights came on and a subsequent glance in his rear-view showed the nineties-vintage 911 swinging across the street, performing a U-turn. Parlabane's knowledge of Inverness wasn't great, but he knew he would hit a roundabout fairly soon if he stuck to the main routes. He encountered one about a quarter of a mile along the dual carriageway, where he executed what the cops called a reciprocal. He went halfway around and doubled back, allowing him to see the Porsche approach on the opposite carriageway, but it was too dark to get a look at the driver. Whoever he was, he didn't recognise the implications of Parlabane's manoeuvre for his attempt at covert surveillance, because he reappeared in the rear-view a few seconds later, heading back the way they had both come.

Parlabane was congratulating himself on having baulked the guy when it occurred to him that maybe his surveillance wasn't meant to be covert. Could be he had recognised the implications entirely but didn't care because he wanted to be noticed. With that in mind, Parlabane headed back into the city centre and let the one-way system and the traffic lights put sufficient vehicles and distance between himself and the Porsche until he was happy he had lost him. Then he headed out of town. He still had time to kill and there was somewhere he wanted to take a look at.

He let his sat-nav direct him up the hill past the hospital and out beyond Culloden, towards Diana Jager's address. He wasn't going to doorstep her, especially after their earlier encounter, but he wanted a feel for the place, and if the lights were off, it might be quite a close feel too.

Parlabane pulled in short of the cottage, closer to the neighbouring house but near enough to see that Jager's home was in darkness. He turned off the engine and killed the headlights. There was a faint glow visible now to the rear of the cottage, but he couldn't tell if it was a light on at the rear or whether it was perhaps coming from another property abutting Jager's garden. He would check it out anyway: he was practised at staying hidden when the circumstances required it.

He gripped the door handle but before he could open it, another vehicle appeared, approaching from the rear. It stopped about twenty yards behind Parlabane and its headlights darkened, which was when Parlabane recognised it as the Porsche. The driver was too far back to be identified in this darkness, but he could see that the figure inside was on the phone.

Maybe ten minutes passed, a long ten minutes. Neither of them made a move: they both sat there in a silent stand-off. The driver wanted Parlabane to know he had eyes on him. Either Parlabane had been mistaken in thinking he had shaken the surveillance, or the guy knew where he was likely to go. Either way, it was bad news.

The deadlock was broken when another vehicle appeared, arriving from the opposite direction. It was a patrol car, with two officers inside. It swung across into the single carriageway and stopped in front of Parlabane, nose to nose. At this moment the Porsche growled back into life, executing a three-point turn before heading back the way it had come so that Parlabane was once again denied even a passing look at the driver.