Unfaithfully Yours (20 page)

I can remember, one night, having the little bastard spread out in front of me on a plastic mat. He was kicking his legs wildly as yet more yellow stuff oozed out of his arse and all over my fucking hands.

‘Listen, you little bastard!’ I said, pinning him down with slightly more force than was necessary. ‘Fuck off, if you don’t like it! Just fuck off out of it! Or if you’re going to stay – and at the moment I don’t see any alternative – please shut the fuck up!’

But he just kept on making that noise. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t focus his eyes or control his bowels or bladder. He had no teeth. He had no memory. He had no idea who he was or who I was or why I was telling him, with some urgency, to keep his fucking mouth shut. All he could do was keep making that noise. And as I stood there, in the early hours of the morning, I began to wonder more and more at that one thing he could do. It was an incredible noise for a thing of that size to make. It didn’t go up or down the scale. It didn’t get louder or softer. It started at what seemed maximum intensity, went on until his tiny lungs were empty, and then, with the briefest of pauses for the taking in of more air, started again. He was putting absolutely all of his eight pounds and fourteen ounces into it. His little face, wrinkled with bad temper, was dark red and, for a moment, I thought something was going to burst in that minuscule frame.

But he did not give up. What he was saying, what he is still saying, was ‘I can keep this up for longer than you, you cunt!’ It was the message I got from Conrad the toddler, in his Osh Kosh dungarees, and it was the message I got from Conrad in his St Jude’s school uniform. It was the message I got from Conrad the ten-year-old terror, and Conrad the teenager, with the haircut that made him look like a mad scientist, and the unexpected talent for shoplifting. It was the message I got from him in the Cider Years and it is the message I get from him now.

I haven’t said anything about Julia because there is nothing to say about Julia. Elizabeth made sure of that.

I am going to post this at your house now. I know you are there because I saw you go in. And I know John is not there because I saw him come out. If you love me at all, come out and sit next to me and maybe we’ll kiss and maybe we won’t, but at least I’ll know we’ve decided to do away with all these horrible suburban lies and start again. And maybe I can work on being a halfway decent human being.

Gerald

From:

Roland O. Gibbons

Gibbons Detective Agency

12 The Alley

Putney, SW15

5 November

To:

Elizabeth Price

PO Box 132

Putney

Dear Mrs Price,

I have not heard from you since 10 September and am writing to keep you up to date with developments in regard to my surveillance of your husband Gerald Price.

I find taking up my pen to write to you makes me extremely nervous. I hope you will not be offended if I tell you that. In Putney you are generally known as a ‘scary lady’! And when I actually caught sight of you at the performance of
Hamlet
I did not know how to behave. I hope you felt I was sufficiently discreet. Mrs Dimmock said that when we were introduced by Gerald I was ‘blatantly rude’ but I felt that it was time to ‘play old Stone Face’ and that was what I did. I am sorry.

Wasn’t it a wonderful production by the way? Didn’t you think that Mrs Dimmock somehow caught the spirit of Ophelia? She is, as some unkind people pointed out, at least thirty years too old for the part – but that is not the point, is it? I am not exactly the ‘Horatio type’ and felt inhibited by the jodhpurs. It was a bit of fun. I think it is always best to treat Shakespeare as a bit of fun and not take it too seriously even though
Hamlet
is obviously a tragedy and everyone dies. The fact that some people were openly laughing at the moment when Hamlet and Gertrude and Claudius and Laertes all died, was not, in my view, a bad thing. It is pretty funny, isn’t it? I mean, they all die at practically the same time! Who was Shakespeare trying to fool?

I am obviously keen to know your feelings as to your ‘next move’. As I think I said in my last letter, I do hope the revelations with which I have provided you have not been distressing or – even more importantly – prompted you to ‘take the law into your own hands’.

Let me know if you wish to commence legal proceedings against your husband. Some people object to my filming them having sex when they have not given me permission to do so. It is a tricky area. Although, of course, Mrs Dimmock did do what she did with your husband. You may well say that if people don’t want to be filmed having sex with people, they should choose their partners more carefully.

Perhaps you could write to me as soon as convenient at the above address. I am enclosing my bill for your kind attention. I have not, obviously, included time spent in rehearsals for
Hamlet
or my attendances at Sam Dimmock’s surgery; quite often, as I became more deeply involved in the case, these were things I actually took pleasure in doing. That might be a strange thing to say about visits to the dentist but Sam is really good at his job and Mrs Dimmock, in spite of her deplorable behaviour with your husband, is a very sweet and compassionate person, who was never less than a perfect dental nurse as far I was concerned.

After payment of my bill I shall assume – unless I hear from you to the contrary – that our professional relationship is terminated and that you now have sufficient evidence of your husband’s deception. As to the matter of the unfortunate death of Pamela Larner, I should also let you know that I have been asked by another party to investigate this on a full-time basis. It might be that I should request an interview with you about the late Mrs Larner but would obviously not touch on our entirely confidential relationship at that or any other time.

I can say no more at the moment. My investigation is not a murder inquiry although I could not definitively say, either in my private or professional capacity, that it might not, at some stage, turn into one. In pursuit of that end it might be necessary for me to visit your home in Heathland Avenue. It would obviously be more convenient for me if Mr Price was not aware that I was the same man who has been filming him having sex with Mrs Dimmock! I might not even say that that is what I have come to interview him about.

I am not saying that he definitively is a suspect but he might become one. Or might, indeed, already be one, even if I am not at liberty to say that he actually is. Or that I have any evidence to suggest that he might be. Although that might well be possible.

If it is any comfort to you, I have discovered that Mrs Dimmock seems now to be involved with another man. I will not name him but, from what I hear, he is a decent sort. I, personally, feel she was as much a victim in all this as you, and hope it will not be necessary to ‘drag her name through the mud’.

I await your response and assure you of my good attention at all times. I do hope your marital difficulties are resolved satisfactorily,

Yours with deep respect,

Roland O. Gibbons

From:

Roland O. Gibbons

Gibbons Detective Agency

12 The Alley

Putney, SW15

10 November

To:

Elizabeth Price

PO Box 132

Putney

Dear Mrs Price,

I am sorry not to have received a reply to my letter of 5 November. It is possible that my letter did not reach you so I am going myself, personally, to the local sorting office to make sure you receive this.

I do feel that now our professional relationship has ended, and I have acted in a manner that totally and utterly safeguarded your privacy in regard to the question of your husband’s adultery, there is no logical reason why we cannot have a ‘face-to-face’ meeting. Indeed, we have already had one! Even though, of course, we had to pretend we had never met. You get to know someone just as well, however, by correspondence as by meeting them physically in person. The way people write, if you will forgive me saying so, expresses their personality – which is perhaps why my first wife described me as a completely inadequate human being.

Ooops!

May I say, while I am on the subject of being in the room with you, how foolish it seems of your husband to ignore the charms of such a beautiful and commanding woman as you so clearly are. When I met you I got a real charge! You are physically intense, and your dry, drawling ‘upper-class’ voice gives you a steely edge that made me think of the films of the 1940s in which stylish women behave badly. Your beret really suited you!

I know I am expressing myself badly. I am nervous. I cannot think why you have not answered my earlier letter. I am worried in case you think I behaved improperly in the course of the investigation. I do assure you I did not.

If I do not receive an answer to this letter within five working days I will present myself at 112 Heathland Avenue at 1430 hours on the afternoon of 16 November. I am being precise about this time because it may be possible for you to arrange for your husband not to be on the premises when I call. If it is not, I would suggest we meet on ‘neutral ground’ either the ‘Duke’s Head’ by Putney Bridge at the same time or, if a ‘pub’ does not seem suitable, the Caffè Nero near to the junction of Disraeli Road and the Lower Richmond Road at the same time. I believe you have my email address, my mobile and landline numbers. There cannot have been many periods of history, Mrs Price, when there have been so many methods of communication available to those wishing to make contact. It really does seem almost barbaric that I should be writing this letter by hand, then sending it by ‘snail mail’ to a post-office box address and I feel it is time to ‘break through’ the entirely artificial barriers you seem to wish to put between us.

Two and a half thousand pounds, Mrs Price, is, to someone in my position, a very great deal of money. It may not seem a great deal to you. I have seen the outside of your house and I would estimate its value at upwards of £2.5 million. I admire the flowering cherry tree. I like what you have done with the iron railings and the white wall. I have noted the ADT security system and the Range Rover. Olive trees in tubs – of which there are four on the front paved area – give the place a ‘Mediterranean feel’. My humble flat in Keswick Road seems, next to your ‘mansion’, almost squalid. I did not go to Oxford. Or to Cambridge. But I want my money, Mrs Price. And I want it now.

I look forward to our next meeting. If it has to be ‘face-to-face’ I hope it is a pleasant one. I feel I have given you sufficient ‘leeway’ and that now we will be able to communicate more directly on the question of your husband’s adultery and, indeed, on many other matters.

This is no longer the age of the letter, Mrs Price. This is no longer the time of Lord Chesterfield or Horace Walpole! You see, I have read some books in my time, even if my ‘writing style’ leaves a little to be desired!

Yours truly,

Roland O. Gibbons

From:

Orlando Gibbons

Flat 12, Woodvale Mansions

Keswick Road

Putney

17 November

To:

‘Mrs Price’

PO Box 132

Putney

Dear ‘Mrs Price’,

This is an occasion when my use of inverted commas is completely and utterly justified. You are not – whoever you are – Mrs Price, are you? You are ‘Mrs Price’. Inverted commas. You are a person who has deliberately adopted the identity of an innocent woman in order to practise some kind of hoax on an innocent private investigator who has been ‘done up like a turkey’ by your vile deceitfulness. You may not be a woman at all, ‘Mrs Price’. You may not even be English.

Are you a psychopath? Is that it? Are you one of those people who gets pleasure out of creating torment and misery in those around them?

I think you probably are a psychopath. At least, for the moment, I cannot see what possible motive you have for assuming the identity of a perfectly innocent woman whose only crime seems to be that she is married to a man who may be a murderer. Maybe you are that murderer. Maybe you are the person who killed Pamela Larner.

Perhaps – and stranger things have happened to me during my career as a private detective – you are a pervert who simply wishes to get hold of live video and still photographs of people having intercourse. I have supplied you with plenty of that, haven’t I? But if you are a pervert, you are a pervert who knows a great deal about the private life of the real Mrs Price. I am writing this letter to let you know that I am going to track you down and find your real identity. I am a private detective, ‘Mrs Price’. It is my job.

How do I know you are a fake? Well – I finally paid a call on the real Mrs Price and I am absolutely positive she is not the woman who has been writing to me.

I rang her doorbell – a little nervous at the thought of having to confront her about money.

‘Oh!’ she said, her face brightening into a smile, as soon as she saw me. ‘It’s Horatio!’ For a moment I thought she had simply mistaken me for someone of that name, but then she said, ‘I thought you were terribly good. Even though I had my doubts about the jodhpurs!’ I realized, at once, that she was talking about my recent performance with the Putney Thespians.

‘I’ve come,’ I said, ‘about the letter.’

She looked completely blank. ‘What letter?’ she said.

‘A Mrs Price,’ I said, ‘has been writing to me. And . . . I thought …’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘If a Mrs Price has been writing to you, I’m afraid it wasn’t me!’

I didn’t know what to say. I will admit that, at first, I thought she might be lying. I have known perfectly respectable people – with plenty of money – lie through their teeth just to get out of paying a few thousand quid, but somehow I think I knew from the first that this wasn’t the case.

She sat on the large sofa and, after offering me a drink, which I refused, asked what she could do to help me. ‘Who is this Mrs Price who has been writing to you?’ she said.