Michael Ridpath - Final Venture

'Well?' said Lisa.

'Why did you leave last night?'

She said nothing for a few moments. 'I need to get away for a bit. Sort myself out.'

'I see.' I forced myself to speak slowly and calmly. 'But why do you have to leave me to do that? Surely you'd be better staying with me? Then I can help you with your problems.'

'Simon, I think you might be the problem.'

'No, Lisa. It's not me. Your father died. You're worried about work. You're tired. You need me to help you.'

Lisa glanced up at me, and then back to the soccer players.

I waited for her to say something. She didn't.

'You shouldn't listen to Eddie. He hates me. He hates himself.'

'Maybe Eddie can see things more clearly than I can.'

I lost the calm I had been trying so hard to maintain. 'Lisa. You know me. I'm your husband. I love you. You know I'm not capable of killing your father.'

Lisa turned to me, her eyes moist. 'Then what was the gun doing there?'

'I don't know,' I said in exasperation.

Lisa looked ahead.

'Be rational about it, Lisa. I know you've been under a lot of pressure recently, but you must get a sense of perspective.'

'Oh, I am being rational,' she said through gritted teeth. 'Very rational. You're right, it's difficult with all that's been going on. But let's look at the evidence here, Simon.' She was talking fast now.

'One, you were the last person to see Dad alive. You were with him at about the time he died. Two, you and he have been getting along badly recently. You had a fight. Three, he was shot. You know how to use a gun. And four,' she looked at me defiantly, 'I found that gun hidden in our apartment.'

'That doesn't mean anything. Why would I kill him anyway?'

'I don't know. You need fifty thousand pounds to fight your sister's lawsuit. We'll have that now.'

'Oh, come on.'

'All right. Maybe you are having an affair with Diane. Maybe Dad found out. Maybe you wanted to keep him quiet. Maybe you wanted to keep him quiet and get your hands on his money.'

'That's absurd. I'm not having an affair with anybody. Can't you trust me?'

'I don't know,' she muttered.

'Anyway, why would I be so stupid as to leave a gun lying around the apartment where the police could find it?'

'I've been thinking about that, too,' said Lisa. 'It wasn't there when the police searched the apartment last week. Perhaps you were just keeping it overnight until you found a better place to hide it.'

'Don't be ridiculous. Someone must have planted it.'

'Like who? The police? The gun was in a Boots plastic bag. Do you think Sergeant Mahoney goes all the way to England to pick up his deodorant?'

I managed to get myself in control again. 'None of that proves anything.'

'It's a hypothesis. And a plausible one,' said Lisa. 'And I will go with it, until you can disprove it.'

'This isn't some scientific experiment, Lisa. It's me you're talking about. Us!'

'I know,' she said. 'But you said I should be rational. I'm trying to be rational about it. With all that's been going on in my head, the blackness I feel about everything, the way I just want to scream and scream and scream, it's all I can do. Be rational. So, let's test the hypothesis. Can you prove you didn't kill Dad?'

'No. But my point is, I shouldn't have to to you. You who know me better than anyone.'

Lisa looked at me, her eyes filling with tears. 'But I'm not sure I do know you, Simon – know who you really are.'

'But we're married, for God's sake!'

'Yes. But I've only known you, what, two years? I don't know anything about who you are, really, where you come from. I've only been once with you to your own country, and that was a disaster. I do know you come from a screwed-up family, but that's no comfort. I know you're clever, I know you can hold a lot inside without talking about it, but perhaps I don't know what really is there inside you.'

'That's ridiculous!'

'No, it's not,' Lisa said quietly. 'Of course the Simon I fell in love with wouldn't have an affair with another woman, or kill anyone. But did that Simon ever really exist?' She wiped her eyes, and then her nose with her sleeve.

I wanted to put my arm round her, but there was no point. I wanted to argue with her, but there seemed little point in that, either. How could I argue that I was just who I seemed to be?

'Come back,' I said simply. 'Please.'

Lisa took a deep breath, and shook her head. 'No, Simon.' She stood up. 'I've got to get back to work.'

And she left me standing there beside the makeshift soccer pitch, watching her slight hunched figure disappear into the Boston Peptides building.

I walked the couple of miles back to the office, through Cambridge, over the Salt and Pepper Bridge, and through the Common. It was a grey cold morning and the wind whipped off the water and threaded its way through the city buildings.

I played over our conversation again and again and again. Although I hadn't been able to understand the pressure Lisa had been under recently, the grief, the misery, the exhaustion, I had seen it in her face, heard it in her words, felt it with her. But to her, I had become part of that black world that seemed to surround and threaten her.

The bells of the Park Street Church chimed twelve o'clock as I plunged through the busy shopping streets of Downtown Crossing towards the office.

I didn't notice the people jostling around me. My anger ebbed, leaving a huge empty feeling of loneliness, of failure. My limbs felt heavy, my face taut. I still couldn't quite believe that Lisa had just walked away from me. But she had. I couldn't bear the thought of her believing that I had killed her father. Her love was the most precious thing in the world to me. The idea of it turning to hatred for me, hurt. It hurt a lot.

Somehow I had screwed up. Even my father had managed to keep hold of my mother for more than six months!

She had wanted to 'test her hypothesis'. Well, I would test her hypothesis for her. I'd prove to her that I was innocent.

Perhaps I should go to Mahoney? It was, after all, his job to find Frank's true killer. No, that was a very bad idea. I was clearly his favourite suspect at the moment, and it would be difficult to persuade him to look elsewhere. And I definitely shouldn't tell him, or anyone else for that matter, about the gun. If Lisa hadn't lost her head and ditched it, then I could have considered taking it to the police in the hope that if my honesty didn't clear my name, forensic tests might. But Lisa's actions just served to implicate me more. No, I couldn't rely on Mahoney to find out who killed Frank.

I would have to do it myself.

'You said you'd only be a quarter of an hour,' John said, as I walked in the door.

'Sorry,' I gave him a quick smile.

'Your voice-mail has been working overtime.'

'Thanks.'

But I ignored the winking light on my phone, and asked myself the vital question.

If I hadn't killed Frank, who had?

Could it have been a burglar as I had suggested to Lisa? Perhaps Frank had surprised him, and been shot? It was a tempting idea. But as I thought it through, I realized it was unlikely. The police hadn't mentioned any signs of a break-in, nor had I seen any. Frank had been shot in the back some way inside the house. It seemed most likely that he had known whoever had shot him, or at least that he had voluntarily let his murderer into the house.

I realized that I didn't know much about Frank's life away from Lisa and Revere. Presumably he had other friends, but I knew nothing about them. Lisa said there hadn't been any girlfriends since he and her mother had got divorced. She liked to believe that that was because her mother was the only woman Frank had truly loved, although he seemed to me to speak about his former wife with nothing more than indifference. Much of his time was spent at Marsh House. What else he did with it, I just didn't know.