Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 143, No. 1. Whole No. 868, January 2014

Heaven Knows by Marilyn Todd

Last year Untreed Reads brought out all of Marilyn Todd’s Claudia Seferius Ancient Roman mystery novels in e-book format. Now they’ve followed up with her High Priestess Iliona series, set in Ancient Greece. Reviewing the first Iliona novel, Blind Eye, Kirkus said: “Todd casts an eerier mood in this series hick-off, hut provides the same abundance of historical tidbits and robust prose.” This new story isn’t historical hut it’s not quite set in the present either...

“Come in, Frank. Sit down.” St. Peter waved me to the chair in front of his desk. It was deep and cushioned, like floating on air. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”

“Didn’t realize I had a choice,” I said. “Only last time—”

“I know, I know. One minute you’re driving down the Ml in thick fog. Next thing, here you are, with no recollection of that twenty-two car pileup, much less the lorry that smashed into you at sixty miles per hour.” His mouth twisted. “Sorry we couldn’t cushion the shock, Frank. There’s nothing I’d like better than to give everyone a heads-up on these things. Just doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.”

Better for me than for most, I supposed. No devastated wife throwing herself on my coffin. No traumatized kids growing up scarred. Even my parents beat me to it by thirty-nine years, after a car wreck claimed their lives on the north side of London. We O’Donnells are obviously magnets when it comes to twisted metal.

“If it’s about being behind on my report—”

When you arrive, you’re asked how you’d like to spend eternity. What would make you happy forever? I was a detective in the police force before I went private, I said. Any chance of—? Rhetorical question. Heaven always gives you what you want. Which means that although my job is to reunite new arrivals with their loved ones, this is a big place and the issues are complex. Tracing them is not always easy.

“No, no, no, Frank, nothing of the kind. Any time you’re ready, no rush.” St. Peter smiled. “Time has no meaning here, and in any case—” he allowed himself a soft chuckle “—it’s not as if either of us is going anywhere, is it?”

“Glad to hear it. Because for a moment, I thought I was being reassigned.”

“Reass—? Oh, you mean expelled. Absolutely not, Frank. No way. Once you’re in, you are in.”

“Funny, but I recall some bloke by the name of Lucifer was served with an eviction notice awhile back.”

“History, schmistory.” St. Peter swatted it away as if a wasp had slipped in through the Gates. “We’ve tightened the Admissions procedures since then, talking of which—” He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Are you happy, Frank?”

“This is Heaven,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

No answer. He just sat there, stroking his neat little Van Dyke beard, dark eyes staring into space. Through the Gate House window, I watched cherubs weighing the feather of truth, while angels read the newcomers’ auras. Integrity. Loyalty. Honesty. Humour. Every human attribute splayed out in a vast spectrum of colour, like some celestial peacock, shaded according to strength.

“Thing is,” St. Peter said, “we have something of a conundrum on our hands.”

A few taps on the divine keyboard brought up a photo on the big screen behind him. Blond girl, pretty, laughing into the camera.

“Lucy Fuller,” he said. “Twenty-four years old. Events organizer. Single. She sustained seventeen stab wounds close to her home in Winchester, where her attacker either left her for dead or ran off on hearing footsteps approaching.”

A second picture flashed up alongside. Middle-aged couple with kind eyes and a springer spaniel at their feet.

“John and Susan Kincade were walking their dog in the woods, dog started barking, and bingo. Without Mrs. Kincade’s nursing skills, a strong mobile signal, and an exceptionally rapid response from the emergency services, Lucy Fuller would have died.”

“Except she obviously did, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Now that, Frank, is precisely the kind of logic we’re looking for on this case, so let me ask you a question. How do you feel about going back in the field?”

My stomach tightened. “You mean Earth?”

“We... don’t actually think of it in those terms, but, yes. A temporary return to your old life.” He spread his hands. “Sort of your old life, anyway. Technically you won’t be alive, and you most certainly won’t be allowed to contact your loved ones—”

What loved ones? An ex-wife who hated my guts so much she burned every item I owned, then posted a video of her bonfire on YouTube? Or my colleagues from the police force, who felt I sold them out when I opened up as a private detective?

“Can’t say it holds much appeal.” An understatement, if ever there was one. “Especially when I don’t see a problem. I’m assuming Lucy Fuller died of her injuries?”

The Boss wouldn’t be talking to an ex-CID officer if she’d slipped under a bus.

“Laceration of the renal artery led to delayed complications, but before she died, she identified this man” — a third photo flashed up, replacing Lucy’s rescuers — “as her assailant.”

Slim build, dark hair, easy grin. In his Coldplay T-shirt, two-day stubble, and crumpled jeans, he didn’t look the seventeen-stab-wound type. Then again, who does? I reached for the file, which told me his name was Craig Langstone, twenty-six years old, also from Winchester, where he worked as a media consultant. Somewhere in the file it probably told me what a media consultant was. I was too busy reading how, for almost a year, he and Lucy had been an item. Until she caught him in bed with another woman.

“What am I missing?” I flicked through the report a second time, in case I’d skipped a page. “Says here, he committed suicide the day after she died. Hardly an exceptional event, in my experience.”

Guy has fling, guy regrets it, guy tries to win back girl, girl tells him where to go, guy gets angry, things turn nasty, girl ends up in hospital or worse. Overcome with guilt — or because the net is closing in — he tops himself. I’d seen it happen a dozen times during the course of my career. Heard of it hundreds more.

“Well, now, that’s where things get complicated,” the Boss said, leaning back. “Craig Langstone turned up at the Gate House—”

Everybody does, this being the start point for the admittance/elimination process.

“—swearing black was white he didn’t do it.” St. Peter grinned. “Hardly an exceptional event, in my experience, either. Except.” He threw up his hands. “When the cherubs weighed the feather of truth, it passed with flying colours, and when the angels read his aura, that also came out tops. To be absolutely certain, we had the seraphim put him through the Soul Scanner, but guess what? Not the faintest trace of evil to be found.”

“Then the girlfriend’s lying. Or at the very least mistaken.”

“Our view exactly. In the end, we brought in the archangels to test her, that’s how serious it was, but the thing is, Lucy’s story never wavers. She was taking her usual Sunday morning run when Craig jumped out and struck her from behind.”

“She didn’t see him?”

“No, but she recognized his voice, and during the course of the attack he referred to things that only the two of them could possibly have known.”

I want you out of my life, he kept shouting. I want you out of my life. The same words over and over, which at first she did not understand.

You’ve made a mistake! I’m Lucy Fuller, I live—

Remember that night we made love on the beach? When you lost your earring and we spent half the night searching for it, and it was caught on my shirt all along?

That was when she knew it was Craig. That, and various other things he brought up. Silly things. Insignificant things. Like their pet names for each other, the first meal she cooked him, that picnic by the river when his ice cream cone fell in the water, bobbing downstream like a raft. Even then, she’d thought it was just his fists he was using. The man she knew — the man she’d loved — would never lie in wait with a knife...

“Which leaves me something of a predicament,” the Boss said. “She says he did it, and she’s telling the truth. He says he didn’t, and he’s telling the truth. Until we get to the bottom of this, I’m not in a position to grant admittance, or exclusion, to either party.”

“Oh no, not Limbo?”

“Now you see why I asked you here.” His face twisted. “Uncertainty is ten times worse than Hell, Frank. In Hell, there’s no false hope.”

Four contented years of reuniting children with parents, widows with husbands, lovers with one another, congealed like duck fat in the pit of my stomach. Memories flooded back. Of cold, lonely evenings. An even colder, lonelier bed.

“When do I leave?” I asked brightly.

Winchester, for those of you who have never been, is just an hour and a half from London and a completely different world. Bordered by lush water meadows on the east, golf courses on the west, it has a town centre lined with half-timbered houses and boasts what was once thought to be the original Round Table from King Arthur’s court. Turn any corner and you’ll find a courtyard, arch, or alleyway virtually unchanged from Chaucer’s day, not to mention a twelfth-century castle, an almshouse built by William the Conquerer’s grandson, and the longest damn cathedral in Europe. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the river cuts right through the city, creating an oasis of calm and tranquility in a distinctly uncalm, untranquil world.

I stood beneath the statue of King Alfred, the one who burnt the cakes, feeling the spring sunshine warming my face for the first time in over four years. Despite countless visits to Winchester Prison during my spell in the force, this was the first time I’d stopped to listen to the voices of the chapel choir drifting on the air, and suddenly it seemed a lighter, freer man who wandered round the cathedral close, gazing up at the stained-glass windows while the organ resonated round Jane Austen’s grave. And as I walked through gateways that had stood for a thousand years, and passed mills that were almost as old, I felt an unexpected pull...

“Be careful,” St. Peter warned, once I’d been primed, updated, and kitted out for travel. “Don’t allow yourself to become emotionally involved.”

“No worries there,” I laughed. “Plug-ugly flatfoots like me, we never get the girl.”

“Who’s worried? Plug-ugly flatfoots like you can take care of yourselves!” He paused, and the smile dropped from his face. “Seriously, Frank. It’s the living I worry about. Once they cross over, we can erase any bad memories, if that’s what they want. But while they’re still in the physical zone, there’s nothing we can do to influence events as they unfold. Despite what some people think.”

“I’ll be good.”

“I know, but— Emotional attachment means someone gets hurt when it comes time to leave, and if it isn’t the traveller we send back, it’s the person they leave behind, and I’ve seen it happen too often. All chance of a happy future destroyed, because they’re literally chasing a shadow.”

“Trust me.” I gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Fifty-four’s too old to start going off the rails.”

“Deny the Holocaust, deny paternity, deny the existence of God if you must,” he laughed back. “But never, ever deny the male midlife crisis!” He shook my hand. “Best of luck, son. Those kids are counting on you, and remember: no diversions, no involvement, just facts.”

“No diversions, no involvement, just facts,” I promised.

Yet an hour into the mission, what do I do? I fall in love with a city.

Mind you, at least the girls were safe.

But now, with two carefree faces burning a hole in my conscience, it was time to leave the castles, crypts, and tearooms and set to work, with the crime scene top priority. Hardly the freshest I’d ever worked, because, like St. Peter said, time loses its significance once you cross the Threshold. Craig and Lucy’s sojourn in Limbo might mean unchanging spiritual agony, but in earth times, seven years had drifted by. A lot of time for a murder investigation, but it was crucial to get a feeling for this peaceful, wooded hillside, where a young woman was ambushed, stabbed, and left for dead.

I want you out of my life.

I closed my eyes, picturing Lucy, barely out of breath at the start of her run, thinking she’d tripped, until she felt herself being hit in the back, and heard a man spitting hatred into her ear.

I want you out of my life. Out of my life. Out of my life—

I opened my eyes, staring down at the spires and rooftops until the hatred faded. Right then. I drew a deep breath. Next stop Lucy’s parents, and if you think it’s tough standing on the spot where a girl was viciously attacked, it’s child’s play compared to questioning the bereaved parents. The only thing worse is breaking bad news.

I needed to tread carefully too. If they got wind that my investigation wasn’t kosher and contacted the police, they would also realize that neither Frank O’Donnell nor his so-called agency existed. That in itself wasn’t a problem. I’d be whisked back, they’d be confused, no one would be any the wiser. But if this mission was aborted, who knew when the next attempt would be made. In another seven years, memories would have faded to dust, witnesses might well be dead. What chance, then, of Craig and Lucy ever being released from their spiritual prison?

I am man enough to admit that my hand was shaking as I rang the Fullers’ doorbell, the first of several interviews, and by the time night fell, my head was splitting after putting so many decent, wounded people through the wringer. Even after renewing my acquaintance with Chivas Regal — perhaps the only true friend I’d ever had — I still couldn’t shake off their pain and suffering. Much less the guilt of forcing them to relive the blackest moments of their lives, probing memories they’d spent seven years trying to bury.

Somewhere in the early hours, I dropped into my hotel bed, no longer some distracted tourist revisiting a foreign land in which so much had changed and yet so little.

My only thought was, shit. Tomorrow, I get to wreck some other poor sod’s life.

“Mrs. Langstone? Frank O’Donnell from the DIA.” I handed her a card that looked every inch the biz. “I wonder if I might have a word about your son?”

She handed the card back. “I’ve never heard of the DIA.”

“It’s a new initiative. Our brief is to clarify certain unresolved issues which—”

“You work for the government?”

“A private corporation. May I come in?”

“No.”

Hostility’s nothing new. Mothers either welcome you indoors, burst into tears, then swear their son’s a good boy, an honest boy who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Or they hurl abuse because their baby’s being victimized, those bastard cops set him up, he was at home eating pizza at the time. (And, of course, that he wouldn’t hurt a fly.) Occasionally, though, they slam the door in your face, but what made me wedge my foot in this particular door had less to do with a murder investigation. More to do with the fact that, with her long blond hair, tight top, and skinny jeans, Craig’s mum was one foxy-looking woman.

“Five minutes, Mrs. Langstone. Please.”

Blue eyes scanned the clear blue sky and the stillness of the newly unfurled leaves. “Very well, we’ll walk. Give me a minute.”

Most men, I thought, would give her the earth if she so much as crooked her little finger.

Rather than stand, like some hapless vacuum-cleaner salesman, staring at the glossy woodwork that had closed gently, but firmly, in my face, I leaned my elbows on the railings, watching the water gurgling past.

My home was the Victorian terraced house that I’d inherited from my parents. At the time of their crash, I’d barely turned fifteen, and my aunt — my father’s sister — was appointed my legal guardian. In the face of ferocious opposition from my uncle to sell the house and put the cash in trust, she rented it out. In part, this paid for my keep. Mainly, though, the income gave me pocket money that most boys my age could only dream of, and a home of my own once I turned twenty-one. All of which appealed to the gold-digging virtues of my ex-wife, attracted to the money not the man. Not that I was rich, but when you’re poor, comfortable equates to wealth, and that’s about the best I can say in her defence. Sixteen years later, when I simply couldn’t hack it anymore, she became so enraged when the court ruled in my favour about keeping the house that she burned every single one of my possessions, including the few remaining photos of my parents. Needless to say, I haven’t seen her since. In either dimension.

But roomy as the homestead was, it sat on a busy junction, plus I was never what you’d call handy with paintbrushes, screwdrivers, or garden forks.

This ancient flour mill, smack bang in the middle of town and converted into small, upscale apartments, was as far removed from tired and weed-infested as it was possible to get. Two hundred metres from the road, and you couldn’t hear the traffic. Amazing. Just water rushing through the mill race, the quack of hungry ducks, and a boisterous choir of birdsong from the trees. Times like this, I wished I could tell my willow warblers from my blackcaps. But at least I recognized the sparrows at my feet.

Just when I’d decided she’d had no intention of coming out, the front door opened and Craig’s mother emerged, zipping up a leather jacket that half the women half her age wouldn’t dare to wear. “This way, Mr. O’Donnell.”

Yes, ma’am.

We followed the Itchen through the park, then out along the open water meadows, an artist’s paradise of rolling downlands, wildflowers, and waving catkins. We watched rainbow trout basking underneath the bridge, heard the occasional plop of a vole dropping into the water, and once caught the unmistakable-even for me — turquoise and orange flash of a kingfisher. On the way out, we discussed the weather, the economy, the problems in the Middle East. On the way back, we agreed that Pink Floyd were the best, stood in different corners when it came to politics, and discovered that we were both ambivalent when it came to Quentin Tarantino, which had to be a first.

“Well, that was a pleasant walk, Mr. O’Donnell.” You could almost hear the barriers go back up. “Now perhaps you can tell me what exactly, after all this time, is unresolved about my son?”

I have a trick to break down barriers, and subtlety isn’t it. “His innocence,” I said.

“Oh, really? And what makes you such an expert?”

Everyone handles grief differently. There’s no right way, no wrong way, though I wasn’t sure brittle was helping. Still. If that’s how she wanted to play it...

“Sorry, Mum.” I’d read Craig’s suicide note so many times, it was imprinted on my eyeballs. “But the police don’t believe me and I can’t prove otherwise. If there is an afterlife, I can at least convince Lucy. Either way, we’ll be together. Be happy for me, Mum. Love, C.”

The clenching of fists was her only hint of emotion. I ploughed on.

“I spent twenty years in the police force, sixteen as a P.I., Mrs. Langstone, and contrary to popular belief, most suicides don’t leave notes. Those that do, they’re either short and abrupt, or they’re long, rambling over-protestations of innocence by men who are as guilty as sin.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“His letter hurt you, I know that—”

“Stop right there.” For all she tried, there was no snap to her voice. “You know nothing about me, Mr. O’Donnell, much less how I feel.”

“Maybe I know more than you think. For instance, I know you don’t trust me, and to be fair, I don’t blame you.” All manner of shysters would have stepped forward after the tragedy, offering everything from psychic healing to séances and messages from “beyond.” That was the reason for this walk. Establishing trust. Somewhere along the way, I must have passed the test, but these things cut both ways. “I also know this cool-calm-and-collected manner of yours is an act.”

The mere fact that she didn’t bat an eyelid when I turned up out of the blue showed the amount of effort she’d put in, keeping it all together.

“You didn’t keep me hanging around on the doorstep because you’re cold or distant, or even suspicious. You needed that long to regroup.”

“Or I could just be another longtime single mum, who’s used to being strong and in control?”

“You could,” I agreed. “But no one’s that tough.” I stared at the pavement. Ran my hands through my hair. Changed tactics. “You had a son. Your only child. And when he died, you felt you’d failed him. If only you’d phoned him more often— Talked more about it— Made him stay with you after he’d won bail, instead of letting him go back to his own flat—”

The same guilt trip the bereaved always take. That, as his mother, she should have recognized the signs. Should have phoned the Samaritans. Should never have let him out of her sight...

“Mothers are supposed to protect their children, Mr. O’Donnell. They’re supposed to fight for them. Kill for them. Die for them, even. Not let them slip through their fingers like water.”

“With hindsight, we’d all be heroes, Mrs. Langstone, but I can tell you now, you did not fail your son. You believed in Craig when no one else did, you believe in him still, and, for the record, so do I.”

Her expression hadn’t changed, but tears began rolling down her cheeks, splashing onto her jacket.

“Angie,” she said. “My name’s Angie. I think you’d better come in.”

The flat was as neat inside as out, everything tidy and in its place, smelling of coffee, fresh flowers, and clean laundry. I used to think I had minimalism down to a fine art, but her beige sofas, floaty voiles, and glass-topped tables added a sophistication that left me in the shade. There were no photographs, at least none on display, but a set of watercolours, a sketchbook, and a pile of dog-eared paperbacks proved this was no sterile showhouse but a refuge. Not just from the busy insurance office where she worked, but a means of escaping from the past.

Guessing she’d need a moment to compose herself, I asked to use the bathroom, and spent so long pretending to wash my hands that she probably thought I suffered from OCD. By the time I returned, I expected to find her plumping the cushions on the sofa, lip gloss and mascara picture-perfect, every inch a woman in control. The only thing I’d got right was the sofa. Face in hands, she was perched on the edge, rocking back and forth. Same as she’d probably done every night, every weekend, since her son hanged himself...

I scooped her in my arms and opened a floodgate. Bitter, silent tears gave way to anguished howls, which turned to wracking sobs. And while she heaved away seven years of pent-up pain, I wondered why Ken Langstone bothered getting married if he intended to continue the bachelor life. Why men like him wanted kids in the first place, when they had no intention of hanging around to kick a ball, read them stories, go to school plays. And why more wasn’t done to make feckless fathers keep up with the payments, instead of forcing their young wives to work two jobs to pay off their debts.

When Angie finally lifted her head from my shoulder, her eyes were puffy, streaked, bloodshot, and red-rimmed. What stood out above everything else, though, and which surprised me above everything else, was that they were smiling. “You have a tight grip, Mr. O’Donnell.”

“Had to. You’ve held things together for so long, I didn’t want the pieces falling apart on your lovely white carpet. And it’s Frank.”

“Well, Frank, thank you.” She blew into a Kleenex. “No one’s held me like that for a long time.”

She was lucky. No one had ever held me like that.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” I said, because if there’s one thing a police officer knows, it’s his way around a kitchen. More sympathy can be shown, more confidences drawn, sometimes even confessions, over a simple cup of—

“Are you kidding?” She reached down and brought out a bottle. “After waiting seven years to clear Craig’s name, I deserve something stronger than tea. Glasses are in the cupboard behind you.”

I picked out two crystal tumblers and thought, Chivas Regal, Pink Floyd, Tarantino. Wonder what else we have in common.

“Lucy was a lovely girl,” she said, sliding onto a stool and leaning her elbows on the black granite breakfast bar. “Smart. Funny. One of those women who light up a room every time they walk in, you know? Until some psychopath comes along and wipes everything out, and the worst part is, Frank, the police didn’t even look for anyone else.”

Not true. Extensive searches and lab analyses were carried out at the time, witnesses questioned to the point of exhaustion, the details distributed to police forces across Britain and Europe, in an attempt to link this crime with others. But between the paramedics, the Kincades, and, bless them, their dog, any evidence that might have exonerated Craig, or pointed the finger elsewhere, was destroyed. On top of that, Lucy wasn’t the type to make enemies, which meant there was no one else in the frame. Especially when she was a hundred percent certain.

“Have you spoken to her parents?”

“I have.”

A visit that hammered home — as if I’d needed reminding — that, in a murder case, it was never just the one life that was taken. The ripples of destruction stretch wide and cut deep, and the truth is, they never heal. The crusading, inspirational lecturer that used to be Roger Fuller had become a shuffling old man, whose wife slept in a separate bedroom, because every time she closed her eyes at night, the tears wouldn’t stop welling.

Why? That’s what I don’t understand. Why?

Which was pretty much as far as that interview went. Roger Fuller repeating the question over and over, shaking his head, shaking his hands, as if the very movement would somehow give him an answer. Sarah, his wife, bringing out photos, mementoes, certificates, clippings, in a desperate attempt to keep her daughter alive, when the only thing she could think about was her daughter’s death.

If Langstone couldn’t face being dumped, why not kill himself and leave it at that? Roger spat. This way, everyone suffers.

He was right. Everyone did. But not on account of Craig Langstone.

“I had a long chat with the Kincades too.”

At least, with Susan Kincade. Her husband, John, was in Winchester Hospital, in the final throes of pancreatic cancer.

It’s ironic, she’d said, ruffling the ears of the spaniel I’d seen in the photo, just a little stockier now, with white hairs round his muzzle and eyes. My training prolonged that young woman’s life, but in the end, I was unable to save the person I love most in the world.

Another irony was that if her nursing skills hadn’t prolonged Lucy’s life in the first place, Craig Langstone would never have been in the frame.

Is there anything else you can tell me about that morning? Any detail that struck you as odd?

The police always look closely at who’s first on the scene, but in this case, you couldn’t get two more law-abiding, upstanding citizens than a ward sister and her bank-manager husband.

Nothing. Sorry.

The ultimate irony, of course, was that if it hadn’t been for Susan, Lucy would have died on the spot and her killer would have got off scot-free.

You have nothing to apologize for, Mrs. Kincade. You did everything you could. We shook hands on the doorstep. For both your husband and Lucy Fuller.

When she smiled, I caught a glimpse of the woman on St. Peter’s screen, before sorrow added two decades to her face and subtracted three stones from her body.

It wouldn’t be long before John Kincade crossed the Threshold, and I knew what would happen. Eighty-year-old widows revert to twenty-year-old brides, to rejoin the husbands who died fighting in action. Spinsters revert to their childhood, so they can be loved unconditionally again by their parents. While every man with cancer opts for the lean, strong body of his youth—

For an instant, looking into her sadness, I was tempted to ask what she’d want for eternity, so I could reunite them that much quicker. Then I remembered the Boss’s warning about becoming emotionally involved, and walked away.

In any case, who would believe me?

“I’ve also talked to Craig’s friends, his old boss, his work colleagues.” I gave Angie a rundown on the interviews, partly because I knew she’d be interested, but mainly to satisfy myself that I’d left no stone unturned. “Ditto Lucy’s friends, her boss, her work colleagues.” I paused. Warmed the whisky between my hands. “I had a long talk with the woman Lucy caught him in bed with as well.”

An old flame called Nicole who worked in IT, and I have to admit, having seen photos of Lucy, I’d been expecting the opposition to be something of a femme fatale. A huntress, a predator, someone I’d take one look at and go, wow. But that’s why I’m a P.I. Good at tracking, good at detecting, bloody awful when it comes to reading women.

“I don’t understand it.” Angie topped up our glasses. “They saw each other a few times, sure. But once Craig clapped eyes on Lucy, ka-boom.”

“Love at first sight?”

She tipped her head on one side. “You don’t believe it can happen?”

I sipped. Slowly. “On the contrary. I believe that it can.”

“Craig was devastated when Lucy accused him of cheating. He admitted bumping into Nicole, but that’s it. He swore he never made any arrangement to see her again, and said he absolutely did not sleep with her.”

I know. His feather of truth passed the test on that too.

“Yet Lucy caught them together,” I said. “She’d just flown home, after a week in New York, let herself into his flat, and found a woman wearing nothing but wet hair in the bedroom. The shower was running, Craig was delivering his usual off-key rendition of ‘Rolling in the Deep,’ and there were two sets of everything — coffee cups, wineglasses, underwear — scattered around.”

“Then that’s it.” Angie looked poleaxed. “He really was cheating.”

“Nicole’s not what I expected,” I admitted. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s a good-looking girl behind those glasses” — nowhere near as classy as Angie, or as outgoing as Lucy Fuller — “but, let’s say, more mouse than cat.”

This is my fault. Nicole hugged her arms to her bony, flat chest and stared at a point on the carpet. If Craig and I hadn’t met in that coffee shop— Her eyes screwed shut in unquestionable grief. The stupid thing was, I knew it was a mistake, hooking up with him again.

Because you can’t relive the past?

Because he’d changed, Mr. O’Donnell. Hot one minute, ice cold the next, so much so, I wondered if he wasn’t on drugs. But the police didn’t find anything in his apartment.

Doesn’t mean he wasn’t using.

She bit her lip. I’ll be honest with you, Mr. O’Donnell, I don’t really know about things like that. Only that Craig wasn’t the man I remembered, and I felt so bad for his girlfriend, walking in on us like that. What a shock—

“She said that?” Angie downed the contents of her glass in one shot. “Hot one minute, ice-cold the next?”

You didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking. Just like when Lucy was stabbed...

“Jesus Christ, are all men liars and bastards? Get out. Get out of my house!”

“Angie—”

“Don’t you ‘Angie’ me. You lied to me, Frank.” She slumped down, with her head in her hands. “You told me Craig was innocent.”

I leaned with my back to the worktop, watching the way her long blond hair tumbled round her sculpted collarbones. Remembering the vanilla scent of her shampoo, as she’d sobbed on my shoulder. You have a tight grip, Mr. O’Donnell...

“I won’t apologize for my methods. Raking up the past, making people hurt, that’s my job. It’s how I get results. How I find the truth.” I pulled out a stool and sat opposite her. “But I didn’t lie to you, Angie. Your son didn’t kill Lucy Fuller.”

The theory that began to take shape in St. Peter’s office had crystallized with every step I’d taken. Because if neither the victim nor the accused is lying, you have to ask, who else had a motive?

Her head shot up. “Nicole?”

“Nicole.” What, for Craig Langstone, was a couple of dates and casual sex turned into an obsession for her.

“She loved him that much, she’d kill to have him?”

“Love had sod all to do with it, Angie.”

With stalkers, it’s about control. They don’t take kindly to being dumped, much less supplanted, and maybe Craig gave her a key to his flat, maybe she copied it. Either way, she bugged the place and planted cameras, recording every move he made, every word he uttered. I know, because when I called on Nicole, I used that old trick of asking to use the bathroom to have a good old snoop around.

“How long she’d waited for the right circumstances to come together is anyone’s guess,” I said.

Weeks? Months? before Craig and Lucy’s schedules dovetailed and she could put her plan into action. Starting with that so-called random meet in the coffee shop.

“Knowing Craig had left early for work and that Lucy was on her way round, Nicole let herself in with a key. She swirled wine in the glasses, coffee in the cups, placed them on the bedside table. Then she rumpled the sheets, scattered clothing around, ran the shower, and played a recording of Craig’s god-awful singing. After that, it was only a question of stripping off and waiting for Lucy.”

No doubt her original intention was to drive her away. Craig could deny the affair until he was blue in the face, but Lucy had seen the evidence with her own eyes, and men who cheat lie all the time.

“Nicole would be there to pick up the pieces. Hers would be the shoulder he cried on.”

Only stalkers don’t have normal emotions, so turning up on his doorstep bursting with plans for their future wasn’t the smartest of moves.

“That’s when he most likely told her he didn’t love her, how could he, hell, he hardly knew her. It was Lucy he loved, and whatever it took — and however long — he’d never stop trying to win her back.”

God knows how Nicole responded to that. Did she threaten him? Beg? Plug away with her crazy plans for their future? Whatever, it was enough to make him lose his temper. There is no “us,” he shouted at her. I want you out of my life—

“Which is when she realized that staging a tryst wasn’t enough. Would never be enough.” Her only chance of having Craig was to get rid of Lucy once and for all. “Except killing her wasn’t enough either. She needed to rub her nose in it.” Make her suffer mentally, as well as physically, so that the last words she’d hear were Craig, telling her that he didn’t want her. “Seventeen stab wounds is a lot,” I said, more to myself than to Angie. “Suggesting a crime of overkill and rage, regardless of how carefully it might have been planned.”

Lucy thought she’d tripped, but at five foot five to Craig’s six foot three, he’d have had no trouble overpowering her. Nicole, on the other hand, was petite, and one look at the crime scene showed me why she chose that particular spot. Two silver birches, one either side of the footpath. Where better to stretch a piece of string?

As plans went, Nicole must have thought hers was pitch perfect. Until Craig ruined everything by killing himself. No wonder the poor girl was gutted.

“There’s a problem, though.” I took both Angie’s hands in my own. “To prove it, and put this bitch in jail for the rest of her life, I need help. Your help, to be precise.”

I could run, I could jump, I could smile, I could cry, and prick me, like Shylock, then I bleed. But Frank O’Donnell was buried in North London four years earlier. He can’t suddenly stand up in court.

In the meantime, the sun was setting and, as every good general knows, an army marches on its stomach. I could, I said, rustle something up here. Spaghetti, chili, chicken in white wine, because if there was something I was good at round the house, then it was cooking.

“I do a mean paella,” I said. No idle boast. “Or, if you prefer, we could go down the pub?”

I’d spotted a pretty thatched inn, just a stone’s throw away. All oak beams, horse brasses, and roaring log fires.

“Uh-uh.” Angie pointed to her streaky panda eyes. “I look a fright.”

She looked beautiful.

“You look fine.”

“Really?” She reached for her jacket. “Then what are we waiting for? It’s been ages since I’ve eaten out.”

“Me too.”

With a table right next to that roaring log fire, we ate and we laughed and we drank and we talked. We talked about the trials of being a teenage mum, the tribulations of being a teenage orphan, and the problems we’d faced in our marriages. But mostly it was about music and movies, trivia and travel, the best advice our mothers ever gave us, and who we’d hate to be stuck in a lift with. Did I mention that we laughed a lot too? A real lot?

Quite how our lips touched, I’m not sure. One minute I was saying goodnight on her doorstep, the next we were in each other’s arms like a couple of lovestruck teenagers. I tried to pull away, telling her this was wrong, she was vulnerable, it would be taking advantage. She said shut up, Frank, at fifty-three she knew her own mind, and she’d decide what was taking advantage and what was not, thank you. Maybe so, but I explained that I was just passing through. So help me, I’d never be able to see her again. Not once this case was over. She didn’t ask why. Just kissed the tears from my big, ugly eyes, and led me into the bedroom.

Later — much later — she rolled on her stomach and said, “Do you believe in the afterlife, Frank?”

“If you’re asking do I think Heaven’s made out of clouds, that angels have wings, and St. Peter sports a long, straggly beard, I’d have to say no.”

She laughed. “Next you’ll be telling me they don’t strum harps all day either, and the Pearly Gates aren’t made out of mother-of-pearl.”

“Who’d go to Heaven if eternity meant buffing those to a shine?” I kissed her forehead. “Why do you ask?”

“Craig. He said, Be happy for me, Mum.”

“He meant well.”

“I know. And for seven years, I’ve put on this brave front, thinking, Christ, if he is up there looking down, the last thing I want is him feeling bad about killing himself. He needs to know that I fully accept he was a grown man at the time, capable of making his own decisions. Even if I didn’t agree with them! And that he’s my son and that I’ll always love him, just as I will always be proud of him.” She twisted round and cupped my face between her hands. “But until today, that’s all it’s been, Frank. An act. Then you came along, and I can honestly say, you’ve made me happier than I’ve felt in a very long time.”

For the second time that night, I heard myself saying, “Me too.”

While wondering, who’d have thought happiness could hurt so bloody much?

I didn’t report back to the Boss in person. Just submitted a brief statement of facts, exonerating Craig, endorsing Lucy’s testimony, and confirming that justice was done. No lengthy explanations about how, between us, Angie and I pulled the same “bumping into” trick that Nicole pulled on Craig. Or how, while the women chatted, I played the Artful Dodger, easing Nicole’s purse out of her handbag, thereby giving Angie the perfect excuse to call and return the wallet that had somehow fallen on the floor.

In any case, St. Peter wouldn’t be interested in how, once inside Nicole’s starter home on the south side of the city, Angie asked to use the bathroom. Then snooped around, just like I’d primed her, capturing, on her cell phone, walls covered with pictures of Craig, of hundreds of DVDs, CDs, and scrapbooks through which Nicole relived her obsession, as well as a variety of cameras, audio devices, and computer hardware. All the paraphernalia, in fact, that every self-respecting stalker needs.

I did, however, mention that the police, with a bit of pushing admittedly, reopened the case, and that their search warrant provided them with all the evidence they needed. Adding, at the end, how Nicole, far from repentant, remained arrogant in her belief that Lucy wasn’t good enough for Craig. Killing her was like squashing a spider, good riddance to bad rubbish, she said. The bitch was only holding him back. Her only regret seemed to be that Craig committed suicide before he understood who he was meant to be with.

I stayed with Angie in Winchester for as long as I could, toasting Nicole’s arrest with champagne, making love in the moonlight, listening to Pink Floyd at full pelt with our eyes closed. And when it came time to leave, you can forget that parting is such sweet sorrow crap. Sorrow is sorrow, full stop. I simply threw myself into reuniting lost loved ones like there was no tomorrow, and, given all those astral planes I had to contend with, never gave it a thought when St. Peter summoned me to his office.

“Do you remember what I asked you, Frank, last time you were here?”

“Did I want coffee, tea, or a glass of cold beer?”

“I asked, you dolt, if you were happy!” Grinning like a loon, he motioned me to sit. “After that lorry ploughed into you, we asked if you wanted to be young again. To go back to the time before your parents were killed, because nearly everyone wants to relive the days when they were happiest. But not you, Frank. You didn’t change one damn thing.”

“Yeah, well. I’m comfortable inside this plug-ugly hide. Kinda grown used to it over the years.”

“You’re also one of the few who didn’t want your bad memories erased either.”

“Good times, bad times,” I shrugged. “They made me who I am, and if there’s one thing I learned on that little planet called life, it was that the moment you move one piece of the puzzle, another slips out of sync. All I wanted was to keep on doing what I’m good at. Finding answers.”

“That’s what we’re here for. Giving people what they want. But the thing is, Frank, sometimes they don’t see the full picture.”

“Meaning?”

“You believed you were that plug-ugly flatfoot who never got the girl, so that’s what you became. And to compensate for the loneliness, you immersed yourself in helping people. Trying to give everyone a happy ending. Didn’t always happen. They can’t all be Craig-and-Lucy-happy-ever-afterlife. But it never stopped you trying.” He gave a couple of clicks on the celestial mouse. “Not once, Frank. Not once.”

I can’t remember what I was about to reply, because I was distracted by the music that suddenly filled the office — Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone — and the scent of... the scent of...

Vanilla shampoo?

I twisted round in my chair. On the left, cherubs were weighing the feather of truth. On the right, angels read the newcomers’ auras. Then, while I watched, the elegant, grey-haired old lady who’d shuffled over the Threshold just as I arrived emerged from the Tunnel of Light in a tight top, skinny jeans, with her long blond hair tumbling over her shoulders.

“Angie?”

“Like I said. People go back to the times they were happiest.” St. Peter stroked his neat little Van Dyke beard with satisfaction. “Now go take that woman’s hand, and the next time I ask you, are you happy, I want to hear you say, yes, you bloody are. Oh, and Frank.”

“Boss?”

“Do everyone a favour, watch a Humphrey Bogart movie, will you? Ugly guys do get the girl.”