Final Venture

20

The Red Hat was full. Someone was leaving as I arrived, and so I acquired a beer and a stool and started to drink.

Lisa was going. Really going. Not just across town but to California, two and a half thousand miles away.

She had said that I had changed, that she didn't know me any more. But she was wrong. I was sure that it wasn't me that had changed, but her. It worried me, but it also made me angry. She was holding me responsible for so much, when all I had done was try to help her. I hadn't killed her father. I hadn't cost her her job; in fact I had risked my own to warn her about the take-over. She had lost her own job by being difficult. And I certainly hadn't slept with Diane.

I drained my glass and tapped it for a refill. The barman was running a tab. He knew I was here for the long haul.

All this was so unlike her. The pressure was too much for her, and she wouldn't let me near her to help. It was so frustrating. I felt myself being torn, between anger and concern, a desire to let her go and sort out her own problems, and a stronger desire to keep her.

She had threatened to leave once before. Then everything had been so different. We had known each other for about six months, in a relationship that we both thought was fun but casual. Then, out of the blue, Roger Mettler had asked her to return to Stanford. At the time, Boston Peptides was going nowhere, and so she decided to fly out there and talk to him. She came back full of enthusiasm. We had dinner together. We were both bright on the surface, but underneath, I felt a deep gloom creeping up on me. I realized, almost to my surprise, that I didn't want her to go. But I couldn't tell her that. Her life was her own, we had made no commitment to each other, it wasn't up to me to disrupt her career.

So she accepted the job, handed in her notice at Boston Peptides, organized somewhere to stay in Stanford. She seemed full of enthusiasm for the new life ahead of her. I played along, but felt terrible. Then as we lay in bed together one Sunday morning, the time to her departure now measured in days not weeks, I finally spoke to her about how I felt. I told her I knew she must go, but I really didn't want her to. I will always remember the look on her face, as it turned from confusion to a broad smile. We spent most of that Sunday in bed.

She stayed.

And now, eighteen months later, she was gone.

I had to get her back.

I decided to leave the apartment empty for Lisa the next morning, and drove straight to Wellesley, calling Daniel at the office to let him know something had come up at Net Cop. Craig was pleased to see me.

'Hey, Simon! So they let you out?'

'I've got a good lawyer and their evidence didn't stack up,' I said. 'But I'm not off the hook yet.'

'That's too bad. Hey, did you know we signed the deal with the Bloomfield Weiss guys yesterday?'

I shook my head. Craig's attention span for anything outside Net Cop was about ten seconds. I wasn't surprised. That was, after all, why I had backed him.

'That's good, Craig. When are you getting the money?'

'Next Monday, according to Jeff Lieberman.'

'Great.'

'Yeah. We're starting on the prototype right away. I've been talking to Luxtel and-'

'Craig?' I interrupted.

'Yeah?'

'Do you mind if I ask you about something else for a moment?'

Craig looked a little annoyed to be stopped in full flow, but he nodded his head. 'OK.'

'Were you in the marshes at Woodbridge the Saturday Frank Cook was murdered?'

'Oh,' said Craig.

I raised my eyebrows.

'Yeah. You could say I was. Did someone see me?'

I nodded.

Craig looked thoughtful. 'Do the cops know?'

'Not yet.' They had no obvious way of linking Mrs Bowman's description to Craig. To them he was one of hundreds of people Frank came into contact with through his work.

'Good.'

I paused. This next question was a difficult one to ask, but I had to ask it. 'Craig. Did you kill Frank?'

He paused. Breathed in through his nose. 'No,' he said at last.

'Is that what you were thinking when you seemed so pleased with yourself just before he died?'

'No, it wasn't.'

'Well?'

'Well, what?'

'Well, what were you doing in Woodbridge?' I asked in exasperation.

'That's a little difficult to explain.'

'So try,' I said. 'Look, Craig. I'm the one who's facing the murder charge here. If you were there when Frank was killed, I want some answers.'

'I don't think you're gonna like them.'

'I need to know, Craig.'

'OK.' He shrugged, and moved over to a locked filing cabinet in the corner of his office. He took out a brown manila envelope and handed it to me. Inside was a sheaf of a dozen or so black-and-white photographs.

They were pictures of Frank with someone. A man. They weren't sexually explicit, but the nature of the relationship was obvious. In one they were holding hands. In another Frank's arm was round the other man's waist. A third showed an affectionate kiss on the cheek.

The other man was John.

I now knew what the word 'gobsmacked' meant. The pictures made no sense!

Or did they? As I thought about it, they did make some kind of sense. They explained why Frank had left Lisa's mother, for a start. They explained why we hadn't heard of any other relationship since then. A man as good-looking as Frank would have to work hard to avoid an entanglement with a woman. And it looked as though he had.

I now remembered where I had seen the Oakwood Analytics pen. On John's desk at Revere. I had used it to write his phone messages for him. And then there was the X-Files book that had been lying on a table in the living room: I knew John was a fan.

But could I believe Frank was gay? It had never occurred to me before. He didn't fit any of the gay stereotypes, except perhaps for a certain neatness in the way he dressed. And there was that holiday to Florida. I remembered he had been vague about exactly where he was going, but later we had realized it was the Florida Keys. A clue of sorts if you were looking for one. But I hadn't been looking for one, and neither had Lisa.

John was more obvious. Although we had worked together for a couple of years, I knew him much less well than I knew Daniel. He kept his private life very private. He had a mythical 'girlfriend' back in Chicago. In fact, I remembered Lisa speculating a year or so ago that he might be gay. I had disagreed, and then forgotten her comment.

Only two days before, John had told me that maybe it was time to tell his father who he really was. Now I understood what he meant.

A host of questions leaped to my mind. How long had this relationship gone on? Were they serious? It looked as if it was still going strong when Frank had been killed. And then of course the most important question of them all. Did this mean John had killed Frank?

'When did you take these?'

'The evening before Frank was killed. I followed him from Boston out to Woodbridge, and hung around with my camera. I got these pictures of them on the porch outside the house with a zoom lens.'

'And on the Saturday? Did you see him on the Saturday?'

'No. I came over about lunch time. John's car wasn't there. Frank spent most of the time outside working on a boat. He had just gone inside when you came along.'

'So you saw me?'

Craig nodded. 'I saw you arrive, and then I left. I figured his boyfriend was unlikely to show up and do anything photogenic while you were there.'

'So you didn't see who killed Frank?'

'No.'

I thought for a moment. 'Did you see anyone else come to his house?'

'No. I did drive down on Saturday night, but when I saw the boyfriend's car wasn't there, I turned round and came home.'

'When was that?'

'About nine, I should think.'

'Did you see signs that Frank was still alive?'

'No,' Craig answered. 'I mean, I assumed he was at home because his car was there, but I didn't actually see him. I just turned my car around and left.'

'Whew.' I put my head in my hands to think over what I had just learned. 'How did you know about Frank and John?'

Craig didn't answer.

'Craig! Tell me.'

'OK. I intercepted Frank's e-mail at home.'

'I didn't know you could do that.'

'I can,' replied Craig. 'It's not that difficult once you know how. Anyway, he was getting these messages from some guy called John that showed they were very good friends. They were supposed to be spending the weekend together in Woodbridge. So I thought I'd go up there myself with a camera and see if I could take any interesting photos.'

'To blackmail Frank with?'

'I didn't want money for myself!' protested Craig. 'I just wanted him to give the go-ahead for Revere to put in the investment they owed us.'

'That's blackmail, Craig.'

'Look. Frank had welched on a deal!' said Craig, his old anger returning. 'I had to do what I had to do.'

'No you didn't. Oh, Jesus.' I ran my hand through my hair. 'Did you tell the police any of this?'

'No,' Craig replied.

'Why not?'

'I thought I'd just get myself into trouble. I didn't actually get around to blackmailing Frank, but I was sure it wouldn't look good to the cops. And I didn't want to become a suspect myself.'

'But what about me? You knew I was in trouble. You could have helped me!'

'I thought about that, Simon. Honestly. But I thought what I had seen just made you a bigger suspect. I didn't believe you had killed Frank. But I didn't want to give the police any more evidence against you.'

'Oh, bollocks,' I said. 'If the police had known about John, that would have opened up a new line of inquiry away from me. You were just afraid of incriminating yourself.'

Craig looked uncomfortable.

'I'm going,' I said. 'Can I keep these?' I held up the photos.

'I'd prefer you didn't,' said Craig.

'I'll keep them. You've got the negatives. You can make some more prints if you need them.' I put the photos back in their envelope, and moved towards the door.

'But Simon. We need to talk about the prototype.'

'No we don't, Craig. I need to prove I'm innocent. You can worry about Net Cop if you like. Personally, I don't give a damn.'

It was nearly midday by the time I got back home. Lisa had already been and gone, taking her stuff with her. The apartment, normally so cluttered, felt even emptier and lonelier than it had before.

I pulled out the photos Craig had given me and looked at them again.

Had John killed Frank? If he had, why? It was possible that he and Frank had had a fight about something. But I had no evidence of that. And even if I had, John seemed an unlikely killer. But then, I just couldn't imagine John and Frank together in that sort of relationship anyway. Now I realized there was a whole side of Frank's life I knew nothing about, a side that might easily include a motive for murder.

What would Lisa make of this? We had no openly gay friends, but that wasn't by conscious choice. I knew she shared the liberal view that people's sexuality was their own affair. But when it was her own father? I had no idea how she would react.

I tossed the photographs on the table. I felt angry. Not because Frank was gay, but because he had deceived Lisa for all these years. All the time he was living this double life, and not telling her. That I hadn't known who he really was, I could live with; but that his daughter hadn't made me angry. His secret would be much harder to confront now that he was dead than it would have been when he was alive. Not only had he gone, but now Lisa's memory of him would be altered. She would see everything he had done in a new light.

I wasn't sure whether I would be able to keep what I had discovered entirely quiet. But I resolved to do my best to keep the photographs from Lisa for as long as I could.