by Jane Robins
“I have considered that. Really, I have. But you have to believe that I’m being serious.”
“So what would you like me to do? If it were up to you?” Her brashness made it seem like she was saying, So what would you like me to do, young lady? If it were up to you, young lady?
I leaned forward. “I’d like you to interrogate Charlotte.”
“On what evidence? Do you have any actual evidence of this Strangers on a Train bargain that you say you made?”
“You can look at our internet messages,” I said. “They tell you everything, but just not in straightforward language. Everything is hinted at.”
I had made a printout of the key conversations, and I passed them across the table. Melody read everything—slowly, carefully, running her finger down the text, underlining extracts with a ballpoint pen. As I watched, I felt a pain, like some stinging insect was inside my chest. Yes, Scarlet had referred to “our bargain” and “the danger Pink is in” and “the need to act”—but I could see now that Melody Sykes wouldn’t be convinced. It didn’t help that I hadn’t included the conversations in which I had gone along with Scarlet, told her that I would keep my end of the bargain.
She finished reading and looked at me, a faint smile on her lips, saying, “You seem tired, Ms. Farrow. I think you need a good, long sleep. I understand that you’ve been through a traumatic time—your brother-in-law dying so suddenly like that . . . I’m not sure there’s anything for me to follow up on here. It just seems like—forgive me, it’s the only phrase I can think of—a bit of internet nonsense.”
Tears were pricking at my eyes. “But you can go and see Luke Stone. . . . He’s Charlotte’s boyfriend—so he can give you her full name. He’s the one she wants me to kill!”
“And are you planning to go through with that?”
“Of course not.”
“Quite. That’s my point.”
She picked up her coffee cup and stood up, saying, “I think this brings our meeting to a close. I’ve made a note of our conversation—do feel free to speak to me again if you need to.”
I could see that this was her standard way of ending meetings with members of the public. She didn’t actually want to see me again.
• • •
At home later I drank half a bottle of Strongbow while I tried to figure out what I might do to convince Melody, and I kept arriving at the same conclusion—I needed to establish the connection between Scarlet and Felix. And the drunker I became, the more ready I was to dial a number I’d found online for Francesca Moroni, although the questions I wanted to ask were impossible, outrageous. I could hardly say: So how rough was Felix when you had sex? Did you ever think he would kill you? But my head was filling up with a cloudy, optimistic recklessness, so I poured another glass of cider and called anyway.
It was a good moment, apparently. She was alone and could chat—and I explained that I wanted to ask her about Felix, that I was looking for closure—I winced at the word, but plowed on, encouraged by her own slightly fuzzy diction, and pauses to sip.
“Fire away . . . ,” she said. “I won’t be offended. Seriously, I know that when someone dies you want to ask all the questions that you wish you’d asked when they were alive. Believe me, I’ve been there.”
So I questioned her about her relationship with Felix, how they met, and why they split up. She didn’t come across as the “poor Francesca” that Lucas had described—rather as a strong person who had had the courage to walk away when Felix had failed to commit.
We seemed to be getting along well, and I risked a more penetrating question: “Did he want you to give up your career?”
“What are you getting at?” She sounded sharper now.
“I want to know if Felix was controlling with you. In an obsessive, harmful way.”
A pause, while she took another sip of her drink. Then:
“Like he was with Tilda? Is that what you’re implying?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to bad-mouth Felix, Callie.”
“Please, Francesca, I have to know whether Felix harmed you—it’s for my peace of mind. I’m trying to figure out if Tilda’s better off now that she’s free of him.”
“Stop it. . . . It’s disrespectful. Felix was demanding, yes. But he never harmed me. Our relationship wasn’t like that.” She was speaking quietly now, and I couldn’t tell whether she was being truthful, or whether she was simply protecting Felix’s memory.
“I was worried that he might be seeing someone else, someone called Charlotte . . . for violent sex.”
“That’s enough. It’s ridiculous, you should stop making allegations.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.” There was another pause on the line, and I thought she was going to say good night. Instead I heard:
“It’s possible . . . just about. I once caught him accessing a website called illicithookups.com. But that’s all. He was never violent with me. Never.”
40
Twenty-ninth of October—the day before I was supposed to kill Luke Stone—and late, just as I was going to bed, Scarlet emailed her address in Manchester and reminded me of our “nice chat that day at Kenwood House.” There was no longer any need for me to humor her, so I replied:
Our chat was disgusting and I won’t be following up on it.
A few minutes later:
You must follow up. It was agreed. Remember what I’ve done for you, at your bidding, and return the favor. You have no choice, actually. You’re implicated.
I was nauseated and didn’t reply. But I’d had a bad night, lying awake and worrying. I thought maybe I should, after all, go to Manchester in the morning, to Scarlet’s flat. If I found Luke in a comatose state then I’d be able to phone Melody Sykes. Luke could be revived, and Scarlet charged with drugging him. But the more I thought about it—the more doubtful I felt. Melody would probably suspect me, given that she seemed to think I was unstable. And I needed to concentrate on proving that Scarlet murdered Felix—her sick games with Luke were not my priority.
In the morning, I went to work, although it was a Monday. I think I just wanted Daphne’s company. She was in a buoyant mood because Douglas was treating her to a holiday in Siena. “I’d just mentioned to him that it’s one of my favorite places—and he found us the most charming little hotel to stay in, and they’re putting a table by the window, so I’ll be able to write while I’m looking at the terra-cotta roofs and the winter sun. And I’ll take breaks for us to walk the streets, exploring, stopping in cafés and bars. Oh, it’s blissful.”
“I read in a magazine that your first holiday together can make or break your relationship,” I said. I didn’t want to be negative, but I was aching from the contrast between her good fortune and my turbulent life.
“I reckon you’re right.” She was untroubled by my sharpness, confident in Douglas, and she went back to pounding her keyboard, absorbed in The Lady Connoisseurs of Crime.
I had my laptop on the payments counter and I typed illicithookups.com into the address bar, then said I was looking for a man and hundreds came up instantly. Men who posted pictures of Brad Pitt and David Beckham instead of themselves, men who posted pictures of their hairy bellies, showing that their trousers were unzipped, men posting pictures of themselves in mirrors in grotty, dirty bathrooms, men in a variety of role-play costumes—babies, dolls, dogs, hangmen. You name it. A sizable minority, though, was hiding behind the stock photograph for the site—a suave City gent in a dinner jacket, with a cocktail in his hand. There’d be no way of finding Felix in this lot—so I tried being a man looking for an illicit woman, and in no time at all I was scrolling through pictures of women in lacy bras and thongs, stockings and stilettoes. Most of the images were like Fifty Shades of Grey—black fluffy handcuffs; leather whips pressed into rolling cleavage and buttocks and thighs. Anything more explicit, apparently, was available only if you paid £120 a month, a fee that would also allow you to message “your fantasy girl,” with a view to mee
ting her in the flesh.
I clicked on a skinny woman calling herself Playful Pandora lying across a bed. The picture showed a sprawling, barely clad body, straining ribs, flung-back neck, but not a face, and I thought for a second that it could be Scarlet. But then I saw that she’d posted: “Naughty nights with masterful sex god sought by luscious lovely forty-two-year-old.” I harrumphed with laughter, and Daphne looked pointedly at me. I read more, learning that Pandora really liked “bondage, S and M, all exotic requests considered.” When I clicked on other profiles—Sexy-sexy, Betsy Bootylicious, Mistress Millie (alliteration was practically mandatory)—I found women on all fours, their bottoms in the air, doing little ootsy-cutesy-me faces at the camera, and others that were the opposite, stern dominatrices in tight black rubber or leather, brandishing so many different sorts of torture instruments that I wondered whether you could buy them on eBay. All the ads I saw were on the same theme—women touting sexual adventures involving pain and domination.
I opened up the dossier and typed out hypothetical situations. Maybe Scarlet had learned from me that Felix was violent in the bedroom and had gone looking for him on Illicit Hookups—which was evidently the go-to site for rough sex. That was just about conceivable, if she paid the £120 interaction fee. Or was it the other way round? Did Scarlet meet Felix on Illicit Hookups a while ago—then go to Controlling Men to see if he was on there as a predator? Of course I quickly realized that that wouldn’t work since I had simply referred to Felix as X in the beginning, made him anonymous. I returned to Illicit Hookups, scanning the profiles, trying to find Scarlet, and I spotted a few possibilities, but nothing that was truly convincing.
• • •
When I got home from work I phoned Wilf. It was my first attempt to contact him since he’d walked out of our lunch in the Albany, angry that I’d turned out to be insane. He didn’t answer, and the phone went to voice mail, but I didn’t leave a message. Five minutes later, he called back.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“Am I forgiven?”
“What for?”
“Walking out . . . I’ve been wanting to call you. I was knocked sideways by those things you said, Callie. But I want to know more. I mean, it sounds like you’ve been dragged into some horrible mire by unscrupulous people on the internet, like you could do with a friend by your side.”
I almost broke down. “That’s exactly what’s happened! I’m finding it difficult to know what’s real and what isn’t.”
“Would it help if I came round and threw you on the bed and made love to you?”
“I think that would help. It’s certainly worth a try.” I was smiling—really, truly smiling—for the first time in ages. “Come here—I’m at home.”
• • •
Making love with Wilf did help. It helped a lot. After so many months of struggling to establish some understanding, some control of the events in my life, it was a wondrous, joyous release to surrender myself to him. To be totally mouth to mouth, skin to skin.
Afterwards, I put on his shirt, savoring its earthy scent, thinking about poor Tilda putting on Felix’s shirt after he died. I wandered into the other room, looking for my phone. We’d agreed that a Thai takeout—green chicken curry with rice and lager—would suit us very well, and I needed to order. My phone was on the sofa, wedged in a crack in the cushions, and I flopped down, intending to search for the restaurant number. I couldn’t help noticing, though, a new email from Scarlet. I wanted to ignore it, to pretend that she didn’t exist, but the pull was too great; and suddenly, against my will, I was back in the bloody riptide, wanting to see how angry she was at my failure to turn up at her flat, and I clicked:
Dear Callie,
I was sorry that you couldn’t come to Manchester. It was disappointing. But all that doesn’t matter now because a terrible tragedy occurred here today. The love of my life, Luke Stone, has died from a drug overdose. I had known that he was a user, but I hadn’t suspected that his life was in danger. I came home and found him dead. I’m setting up a memorial page for him on deardepartedfriends.com. I thought you’d like to know.
Yours,
Scarlet
Wilf appeared at the bedroom door, naked like a bear and grinning wickedly, until he noticed my expression.
“Look at this.”
He read Scarlet’s letter, slowly. Then reread it. “Fuck. I mean fuck . . . Callie, you need to go to the police.”
41
We went to the same room as before, a little interrogation cell, empty except for a table and four chairs. “So, what brings you back?” Her tone was dog-tired. She looked like she’d slept in her clothes, a crumpled beige jacket over a yellow T-shirt with a coffee-colored stain. “Didn’t I tell you to take a break from your amateur detective work?” She sighed loudly, for effect.
“Something awful has happened. You know how I told you that Scarlet, I mean Charlotte, wanted me to kill her boyfriend? Well, he’s dead. Luke Stone is dead.”
Melody scraped her chair in close, and leaned over, eyeballing me across the table like This had better not be more of your bullshit, Ms. Farrow. “You’d better explain yourself,” she said.
“Look at this.” I passed her a printout of Scarlet’s email. “When she says I’m sorry you didn’t come to Manchester she means she’s sorry I didn’t come and kill Luke. She had given me diamorphine and syringes, and told me to come and inject him . . . I didn’t do it, so she’s done it herself. See.”
She read it, and reread it, and her tone changed. It was like she’d woken up. “I’d like to call a colleague in. I think two of us should hear this.”
She left the room briefly and returned with a young man with lank, floppy hair. “This is Detective Constable Ramesh Sharma. If you don’t mind, I’ll ask him to join us, and take notes. We’ll also record our conversation.”
“I’d like that.” I sat up straight, like it was my first day at work and I wanted to make a good impression.
“Okay. So let’s go back to the beginning . . . You say Charlotte—you don’t know her surname?—well, this Charlotte wanted you to murder her boyfriend?”
It was so complicated. I needed to explain about Felix at the same time—and I went through it all as best I could. Unlike last time, I showed Melody the photographs of Felix’s room at the Ashleigh House Hotel. “See how odd it is? Everything seems somehow arranged, and neat and tidy, and see how he hasn’t touched anything on the hospitality tray—and yet they found he had eaten raisins that morning, which fits with what Charlotte told me. It’s clear she was there, don’t you think? And how come she could just go into his room, with breakfast for him? He hadn’t ordered breakfast. And she must have spent time there, to somehow inject him . . . Isn’t it obvious that he must have recognized her? I’ve found out that Felix went to a website called illicithookups.com, which is for people who like sadomasochism, among other things. Charlotte likes violent sex—I know that. And so does Felix. Could she have looked for him on this website? Befriended him? Isn’t that worth investigating?”
She let me go on, and it was a wonderful liberation to be handing over my investigation to a professional person. At last! When she asked questions it was to nail down specific facts: What was the name of the hotel receptionist who took the photos? Did I have any more email communications with Charlotte? Could I give her Charlotte’s address?
Thankfully, she didn’t quiz me on my own complicity and, as I drew to the end of my account, she said, “Okay, Callie. That’s enough for now. We’ll make arrangements for you to hand in the syringes and diamorphine that Charlotte gave you to your local police station.”
As she spoke, I felt like my insides were being eaten up, like parasitic worms were penetrating my intestines. “I’m sorry . . . I binned them. It was so stupid of me. . . .”
The look that Melody and Ramesh exchanged told me everything. The idiot witness had chucked the evidence. Or worse, she was, after all, a liar, a fantasist. M
elody seemed to deflate into her crumpled, stained clothes.
“We have your contact details and you can expect to hear from me in a few days.” Her irritation was back, undisguised. “In the meantime, stop your own activity. You have a wild imagination—keep it in check and we’re more likely to get to the truth.”
“Thank you . . . Thank you. Will you see Charlotte today? Bring her in for an interview?”
“I can’t discuss that. But take it from me that we’re taking your claims seriously and will investigate them thoroughly.” Her weariness had returned.
“I’m grateful.” And I was. Despite my stupidity, it seemed possible that Melody Sykes was taking over. That I’d offloaded a great burden.
42
Daphne said, “You seem better, Callie. You’ve been looking knackered recently, but something’s changed.”
“I’m pulling myself together. After Felix’s death . . .”
“Good for you. Tell you what, I’m doing so well with The Lady Connoisseurs that I’ll print off the manuscript and get you to read it. I’d value your opinion.”
I was flattered, and I spent most of the morning reading, and enjoying, her novel. I liked her private detectives, Maisie Fothergill and Hermione Swift, and the quiet treacheries of their circle of friends. There were big country houses too, and steam trains and afternoon tea, and time passed quickly until, just before lunch, Tilda came into the shop. She hadn’t warned me that she was coming, and I was surprised that she looked different. More energized than recently. Eyes shining, rather unnaturally. Better clothes—not the big tweed coat or the hat. Just trendy jeans (XXOX, Paradise in the Park?) and a tailored jacket that looked expensive.
Daphne said, “Oh . . . I was so sorry to hear about Felix. You have my sympathy.”