His eyes flicked toward my lap.
"And that means you must have heard what was going on next door," I went on matter-of-factly, "or you joined Sharon shortly after she heard it. Either way you'd have noticed something. You don't get good sex off a woman who's just listened to her neighbor being clubbed into unconsciousness." I eyed him curiously. "But Sharon's bound to claim your story's bullshit anyway because, according to her inquest testimony, she was in the pub from 6 till 9:15."
"This is crazy," he said, his eyes straying toward the telephone on his desk. "What does Sam say?"
"Nothing much ... except that he's adamant he didn't know about Sharon and refuses to take the blame if you lied to him about why you needed an alibi."
It was the accusation of lying to Sam that seemed to goad him toward honesty. Either that or his resentment at being made everybody's scapegoat finally boiled over. "Sam knew better than anyone that I didn't have the bottle to go near another card game," he said bitterly. "I may be a risk taker but I'm not a bloody fool. I was taken to the cleaners by some pros the first time and I wasn't going to give them a second chance." He squeezed the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. "And there's no way Sharon was an issue. I could have paraded half the whores in London in front of Libby without her turning a hair. The marriage had been dead for months ... it was just a question of which one of us was going to pack our bags first."
"Then why did you lie in your statement?"
He saw in my eyes that I knew the answer. "Do you really want it spelled out? It was dead and buried before you even left England."
"For Sam maybe," I said. "Not for me. That's why I'm here. I've waited a long time to find out who he was with that night ... and what they were doing..."
E-mail from Libby Garth-ex-wife of Jock Williams,
formerly of 21 Graham Road, Richmond-now resident
in Leicestershire-dated 1999
M. R.
From: Libby Garth (liga@netcomuk.co)
Sent: 05 May 1999 14:37
To: M.R.
Subject: Re coming home at last!
M'dear, this is such marvellous news! I truly believed you were gone for good! I suppose Sam's coronary accounts for it-so every cloud does have a silver lining then? Anyway, I can't wait to see you again. Perhaps you can persuade Sam to visit Jock one weekend while you and the boys come up to visit us in Leicestershire? I can't imagine Sam will want to buddy up to Jim for fear of betraying his old friend-and Jim would be v. nervous to have a suspicious mate of Jock's about the place.
Talking about suspicious mates (ha! ha!) are you planning to confront Jock after you get back? As you know, I've never managed to find out how he bought that house in Alveston Road, although I met a university friend of his at a party a while back who made an oblique reference to the effect that Jock's parents had helped him-viz.: "Jock's never been known to miss a trick. He told me once he'd screwed a small fortune out of the pair of them because each one thinks he doesn't talk to the other, and they can't check because they haven't exchanged a word since the brother died." Could that be where the money came from? It sounds like Jock's modus operandi, whatever he may say about being a "self-made man."
Have I ever told you how impressed I am by all your efforts? Who'd have thought the little teacher from Graham Road would have turned into such a tigress! Poor old Sam must wonder what's hit him. You say he still won't talk about the night Annie died, but perhaps that's only to be expected. The longer you remain married the harder it must be for him to admit that he was prepared to put a friend before his wife.
You're too wise not to put something that happened twenty-plus years ago into perspective. Let's face it, we all make mistakes, and in fairness to Sam you did go a little crazy afterward-classic post-traumatic stress reaction for which you should have had counseling-and neither he, Jock, nor anyone else had reason to doubt the police view that Annie died in a tragic accident. I know you'll say it doesn't pass the "so what" test, but I can't help feeling it would put your marriage under unnecessary strain to keep reminding Sam of his "failure" when all the police will require is a straightforward admission that they didn't see Annie that night.
Re the Slaters, Percys and Spaldings. Do be careful how you approach them as there is no doubt in my mind that they'll be extremely hostile to answering questions. Hate groups are notoriously violent-they're too low on the pecking order to be anything else-and I really don't want to read in my newspaper that your body's been fished out of the Thames! The burning fiery cross is a frightening reality, my darling, not a figment of KKK imagination. They believe in terror because terror gives them status. (It probably gives them orgasms as well because they're all sadists, but they would never admit to that!) Anyway, I do wonder if you shouldn't leave the Slaters to the police, particularly as you've amassed so much evidence already of their petty thieving.
Speak soon,
All my love, L
*17*
It was an involved tale about a pretty little secretary in Sam's office who had ensnared him during the August of '78 while I was in Hampshire dog-sitting for my parents, who were on holiday. It was a brief madness, Jock assured me, a fatal attraction that went sour almost as soon as it started. Sam wanted to dump her the minute I came home, but the girl was having none of it. If she'd worked anywhere else it wouldn't have been a problem, but Sam was worried about how it would affect his career if she turned on him out of spite. It was the early days of sexual harassment cases, and this was a girl who knew what she was doing.
Sam strung her along for a couple of months, then made an attempt to end it on the night I was due to stay late at school for a parents' evening. By malign chance, it was also the night Mad Annie died. "Sam was way out of his depth," said Jock. "He had this crazy idea that if he wined and dined his mistress first, then told her he planned to do the decent and honorable thing and stay with his wife, the girl would accept it. Instead she went ballistic ... screamed and yelled at him in the restaurant ... poured wine down his suit ... and, what with one thing and another, he was in a pretty dire state by the time he reached home.
"He passed Annie in the gutter," said Jock. "She was under the lamppost so he could hardly miss her, but she reeked of drink so he left her. He knew you'd be back any minute and his first priority was to get out of the suit, clean himself up and pretend he'd been in all evening." A glint of humor flashed in his eyes. "Then you come running in fifteen minutes later to ring for an ambulance and the silly sod promptly shoots himself in the foot."
I frowned. "He was watching television. I never even questioned where he'd been."
"You told him Annie Butts was dying in the road outside and he said, 'No, she's not, she's paralytic.'"
"So?"
"Why would he say that if he hadn't seen her?"
I bit back a laugh. "Are you telling me you lied to the police because of some half-assed remark he made while I was screaming down the telephone for an ambulance? He could have told me she was standing on her head and waggling her legs in the air for all the notice I paid him. I wouldn't have remembered afterward."
Jock shrugged. "That's exactly what I said, but he didn't believe me. He reckoned you had a memory like an elephant. He said it would be easier all round if we supported the police version that Annie was staggering drunk at a quarter to eight. I mean it wasn't as if we were the only ones to say it ... everyone was saying it. We thought it was the truth."