This, Greg decided morosely, had been a mistake. The snow was still coming down: tiny, innocent looking flakes that you could barely see. The sort that, unlike their bigger, flashier sisters, refused to melt when they hit the ground. The Mini Cooper slipped yet again on the churned gray carpet that constituted the surface of Sixth Avenue. Inching painfully downhill from Bigelow and into downtown Pittsburgh, Greg cursed under his breath. First in English, then in Russian, and finally, for good measure, French. Though why he bothered with the latter was a mystery, even to him. The French had many strengths. Swearing wasn’t one of them.
Pittsburghers had to be the worst snow drivers Greg had ever seen. Worse even than the English, and that was saying something. Crawling along at a snail’s pace and leaving at least two car lengths between themselves and the nearest vehicle, each block could only hold about a third of its usual volume of cars, with the inevitable result that downtown’s narrow, utilitarian streets became gridlocked, choked by the non-existent traffic that failed to enter the capacious gaps between vehicles.
Greg, of course, was driving within a handful of feet of the car in front of him, hoping to shame others into driving more efficiently. It was a wasted effort. Realizing that he was not going to get where he was going on time otherwise and calculating that the Parking Authority’s minions were tucked up out of the weather, he bounced the Mini Cooper onto the nearest sidewalk and abandoned it, running through the snow until he reached the chocolate-box façade of the Union Trust building. Rushing inside, Greg passed beneath the stunning Flemish–Gothic cupola without even an upward glance, so determined was he to gain the elevators before the six o’clock witching hour.
In the event, he made it through the heavy glass doors of Booth, Chanain and Hinkershil, LLP with just under a minute to spare. The receptionist, who already had her coat on, stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and mild resentment.
‘Can I help you? We’re just about to close.’
‘I’m here to see Bryan Delcade.’ Snow was already beginning to melt off his boots and onto the deep green carpet.
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘He’ll see me. I teach his children.’ Greg’s voice had the vague air of someone who was distracted. Which he was. He was fiddling with his phone.
Hearing the word ‘teach’, the receptionist’s expression softened considerably.
‘Can I tell him what it’s concerning?’ she asked, stabbing at the keys of a complicated-looking telephone.
‘It’s a personal matter, not business.’
Greg smiled and glanced down at his boots. The carpet around his feet had turned almost black with damp. He shook the last of the flakes off his toecaps and onto the deep pile. The receptionist, meanwhile, appeared to have gotten through.
‘Mr Delcade? I have a Mr …?’
‘Abimbola.’
‘A … Abimbo to see you.’ There was a brief pause. The receptionist put down the phone. Seeing her expression, Greg fiddled once again with his cellphone.
‘I’m afraid he’s with a client right now. Perhaps I can make you an appointment?’
Greg smiled at her apologetically.
‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to call him back. Ask him to check his texts.’
‘I don’t think I can do that.’
‘Trust me. If you don’t do that, he’s going to be very, very angry when he finds out.’
A flash of fear, almost unnoticeable and quickly suppressed, passed across the receptionist’s face. A sure sign that Bryan Delcade was the sort of man who took out his displeasure on underlings. Wordlessly, she picked up the phone again.
‘He’s not answering.’
‘Oh.’ Greg was mildly surprised. ‘Then I’ll just wait.’
‘You can’t do that, sir. We’re …’
‘Greg! How nice to see you.’
Bryan Delcade walked into reception, immaculately dressed in a dark gray suit and brown shoes. The overhead lights, reflecting off the polished surface of his spectacles, made his blue-gray eyes impossible to read. He was, Greg saw, clutching tightly onto his cellphone. An even tighter smile played across his lips.
‘Alicia?’ he asked, turning to the receptionist. ‘Is Conference Room A free?’
‘Yes, it is. It’s not booked out until tomorrow at two.’
‘Great. Greg? If you’d follow me?’
The lawyer led him into a room immediately off reception. It had the same deep green carpet as the one he’d already stained with snow. The room itself was a modestly sized space furnished with a baroque-looking circular table – oak, at a guess – and swivel chairs upholstered in luxurious green leather. On one wall, ornate gothic windows looked out over what Greg took to be Grant Street: he could see the hideous brown cladding of the BNY Mellon Building on the other side of the road. The other three walls were floor-to-ceiling glass, one of which looked onto reception. He noticed Alicia, still in her coat, staring at them curiously from behind her desk.
Electric motors hummed suddenly to life. Beige blinds descended from recesses in the ceiling, blocking the view.
‘Just what the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’ Delcade hissed. Hidden from Alicia’s prying eyes, his fury was plain to see. Greg, as at their previous meeting, got the distinct impression that Bryan Delcade, Esq. would love nothing more than to beat him to a pulp.
Let him try. Greg had a sudden, vivid impression of Delcade writhing on the green-carpeted floor, clutching at a shattered windpipe.
As if reading his thoughts, the lawyer took a step back; made a massive, almost physical effort to calm himself.
‘What’s this about?’ he asked, a little more quietly. ‘You want money, is that it?’ He sat down heavily in one of the green leather swivel chairs. ‘I don’t have as much as some people seem to think.’
Greg did not sit. The beige blinds had not come down over the Gothic windows. He wandered across to them, curious, and looked out. It was, indeed, Grant Street. And it was still snowing. Small piles of white had built up on the other side of the glass. Curiosity satisfied, he turned back to face the lawyer.
‘I’m not here for money, Mr Delcade. Though I trust you won’t be taking steps to damage the careers of anyone else on the Calderhill faculty?’
Delcade nodded, looking distinctly relieved.
‘If that’s the price to have this picture destroyed, then we have a deal.’
‘I don’t need a deal – and I’m not destroying the picture.’ Greg pulled out his phone, examining the text he’d sent Delcade from the lobby of his own law firm. It was little more than the picture he’d unthinkingly snapped in that Southside bar. Delcade consorting with a young man. The young man, intense and smooth-skinned, with gelled hair and immaculately manicured hands. The lawyer, greedy for the young man’s attention, sleek and attractive in his own right, his hair just so. Lithe, well-maintained muscles straining against an expensive shirt. Although taken on the fly, there was something subtly erotic about the picture’s composition. The way the two men leaned into each other as they kissed, the casual beauty of their bodies, the warm framing provided by the wood and leather booth. He looked at it longer than he should have.
‘I don’t need a deal because I already have you over a barrel,’ Greg said, at last. ‘You’ll stop fucking with people’s careers, because if you don’t, this picture will pretty much sink any hopes you have of a political future. Though, God help me, I think the voters of Western PA can do better. Do you understand me?’
‘I didn’t grow up in the fucking ghetto. There’s no need to assume I’m stupid.’
‘It never occurred to me that you grew up in the ghetto, Mr Delcade. You lack the skills. But, no worries. All I want from you today is the answers to some questions.’
Delcade looked at him warily.
‘Questions about what?’
‘About why you were parked down the street from Calderhill Academy the night your wife died.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Greg stuck a hand into his coat pocket and fished out a photocopy of the parking ticket.
‘You should be more careful about where you litter – and with what. This little beauty –’ he waved the photocopy in Delcade’s direction – ‘fell out of your pocket when you came to see me the other day. You couldn’t be arsed to pick it up. I did. And it says quite clearly that you were parked on Joseph Monday night, at eight eleven p.m. Right around the time your wife was being murdered.’
Delcade jumped to his feet. Greg tensed, certain this time that the man was going to take a run at him.
He needn’t have worried. Delcade was pacing up and down, from one blind-covered glass wall to another, his rapid footsteps soundless on the deep green carpet.
‘I didn’t kill my wife,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Fine. What were you doing?’
Delcade didn’t answer. He just kept pacing. A caged animal. Greg leaned against the Gothic windows and waited. Despite the muffling effect of the snow, a faint rumble of traffic could be heard through the glass.
Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the pacing stopped. Delcade slumped back into the green leather swivel chair, apparently exhausted.
‘I was seeing someone.’
‘Who?’
‘Does it matter? Someone not my wife.’
‘Man or woman?’
There was a long pause.
‘A man.’ Delcade let out a long, confessional sigh. ‘We’ve been seeing each other, on and off, since college.’
‘So not the young man in the picture?’
‘No. And fuck you,’ he added, seeing Greg’s expression. ‘It’s not an exclusive relationship. He’s married, for a start.’
‘So this married … homosexual is your alibi?’ The word, spoken aloud, churned up something uncomfortable in the pit of his stomach. Something complicated. Poisonous. Disgust mixed with a sense of connection. A mirror held up to something he didn’t want to look at.
‘Yes,’ Delcade confirmed, dragging Greg away from his confusion.
‘And does this person have a name?’
‘Not one I’m prepared to tell you.’
‘It wouldn’t take much to ruin your life, I don’t suppose.’ Greg pulled out his phone again, looked at it speculatively, fingers poised over the screen. Delcade licked his lips, suddenly apprehensive.
‘Look. Even if I wanted to kill my wife – which I didn’t – why the fuck would I kill her at the goddamn school? How could I even get in there?’
‘Your wife did.’
‘And I have no clue how she managed it!’ Delcade’s voice vibrated with exasperation. So much so that Greg almost believed him.
Almost.
‘Or maybe, because you were already tailing her, you saw how she got inside and just followed her in. Good a place as any to kill a wife, I suppose. Why else would you be parked outside the school on a Monday night?’
‘I told you, already. I was seeing someone.’
‘Yes, you did. So who was it?’
Delcade reverted to tight-lipped silence. Greg turned back to his phone.
‘Look,’ Delcade interjected. ‘Let’s make a deal.’
‘I don’t like repeating myself, Mr Delcade. There’s no deal you can make that would be of any interest to me. Tell me who you were with Monday night.’
‘Hear me out, OK? Just hear me out.’ The lawyer plunged on without waiting for an answer. ‘If I tell you who it is, it isn’t just my life you’ll ruin, it’s someone else’s. And someone else’s family. The guy I’m seeing may not be happily married, but his wife is. They have children: two daughters and a young son. If this gets out, it’ll break their hearts.’
‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you slept with him,’ Greg said, even more roughly than he’d intended. The lawyer’s words were making him uncomfortable.
‘Yeah, maybe I should have, but I didn’t, and the fact remains that you’re asking me to throw four innocent people to the wolves. And all because you mistakenly think I murdered my wife.’ He smiled thinly in Greg’s direction. ‘So here’s the deal. If you can answer one question – just one – I’ll tell you who I was with. And if you can’t, you let this go. Agreed?’
Greg, imagining himself with a wife and kids of his own, said nothing.
‘Great.’ Delcade licked his lips, took a deep breath. ‘Hypothetically, let’s assume I followed my wife, intending to kill her. And let’s assume that – somehow – I followed her in. Now, here’s the question: who was she meeting?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Who was she meeting? She must have been meeting somebody. I mean, c’mon, why else was Lindsay there? She didn’t get her kicks from wandering around empty buildings. Even you know that. So, whoever she was seeing would have either been there when I “killed” my wife, or would have discovered the body shortly thereafter, correct? In which case, why didn’t they raise the alarm on Monday night?’ He smiled in answer to his own question. ‘Because that’s the person who killed her. Not me.’
Greg stood quietly, then, thinking. Snow continued to fall into Grant Street. In the BNY Mellon Building, vague silhouettes could be seen moving past the windows.
‘I’m told your wife went out most Mondays.’
Delcade let out a sigh of relief.
‘She did, yeah.’
‘And did she always take a rideshare?’
‘Always.’
‘Why?’
Delcade laughed, the sound guttural, devoid of humor.
‘Because by the time she got home again she’d be in no fit state to drive. She’d either be tight, or high as a kite. Sometimes both.’
‘Where’d she go?’
‘No fucking clue. What she did on Mondays was her business, not mine.’
‘And the same arrangement for you?’
‘Not officially, but, you know, her being away for most of the evening allowed for, ah, opportunities, particularly now the kids are old enough to look after themselves.’
‘And who did she see, do you know?’
‘No, I don’t. Girlfriends, I imagine.’
‘Could she have been meeting a man?’
Delcade seemed to find the thought amusing.
‘Maybe. But I doubt it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she’d be too hammered to do it. Women don’t usually get that drunk with men around, particularly if there’s more going on than just dinner and a movie. Now and then? Sure. But this was a regular thing with Lindsay. She was night-out-with-the-girls drunk; not I’ve-just-been-laid drunk. There’s a difference.’
Greg wasn’t sure there was, but he let it slide.
‘If she had been seeing another man, how would you have felt about that?’
‘Relieved, actually, so long as she was discreet. Less pressure on me to … perform.’
Greg nodded. He stole one more glance at the rutted snow on Grant Street, the spaced-out traffic crawling toward the suburbs.
‘Thank you, Mr Delcade. I imagine, given the time, you’ll have to let me out of the office?’
Bryan Delcade did so. Opening the heavy glass doors with his keycard, he let them swing slowly shut behind Greg’s back. They had not, however, completely closed when the lawyer spoke again. The words, not intended for Greg’s ears, reached him anyway.
‘Fucking nigger.’
Greg pressed the elevator call button as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Because, in one sense at least, nothing had.