Black Widow (31 page)

Her words were warm, the balm of feeling that someone else understood.

‘It was a slow demise, eventually irreparable, but yes. I lost something – we both did – something that was more than each other, if you know what I mean.'

‘I think I do. I've always thought a relationship should be about creating something greater than the sum of its parts. I think that's why I was always protective towards Peter in that regard: wanting to know what the other half is bringing to the table. I was rightly suspicious in the past: he was bitten more than once by women who buggered off once they found out there was no fortune.'

‘But from what I've found, that's not Diana. If she believed Peter was secretly rich, she wouldn't have encouraged him to stake so much of his time and energy on this project, would she?'

‘You're right.'

Lucy took a slow sip from her glass of white wine.

‘But that brings us back to how hard he was working and that message he left this Harper guy about being in over his head. He said he'd done something he couldn't take back. Surely that suggests…'

She sighed, holding up her hands in a gesture of frustration. She couldn't define what that suggests, which was the very nub of this.

Parlabane spoke calmly.

‘We don't know what it suggests. Yes, Peter was apparently under pressure: whether from his work or his marriage or a combination of both, we simply don't know. It doesn't mean anybody was to blame. It doesn't mean that the accident wasn't what it looks like.'

He chose his words delicately, not overtly including the possibility of suicide, but not excluding it either.

Lucy's face looked strained: like part of her felt obliged to keep fighting but the other half didn't believe in the cause any more.

‘But what about her telling me he almost lost control of the car at the same place? Doesn't that sound suspicious?'

He reached out his hand and placed it gently around her forearm.

Lucy looked back at him, fragile and yet somehow grateful, craving his reassurance that it was going to be okay. A hint of a tear glistened in one eye.

‘If you look long enough into any sudden death, any accident, you'll start seeing strange coincidences, and there's a temptation to start joining dots. It's like seeing faces in the clouds. Unless, that is, there's something you're not telling me.'

She gazed away for a moment then shook her head sadly. She seemed shrunken again, crestfallen. He had to show her that she was seeing it wrong.

‘We both know I could start looking deeper: start pulling at the frayed edges of what I've found, but I'd only end up ascribing imaginary significance to incidents or remarks. I know you came to me because I've got this reputation for finding hidden conspiracies, but I've learned the hard way about looking too hard for things that aren't there. Sometimes you've got to take comfort in the anthropic principle.'

‘Which is what?'

‘It is what it is.'

She gave him a half smile. She understood. The tear spilled and she wiped it. She moved her arm and he thought she was pulling it from his grasp, but instead she took his hand in hers, gripping it tightly.

‘Lucy, when you came to see me the other day, you said your preferred outcome was that I would come back and tell you there's nothing to this. Well, that's what I'm offering you here.'

She gripped tighter, squeezing, her fingers stroking the back of his hand. Then just as he thought she was going to let go, once again they held each other's gaze a moment too long.

She leaned forward and kissed him.

The parallel realities crossed over.

Two seconds ago, he'd never have seen this happening, but a moment can change everything. Even as she began to lean towards him, he knew what he wanted to happen, and miraculously it did.

He felt himself fade from the room, fade from the physical. The sounds of conversation, music, clinking glasses and laughter all muted. He hadn't kissed another woman like that in fifteen years. She smelled like cinnamon and lemon grass: natural and warm.

And then when she pulled back, the spell was broken.

What was he thinking? This was all wrong, in so many ways. She was grieving and vulnerable. There was also a professional relationship in play here. She wasn't in any formal way his client, but nonetheless, there were huge implications for his judgement.

She must have clocked the look of regret on his face and misread it. She sat back further from him along the bench, looking flustered.

‘I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened. That was inappropriate.'

‘Don't worry about it,' he said, but evidently she would not be reassured.

‘No, you've done so much for me, and … Well, maybe that's just it. I'm a wreck at the moment and at times like that I can get overcome by somebody being nice to me.'

She gathered up her coat and got to her feet. She glanced at his pint glass, still more than half full.

‘I'll leave you to your drink. Thanks for all you've done, but I'd better go.'

He could have stopped her, he realised, as he walked home from the pub in the rain roughly a pint and a half later. He could have persuaded her to stay, told her she wasn't the only one feeling overcome. Told her how much he had wanted her to kiss him.

Why didn't he?

Because he was terrified, was the answer.

He hadn't been in a relationship of any kind since it all fell apart between him and Sarah. The nearest he had come was with Mairi, his late friend's younger sister, who he had known as a teenager then not seen in two decades. They had become close when the singer of a band she managed went missing and he helped find out what had happened.

He had come up with so many crappy reasons not to pursue that, many of which were sounding familiar: she was in a vulnerable place; they had a sort of professional relationship; they were confusing stressful emotions for something else. But the main one had been that he was kidding himself it wasn't over with Sarah.

He had spoken to Mairi online but she had barely been in the country for months. It was only once she was gone that he realised how right she was for him; how daft, how cowardly he'd been not to pursue it. Maybe it wasn't too late, though. He and Mairi had left the door open before she went travelling with the band, so perhaps that had been a factor in letting Lucy walk out of the pub.

He recalled the taste of her, the smell of spices, the touch of her hand. Then he pictured her lifting her coat in flushed embarrassment. That was when he realised what he had just done. He had held back from Mairi because he was telling himself Sarah was still possible. Now he was holding back from Lucy because he was telling himself Mairi was still possible.

The rain was turning to sleet as he trudged along Maybury Lane, making it seem all the more dark and narrow. It hit his face in big wet blotches, like airborne slush. Sometimes cold water to the face was exactly what he needed.

Get real, he chided himself. As if he could possibly end up with some aristo offspring whose full name was Petronella Lucille, for God's sake. As if.

But as he came in sight of the square, he realised he was trying to make himself feel better because he was worried he'd blown it.

He was starting to have feelings for her and that scared him. How long was he going to stay damaged by what happened with Sarah? And at what point was loneliness going to scare him more?

His close came into sight and he fished in his pocket for his keys. As he pulled them out he heard a scurry of movement at his back and then suddenly all was black. A thick sack was yanked down over his head and arms from behind, while at the same time a fist drove into his gut. The blow wasn't particularly powerful, but the surprise of it was enough to double him over. He felt a draw-cord tighten at the mouth of the sack, tethering his wrists to his sides as hands drove him forward along the pavement. His knees rapped against something solid and he pitched forward, off-balance, then he hit what felt like chipboard: the floor of a van. He was dragged inside then heard the doors slam closed.

He couldn't see and he could barely breathe from the blow and from sheer panic. He felt the pressure of human weight pinning him to the deck. Someone was kneeling on his back, hands gripping one of his legs, holding it in place. Other hands were tugging at the bottom of his jeans, then he felt the tiny cold sharpness of a needle in his calf.

The rear doors opened and closed again. A few moments later he heard the sound of someone climbing into the cab at the front, then of a diesel engine ticking into life. The last thing he was aware of was a swaying sensation as the van began to move.

‘For a long time I really thought he was the one.'

Liz Miller began speaking as I surrendered to my hunger and bit into the hummus wrap that had been placed in front of me a short time earlier.

‘And by that I don't mean I was worried I might never find someone. I mean I didn't think I was ever going to be capable of a relationship again. Well, to be honest finding someone was always going to be difficult too, but I didn't even think I was ready to go looking.'

She shifted in her seat, sitting up straighter. These remarks were clearly an overture to something. Her eyes flitted back and forth, as though checking how close the nearest other customers might be to earshot. We were seated by the window, with a view of the Tay suggesting our words would be swallowed by the wind, and yet it was a compact little place, the tables close together. If the music suddenly shut off, I felt my voice would be audible from the kitchen.

‘This is a hell of a thing to tell a complete stranger too, but in my case it's a matter of public record. I went to prison ten years ago. I served four years for stabbing my partner.'

‘By partner do you mean …?'

‘My boyfriend,' she clarified, though evidently the word made her shudder. ‘Common-law husband, as the law would have it, given we were living together, though to this day I don't know how it ever came to that. The signs were all there before we started sharing a home, but I was kidding myself, maybe thinking I would change him once he was under my roof.'

‘He was violent? He abused you? And you stabbed him?'

She nodded, a grim but unapologetic sadness in her face.

‘Good for you.'

The impulse of solidarity had come through before I could censor myself.

‘Actually, not so good for me as it turned out. He came in from the pub one night and he had this look about him, one I recognised as flashing with all the warning signs. He could barely see straight and he was full of poison. I tried to make him go to bed but he followed me into the kitchen, intent on starting one of those conversations where I knew there were no right answers, just different routes into the inevitable. I had been there before and I knew I should have left him afterwards: that's why I was so scared. I thought I'd had my chance to get away and this was my fate for not taking it.'

‘So you killed him in self-defence?'

I was trying to deduce the charge and mitigation from the sentence she had served.

‘No. The fucker survived, and the blood-alcohol level recorded at the hospital ended up getting used against
me
. It was my word against his, and the prosecution said I had taken advantage of his inebriated state to attempt to kill him while he was vulnerable. A couple of pints fewer and it would have been me who ended up in Trauma, or worse, but because he was too pissed to beat me up properly, I went to prison.'

Liz's voice broke a little towards the end and she swallowed, taking a moment to recover from the effort of telling me this. Her hands were clasped together on the table. I saw that they were shaking.

‘When I got out I thought I'd never allow a man to get close to me again, or allow myself to trust one. But then a couple of years ago, I met Peter. He had recently moved to the area, and we met when he joined the gym where I was a member. There was a group of us having coffee after a spin class. I mentioned I was having computer problems and he offered to fix my laptop if I brought it along next time. It started from there.

‘He didn't ask me out for a while, which is just as well, as I would have backed off. He was very patient, so much that I didn't think he was interested that way. We went for a bike ride together. He called me before the spin class and said the weather was too good for being stuck in the gym, so would I like to join him. We rode for miles, and got talking properly for the first time, one to one, when we stopped for water up near Monifieth.'

The shaking of her hands had ceased. Talking about Peter seemed to calm her, an effect that was less pacific to me.

‘Peter is a gentle soul. You'll know that.'

I nodded, encouraging her to go on, though I wasn't sure I liked how it was developing.

‘He was good for me. He was solicitous and unassuming. He listened to me. He built up my confidence. He was everything I needed in order to believe I could have a relationship again, to believe I could trust a man again. But both of those things were mere by-products of the most important thing: he made me believe in
myself
again.'

All of this was sounding unnervingly familiar. I wondered how far the comparisons would endure.

‘And what did you do for him?'

I was careful not to make it sound suspicious.

‘I confess I never stopped to ask. I was so happy, and it was like aviation: I didn't want to think about how it worked, in case somehow it didn't any more. I did wonder sometimes how he could be still single, but I knew he was shy, and that was before I learned about how he had been hurt before, by the women who thought he had money.'

She glanced at me to confirm I knew what she was talking about. I gave her a solemn nod.

‘I mean, he wasn't the absolute perfect catch. He was a shambles in a lot of ways, particularly career-wise. He had a hatful of abandoned ambitions, but the bastard I went to jail for was a driven individual, so it would be fair to say it wasn't the trait I most prized in a man. Peter made me feel happy, and loved, and safe. Those things were far more important. And then he asked me to marry him.'