The Trusted Professions - Chapter 11

However, before we sent the package to Gillette, we had one last meeting with Keri Colmes to go over the gathered evidence with her. We were both so proud of our coup that there was no small amount of braggadocio about the entire thing- we wanted to show off what we?d gotten for her. If we weren?t both so excited about the dramatic turn of fortune we had after the disastrous first attempt to honey-trap her husband, I don?t think we would have been quite so obtuse to the feelings of Mrs. Colmes. That, in turn, may have prevented this entire tragedy from happening. The gift of hindsight, I guess. Certainly it feels odd now to think that we were both so pleased with our attempt to bring pain into other people?s lives. I?ve always been a sucker for the concept behind karma, if not exactly a strong believer in the practical application of the matter. But if it does exist, the following was a pretty dramatic example of it.

So, we invite Keri to the office, and seriously, we?re like two little boys showing off our new toys. I guess it was the first really serious triumph of our new careers, there was definitely an air of excitement about the whole thing.

?Okay, we were thinking of putting all of this on an explorable DVD, something that Gillette will have no trouble looking into. We have footage of your husband putting the stones to our honey-trap on three separate occasions- on one occasion in the house that he and Gillette share! Likewise we have audio pickups, recordings of every telephone call the two have shared, SMS transcripts, the works.?

Jez smiled as he presented all the various pieces of incriminating evidence we?d gathered. We really had been thorough. To ensure that Colmes didn?t try and explain away the footage to Gillette as a slip, a one-off, we?d arranged for Max to see him twice more after the first successful trapping. It wasn?t hard to do- Colmes seemed besotted with her, she named the time and place and he was there, like a faithful puppy. There was now a consistent and provable pattern to his infidelities. As painful as it had been for me to see Max and Colmes together, on a professional level I really did feel a bizarre kind of pride at a job well done. Over time I?d just managed to?numb myself to the idea of Max having other lovers. It was her job, it was what we?d hired her to do. Who was I to suddenly declare that she was off-limits- especially as our entire case hung on Saul?s obsession with her.

Mrs. Colmes stared at us expressionlessly.

?But this is the crème de la crème of the entire enterprise,? Jez said with relish. ?The one thing that will truly seal the deal. Once Gillette hears this, there?s no way on earth she will take him back. No-one would.?

He clicked the mouse a few times to bring up an audio file date-marked for a month prior.

?Okay, this is an audio feed we recorded using the super-ear during the original surveillance of Ms. Ovay, before we bought the honey-trap strategy into play. We were just doing routine surveillance on her, looking for something to break the two up. Naturally, that meant we got a lot of audio footage of her and Saul just hanging about at home, doing their own thing. At the time, we discounted this conversation as actually working against our case. Fortunately we kept everything backed up, because right now, it?ll be the noose we hang the entire relationship with. Check this out:?

He clicked the little triangular ?play? button, and the audio feed began to run through the computer?s monitors. A parabolic mic picks up noise by focusing sound waves, that would otherwise be too high in wavelength to be heard, into one point- a lot like a satellite dish, which is more or less what a PM looks like, only miniature. Unfortunately, it can only capture wavelengths smaller than the dish itself- which isn't huge, so the audio signal flanges up and down, it?s certainly not great quality, but it?s entirely sufficient to make out a regular-volume spoken conversation:

?Hi honey.? Saul?s voice came through the tinny PC speakers we had plugged into the workbench. I was again surprised by the level of hatred I felt when I heard his voice. The man had done nothing against me personally, indeed I had dedicated myself to interfering in his personal life for profit- but the knowledge that he?d known Max in the same intimate way that I had still filled me with rage. Alarmingly, I thought I saw the same rage reflected just under the surface of Keri?s otherwise blank expression. This was my first warning sign of what was about to come, but I ignored it completely.

?Hey baby.? There was a slight pause and the intimation of a kiss. Gillette had successfully buried her Essex accent in a remarkably short period of time. She now spoke in a faux-posh accent that was actually kind of hilarious. ?What you got there??

?I got you a present.?

?A present?!? For me! Oh honey, you spoil me too often.?

?Nothing more than you deserve, my dear.?

?Oh, baby. You?re too much.? There was a rustle of unwrapping paper through the speakers. It sounded like the ocean.

?It?s ah?a book.? You could practically hear the disappointment in her voice.

?Yes. It?s Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman. I love his work above any other poet, and wanted to share it with the woman I love above all things. He was the first poet to really capture the material delight of the senses. Come here,? a patting noise, presumably his hand patting his lap, ?and I?ll read you my favorite one.?

He proceeded to recite 'I Sing the Body Electric' in whispered, supposedly erotic tones, while Gillette giggled and tried not to interrupt him.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?

Jez thankfully shut off the playback of the recording before Gillette became bored and succeeded in distracting Colmes from his recitation. While she may not have been the world?s greatest poetry aficionado, as a romantic gesture the book certainly seemed to do the trick.

Keri?s gaze was decidedly icy at this stage, but Jez was caught up in the theatre of revelation, and I was too infected by it to think to stop him.

?And now take a listen to this recording, which was made two days ago, in the same house, no less. The voice you'll hear is that of our honey-trap, who successfully seduced Mr. Colmes last week.?

He hit play on a second audio file, and this time it was Max?s voice that we heard. This second recording was made by a mic we'd sewn into one of Max's jackets, so the fidelity was much higher than it was for the previous file. The best spyware that money could buy.

?Well, that was fun, hoss. I?d best be off. I might call. Might not. You just wait and see, yeah??

?Wait, don?t go just yet.? Saul?s plaintive voice belied his commanding screen persona- it was barely recognizable as the same man. ?I have something for you.?

?Hmm. I don?t have to give anything back, do I??

?No! Freely given.?

?Okay then. Let?s see it already.?

?Here you go.? Again the unwrapping. Again the ocean. This time with ripping.

?Whitman. Nice. I?ve read it, but it?ll be nice to have a classy edition like this. Cheers, there. Why him??

Jez was practically grinning from ear to ear in anticipation of the perceived ?punchline?.

?I love his work above any other poet, and I wanted to share it with the woman I love above all things. He was the first poet to really capture the material delight of the senses.?

?Aww, you?re sweet. I suppose now you want to read me one??

?I?d love to.?

He proceeded to read the same poem. Same inflection. Same whisper. No giggling.

Do you know so much yourself, that you call the slave or the dull-face ignorant?   
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight?   
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float?and the soil is on the surface, and water runs, and vegetation sprouts,   
For you only, and not for him and her? 

Jez hit pause and burst out laughing.

?Fucking brilliant. What a legend. Giving the same book of poetry to a different bird. It?s like he?s only got one move that he keeps playing. When Gillette hears how he was re-gifting, no excuse will save him. The turkey is basted, the oven is pre-heated, all we have to do is?shove it in! Voila.?

He turned to Keri Colmes, and as a final flourish, he took the leather-bound copy of Leaves of Grass that Colmes had given Max (and she, in turn, had given to us), and slapped it down on the desk in front of Keri, as if hammering a final damning nail into a coffin, and then stood, his arms outstretched, as if he expected rapturous applause.

What he got was something slightly different.

The first thing she did was to pick the book up, gingerly, and run a finger down the left edge of the binding. She had an extremely odd expression on her face. I guess I've never really seen another expression like it. The only thing I could think of to say what it looked like is to remember when I was a kid, like seven, our next-door neighbours had this dog, this Golder Retriever bitch, that gave birth to a litter of puppies, which were then all given away to other neighbours- some of them to the pound. And I remember the expression on that dog's face, y'know, like, it was sad, but it was also kind of...uncomprehendingly sad, like it didn't really understand what was happening. Have you ever seen that expression on a dog?

I think so, yes.

On a person?

Yes.

Well it was just like that. She opened the cover and turned to the first page, y'know, that white page they leave on the inside of a cover with nothing on it? And there, in her husband's writing, his own handwriting, was a hand-written message, just for Max:

Yours in Body & Soul,

-Saul

She stared at those words for a few moments, and then the book tumbled out of her fingers as she just...let it go, her fingers lifeless. It clattered noisily on the office floor.

Take a tub of plaster of Paris, and slather it all over your face. Stay perfectly still for an hour or so while it sets. Once it?s hardened, you can carefully remove it from your face, and it?ll be molded into a perfect replica of your features. If you do this to a corpse, they call it a death-mask. Something to remember them by, I guess. A mask of yourself. Now take this mask, and look down into it. It?s you, but it?s missing the eyes, so it?s like you?re soulless. Dead inside. Now drop it. Your face will fall to the ground and shatter into a thousand little pieces, each one imprinted with a miniature portion of your face, collectively you, like no-one else, but individually meaningless.

This is more or less the best way to describe what happened to Keri Colmes. She just broke, right before our eyes. She just?broke down. Caved in on herself. The icy mask was shattered and a flood of tears issued forth. Not just from her eyes, but her nose, her mouth, she just?gushed pure misery. We both leapt forward with tissues in hand, but a family sized cart of Kleenex couldn?t have sopped up what was coming out of her. Her body was wracked with sobs, like she was vomiting tears. In between the sobs I could just hear the words ?That bastard?, spoken with unbelievable venom. Pure hatred. I wouldn?t have been surprised to see it ooze out black amongst her tears, it was so strong.

It came to me then, as it should have many times before, that Saul Colmes had, of course, said those exact same words to her, in time gone by. Maybe in her youth. Maybe punting on the Cam, moments before he proposed. They were her special words. They were something precious between her and him, something she could have held on to forever, even if he never returned to her as planned. But now they were cheap, sullied things, handed on to not one but two other lovers. A line to be used. We weren?t just watching the collapse of Mrs. Colmes, we were watching the collapse of her unending love for him. The end of hope. Whatever man she thought would come back to her was gone. He?d never even existed. He?d been an illusion, generated just for her by this?other man, that she had no knowledge of. He was not only gone from her future, he?d removed himself from her past. Turned her memories of their life together into something sinister, living alongside a man she never even knew. We were watching the retroactive destruction of everything she?d ever known.

It took us a few minutes to calm her down, but she finally got her breathing under control. She wept silently for a long while, as Jez and I sat in silence, internally cursing ourselves for our pride and vanity. She finally spoke, quietly, but calmly, staring at her feet as she did so.

?How much am I paying you for this information??

Jez cleared his throat and shifted in his chair nervously. ?Ah, obviously the final figure will need to be worked out in detail, surveillance costs, pricing for ??

?Ballpark it for me.? She cut him off.

?Ballpark? I?d ah, I?d say, ah?? his mind worked furiously as he tried to work this new variable into his pricing equation. He looked at me in desperation. I made the universal ?fucked if I know? facial expression that involves activating all your lower jaw muscles, like this.

I know the one.

??fifty thousand pounds??

?Fine. I have a second job for you, gentlemen.?

?We?d be...happy to help in any way we can, Keri.?

Her voice was cold. Empty. Flat. The emotion that had been so visible on her surface moments before was gone. Dead.

?I?ll pay you one million pounds to have my husband killed.?