Unfaithfully Yours (25 page)

‘I am sure we can clear up Mike’s problem with this,’ I said to him, keeping my voice as unthreatening as possible, ‘and if you wouldn’t mind me asking you a few questions we might be able to sort it out very quickly.’

‘I’m not supposed to be here,’ said Gerald. ‘I’m at a secret address in Norfolk.’

‘Oh!’ I said.

He was still darting those paranoid glances to right and left of him. A woman wandered out of Gap, carrying a large plastic bag, and looked round her with that dazed look people get when they are shopping. I realized that it would not be long before he disappeared completely, probably with whatever woman he is currently ‘doing’.

‘It’s ten years ago,’ I said. ‘What I have to do is discover the sequence of events on the night she died. Which was the third of November 2000.’

He was looking edgy again. Was there something significant about this date for him? Or was it something else? The woman with the plastic bag, who was obviously not Mrs Price unless she had taken to going out in very elaborate disguise, seemed to be engaging an unhealthily large amount of his attention. Perhaps, I decided, she was yet another of the women of Putney with whom this insatiable man had had sexual intercourse.

‘Actually,’ said Gerald, managing to drag his eyes away from the rather attractive creature with the plastic Gap bag, ‘that date sounds familiar to me. I can tell you very precisely the exact time I left the house. I keep a very detailed diary and also preserve back numbers of the volumes that tell the world and yours truly What Gerald Has Been Up To. I tell you, Gibbo, when you have shagged as many women as I have and have lied so enthusiastically about your whereabouts for the last thirty years, you bloody do need a reminder of where you actually were as opposed to the fictional location you handed over to the wife or the girlfriend.’

‘And,’ I said slowly, ‘you have been looking through this “diary” of yours recently, have you?’

‘Because,’ said Gerald, with elaborate patience, ‘I had heard Larner was saying all this stuff about me and I wanted to check. There is nothing sinister in the fact, Gibbo.’

I just stared at him. Then I nodded with what I hoped looked like sympathy. He was, I must admit, a man greatly changed since my last encounter with him. There were moments when I thought he might almost be trying to be honest. Emboldened by my sympathetic nods (an indispensable ‘tool of the trade’ for all private detectives), Master Gerald drew closer to me. Although it was only about eleven in the morning, he smelt strongly of alcohol.

‘I looked it up only the other day,’ he went on, ‘and I can tell you I left the Premises of Doom at twenty-two fourteen precisely.’ I considered this. Gerald, as if he had complete access to my innermost thoughts, gave me the kind of rumpled grin that went a long way to explaining the power he has over women. And men, too, probably, Michael.

‘If you don’t believe me,’ he said, ‘you can always check out KGB Katharine at number thirty-three.’

I was about to ask him who KGB Katharine might be, when he told me.

‘She’s an old bat who lives opposite. I noticed she was still at the upper window when I went round to try and shake Poofy Boy out of his tree the other day!’

Once again, Michael, I do apologize for this man. He makes me ashamed to be a member of the human race and has little understanding of the highly complex nature of our sexual needs and the obvious necessity of tolerance and sympathy for those who are ‘wired’ differently from us. Not that I am suggesting there is anything mechanical about your feeling for that rugged dentist of yours. Which I have had the opportunity to observe at close hand and, as far as I am concerned, is a vindication of the beautiful principle that love blossoms in the strangest places and can transform and enhance lives in a manner that is nothing short of miraculous.

My feelings for Sam’s soon-to-be-ex-wife are, as far as I am concerned, in the same category.

‘What,’ I said, ‘does she have to do with the murder – or suicide – of Mr Larner’s wife?’

Gerald grabbed my arm again. It was, if possible, an even more painful experience than the last time he had tried it. ‘She is always at the window,’ he said, ‘staring down at the street. I noticed she was there the last night I saw Pamela. KGB Kathy always has the look of someone who is about to report you to the police. My worry was that she would find a way of letting the old Fish Faggot know that I had been round, trying to get out of the tiresome responsibility of poking his missus!’

I said I did not doubt his word but was not sure that this person would be able to be precise about the time of something that had happened ten years ago. Something that was, after all, not of particular significance or, at least, probably did not seem as if it was when it occurred. Gerald became very animated indeed at this remark. For a moment I thought he was about to attack me, which I have always been anxious to avoid where he is concerned.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘these people have nothing else to think about apart from what their neighbours get up to. Their entire horizons are blotted out by things like parking permits and whether you have taken an inch of their garden or who owns the fucking fence. This is Putney, mate, not ancient Athens. Nobody considers the higher things of life. This is the suburbs, Gibbo, where no one gives a fuck about the meaning of life or about anything that does not directly affect their own comfort. They do not give a monkey’s about the starving or the tortured or the mentally ill or the politically abused. Which is why I am getting as far away from it all as possible.’

He had started to look around him again. This time it was a woman in her early sixties who was walking away from us, in the direction of Waitrose. It was curious. I had never, in all the time I had known him, heard Gerald express any interest whatsoever in those less fortunate than himself. What had caused this ‘
volte-face
’? Was he, at last, going to develop into an approximation of a human being?

I thought, but did not say, that Norfolk was, perhaps, not as far from Putney as all that, and that the people there were liable to be no more interested in the Dialogues of Plato than his or my or, indeed, Mrs Larner’s neighbours. Once again he seemed to have a very good idea of what was in my mind. In a curious gesture, he stretched out his hand and ruffled my hair – or, at least, what is left of my hair.

‘Gibbo,’ he said, ‘this may well be the last you see of me. I’m in love.’

I asked him, politely, to explain the connection between these two statements. He smiled and I saw a look in his eyes I had never seen before. I have never actually been to Darien or run across the peak on which stout Cortés is supposed to have experienced wild surmise but here, in the more humble surroundings of the Putney Shopping Centre, I thought I might have glimpsed, for the first time, a pretty good example of the kind of gazing around oneself that might well make a strong man, such as Gerald, or indeed Cortés, grow strangely silent.

‘Love, Gibbo,’ he said dreamily, ‘is not just a question of winching the old leg across a nice piece of tail. I thought it was – but it isn’t. It is not just a matter of fishing out the old penis and shoving it up the nearest bit of slippery. You can squeeze their behinds all you like. You can get down and dirty on the Bournville Boulevard if that is what takes your fancy. You can clamp your teeth on to as many tits as you choose – and I am a tit man, Gibbo!’

For reasons I do not really wish to go into here – I knew this to be the case.

‘You can shag an entire girls’ school in the open air, old boy. You can stick it in and waggle it about and unload as much white stuff as there is in a jumbo bottle of hair conditioner but it isn’t necessarily love. Love is amazing, Gibbo. Love is something that . . . you know . . . I mean . . . love is …’

‘What,’ I said, realizing it was a question that many had asked before me, ‘is love?’

He patted my arm gently. ‘I’ll tell you one day, Gibbo!’ he said, and vanished into the crowd of morning shoppers with the grace and speed of a much lighter man.

Well, Michael, the game’s afoot. You may well see a great deal of me in the next few days. I shall be round to visit ‘KGB Kathy’ – although, as I do not plan to address her by that name, I would be very grateful if you could give me a ‘steer’ as to what I might call her. I shall be going back to talk once again with Mrs Price. Although her husband is still my prime suspect, there is no doubt that this seemingly innocent woman had a definite motive for doing away with your late wife. The
modus operandi
of the crime (if it was a crime) is much more that of a woman than of a violent male like Gerald Price. It may be that Elizabeth, whom I find a deeply sympathetic and moral person, is a possible candidate for the role of your wife’s assassin. I would be very upset indeed to find out that this was the case but we have to face the possibility. Even though I find the idea of Mrs Price spending twenty years in Holloway very difficult to accept! But the truth is what counts! I shall leave no stone unturned and – God willing – I shall have a ‘result’ for you as soon as possible.

I am looking forward so much to our ‘seafaring trip’. Your new partner said to me, only last week in the Coat and Badge on Lacy Road, that we would have ‘plenty of rum, bum and concertina’! I do not quite know what he meant by that but I shall enjoy whatever is on offer and once again I assure you of my best professional attention at all times. I do hope your documentary is going well. I don’t know whether it would be of any interest but I once had a female guinea pig who, quite clearly, was more interested in her ‘girlfriends’ than any mere male! I am not sure she was an active lesbian but I think that if she had been given the opportunity that is the path she would have chosen for herself!

Best,

Orlando Gibbons

From:

Roland O. Gibbons

Gibbons Detective Agency

12 The Alley

Putney, SW15

23 November

To:

‘Mrs Price’

PO Box 132

Putney

Dear ‘Mrs Price’,

Or should that be Mrs Price? Are you who you have been pretending to be? Is any of us who we pretend to be? It is a major question.

I went down to the Putney sorting office the other day and was able to discover that someone had, indeed, picked up my last letter to PO Box 132. So you read what I write to you. I don’t think I have ever had that before. The chance to address the Unknown Criminal, to say exactly what I think to the person I am pursuing before the chase is over and the banality of the solution is revealed.

I think whoever hired me has something very important to conceal and that that ‘something’ is connected to the murder of Pamela Larner. I think I am probably talking to the person who killed Mike Larner’s wife. I don’t know how you did it. I don’t know why you did it; but I am pretty sure you are one of the Puerto Banús Eight.

I am following lines of enquiry that may soon lead me to the person who wrote me those letters. Be warned.

Apart from Gerald – who is still in the frame – the three women who, with Mrs Larner, formed the core of the ‘Puerto Banús Eight’ had the strongest motives for doing away with Pamela. Let me think aloud – for your benefit, ‘Mrs Price’.

Let us start by assuming it was you, the real Mrs Price, who committed the crime. Yes, you, the nice lady teacher in the house with the olive trees, your motive being sexual jealousy. Gerald was having an affair with Pamela. You told me when I called on you – if it is indeed you – that you had no idea, until he left you, that he was involved with anyone seriously. I was ‘taken in’ by what you said. For whatever complex series of reasons I believed you.

That doesn’t, I now realize, mean that you are not a murderer.

But – and it is a big ‘but’ – if you really did kill Pamela Larner for reasons of sexual jealousy I do not see why you would want to hire a private detective in order to find evidence that you presumably already knew about and that had, anyway, caused you to commit homicide and was therefore liable to lead to the uncovering of your crime.

Maybe that is it, Mrs Price. Maybe, like many murderers, you want to be caught.

Actually, I am not sure that is true. I have never met a murderer who wanted to be caught. In my experience they are all pretty keen to get away with it. What I am trying to say, Mrs Price, if you really are ‘Mrs Price’ and I am writing to you and not someone else, is that you are a much deeper and more complex character than I had first suspected.

I have never seen anyone speak with such venom as Mr Price when he was talking of you. Mary Dimmock, with whom, as I have admitted, I am having an affair, loathes you with a passion. She has described you as ‘a nasty old toad’, ‘cat’s arse’, ‘wrinkly bum’, ‘the Witch of Endor’, ‘the Madwoman of Chaillot’ and ‘Loopy Liz’.

It is one of the few things I do not like about Mary. Perhaps she only says these horrible things because she suspects how fond I am of you. Women are very quick to find out where their men’s affections lie and they do not extend much tolerance to women they think might ‘steal’ their property. Mary would be overjoyed to find out you had killed Mrs Larner. And yet – oh, I hate saying this even in a uniquely secret letter – you, Elizabeth Price, if you are Elizabeth Price, are a strong suspect. Of all of the other three women who went on those holidays, you must have hated Mrs Larner most.

It may not be Elizabeth Price to whom I am talking, however. There are other possibilities even more frightening to contemplate. Perhaps I am really writing to Mary Dimmock. My Mary. My God! Mary Dimmock – you and I have become lovers. And yet – do we really know each other? You are, Mary, a woman whom I have stalked. A woman whom I have filmed having anal intercourse behind a tree in Richmond Park! I have not behaved well towards you; by the same token, you may be not the person I think you are at all. You may be a murderer. How could you do this to me, Mary? If you are Mary.

But, again, how could I do this to you? I am no better than you, am I? Even if you are the woman posing as Mrs Price and the woman who, probably, murdered Pamela Larner, I am in no position to sit in judgement on you. I have not, of course, told you that for a period of nearly three weeks I watched you and Gerald Price ‘at it’ and that, even now, when we have become lovers, images from my surveillance of you often surface when we are reaching the climax of our lovemaking. Last week, for example, when we joined so beautifully together in my humble bed in my humble flat in Keswick Road, I had a sudden vision of Gerald whacking your naked behind with a large branch in a secluded area of Putney Heath. This was something I had not only filmed but also, from time to time, replayed for my own private pleasure on my home computer.