Double Blind (11 page)

While I washed my hands, I wondered why he’d been so reluctant to let me in. The house wasn’t exactly Architectural Digest, but it wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. My curiosity piqued, I tiptoed from the bathroom towards the door that he’d closed, pushing it open a few inches. It was dark inside.

My brother Leo had been known to call me nosy and meddling, but I preferred to think of what I was about to do as investigating. My curiosity had got me into trouble on more than one occasion. I tried not to think about that right now.

Light from a street lamp outside illuminated the room enough for me to see a single bed neatly made with a white duvet and matching pillowcase. An old wooden armoire stood against one wall. The room was very neat and revealed nothing particularly interesting, which made me wonder why Chris had bothered to pull the door closed. The headlights of a car passing on the street briefly flooded the room with light and illuminated the far wall. It was covered from floor to ceiling with pieces of paper attached with thumbtacks and tape. I crept in to take a closer look. Not wanting to risk switching on a lamp, I held up my mobile, which shed enough light for me to see that the papers were press clippings and magazine pages, and every one of them featured Simon Scott.

Chris was truly a supporter, I thought, until I peered more closely at one clipping and saw deep slashes across a photo of Scott’s face. I looked at another and saw similar gouges across Scott’s eyes. Large black Xs criss-crossed some of the photos and there appeared to be yellow highlighter on some of the text, but I didn’t have time to read any of it. My heart was thumping against my ribs and I was finding it hard to breathe. Struggling to make sense of what I was seeing, I also knew I had to move before Chris became suspicious. I crept out to the landing, carefully pulling the door closed. When I reached the top of the stairs, Chris was standing at the bottom looking up at me. Pulse racing and my legs trembling, I made my way down.

“I feel much better now, I said. “Thanks.”

He nodded. “I made some coffee. Do you want some?”

What I really wanted was to get out of the house, but rushing away seemed rude, so I followed him into the kitchen, my hand shaking when I took the cup of coffee he offered me.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I think I’m coming down with something, actually,” I said. “What with the rain and being in close quarters with all those people, it’s not surprising I suppose.”

I drank the coffee fast even though it was hot, burning my tongue and throat as I took several big swallows.

“I’d better go,” I said, handing him the empty cup. “It’s getting late. I hope I’ll see you next week.”

“Perhaps,” he said, following me to the door. I heard him bolt it behind me before I hurried under relentless rain to the tube station.

Jittery and perplexed, I found it hard to sleep, and was wide awake long before dawn, listening to the faint hiss of tires on wet asphalt and the steady beat of rain on the windows. I climbed out of my warm comfortable bed for just long enough to make tea and toast and then hurried back with my breakfast and laptop. Searching online for Chris Melrose brought up half a dozen results, all confirming what he had told me about his postgraduate student status. I couldn’t find anything else on him. General searches on Melrose filled the screen with pages of information, but nothing that was helpful.

After a while, I got up, put on a robe and went to the living room to look through the photos I’d taken at the campaign events. I printed some of them; a shot of the man with the binoculars, a couple of Chris, and even a decent one of Simon Scott standing on stage with his arms raised in the air. Spreading them out on my desk, I added a photo of Eliza Chapman that I’d printed from one of the old articles on the Internet. In the lamplight, I stared at the images, trying to see the relationships between them. If I could work out the links, perhaps I could save some lives.

Chris was working in Scott’s campaign office and going to all his campaign events. Was he doing that to support him, as appeared to be the case, or to watch him, the way I suspected the binoculars man was? And if so, with what objective? Revenge, like Eliza Chapman? Chris, Eliza and binoculars man were all possible suspects if Scott’s aura indicated death by murder.

I checked the time frequently, wondering when Anita might be free. I wanted to make sure she was all right, and tell her about Chris, but she’d told me she was on duty until mid-afternoon. I moved the photos around, shuffling them like cards to see if I could wheedle any information out of them. After a while, I got up and made more tea, throwing on jeans and a sweater while the kettle boiled.

Cup in hand, I walked back towards the desk, happy to see there was a break in the rain. Pale sunlight filled the room. The light gave substance and depth to the photos, and I stared at them for a full minute, wondering if I was imagining things. Picking up the two pictures that had caught my attention, I carried them to the window for a closer examination. Chris resembled Scott. He had the same eyes, hazel with a gold-colored ring around the iris. Could they be related?

I went back to the desk to send an email to Colin Butler, telling him that I had some news and that I needed his help. To my surprise, he responded almost at once. When he suggested meeting in a pub not far from where I lived, I jumped at the chance to get out of the flat.

I arrived at the pub before Butler did, and took a mineral water to a table near the window. The bar was packed with lunchtime patrons, their chatter competing with the sound from two televisions showing replays of the previous weekend’s football matches. Black beams held up sagging plaster ceilings. The floor undulated and creaked underneath tired red carpeting. When Butler arrived, I gave him a little wave, not sure that he would recognize me. In brown cord trousers and a brown jacket belted around a substantial gut, he reminded me of a bear. He shambled to the bar and then joined me at the table.

“So, Kate, what did you make of Eliza Chapman?” he asked, taking a long swallow of his drink.

“Well,” I said carefully, “She has a good reason to dislike Scott for cheating, but her hostility to him is extreme. She seems a little unbalanced, to be honest.” I’d told Butler by email about Eliza’s account of the pilfered thesis, but I hadn’t mentioned her story of the pregnant girlfriend. That seemed like malicious gossip, not something that a journalist at a serious newspaper would be interested in. But my discovery about Chris changed all that.

“There was something else,” I said. “She said he got his girlfriend pregnant, and then dumped her when his family told him to.”

Butler’s bushy eyebrows ascended towards his thinning hairline. “Tell me more.”

I gave him a brief summary of what Eliza had told me about Scott’s relationship with Phoena Stamos. “So Scott behaved badly, but why did it bother her so much?” I mused. “I mean, I’ve had friends who’ve shown significant lapses in judgment, but it doesn’t mean I hate them for it. Her reaction seems irrational.”

He wiped foam from his lip and nodded. “I think she was in love with Scott.”

I hadn’t thought of it, but it made sense in terms of explaining her animosity towards him. The woman scorned and all that.

“What makes you think so?”

“Just something she said when I interviewed her about the scandal with the vaccine dosage,” he said. “She didn’t name Scott, just mentioned the pain of some unrequited love in her past. She never married, you know. I daresay she didn’t really mean to talk about her personal life like that, but it came out during our conversation.”

I smiled. “I’m sure you’re a better interviewer than I am. And that makes me wonder why you sent me to talk to her?”

Butler’s eyes blinked rapidly behind his thick-lensed glasses. “Yeah, that’s a fair question. The decision to not pursue any rumors came from high up and I really did have a pile of other articles to write, but I was curious. So I thought if I sent you to meet Eliza, I’d find out what she knew without directly contravening instructions from my editor. When I heard what she’d told you, I decided that there really isn’t a story there. So, I have to say, my editor’s happy, I’m happy. Eliza won’t be, but that’s life.”

“I think we need to be careful,” I said. “She made a threat. Said she’d take things into her own hands if you didn’t put her story in the paper. I think she could be a danger to Scott.”

Butler took another drink of his beer before answering. “You’re conflating two things, it seems to me. She seems to hate Scott. She resents his success. She’d like to see the details of his past indiscretions covered by a serious newspaper. That’s not the same thing as being a danger to him.” He took another long swallow from his glass. “I don’t like to be harsh about a fellow human being, but Eliza is a sad fish. I did my best for her once and that’s as far as it goes.”

I sipped my mineral water, which tasted flat. Butler’s words depressed me for some reason.

“But you said you have something new to tell me?” he asked.

I sat up straighter. “According to Eliza, after Scott broke off the relationship, Phoena left for London to have an abortion.” I said. “Eliza told me that Scott later got a postcard from Phoena saying she was back in Greece. But I think it’s possible she had the baby, and he’s here in London.”

I was gratified to see a flicker of excitement in Butler’s eyes. He set his glass down on the sticky tabletop. “And what is the basis for that hypothesis, may I ask?”

It took a while to explain how I’d met Chris, the chance visit to his house, and the discovery of the hate wall in the upstairs bedroom.

“I didn’t see it before, but now I’ve caught a glimpse of the similarity in the photos, it seems obvious. Chris has darker hair, but the same fair skin and light eyes. He has the same nose as Scott, and they’re about the same height. I believe he could be Scott’s son.”

“Very interesting,” Butler said. “And by ‘interesting’ I refer to your investigative methods. Snooping around people’s bedrooms and finding a casual resemblance between two photos doesn’t exactly present a cast iron case.”

I pulled the photos out and put them on the table facing him. “Take a look for yourself.”

He studied the photos for a while. “You may be right.”

When I grinned in self-satisfaction, he held up a hand. “But I still don’t think the story is newsworthy. An illegitimate son makes an appearance just before the election.” He turned his hands palms up. “So what?”

“You don’t think that would cause a scandal?” I asked. “I’d take a bet Scott’s wife doesn’t know about Phoena. If Chris went public, it might be enough to upset Scott’s supporters. Women might decide not to vote for him.”

“Well, that is possible, but the putative son is leaving it awfully late if he wants his grand entrance to influence the election.”

“What about the mangled press clippings? Do you think Chris intends harm to Scott?”

Butler drained the rest of his beer. “Not really my field of expertise. It sounds a little melodramatic, actually.”

If he thought that sounded melodramatic, what would he make of a death-predicting aura?

“So that’s it? You said you needed my help?”

“Do you have access to databases, records, anything that might show if Phoena Stamos had a baby and lives in England?” I asked him. “I know you don’t think it’s newsworthy, but I’m still interested. I’d like to know but I already searched the Internet and nothing showed up.”

He nodded. “Well, I do, but I can’t give you access,” he said.

“You could look it up for me, couldn’t you? It wouldn’t take long and I just feel that I need to know more about Chris before I see him again, even if he’s not a danger to Scott.”

“I do owe you for doing that trek up to Cambridge,” he said slowly. He leaned over to retrieve a laptop from a black canvas bag on the floor by his feet. I was surprised. I’d thought of him as a paper and pencil man. He smiled at my expression. “I’m very handy with a keyboard. While I get this booted up, why don’t you buy another round?”

It was hard to suppress my excitement. I jumped to my feet and headed to the bar. When I got back to the table, I pulled my chair round to sit next to Butler, who was looking at a website I didn’t recognize. He might look like a slow and lumbering bear, but his fingers flew across the keys and he seemed to read at a great pace, putting screens away and pulling up new ones before I’d got much past the top few lines.

“Aha.”

I peered at the words on the screen as he pointed a finger at an entry halfway down. “Marriage certificate for Phoena Stamos and William Melrose, dated 14th September 1993 at the Islington office.”

“I knew it! Phoena must have settled in London after she came back from Greece, assuming that she ever went back there. And she married Melrose about five years after leaving Cambridge. Chris must have taken his stepfather’s name. Look up William Melrose.”

“Pushy, pushy,” said Butler, but he carried on typing. “What makes you think that Chris isn’t William Melrose’s son by birth?”

“The timing. Chris is in his late twenties. If Melrose and Phoena had a child together, he’d only be early twenties, five years too young to be Chris.”

“Ok, give me a minute. There are lots of listings for William Melrose, but let’s see if I can whittle down the list a bit.” He glanced up at me. “Drink your water or something. I can’t work with you breathing down my neck.”

I sat back in my chair, giving him some space, and checked my watch. It was only one in the afternoon, at least another hour before Anita would be free.

“All right,” murmured Butler to himself. “This could be our man. Oh dear, yes it is. Death certificate dated November 2005. So he and Phoena weren’t married for very long.” He stopped typing, cracked every finger on both hands and then took a big swallow of his beer. “Did you get any snacks?” he asked. Obediently, I went back to the bar and bought two bags of salt and vinegar crisps.

“Mmm, thanks. Love these things,” he said. “Wife tells me not to eat them but she doesn’t understand that I need salt to focus my brain.”