Alex Barclay - Harm's Reach

That was another thing that turned her stomach. ‘Start a new life’ with Conor Gorman. How ridiculous. What did he think was going to happen? She would do a spread in Harper’s announcing her love for the just-turned-seventeen-years-old nephew of her dead immigrant housekeeper?

She laughed out loud. And at the idea of Robert Prince and fraud. People assume so much about the wealthy. There was no fraud in Robert Prince’s world. There was no taking — only giving; money and love and second chances.

She loved to hear Laura’s stories about the Irish underworld in New York. Particularly the one about Janey Mac — Nicky McMullen — from the dive bar in Yonkers who had fled to Chicago and became Janey Mach III. She had given Laura a new purse when she got pregnant. It had a GPS tag in the lining, expertly stitched. She was carrying her baby, after all. It was not difficult to trace Laura from a throwaway phone. It was not difficult to hire someone to follow her in Chicago, and to pay Janey Mac off — he didn’t give a shit about Frankie Gorman or his delinquent son.

Unfortunately, Nicky McMullen got cold feet when he saw Laura’s bump. Chickenshit.

But for Conor to get rid of her problem was the biggest revelation, though Laura had brought some of it on herself; she had told him too much. He had thought Laura was lying when she said that the Princes were trying for a baby. Conor had believed that all those appointments the Princes were going to was because they were divorcing. Laura must have wondered how Conor could have had a clue what was going on in the Princes’ marriage and why he seemed to care so much. And when his aunt mentioned his father, told him where the deadbeat was, was forced to admit that she had known all along, he had grabbed the gun and told the woman who had saved his life that she was messing up his life. And the impulse, the fear, the love, the hormones, the pain, the everything that had been poured into this one handsome boy exploded. Loser. The panic, the tears, when he called her from his creepy little friend’s cell phone...

At least Conor had proved coachable: rip the tag from the purse, make Robert, anyone, look bad, make me look good. Create just enough suspicion to send people off in different directions. They would be a team; she and Conor would create a little tornado that would throw dust in everyone’s eyes, blind them just a little until a better suspect emerged. Whoever... Robert... the creepy little friend... anyone.

Everyone had secrets. And even the most harmless ones could look sinister through a prism of suspicion.

She thought of the women in the tabloids who had their multi-millionaire husbands by their balls and bank accounts. Incongruous couples, with public declarations of love so effusive they couldn’t possibly be real. Relationships that bloomed in this microclimate of extreme wealth were not about feelings held in hearts, but secrets held over heads. She knew how it worked. When you are invited into the inner circle, you look very carefully around you, you observe. And you look for hiding places, for what lies twisted in silken sheets or behind lifted eyes, what words pass collagen lips, or are bitten back by ultra-white veneers.

With these secrets, I thee wed.

For better and better, for richer and richer.

In her case, the secrets she had uncovered came along after the wedding. Robert had fallen so clearly, so desperately in love she didn’t need secrets for diamonds and golden bands to slide up her ring finger. Secrets were her eternity ring.

Ingrid heard a noise at the front door. Light on her feet, she walked out into the long polished hallway. Her suitcases were at the end by the door: a set of five, olive green, edged in brown leather with accents of gold.

Now, there was banging at the door, hammering. Ingrid froze. The door burst open. She felt a rush of adrenaline.

This is not how it ends. This is not how it ends. This is not how it ends.

She backed into the kitchen, then turned, set to run for the French doors, but she could make out two dark figures standing there. Ingrid was briefly blindsided by her reflection in the glass.

She knew what she looked like to others. She knew what her husband looked like.

A Swedish proverb came to mind: Alla känner apan, men apan känner ingen.

Everyone knows the monkey, but the monkey knows no one.

The back door burst open. She wasn’t expecting women. It was the agent. And the detective.

‘Ingrid Prince,’ said the agent. ‘You are under arrest for Solicitation to Commit Murder in the First Degree.’

Ingrid Prince closed her eyes.

I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent.

Janine and Ren walked into the interview room. Ingrid Prince sat at the table, washed-out, beautiful, erect, even after waiting for three hours. Her hands, chained and cuffed, were on the table in front of her. Ren blinked and got a flash of the sunny Hamptons beach, the casual beauty of the expectant mother. She refocused. Ingrid was staring at her. Ren could feel herself go cold.

How did I not see this before?

Was I blinded by beauty... maternity... wealth?

I have never been blinded by beauty or maternity or wealth; we are all equal.

Ren blinked. Ingrid did not.

But I was blinded.

Ren thought of the orange bottle of mood stabilizers in her bathroom cabinet.

Not blinded... numbed.

Ren was suddenly acutely aware of Janine beside her. They turned to each other. A slight frown came and went on Janine’s face, as if she had been reading Ren’s mind.

Unlike the previous interview with Ingrid Prince, there was a lawyer seated beside Ingrid; she no longer needed to pretend that she had nothing to hide. The veneer had cracked.

The lawyer looked to be in her late fifties, a plain, heavy, jowly woman, no doubt as groomed as she could be without caving in to society’s expectations of how a woman should present herself: neat bun, tidy but thick eyebrows, smooth skin, no facial hair, but no makeup, no adornments, nothing to draw the attention away from the fierce set of her face, the just-try-me eyes. Ingrid Prince’s message was clear: there is no beauty in this, this is serious. My serious, non-frivolous, law-loving lawyer believes in me — shouldn’t you?

Ingrid Prince, your downfall will be your belief that the surface can make things right.

Janine talked everyone through the formalities. Ingrid refused to answer every question put to her. Her lawyer was dazzling.

As if we expected anything less.

Ren and Janine stood up. ‘We’re going to take a short break.’

Ren and Janine returned to the interview room fifteen minutes later. Ren set down the records to Jesse Coombes’ cell phone. The phone number of the rental in Golden was highlighted.

Janine began. ‘We have confirmed that Conor Gorman made calls from Jesse Coombes’ cell phone to you at the following times: Saturday, May 12th, nine p.m.... after Laura Flynn called Conor Gorman to arrange to meet him; Monday, May 14th, one p.m.... after Conor Gorman shot the only person who ever truly loved him, your “dear friend”, Laura Flynn.’

‘Here, also,’ said Ren, ‘are the admission records for The Darned Heart Ranch: Conor Gorman ran away on January 8th — the night he was picked up for fighting at the Ace-Hi Tavern in Golden. It appears from these records that he didn’t show up at the ranch until the following morning. Romantic night?’

Baby-making night?

Not a flicker.

‘And here,’ said Janine, ‘is the sworn testimony of a man called Nicky McMullen, aka Janey Mac. We discovered that Laura Flynn reached out to Frankie Gorman in Stateville, sent him a letter we now realize was a coded way of getting Frankie to send Janey Mac to meet her at her hotel. You found this out too. And Janey Mac says you paid him twenty-five thousand dollars to kill Laura Flynn before she got back to Colorado. But when he met poor Laura, who looked so like her sister, Saoirse, who Janey Mac once loved so dearly, he was a little spooked. He didn’t do it. But he followed her. And he couldn’t stop thinking that she was pregnant and that he shouldn’t be doing this. But he kept going. And... well, when it came to the crunch, he just didn’t have the heart. He fired a few shots, pretended to you that she sped away before he had a chance to fire again. Detective Hooks here works with a marvelous lab in the UK that got his print from the shell casing that flew into Laura’s car.’