Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

‘That was him. Or rather her.’ Clarke shook her head. ‘He’d started to get careless. He was finding the whole charade hard to sustain by then, and when he got the blackmail demand he panicked. He didn’t have that sort of money to hand, so he basically ran away. Took himself off to the clinic to try and decide if he wanted to transition or not. In the end he didn’t feel ready to commit, and came back home expecting the shit to have hit the fan. Which it had, just not how he expected.’

God, I thought, trying to imagine it. Villiers had exchanged one nightmare for another. Instead of having his secret made public he’d found himself the main suspect in Emma Derby’s disappearance. And he couldn’t prove his innocence without revealing his secret. For the first time I felt something I wouldn’t have believed myself capable of feeling for Leo Villiers.

Sympathy.

‘So why did he wait so long before going back to the clinic?’ It was still too much of a leap to think of Villiers as ‘she’.

‘He was a mess,’ Clarke said simply. ‘He’d no idea what was going on, and now there were all these questions and pointed fingers to cope with as well. He was drinking and on tranquil-lizers, and says he really did consider suicide. We were almost right about that much, at least. The final straw was when his dog died.’

‘His dog ?’

‘I know.’ Clarke gave a wintry smile. ‘He got it as a pup when he was kicked out of university, and according to him it was the only thing that didn’t care who or what he was. When it had to be destroyed he says something snapped. He stayed long enough to bury it and then just walked away. Literally. Got on a train and left everything behind. House, car, money, the lot. He says he doesn’t want anything to do with any of it any more.’

Clarke sounded sceptical about that much, at least. But put in this new context Villiers’ reaction didn’t seem hard to understand. Sometimes all it takes is one final stress to bring everything crashing down. And while our circumstances were very different, I didn’t find it hard to imagine a life becoming so unbearable that the only way to survive was to walk away from it.

I’d once done the same thing myself.

Still, while this explained why none of Villiers’ bank accounts or credit cards had been used since he’d disappeared, it posed a different question. ‘If he wasn’t using any of his own money how did he pay for the clinic?’

‘Oh, he’s not exactly penniless.’ Clarke irritably brushed the flapping strand of hair from her face. ‘His mother left him a trust fund that’ll see he doesn’t starve. Merchant was her maiden name, so cutting himself off from his old life obviously doesn’t extend to that. It’s only anything connected to his father he doesn’t want anything to do with.’

Remembering Sir Stephen’s behaviour I guessed that might be mutual. I thought about the cold-eyed insistence that the body found in the estuary was his son’s. Lundy had said all along that Villiers’ father was hiding something, and now we knew what. My son is dead .

As far as Sir Stephen was concerned, perhaps he was.

‘Does Villiers know who it was we found in his clothes?’ I asked.

Clarke nodded tiredly. ‘That’s why he came back. Anthony Russell, twenty-six-year-old former model and dancer. Indonesian on his mother’s side, worked at a dressing service in London where trans men and women can try on clothes in private. He was another of Villiers’ secrets. They usually hooked up in London but he’d occasionally come out to Willets Point. He was the same sort of size as Villiers and used to borrow clothes when he stayed. Except for his shoes. Russell’s feet were bigger.’

And had hammertoes, I thought. It was a common complaint for dancers. I’d told Lundy I thought the dead man could have been athletically built, but I’d not made the connection. I felt dully annoyed at my mistake. Still, the part-Indonesian ancestry could well explain the skull’s mix of characteristics. As well, perhaps, as the gardener’s sighting of a prowler on Willets Point. Not a burglar or a refugee, just another part of Villiers’ private life he wanted to keep secret.

Something else occurred to me. ‘Was Russell colour-blind?’ I asked, thinking about the garish purple sock in the cheap training shoe.

‘I’ve no idea. Why?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ I felt too tired to explain.

Clarke gave me an odd look as she continued. ‘Russell was the only person who knew Villiers was transgender. But they fell out when Villiers told him he was going to transition. Apparently Russell had expensive tastes and a recreational drug habit, so the idea of a poor, transitioned Villiers was a lot less attractive than a rich, closeted one. Villiers ended up throwing his house keys down and storming out, telling Russell he could help himself if that was all he cared about. He didn’t expect to be taken literally, but when he read about the body he guessed who it was.’

‘Does Villiers have any idea who might have killed him?’

‘No, but Russell used to like playing around with his shotguns. Shooting bottles, taking pot-shots at seagulls. Although Villiers doesn’t think he would have shot himself intentionally, he thought he could have done it by accident when he was drunk or high.’

‘Is that what you think?’ I asked.

‘I think if it was that simple we’d have found the gun by now. And I’m a long way past believing anything about this case is accidental.’

The sound of someone climbing down the ladder made us both turn. But it was only Frears. Awkward in the bulky coveralls, the pathologist made an ungainly descent before coming over. He gave an awkward shrug.

‘What you’d expect.’ There was none of his usual flippancy. ‘Single shotgun blast to the abdomen and lower chest, massive trauma and blood loss. Looks like the gunman surprised him halfway down the steps. Minimal spread, couldn’t have been fired from more than six or seven yards away. The pellets we’ve found look like bismuth birdshot, probably number four or five. Not huge, but at that distance it wouldn’t make much difference.’

The shotgun cartridge found at Edgar’s home had been number five birdshot, and bismuth rather than lead. The same as the cartridges at Leo Villiers’ house.

‘If it’s any consolation I doubt he knew much about it.’ Frears sounded almost apologetic. ‘With an injury like that his system would have started to shut down from shock almost immediately. Frankly I’m surprised he survived as long as he did.’

As though on cue there was activity above us. We fell silent as Lundy’s body was carried out from the tower. Strapped to a stretcher, the body bag was brought down on to the upper gantry. Then, while one officer went down the ladder first to steady it in the wind, it was slowly lowered on a rope to the platform. I started forward to help as it neared the bottom, but the area around the ladder was already crowded. Hands reached up to take the weight as the stretcher and its burden were set down on the platform.

Clarke watched, tight-lipped, as Lundy’s body was carried over to the waiting launch.

‘What’ll happen now?’ I asked her as Frears headed after it.

‘Now?’ she echoed bleakly. ‘Now I go to see Sandra Lundy. Then I’m going to continue questioning Leo Villiers, or Lena bloody Merchant, to find out what else he knows. There’ve been too many assumptions made in this investigation from the start, especially about Emma Derby’s role in all this. When it comes down to it we still haven’t found her body, which is starting to make me wonder. And after what’s happened today I’m not taking anything for granted.’

As her meaning sank in, I felt a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold. It had been assumed from the start that Trask’s missing wife was a victim of Leo Villiers. But if we’d been so wrong about that it threw doubt on everything else as well. Emma Derby’s disappearance had started all this, yet out of all the victims her body remained conspicuously absent.