Nobody True (20 page)

Andrea paused at the door and, one hand on the handle, looked back at Primrose. Our daughter was already asleep, exhausted by the trauma of the past few days. Andrea left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.

I sat on the floor by the bed, pretending to stroke Prim’s hair and her back, almost believing I could feel her as I whispered words of comfort, hoping that somehow my words—or at least the sentiment behind them—would get through. Pretty soon, she was giving out tiny snores, but I stayed with her, continuing to whisper, telling her over and over again how much I loved her and that she shouldn’t be afraid, Daddy was okay and he was with her even though she could not see him. At one stage, her eyelids flickered and she murmured “Daddy”, but she was quickly away again, fast asleep, slowly and unknowingly coming to terms with my death. One day at a time, I told her. It will eventually become all right. You’ll always miss me, I hope, but the hurt will lessen and eventually fade. Never completely, but enough for you to carry on with your own life without this debilitating heartache. God, I loved her so much, and the thought of what I was losing almost tore me apart.

Although I wasn’t tired myself, I closed my eyes, content just to be with her for a while. Eventually, her chest rose and sank rhythmically and her grasp on Snowy loosened as she fell into a deeper sleep. I opened my eyes and looked out the window: it was getting dark outside.

Rising from the bedside and giving Prim one last simulated kiss, I went to the door and passed through it. There was that fleeting and odd moment of seeping through thin air and atoms (did I actually pass through the air between the atoms? I briefly wondered, remembering that nothing in this world of ours—of yours—is truly solid. Maybe that’s the secret of insubstantial ghosts walking through apparently substantial walls or doors), the sensation of being part of the door itself, then I was on the landing outside my daughter’s bedroom. I could hear the low tones of voices below, the sound indicating that most of the guests had left. Silence followed, then voices again. One was Andrea’s. I walked along the landing and turned the bend leading to the stairs. Rather than glide, I took the stairs one at a time, as if my life was normal and I had just finished reading Prim a bedtime story, ready for a vodka tonic, or perhaps a brandy, before dinner. That would have been nice. That would have been so nice. But that wasn’t the reality. No, surprise, shock, dismay and misery were the reality. My past life had not quite done with me.

They were kissing. Andrea and Oliver were in each other’s arms and they were kissing.

I froze there and gaped.

It wasn’t a kiss of condolence. It wasn’t a platonic kiss between old friends. It was a ravenous, lustful kind of kiss. The tongue-swallowing kind. The kind Andrea and I hadn’t shared for the last three or four years.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I stared through the open door into the lounge and my knees almost gave way. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. My wife and my best friend. With me hardly dead five minutes. Was I crazy? Had my loss of body at last driven me crazy? It couldn’t be true.

They broke apart and it was only small consolation that Andrea was doing the pushing.

“No, we can’t,” she said breathlessly. “It isn’t right. Not so soon.”

Isn’t right? Not so soon? What the hell was she saying? It was… it was obscene!

“I’m sorry, Andrea.” He wouldn’t release his grip on her though. “I couldn’t wait any longer. It’s been such a rough few days.”

“How the bloody hell do you think it’s been for me?” she shouted back. “I never… I never wanted anything like this.”

His voice was anxious, but relatively calm compared to Andrea’s. Still he did not let her go.

She put her hands against his chest. “I loved him, Oliver. You must understand that. I still loved him.” There was a slight catch in her throat.

“Yes, I know.” He was looking intensely into her eyes. “But it wasn’t the same. It was never the way it is with us. Even when you first went to Jim, you still loved me.”

He tried to pull her close again, but Andrea resisted. I wished she’d resisted a few minutes ago.

“Primrose might come down,” she told him, her efforts to break away feeble.

“She’s dead to the world. Sorry, shouldn’t have put it that way. But the poor little mite is exhausted. She’ll sleep through the night if you’ll let her.”

Finally, Andrea did manage to free herself. Oliver attempted to grab her back.

“No!” This time her objection was fierce and Oliver took a pace backwards.

“All right, Andrea.” He kept his voice low, as if he might really wake Primrose. “It’s just been difficult keeping away from you when you’re going through so much.”

“How ironic is that?” She spat out the words contemptuously, but I knew they were directed at herself as much as my so-called friend. “What we’re doing is disgusting.”

Well, I went along with her there.

“You don’t mean it, Andrea. Just because he died in such a terrible way doesn’t mean what we have isn’t right.”

Isn’t right? He thought cheating on me was right? Before, I hadn’t believed my own eyes; now I couldn’t believe my ears. This hypocritical, two-timing bastard was justifying their treachery.

“But…”

He shook his head to stop her saying any more. “You needed me a few moments ago. Those were your true feelings, Andrea.”

“I need you now, but that’s not the point. It’s too soon, it’s too wrong.”

“How long do I have to wait?”

“I… I don’t know, Oliver. We have to give it time. We have to think of Primrose too.”

“And our friends? Your mother and father? His dreadful mother?”

My dreadful mother? Only I had the right to call her that.

“We have to do the proper thing for now.”

“You never stopped loving me, did you?” His eyes were wide, eyebrows raised. That old Oliver little-boy-lost look. Never failed. I’d seen him use it on men as well as women so many times, albeit in different circumstances. Had I ever honestly liked him?

“We shouldn’t even be discussing it. He was your best friend—don’t you feel any guilt?”

“Of course I do! I always have!” He was angry too. “But you should never have left me in the first place. You used Jim against me.”

“Of course I didn’t! How can you say that?” Andrea glanced towards the staircase as if afraid her raised voice had roused our daughter. For a moment, she seemed to be looking directly at me.

Then the doorbell rang, making all three of us jump.

Andrea opened the front door. On the doorstep stood DS Simmons and DC Coates. They must have followed the funeral cars back to the house, waiting outside until they thought everybody had left.

The taller of the two, Simmons, appeared to be spokesman. “Sorry to bother you on this sad occasion, Mrs True, but is Mr Oliver Guinane still with you? We’ve been waiting some time for him to leave so that we didn’t need to disturb you.”

Andrea looked behind her, her mouth open in surprise. Oliver was standing in the doorway of the lounge and only a few feet away from me.

“It’s all right, Andrea,” he said, “leave this to me.” His voice was calm, but I couldn’t help noticing there was an edge to it. Natural enough, I suppose, when two unfriendly-looking policemen confront you. “Can I help you?” he asked politely. Now I noticed how pale his face was.

“Yes, Sir. Detective Sergeant Simmons and Detective Constable Coates—we met you at the hotel on Monday.”

“Of course.” Oliver nodded to them both.

“May we come in?” Simmons asked Andrea courteously.

She hesitated, but only for a moment “I… I suppose so. My daughter is asleep upstairs.”

“We’ll be very quiet. Just some questions we need to ask Mr Guinane.”

Andrea opened the door wide and stepped to one side to allow the two policemen to enter.

Simmons and Coates stood in the hallway, looking awkward, but their eyes finding Oliver’s from time to time.

“As you probably know, Mrs True, DC Coates and I are working on the case of your husband’s murder.”

She nodded. “I noticed you at the funeral.”

“I hope we weren’t obtrusive in any way.”

“No. Unlike the Press people.”

“Yes.” Simmons pondered this for a second or two. “Newspaper people can be a nuisance sometimes. But there was nothing that we, as policemen, could do about it. Free Press, and all that.”

“It’s okay, I wasn’t blaming you.” She glanced at Oliver, who was still waiting in the doorway to the lounge. “Why did you want to see Oliver?”

Andrea seemed nervous to me, probably because of what she and my ex-friend had been up to a couple of minutes ago.

“Ah, I think that must be between Mr Guinane and us for now.” It was the shorter man, Coates, who had spoken. “It’s only a few simple questions, nothing formal. Shouldn’t take long.”

Andrea looked questioningly at Oliver, who had stepped aside from the door.

“I’ve no objection to Andrea being present. Shall we go through?” His hand indicated the lounge.

“Uh, no, Mr Guinane.” Simmons again. “Certainly we can talk wherever you suggest, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for Mrs True to be in on this.”

Quick, anxious looks were exchanged between Andrea and Oliver. Oliver started to protest, but Andrea interrupted.

“That’s all right, Sergeant,” she said. “I’ll check on my daughter and wait with her until you tell me I can come down.”

“Shouldn’t be too long,” Simmons promised this time.

I wasn’t prepared for the next moment. Andrea strode straight through me to climb the stairs and I almost sagged with the weight of the emotions that hit me. She was confused and unexpectedly frightened, all beneath a surging undercurrent of terrible grief. Fortunately, she passed on swiftly and mounted the stairs, her step weary.

Both detectives faced Oliver.

“Shall we go through, Sir?” suggested Coates, who had an undisguised glint in his eye as he regarded Oliver.

Oliver allowed them access, then followed into the room. I trailed in after Oliver.

He indicated, inviting both policemen to sit and they duly found places at either end of the sofa. As for me, I was in no mood to sit, because I was raging. I wanted to catch hold of my ex-friend and partner and throttle him there and then. I wanted to beat him to a pulp and, indeed, I took several swings at him, all of them useless, merely swiping through him as though he was nothing more than a hologram. I ranted. I kicked him where it really should have hurt, but he didn’t even flinch. God, I wanted to kill him!

But I could only wait and listen. The interview went something like this:

DS SIMMONS: “Mr Guinane, the other day you told us that you left the hotel on the night of James True’s murder and returned home.”

OLIVER: “Yes.”

DS SIMMONS: “Yet a neighbour of yours, an early riser who had a pet dog to let out into the apartment gardens, told us he saw you entering the apartments’ foyer around 6 a.m.”

OLIVER: Silence.

DC COATES: “You were empty-handed, so you couldn’t have been out to buy milk or the morning papers.”

OLIVER: Uncomfortable silence.

DS SIMMONS: “Do you wish to change your original statement, Sir?”

OLIVER: “I couldn’t sleep. I was kind of wired—you know Jim and I were working on a big campaign for a prospective client? It’s hard to relax after you’ve been dreaming up winning ideas half the night.”

DC COATES: “So you left the hotel suite quite early, did you? Sunday night, I mean.”

OLIVER: “Well, not that early. It must’ve been somewhere around midnight. I didn’t check my watch, had no reason to.”

DC COATES: “You were overheard having a violent argument with James True—”

OLIVER: “It was hardly violent. There’s bound to be creative differences from time to time. It goes with the territory and it’s never serious.”

DS SIMMONS: “The hotel’s night porter, who was collecting breakfast order cards, said the row sounded extremely serious when he passed by the room.”

OLIVER: “He’s wrong. We might have been a bit loud, but we didn’t come to blows or anything like that.”

DC COATES: “Isn’t it true that there was also a significant business disagreement between you both at this time?”

OLIVER: “We failed to agree on a forthcoming merger with a larger agency—I was pro, Jim was con—but it was hardly cause for murder, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

DS SIMMONS: “We’re not suggesting anything at this time.”

DC COATES: “You and True’s wife were lovers at one time, weren’t you?”

OLIVER: “Good God. Has somebody at the agency been gossiping? Our relationship was years ago, before Jim and Andrea were married. In fact, Andrea was actually my live-in partner before she decided on Jim. There’s been nothing between us since.”

ME: Huh!

DS SIMMONS: “Are you quite certain of that, Mr Guinane?”

OLIVER: “Of course I’m bloody certain!”

DS SIMMONS: “Well, we’ll leave that for now.”

ME: No, ask him more. He’s lying!