I stopped.
There was a light on in one of the fourth-floor rooms. It looked like 413, where we’d found the body. I crossed the road and tried the door. It was locked. I started for the corner entrance, dialling Sutty as I went. The side door was closed as well.
‘Yeurgh,’ said Sutty, answering the phone.
‘Do we still have an officer at the Palace?’
‘Nah, SOCO wrapped yesterday. Why?’ I was crossing the street again, looking up at the building. The light was off. From a certain angle the top-floor windows caught a reflection from the street. Had that been it?
‘Ignore me,’ I said.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Freddie Coyle, crossing the road towards me. I’d been approaching his Sackville Street building to ask some follow-up questions about his infidelity. He had other ideas. He strode past me wearing a dark, mahogany suit, smelling richer than God. ‘If this is more talk about that man in the Palace, you’re wasting your time. More importantly, you’re wasting mine.’
‘Do you know if there’s anyone in the Palace now, Mr Coyle?’
He stopped. Turned. ‘How would I? Ask Ms Khan. Now if that’s all …’
‘I’m afraid it isn’t.’
He held out his arms. ‘Well?’
‘When we spoke yesterday, I asked if you had any enemies …’
‘Did I mislead you, Detective Constable?’
‘After speaking to your wife, it seems like you might have.’
‘Then you didn’t listen to a word I said.’ He shook his head and walked on.
I matched pace. ‘What was it that I should have heard?’
‘It’s no wonder you missed it. All I did was as good as say the words to your face. Of course I have an “enemy”. And it’s no surprise that after speaking to her you suddenly have more questions for me.’
‘Are things as bad as all that between you and your wife?’
‘Ex-wife,’ he said. ‘You’re here, aren’t you? A divorce is one thing, breaking up the business and all that, but to set the police on me …’
‘Do you think Ms Reeve has something to do with events at the Palace, Mr Coyle?’
‘Oh, listen to yourself. Don’t you get sick of pinballing between us? All this he-said, she-said shit?’
‘Frankly, yes.’
‘Natasha’s not an instigator, not a creative or a visionary. She’s a manager. She handles things. She’s simply exploiting this poor fool’s death to get back at me.’
‘To get back at you for what?’
He stopped then. Looked at me and gave a short cynical snort of laughter. ‘So that’s it?’ He looked me up and down and took a step closer. ‘You cheap little boy. Who I share my bed with is my own business.’ He started to walk again and I followed.
‘I agree, but someone tipping off your wife about it sounds like an enemy to me.’
He stopped again, looked at me. Frowned. ‘Tipping off my wife?’
‘What did you think happened?’
‘She copied my key. She followed me …’ He almost said it like a question.
‘Ms Reeve was receiving anonymous notes in the final weeks of your relationship,’ I said. ‘Times, dates, places.’ The news seemed to hit him like a blow. ‘Even pictures. You didn’t know?’ Coyle stared down the street. A convoy of fire engines, ambulances and police cars was blasting by us, and it bought him a few seconds to think. He looked like a man whose worst suspicion has been confirmed. I didn’t think Natasha keeping the notes secret was the source of his pain. He looked angry, betrayed. People walked around us on the street like we were a quarrelling couple. ‘Who was the man you were sleeping with, Mr Coyle?’
At length his eyes came back to me. ‘That’s none of your business.’
‘With respect, it really is. I’m trying to identify a dead man found in your hotel.’
‘What? You think I killed my former lover and then framed myself for his murder?’
‘I didn’t say that, but your wife thinks that in the weeks leading up to your separation you’d become preoccupied, distant …’
‘What of it?’
‘Are you in some kind of trouble?’
He looked at me and lowered his voice. ‘I know you may think me cold but it’s not exactly a dream to deceive your partner for years on end. To discover something so fundamental about yourself so late in life …’
‘There’s also the matter of the person writing those notes.’
‘Don’t you see?’ he hissed, taking a step towards me. ‘They’re one and the same. They have to be one and the same. Happy now?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that no one but the man I was sleeping with knew about us. I mean that I was careful.’ He was breathing hard. ‘I mean that if someone tipped off my wife about our relationship then it had to be him.’ Saying the words seemed to make them true for Coyle and he looked about us, as if he’d never seen the street we were standing on before. ‘You must live for these moments of discount poetry,’ he said at last. ‘The betrayer gets betrayed …’
‘Are you still seeing this man?’
‘No.’
‘I heard someone in your flat when I interviewed you on Monday morning. Can I ask who that was?’
‘You can fuck off.’
I nodded. ‘I can, but first I’ll need the name of the man Natasha found you with.’
‘Fine,’ he said, walking back the way we’d come. ‘I’ve lost my appetite, anyway.’
‘I assume you refer to the precedent of Fuck All vs Never Happened?’
I’d asked Sutty about potential legal options that Sophie could explore for preventing Oliver Cartwright from leaking their sex-tape. He’d made a compelling argument for the impossibility of my situation, the absolute certainty of my failure.
Worse, I agreed with him.
He was eating a Subway breakfast sandwich, his favourite food, while we walked. Because it was their policy not to serve the sandwich after 11 a.m., and because Sutty was never awake by then, it meant that an argument was built in to each order, and I suspected that was what he really kept going back for.
I gave up on Cartwright for the moment, focusing instead on the comparatively simple smiling man. Coyle had given me the name of his former lover but I’d had to report for our shift before I could follow it up. It was getting more difficult to keep this line of enquiry from Sutty as a new vista of lies and betrayal opened up before me. I was wondering again if I could broach the subject with him when I saw the satisfied smile slide off his face. I followed his eyeline to the car to see what was wrong.
There was someone sitting inside it.
We stopped for a second, looked at each other and then went forwards.
‘Och, fuck,’ said Sutty, under his breath. The door opened to reveal Superintendent Parrs, sitting on the passenger side. He hung one leg out of the car and gave us his dark, shark’s smile.
‘The dynamic duo,’ he said. ‘Doom and Gloom.’
‘Sir,’ we said in unison.
‘Evening, Peter,’ said Parrs, talking to Sutty. ‘It’s been too long. How are things?’
He shrugged. ‘No complaints …’
‘That’s not what the last girl you arrested said, pal. Anyway, it’s late. You must be hungry. And I need a word with the boy wonder. Why don’t you go and grab a bite to eat?’
‘Famished,’ said Sutty, looking at me gravely. He was already walking backwards, still clinging on to his sub. ‘Evening, Superintendent.’
‘Good evening, Detective Inspector.’
Parrs watched him go, still smiling. He didn’t speak again until Sutty was out of sight, and even then he didn’t look at me.
‘Get into the fucking car,’ he said quietly.
5