Die of Shame

by Mark Billingham

  Robin smiles and eventually touches his glass to the one that Chris raises towards him.

  ‘Lovable, glorious arse a lot of the time, I’m well aware of that.’ He doesn’t bother with the pointless wait for Robin to contradict him. ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did at the session.’

  ‘These things happen,’ Robin says. ‘Tony doesn’t want us to self-censor.’

  ‘Still. Must have been awful, trying to do a job like that. I mean having that responsibility while you were using. Most I ever had to worry about was finding somewhere to sleep.’

  Robin nods, accepting the implicit apology, or simply remembering. ‘It was my patients who suffered most of all. That’s the worst part.’

  ‘We’ve all done bad things,’ Chris says.

  ‘Relative, though, isn’t it?’

  Shouts for a penalty go up near the television, which quickly become pointless insults hurled at the referee when the decision is not given.

  Once the noise has died down a little, Chris says, ‘Would you have lost your job? If the hospital had found out?’

  ‘Oh yes, immediately.’

  ‘That would only have made things worse though, right? Better to be a junkie with a job.’

  Robin shakes his head. ‘I should have resigned.’

  ‘Would you still lose it?’ Chris has lowered his voice. ‘If they found out now, I mean?’

  ‘They wouldn’t have any choice, would they?’ A momentary tremor of pain distorts Robin’s features. ‘Then there’s the inevitable lawsuits that would start flying around.’

  ‘Oh right. Yeah…’ The shouting starts up again. Chris turns around and loudly asks the nearest fan to lower the volume. He gets a hard stare for his trouble, before turning back to Robin. ‘Wonder how they’d feel if they knew their star midfielder was pissing all his wages away on coke?’

  Caroline walks into the Ladies to discover Heather already in there. She is still at the sink when Caroline emerges from the cubicle and shifts across slightly so that Caroline can stand close to her, the pair of them looking at themselves in the small, cracked mirror like teenagers in a nightclub cloakroom.

  ‘So come on then, what did Tony want?’

  Heather’s eyes shift to Caroline’s reflection, clock the look on her face. ‘Did Diana say something?’

  Caroline is all innocence. ‘No. Just asking, that’s all.’

  Heather shrugs and goes back to her own reflection, leaning in close and widening her eyes. She is not brushing her hair or applying any make-up. She stares as if simply to confirm that she’s really there. ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ she says. ‘It’s like he just wanted to talk to me, find out how I was doing.’

  Caroline nods. She has taken out a small plastic make-up bag and is reapplying lipstick. ‘I think I’m actually making progress with Chris.’

  The eyes dart across again. ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Breaking down the barriers a bit, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Heather does not sound altogether pleased. ‘I did that ages ago. Not that hard, really.’

  ‘Yeah. You two are obviously mates.’

  Heather sniffs.

  ‘I’m not trying to muscle in or anything.’

  ‘It’s a free country.’

  ‘You know, if you think I’m trying too hard.’

  ‘Chris can be mates with whoever he wants.’

  Caroline says ‘OK,’ and after straightening her dress, she leaves to find Robin on his way out of the Gents. She puts a hand on his arm, as though pleased that she has a chance to talk to him alone.

  ‘Listen, we could have lunch, if you want. Or coffee or something.’

  Robin looks a little taken aback and it’s a few seconds before he says, ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Robin says nothing.

  ‘Just… in the session, you know.’

  ‘I have got friends.’

  ‘Course. I’d like it though. You know, if you want to.’

  Robin fingers a shirt button. ‘Yes, sorry. I just thought you were feeling sorry for me or something. Being a bit oversensitive.’

  ‘Call it a date then,’ Caroline says. She steps back as Heather comes out of the ladies and the two of them walk back towards the table together.

  ‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’ Caroline says.

  ‘Got a thing for older men, have you?’

  Caroline laughs, but she has reddened slightly. ‘Not sure Diana would be very happy if I did. I mean he’s not married, but it still might be against her “rules”.’

  Heather looks at her, confused.

  ‘Just saying, I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.’

  … THEN

  Group Session: March 1st

  A useful session. The usual bickering, but no red flags. Caroline and Diana seem to have bonded, which is good. Chris less angry than in previous sessions despite the same goading of Caroline and a nasty attack on Robin towards the end. Heather seems calmer after midweek phone call.

  Caroline unwilling to participate in the shame exercise. Adamant that it is not applicable to her, though not opposed in principle. Hard to gauge truth at this stage, after only three sessions with her. Shows no inclination so far towards one-to-one. Chris remains opposed and I fear that he may seek to disrupt further attempts with others in the group.

  Interesting discussion at Caroline’s behest about physical effects of H. Became revelatory exercise in sense-memory. Is she being voyeuristic?

  Heather has invited group members to a birthday party, which could be tremendously useful in terms of forging stronger links. Discussion of my own ethical position vis à vis my inability to attend. Robin’s comment about ‘professional distance’ sparked derisory remarks from Chris. Robin, as always, fighting the urge to retaliate.

  Key Line: ‘You take it and the pain goes away.’

  Tony had come sooner than he would have liked, surprised and excited by Nina’s intensity, but she had urged him on, refusing to let him slow down or hold back, insisting that she had come twice already.

  He has never really believed the suggestion that make-up sex is better than sex would otherwise be, but there is no denying that it was as passionate as he could remember. As it had ever been, in fact. As it was in those first few months clean, when he was nervous and horny as a teenager, and it felt like the two of them had just discovered what their bodies could do and must immediately make up for lost time.

  Equally though, there is no denying that the argument preceding it had been every bit as passionate.

  ‘You need to back away sometimes,’ Nina had said; had screamed. ‘You can’t be their friend. Why the hell would you ever want to be their friend?’

  Heather was not the first client of his to overstep the boundaries. Over the years, several had abused his accessibility. He had been accosted in the street more than once and there had been a number of unwelcome visits or phone calls far more inconvenient than Heather’s. He had always believed that it was part and parcel of the job, even when he had discovered one of his clients hiding in the spare bedroom, several hours after a session had finished.

  Something about Heather though had seriously rattled his wife’s bars. The sight of her, standing on their doorstep, smiling as if she had every right to be there.

  ‘As if I should have invited her in for dinner or something.’

  Nina had a nose for these things; an instinct which, over the years, Tony had learned to respect, and be afraid of.

  ‘She’s way too needy.’

  ‘They’re all needy, and it’s my job to help them. That’s the point.’

  ‘Right. A job. Not a mission from God.’

  ‘She’s no different from any of the others.’

  ‘You didn’t see the way she looked at me when I answered the door.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘Don’t tell me I’m being melodramatic – and don’t you dare pull that shit about me not understanding because I
’ve never been a junkie.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to.’

  ‘Don’t you fucking dare…’

  Now, they lie a foot or so apart in the super-king-size bed that Nina had once slept on in a luxury hotel in Bath and insisted on buying. Still breathing heavily, still sweating. Tony could swear he feels the air in the bedroom moving against the skin on his arm, kissing his shoulder.

  Nina says, ‘Have a cigarette if you want one.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s just a Saturday thing. If I start associating smoking with sex, I’m going to be on twenty a day again.’

  Nina laughs and leans down to pull the sheet up, then slides a hand across until it finds his. She says, ‘I do love you, you know. I know sometimes you don’t think I do.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘You’re not exactly easy to live with though. I mean neither am I, but…’ She sighs away the rest of it and pulls the sheet a little higher. There is laughter from a group of kids walking past outside and a siren screaming its way along the Broadway, then fading. ‘Everyone’s got baggage, I’m well aware of that, but just when I start to forget about yours I’m confronted with piles of it.’

  ‘I’m Mr Samsonite,’ Tony says. He puts on a deep, mock-sexy voice and turns towards her. ‘Mr Excess Baggage.’

  ‘Seriously, though. That business in the car.’

  ‘Oh, please.’ He rolls back again. ‘Let’s not talk about that again.’

  ‘It was scary, Tony. It’s always scary.’

  The day before, driving back from the cinema, Tony had been cut up by some teenager in a VW Beetle. He had sounded his horn and flashed his lights and on seeing the raised finger had pulled in front of the car at the next set of lights and got out to confront the driver. There was a good deal of shouting. He had called the teenager an ‘irresponsible little wanker’, then slammed his fist on to the Beetle’s bonnet hard enough to dent it, and when the teenager, who by then was looking understandably frightened, had threatened to call the police, Tony had told him to go right ahead.

  ‘I was worried about you and Emma,’ Tony says. ‘Stupid idiot could have killed us.’

  ‘He didn’t though, did he? And if anyone looked like they were going to kill someone, it was you.’

  ‘It’s just road rage. It happens.’

  ‘Rage is right,’ Nina says. ‘And I get why it’s there, and I know you’re going to tell me that a lot of ex-addicts have that kind of anger bubbling away inside them. Doesn’t make it any easier to live with.’

  ‘I know.’

  They say nothing for a minute or so, then Nina leans to kiss his cheek and turns over. She reaches for the switch on her bedside light and prods her pillow into the required shape.

  She says, ‘Don’t forget the recycling tomorrow.’

  Tony thinks his wife is overreacting. Before the business with the Beetle driver, he cannot recall the last time he’d lost it like that. Perhaps a year before, when a neighbour had knocked on the door to complain about the noise from the top bedroom and had not accepted Tony’s apology with sufficient grace. He keeps his temper as well as anyone else, he reckons; knows how to lay a damper on things when it looks like flaring up. There are exercises, mechanisms…

  ‘I’m sorry, OK?’

  Tony lies quite still, his light still on. He already knows that sleep isn’t coming any time soon, that he will need to read for a while. Before too long he hears Nina’s breathing change and he turns his head to look at her back and shoulders. She is slender and toned thanks to four sessions a week at the gym and is still brown from the week she has recently spent soaking up some winter sun in Dubai with two girlfriends.

  He stares at his wife’s body and knows how lucky he is. He loves his daughter and values his job and is deeply thankful for a life which, a few years ago, would never have seemed possible. So he cannot understand why he is wide awake at one thirty in the morning and thinking about a well-worn, brown suede jacket.

  Heather, slowly taking it off.

  … NOW

  Tanner bought a sandwich from Pret A Manger, took it back to the office and spent the majority of her lunch hour catching up on paperwork. She disliked it less than a lot of her colleagues did, even if, admittedly, the two hours or more of it that was generated by every hour of what others called ‘proper police work’ was not necessarily the most sensible use of time or resources. Steps were being taken to address the imbalance by issuing some front line officers with tablets and equipping squad cars with laptop computers to speed up the admin process. It had done little beyond generating an outraged column or two in the Daily Mail, and Tanner was not sure she fancied lugging an iPad around in her handbag anyway.

  Paperwork needed doing, so it had to be done; simple as that. She would not risk scuppering a prosecution by failing to properly liaise with the CPS. When an entire investigation could be jeopardised by failing to check and double check the dozens of individual reports pertaining to it, why wouldn’t she do so?

  In truth, she enjoyed filling in forms and always had. At home, the post would be opened and anything remotely official-looking would be handed silently to her across the kitchen table for completion. Bank correspondence, insurance documents, customer-service questionnaires.

  Black ink and block capitals.

  Slowly working her way through the sandwich and a bottle of orange juice, she typed out three different interview reports and made changes to some pre-trial documentation on a domestic she had been working since the turn of the year. She filed the application for her annual clothing allowance and filled in the first part of her holiday paperwork good and early.

  With a few minutes of her lunch hour still remaining, she called home to see how Susan was feeling. Returning from her early-morning run, Tanner had found her partner still in bed, complaining that she was feeling nauseous and that her head was thumping. Saying she would need to call in sick.

  ‘You still in bed?’ Tanner asked now.

  ‘Wrapped up on the settee,’ Susan said.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Jeremy Kyle isn’t helping.’

  ‘Drink plenty of water.’ Tanner was thinking that Susan might not have been feeling quite as bad if she had done so the night before.

  Susan said she would, then laughed softly. ‘I’m lying here wondering how the supply teacher’s coping with Paul Murphy.’

  ‘Listen, call me if you need anything.’

  ‘It’s a migraine,’ Susan said. ‘Definitely.’

  Tanner ended the call and turned to see Chall ambling towards her desk. He raised his chin and smiled at her.

  ‘Well, we’re bolloxed on the CCTV for Heather Finlay,’ he said.

  ‘Is that a technical term, Dipak?’

  ‘It should be.’ He sounded cheerful enough, despite whatever bad news he was about to deliver. ‘Nearest cameras are on the main road, which doesn’t really help us. We might have something down the line, once we know who we’re looking for. That’s if he’s walked there of course; he might have driven, taken a cab, whatever.’

  ‘Whoever did it knew her,’ Tanner said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So chances are they knew the area, knew exactly where the cameras were.’

  ‘They’d only have taken the trouble to avoid them if they were planning to kill her, though. If it was a drug thing, isn’t it a bit more likely that it was spur of the moment?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Tanner said.

  ‘You want me to start looking at the phone records? De Silva’s might be interesting.’

  ‘Nothing to justify going down that road just yet,’ Tanner said. Nothing worth the trouble and certainly not worth the cost. Some service providers were quicker than others when it came to providing their customers’ phone records, but all of them made police forces up and down the country eat into their budgets for the privilege. ‘Can’t see the guvnor going for that as things stand.’

  ‘It’s all starting to look like one for the back burner,�
�� Chall said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well you said yourself —’

  Tanner was reaching for the phone that had begun to ring on her desk. She answered, said, ‘Thanks,’ then pushed her chair back. ‘Diana Knight’s waiting downstairs.’

  Chall looked at his watch. ‘Bloody hell, she’s keen.’

  ‘She’s bang on time,’ Tanner said. ‘Which earns her brownie points straight away.’

  ‘Or she’s just trying to create a good impression.’

  They began walking towards the stairs. ‘The courtesy of kings.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Punctuality.’

  ‘Tell that to my wife,’ Chall said. ‘She couldn’t be on time for anything if her life depended on it.’

  Tanner said, ‘I’d have divorced her years ago.’

  ‘Sorry we couldn’t find anywhere a bit nicer,’ Chall said.

  ‘It is… what it is,’ Diana Knight said. It sounded convincing enough, but still she seemed a little wary as she looked around the room. Off-white walls with a window high up at one end and a camera mounted in the corner above it. A scarred, rectangular table. Two chairs on one side, a single chair on the other. ‘How very different from the home life of our own dear Queen.’

  It was an expression Tanner had heard before, though she was still not quite sure what it meant. She smiled anyway. As far as she was aware, the woman sitting across from her had never set foot in an interview room, so wariness to some degree or another was very much to be expected.

  Chall said, ‘We have got nicer rooms than this, but they’re all being used, I’m afraid.’

  The woman dabbed cautiously at the tabletop. ‘It’s exactly like it is on TV shows.’

  ‘Except this isn’t being recorded.’ Tanner nodded towards the window. ‘And there aren’t any other officers looking in at us through there.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’ Her hands moved instinctively to her elegantly styled hair, the only grey on show that of her skirt and matching jacket. Tanner clocked the delicate silver necklace and matching bracelet, the perfectly applied make-up. She decided that for a woman of fifty-three, Mrs Diana Knight was nothing if not well preserved.