Kill Me Twice: Rosie Gilmour 7 (33 page)

The shot echoed around the empty house as the photograph slipped out of Colin’s hand.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Rosie
stirred in TJ’s arms at the sound of the mobile ringing. She eased herself away from him, not wanting to wake him.

‘Don’t be creeping about now, Gilmour. I’m awake. It’s not even eight o’clock. Who’s phoning at this time? . . . As if I didn’t know.’

Rosie turned her head towards him, as he lay, one eye open and his lips moving to a smile. She ran a hand down his cheekbone, and traced the line of his lips as she put the phone to her ear.

‘Hey, Rosie! Sorry if I woke you, but I thought you’d want to know this.’

It was Mickey Kavanagh, his first-thing-in-the-morning gravelly twenty-a-day voice.

‘No problem, Mickey. What’s up?’

‘Colin Chambers shot himself last night.’

‘Christ! Really?’

‘Yep.
The cops won’t be putting it out this morning officially, but my mate in the Branch called me, as I’d been talking to him re your stuff in the past few days. So your little chat at the Garrick must have struck the right chord.’

Even though a dead Colin Chambers was much easier for her than a live one, Rosie couldn’t help the pang of guilt. ‘Cheers, mate, for telling me I drove a man to suicide.’

‘Fuck him, Rosie. He drove himself to suicide. You just helped him over the last hurdle.’

‘Oh, thanks. I feel better now,’ Rosie said sarcastically. ‘Christ, Mick. Can’t believe he did that. What a cowardly bastard.’

‘Typical of his type. Falling on his sword as he finally realized his number was up. He would never have admitted it, Rosie. Make no mistake about it, if he thought there was any way he could trash your allegations, he would have done it. But he knew he was done up like a kipper. He’d been hiding behind this all his life. Good fucking riddance is what I say, and so should you.’

‘Yeah,’ Rosie said half-heartedly. ‘You’re right. It’s one bastard off the face of the earth. Listen, Mickey, I’d better go and phone my editor. We’ll want to run with our piece full-on now.’

‘Sure. That’s why I phoned you, darling. Give me a shout if you need me. And give yourself a pat on the back. Okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Rosie said, as he hung up.

She
sank back on the pillows as TJ’s hand stretched over and caressed her stomach.

‘What’s up?’

‘Colin Chambers shot himself last night.’

TJ let out a low whistle. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘The world can do with a lot fewer of those bastards.’ He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

‘I have to phone the editor.’ She punched in McGuire’s number.

‘Gilmour. What’s up at this time of the morning?’

‘Mick. It’s Colin Chambers. He shot himself last night. He’s dead.’

There was a long moment of silence, then McGuire spoke. ‘What a fucking result, Rosie!’

‘I thought you’d say that.’

‘But it is, though. You can’t libel the dead, so now we’ve got him and the Chief Constable at the time, who’s been dead for years. We can more or less trample all over the fuckers, as long as we don’t accuse the whole of the UK police force.’

‘Yeah. It’s definitely a result.’

Silence.

‘Gilmour, I hope you’re not going to start all that guilt shite on me. I know what you’re like. I bet you’re already agonizing because you gave him it straight at your meeting in the Garrick. Am I right?’

‘Well, a bit. I can’t pretend I’m happy to have assisted someone in ending their life, Mick.’

‘What
about the bloody lives that were ruined by his actions? What about them? Robbed of their innocence and their voice. Come on, Gilmour. Don’t give me your crap. Get down to the office pronto and let’s get about this, all fucking guns blazing. Are we clear?’

‘Sure. Of course. I’m glad he’s dead. I’m just feeling a bit guilty for my part in it.’

‘Fuck that. We’ll have a historic splash and couple of spreads tomorrow, and Colin Chambers will be rotting in Hell where he belongs. Now piss off and let me get my breakfast.’

Rosie thought about it for a moment. ‘Yeah. You’re right, Mick. We should be celebrating.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ He hung up.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Millie
sat in her room, staring at Sky News as though she were watching the story of someone else’s life unravel. But it was
her
life they were dissecting, hers and Colin’s. Well, mostly it was Colin’s. It was
his
picture that flashed up with the breaking news tag that the former Tory Home Secretary had been found dead of gunshot wounds in the study of his London home. There were no suspicious circumstances, the police had said, as they usually did when they didn’t want to say outright that a person had taken their own life. But Millie knew that all the newspapers would be saying it loud and clear tomorrow morning. There was no revelation, no speculation as to what could have driven her husband to take his own life, just the breaking news that he’d been found dead by his housekeeper when she’d arrived that morning.

Earlier, when Millie’s door had been gently opened and her psychiatrist had appeared, accompanied by a nurse
and the hospital manager, Millie had immediately wondered what was going on. She’d assumed this was the day they were going to give her ECT, and part of her had resigned herself to it. She knew that Rosie Gilmour wouldn’t abandon her, especially after the flowers and the cryptic note had been delivered, but she had no control over when the ECT would happen. Time was running out. But then, from their expressions as they’d stood over her bed, Millie had sensed grim news.

When the psychiatrist had pulled a chair up at her bedside and told her calmly that her husband had been found dead in their home, and that it appeared he had taken his own life, Millie had looked at him, but said nothing. She felt nothing. Not sadness, not anger, not even any sense of loss. She didn’t flinch. So much so that the psychiatrist had asked her if she fully understood what he had told her. She nodded. Then, after a few moments, she had asked how he had done it. There was a gun at the scene, the police had said. And a note for her. Somewhere inside a part of her that had been dead for a long time, she felt an odd comfort that, in his final moments, he had acknowledged her, after all these years.

After a few moments of silence, but for the sound of feet shuffling and awkward clearing of throats, the psychiatrist had told her the next part. She was free to leave the hospital. The section order under the Mental Health Act had been lifted because her husband had signed a paper
saying he was willing to withdraw his agreement to it, and the medical evidence that the psychiatrist had found over the past few weeks suggested that she was fit to be released back into the community. Millie hadn’t reacted to this either, but inside she was smiling.

‘I’d like to go home now,’ was all she said, and the manager told her he would arrange for a car to take her to wherever she wanted to go.

*

Two hours later, Millie stood on the steps outside her front door where a young WPC stood guard and gave her a sympathetic smile of recognition. The officer asked if she would be all right to go inside alone, and Millie nodded. She stepped aside as Millie slipped her key into the lock and pushed open the door. She could hear the whirr of cameras behind her, and had been told to expect them by the hospital manager as she’d been preparing to leave the hospital. She’d seen them crowded together from the top of the road, when the car had turned down towards the house. Dozens of them, and a TV crew. She didn’t care. They can photograph me all they like, she thought. Nothing can hurt me any more.

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The light from the stained-glass window on the high ceiling sent a cobalt sheen to the white walls of the hallway and she stood for a moment, transfixed by the shaft of colour. Then she walked across the oak floor and pushed open the
study door. Cigar smoke lingered in the air, and she could imagine Colin sitting on his leather chair beside the fire with a whisky in his hand. So many nights she’d longed to join him and talk things out, but they’d become so distant that it had seemed impossible. She stood gazing around the room, every corner a memory, every bookshelf, photograph, school sporting trophy of Colin’s . . .

She hadn’t seen this room sober for months. Everything had been a blur almost, between the depression and the alcoholic stupor her life had become. But now she saw it clearly. She looked across at his desk, where there was a whisky glass, almost empty, and behind it, bloodstains. Her heart lurched. She pictured Colin lying there in his blood. She steadied herself. Then she saw the cream envelope and noticed his writing:
Millie
. The police had informed her that they’d put it back on the desk once they’d established that Colin had committed suicide. She went across and picked it up, held it in her hands, almost reluctant to open it. Then she slit it with the paper knife she’d given him as a gift many years ago and took out the letter. It was written in fountain pen, so typical of Colin even in his final moments, such a snob and a stickler for form. She began to read:

My darling Millie,

I’m sorry. Where and how can I ever begin to tell you I’m sorry? I think you know it’s too late for that. It was too late long ago for me to say sorry to you for all the wrong I had done, for not understanding you in your grief over the babies. I’m so ashamed. The truth is, I’ve always been ashamed and I’m such a coward I couldn’t even face that, because I know that I singularly ruined your life as well as mine. And my shame is even greater, because I only realized this in the last couple of days when it has all come tumbling down. When the reporter came to me and told me about the dossiers and the revelations that would come out over my part in their destruction, the shame of my entire life overwhelmed me.

I know I cannot go on. I’m too much of a coward to face what is going to happen when the story comes out. I cannot face it. I cannot face you because I had you locked away in a hospital, as though you were mad, because you were a threat to me. What kind of man does that? It is my greatest shame. I know you will never forgive me, and neither should you. I hope your life is better without me in it. I have no contribution to make, not to you, to myself, or to anything I touch. But I know that in my heart I have never stopped loving you
.

Colin

Millie sat on the chair he had occupied in his final moments, and gazed at the photograph of them in the cafe on Madrid’s Plaza Mayor, so happy together. She looked at
the letter in her hand and read it again. She’d felt a physical pain in her chest at
never stopped loving you
. If only she could have got through to him. But he was what he was. He had killed himself because he had been found out. It wasn’t because he had let her down; it wasn’t because of her. He could have come back to her at any time and told her he loved her, and she might have thrown herself into his arms. But he hadn’t. He had killed himself because of the dossiers, because he had been rumbled. ‘I won’t weep for you, Colin Chambers.’

She went into her bag and took out her mobile phone. She punched in a number and was glad to hear a familiar voice.

‘Rosie, I’m home.’

*

Larry Sutton waited in the office of the plumbers’ merchant that he part-owned with one of his oldest associates. It
was
a plumbers’ merchant, as the sign above the door said, but it was also the location for secret meetings, out of the way of any of the bars or clubs where he normally saw his associates. Most of Larry’s drug deals were done from this very office, and had been since he and Kenny had started working together all those years ago. Fair play to Kenny, he had actually learned a trade when he’d come out of Borstal. But within five years, watching the way his old muckers Larry and Spider swashbuckled their way around the East End, he quickly realized that being up to
your arse in mucky water was a lot harder than being the middle man.

The plumbers’ merchant’s was also the scene of the punishment and interrogations that were part of the business. The secret was not letting whoever Larry had summoned there know whether he was getting sent on a job or having his fingers chopped off.

That had been the score when Larry had summoned Ricky and Pete. He told them he was well impressed with their work in Madrid and Glasgow, even though he was pissed off with Mervyn Bates. He was grateful for the way they’d disposed of him, and now they’d get their reward.

Kenny had left the office fifteen minutes ago, as arranged, and everything was in place. Larry had brought someone from Belfast for the job, someone who didn’t ask, never flinched, and just got on with it, as long as the money was agreed. He looked at his watch. He was out there somewhere in the yard waiting for Larry’s text.

Larry heard the car, then Ricky and Pete sharing a joke as the doors were slammed and they came up the narrow steps to the office entrance. There was a knock at the door.

‘It’s Ricky.’

‘Come in, lads.’

The door opened, and in came the big frame of Ricky, his blond hair gelled and glistening under the fluorescent ceiling light. Pete was quieter, thicker-looking, as though he might have had bolts in his neck at one time.

‘So,
lads, how was Merv the perv in his final moments?’ Larry chortled.

‘Squealing like a fucking pig, Larry. I’d say he’d shat himself before he hit the water.’

‘Good enough for the cunt.’ He turned to them and looked them in the eye. ‘Are you sure there was nothing left behind? You weighted him down enough so he won’t pop up for a few weeks, and when he does it will take them weeks to ID him?

‘You bet we did, boss. It was clean as a whistle, and we walked away. Came straight down the road, like you said.’

‘Have you seen the papers today?’

‘No, boss.’

‘Well, it’s all over the front page about Merv and his part in that Bella bird. I told you what he’d done, didn’t I?’