Page 57 of Pressure Head
I was relieved to see Phil’s Golf parked outside his building—for all I’d known, he might have been off investigating something, or even just out at a pub somewhere for Sunday lunch. I found a space halfway down the road, glad the restrictions didn’t apply on Sundays. Parking in St. Albans is a bloody nightmare. I pulled on the hand brake, wiped my palms on my jeans, and went and knocked on his front door.
Phil didn’t look happy to see me. Then again, he didn’t look all that unhappy either. Basically, he was back doing his impersonation of a slab of rock. “Tom,” was all he said.
“Yeah. Can I come in?” I asked, shifting my weight from my bad side.
He stepped aside, leaving the door wide open, and set about clearing one of the folding chairs. There was noticeably more mess around than last night; he’d obviously spent the evening working on his box collection. Maybe he’d wanted to make sure he’d unearthed all potential skeletons before the next time I came round and blundered across them. “Coffee?” he offered.
“No, thanks. Just had some,” I reminded him.
“Want to sit down?”
I didn’t, really, but it seemed a bit impolite not to seeing as he’d cleared the chair specially. I sat, and he loomed over me like one of the monoliths at Stonehenge gone rogue, while I shifted on the chair, trying to get comfortable without actually collapsing the flippin’ thing.
“Listen,” I said. “I found something out today. After you left. Darren—that’s my mate Gary’s new bloke—he used to know the Rev.”
“And?”
I took a deep breath. “And it looks like I should have read the letters, after all. Turns out the Rev’s got a bit of a secret past.”
“What kind?”
“The open-to-blackmail kind. Darren called him, and I quote, ‘a right goer’ in his day. He said he’d seen him at some kind of sex party, and it wasn’t so he could tell people the error of their ways.” I hesitated, then blurted it out anyway. “But I still don’t think he killed Melanie. She’d never have blackmailed him, and he’s not the violent sort. No way.”
Phil stared at me—then looked away. He grabbed another chair and shunted the boxes onto the floor, then sat, leaning towards me with his elbows on his knees. “Tom, you’ve met the vicar twice. All right, three times, if you count this morning. You never knew Melanie at all. Do you really think you’re qualified to decide what either of them is capable of?”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he carried on.
“You’re letting yourself get too close to these people. Nobody wants to believe crap like that about people they know—but it happens every bloody day. Maybe Melanie was one of those Christians who think being gay’s a sin; have you thought about that? She might have told Lewis he had to resign or she’d expose him. And you’ve no idea what kind of pressures the Reverend’s under. Sometimes people just snap. Christ, Tom, you need to be more careful.”
“No,” I said. “You’re wrong. I don’t know how I know it, but you’re wrong.”
“What is this, more of your special talents? You’re a bloody polygraph now, are you?” Phil turned away with a muttered curse. “Sorry,” he said, staring out of the window. “But have you got any basis for believing what you do?”
I stood up and walked around, trying to ease the ache in my hip. Bloody church pews. “No,” I admitted. “Sod it, I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve told you now, all right? So you can do what you like with that little bit of information.”
Phil turned back to me. “This Darren, you got a full name and address for him?”
“Sorry. I can give you Gary’s address, I suppose. Darren seems to have more or less moved in there. Or you can catch him at the market; he’s got a stall. You can’t miss him—shortest trader, loudest voice.” God, I hoped Gary would forgive me for sending Phil round to ruffle the feathers in their little love nest. I wandered over to the window, having noticed a picture of a good-looking, dark-haired bloke that hadn’t been on the sill last night. “Who’s this?” I asked, picking it up.
“My husband.”
Shock stabbed me in the chest, and I spun round so bloody fast I nearly fell over. “Your what? You mean all this time, all this dancing around me you’ve been doing, you’re sodding wellmarried? Does he know you bring blokes home when he’s away? Or is it that sort of marriage anyway? Forget it—I don’t give a monkey’s. Just leave me out of it, all right?”
I was halfway to the door, breathing hard, my heart beating furiously, before Phil spoke. “He’s dead.”
This time, I turned slowly, feeling cold inside. “Dead?” I said stupidly. “Really dead, or just as inhe’s dead to me, dead? Because you’ve been sending out some pretty mixed signals—”
“He died in a car crash. Seems there’s a lot of it about.” There was nothing humorous about his smile. “It was a couple of years ago, now, and we were separated, anyway.”
“But you still wear the ring. Why the bloody hell did you lie about it?”
“I didn’t lie. I told you I wasn’t married, and I’m not. Not anymore.”
“Yeah, but you made me think—”
“Think what? That I was an arsehole? So what? No skin off your pretty little nose, was it?”
There was that phrase again. Did it mean anything, him calling me pretty, or did he say that sort of thing to everyone? “I don’t like people lying to me,” I said. Because whether or not he’d said the words, he’d lied.
