‘I can’t lose this flat,’ she says. Diana puts an arm around her. Heather is actually trembling.
‘It’s probably just a Jehovah’s Witness,’ Chris says.
‘Seriously, I just can’t.’
‘If he’s fit, can we invite him in?’ Caroline asks.
They wait in silence for a few seconds, until Robin reappears. He has an odd look on his face, a half smile. He says, ‘Guess who’ and a cheer goes up from the others when Tony emerges from behind him.
‘Brilliant,’ Heather says.
They all move towards him and Diana says, ‘I thought you couldn’t come.’
Tony holds up a box. ‘I just dropped in to deliver a cake.’
Heather rushes forward to take it from him then turns back to kiss him on the cheek. ‘So glad you came,’ she says.
He has reddened. ‘I can’t stop.’
‘You’ve got to have some cake at least, seeing as you brought it.’
Heather lifts the cake from the box. It certainly doesn’t look as though it has come from a chain bakery. She shakes her head in disbelief and opens a drawer to get a knife.
‘I bought some candles too.’ Tony takes a paper bag from his coat pocket and hands it across. ‘They didn’t have enough for the number of years.’
‘It’s not that many,’ Heather says, laughing. ‘Cheeky sod.’
‘Just put one in the middle,’ Caroline says. ‘One candle for one family.’
Robin nods his approval. Tony says, ‘Very nice idea.’
Once the candle is lit, Caroline launches into a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ and the others join in. Diana’s voice, a high trill, rises above everyone else’s and Chris tries and fails to sing a harmony line at the end. Everyone claps and after Heather has blown out the candle and wiped her eyes, she steps forward to cut the cake.
‘Looks amazing,’ she says. She glances at Caroline, takes care to only cut five slices.
Chris turns the music back on, and Heather quickly nudges the volume down a little. Robin and Diana carry their cake into the living room and sit down.
Tony looks around, at the balloons pinned up in the corners of the room and on the door, the banner that has started to sag a little. ‘Looks like you’re all having a great time.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Chris says. ‘The joint is jumping.’
Heather is still grinning. ‘We had dancing.’ She moves closer to Tony and hands him the plate with the biggest piece of cake. ‘I bet you’re a good dancer. Being musical and everything.’
‘You should have brought your guitar,’ Caroline says.
Chris rolls his eyes and heads towards the bathroom.
Tony has just taken a bite. He shakes his head, grunts and swallows. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Maybe one Monday night. You could give us a private concert.’
‘It’s not really why we’re there,’ Heather says.
‘Afterwards, obviously.’
‘Still, not really fair to ask.’
‘I should get going.’ Tony lays his plate down, the cake unfinished. ‘Got a client later on.’
Heather’s smile falters for a moment, but then she puts her own plate down and wipes her fingers on her T-shirt. ‘I’ll show you to the door.’
She follows Tony out into the hall. He stops at the front door and turns to see that she is close to him.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she says. ‘For breaking the rules or whatever.’
‘Well, not rules exactly.’
‘It means a lot.’
‘I just thought you ought to have a cake.’
‘Doesn’t matter what the reason was. Just happy that you decided to come.’
‘That was the reason, though,’ Tony says. ‘The cake.’
She looks at him.
‘Happy birthday, anyway. And well done.’ He turns and fumbles for the lock. Heather leans past him and opens the door.
Once she has watched him walk away and closed the door, Heather stands leaning back against it for a few seconds. An Atomic Kitten song is playing in the kitchen: ‘Whole Again’.
She remembers slow-dancing to it, with the boy she was seeing back then.
She listens and licks the sugar from her lips.
She is startled as the bathroom door opens suddenly and Chris emerges. He sniffs a couple of times and looks at her. He raises his eyebrows.
‘There you go,’ he says. ‘You got what you wanted for your birthday after all.’
… NOW
The supermarket manager’s office was bland and functional: whiteboard, metal filing cabinet and glossy black desk. It was not a great deal bigger, Tanner thought, than the one her chief inspector took such pride in, and was even less homely. Just about the only indication that a human being actually worked in it was a mug, still half filled with tea, standing next to the computer, and a sign on the back of the door: a cartoonishly buxom woman puckering up.
DON’T FORGET TO KISS THE BOSS!
Having already met the charmless Yvonne Segal, Tanner decided that, were she an employee here, it would certainly be the one thing she would do her very best to forget.
‘No mirrors in her house then,’ Chall said, when Segal had left the room.
Tanner smiled. ‘Yeah, the make-up was a bit Coco the clown.’ She was seated behind Segal’s desk, with Chall on a chair at one end. A third chair was sitting empty on the other side of the desk. It was this chair that Tanner and Chall found themselves glancing at when the door opened and Segal ushered Caroline Armitage into the office.
Both were asking themselves if the chair would be big enough.
‘Right then,’ Segal said. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Give me a shout if you need anything.’
Armitage walked forward and Tanner invited her to take a seat.
‘This shouldn’t take long,’ Chall said.
Tanner had wrestled with weight problems of her own for a few years. A succession of yo-yo diets as she’d tried and failed to shed those unwanted pounds, until she’d eventually settled on a regime of regular exercise and cut down on takeaways. Until she’d accepted that there were jeans she was simply never getting back into again.
‘Don’t do it for me,’ Susan had said, back when Tanner was struggling. ‘I like you as you are.’
‘I’m doing it for me.’
‘I think that’s bollocks. It’s always about how other people see you.’
There was little question as to how other people would see Caroline Armitage. She was seriously big; twenty stone or more, Tanner reckoned. She watched the woman settle herself in front of the chair, take the weight on her arms and lower herself slowly into it.
‘This is about what happened to Heather, right?’
‘Correct,’ Chall said.
Tanner had deliberately not given Caroline Armitage any warning of their visit, but still she was thinking that the girl’s intonation had been a little odd. As though she were checking that the police did not want to talk to her about something else entirely, that her manager had not caught her dipping into the till.
‘It’s just a few questions.’
‘No problem.’
Tanner watched the girl shift in her seat, heard the soft shush of the nylon. ‘We want to talk about an evening you and several others spent in the Red Lion pub in Muswell Hill. A Monday evening, just over four weeks ago.’
The girl nodded. ‘Heather’s last session.’ she said. ‘We went to the pub afterwards.’
The blonde hair was almost certainly dyed, Tanner thought, but there were no dark roots showing. She wasn’t wearing quite as much make-up as Yvonne Segal, but it was a close thing. Presuming that she would not go as far as to actually kiss her, Tanner wondered if Armitage was trying to emulate her boss.
‘Regular night out, wasn’t it?’ Chall asked.
‘Yeah, but we didn’t exactly do a lot of drinking. Trust me, I could really have done with one sometimes.’
Armitage smiled and Tanner suddenly saw how prett
y she was. She guessed that it probably took most people that long to see it. She wondered if that made the weight problem easier or harder to bear. She said, ‘Do you remember that night?’
‘Oh yeah,’ Armitage said.
‘Any particular reason for that?’
‘Yeah, because it was the last time I saw Heather… the last time any of us saw her.’ She turned up her palms, as though it were obvious. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot.’
‘There was quite an argument,’ Chall said.
Armitage looked at him.
‘We spoke to the staff in the pub. Several arguments by the sound of it.’
Tanner watched Armitage hesitate. ‘Listen, we know all about the confidentiality, how important that is to you all, but we’re not here to talk about your session with Mr De Silva.’ Tanner was now as sure as she could be that whatever went on in the pub was a direct result of what had occurred during the session earlier the same evening. Finding out what had been said in the Red Lion would tell her as much as she needed to know about what had preceded it. ‘We just want to know what happened in the pub.’
Chall moved his chair a little closer to Armitage’s. ‘You need to tell us what those rows were about.’
Armitage nodded understanding, then finally shrugged. She said, ‘People were angry.’
‘With Heather?’ Tanner asked.
‘Not all of them, and not just with Heather either.’
‘Who else had fallen out?’
Another hesitation. ‘It had all been kicking off between Robin and Chris for a while. Kind of building up. Things had got a bit nasty in the pub the week before.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘There’d been some letter. I told Robin he was way off, you know? He had his own ideas as to who was responsible, so…’
Tanner nodded. She wanted to know what the letter was about, but there were other ways of finding out – most obviously by talking to Robin Joffe again – and she was wary of pressing Armitage too early. ‘What did Chris make of all this?’
‘He had other things to think about. They’d had it out already a few times and yeah, he thought Robin was a dick, but it wasn’t really him he was pissed off with that night.’
‘Heather?’
Armitage nodded.
‘Why was that, Caroline?’
She looked away, her lips kissing one another softly as she searched for the right words. ‘He was a bit all over the place and he was taking it out on Heather. He blamed her for… something she’d made him do. That’s how he saw it, anyway. Shit, I’m going to be in all sorts of trouble for telling you any of this.’
Once again, Tanner was tempted to push for details, but she was sure she could get them from others. ‘You said people were angry with Heather, like it wasn’t just Chris.’
‘Yeah, well, Diana had one on her as well, but that was just stupid if you ask me.’
‘I’m sure it was.’
‘It was all about something Heather had said during the session. I’d really rather not say what that was…’
‘Fine,’ Tanner said.
‘It’s just like it touched a nerve, that’s all.’ Armitage shook her head, remembering. ‘Diana looks all posh and polite and all that, but she’s got a hell of a temper on her.’
Chall watched Tanner scribbling in her notebook. He turned to Armitage. ‘What about you?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Were you angry with Heather about anything? Sounds like most of the others were.’
‘Yeah, I was, as it happens,’ she said, ‘but by then I was pissed off with almost everybody. I was upset, because we were all supposed to be supporting each other and suddenly the group was tearing itself to pieces.’ She tapped her fingers against the arm of her chair. The pink polish could not disguise the fact that the nails had been bitten down to nothing. ‘I wondered if it was me, you know?’
‘What do you mean?’ Chall asked.
‘Because I was the new girl. Because maybe I’d changed the dynamic or whatever. I don’t know that it was all sweetness and light before I joined the group, but it all turned to shit pretty fast after I did.’ Her fingers were still tapping. ‘I was thinking about leaving. I was going to talk to Tony about it.’
‘So, are you going to?’ Tanner leaned back in her chair. ‘Mr De Silva says he’ll be getting the group back together soon.’
Armitage shook her head. ‘I’ve given up on stuff way too many times.’
Tanner and Chall exchanged a glance. They were almost done. ‘What did you do after the pub?’ Tanner asked.
‘I went straight to see Chris,’ Armitage said. ‘He’d sort of stormed out before anyone else.’
‘Stormed out or been thrown out?’
‘Yeah… a bit of both, I suppose. So I met up with him later to see if he was all right.’
Once again, Tanner looked at Chall. She said, ‘Mr Clemence didn’t tell us that he’d seen you after he left the pub.’
‘Oh.’ She looked confused. ‘Well, that’s his business, I suppose. I don’t know…’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Tanner said. She had already decided that she would be talking to Chris Clemence again and now there was something else to ask him about. She said, ‘Right then,’ and stood up, and immediately began rummaging in her handbag. It felt polite to look away as Caroline Armitage got out of her chair, with considerably more effort than had been needed to get into it.
‘Interesting,’ Chall said, when Armitage had left.
‘Certainly plenty to think about.’
‘Bunch of nutters, the lot of them.’
‘Not very PC, Dipak,’ Tanner said. ‘But I’m not going to disagree with you.’ She had not given up on the idea of tracking down people Heather Finlay had known ten years before; trying to put names to the two men she had been seeing. For now, though, her priority was finding out exactly what had gone on between the members of Tony De Silva’s group. Why some had chosen to withhold information and why others had simply lied. There were people she wanted to re-interview, perhaps more formally this time, and the therapist was one of them.
There was no sign of Yvonne Segal as they left her office.
‘OK,’ Chall said. ‘If you had to. Armitage or her boss?’
Tanner popped a mint into her mouth. ‘Neither.’
‘Come on.’
‘It’s a stupid question,’ Tanner said. ‘If I had to, I’d shag you. But you’d need Rohypnol. And a gun to my head.’
Caroline pushed through the heavy PVC strip doors into the loading area. A lorry was backing up and a forklift was moving into position, ready to unload the pallets of baked beans or bog roll. She waved to the driver, then took out her cigarettes and her phone. She had one lit by the time her call was answered.
‘I saw the police and I told them what you wanted me to,’ she said. ‘Happy now?’
‘You’re a superstar,’ Chris said.
‘I’m a mug, is what I am.’
‘It’ll be fine. I’ll just tell them I panicked or something. Make up something.’
‘Why don’t you try telling me what you actually did? After you left the pub that night. I mean it might be a good idea, now you’ve got me to lie for you.’
‘Look, it’s not a big deal,’ Chris said.
‘Maybe not to you.’
‘I wasn’t exactly being a good boy, OK? I just didn’t want those coppers doing me for something stupid. That’s all.’
He was lying to her, Caroline knew, but clearly he was not going to elaborate. She took a deep drag. She said, ‘Just so you know, if this turns nasty, I’ll tell them you asked me to cover for you.’
‘Why should it turn nasty?’
‘Just telling you. Why should I get myself into any more trouble than I’m probably already in?’
‘Because you’re a nice person?’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Because we’re a group and all that? A family?’
‘Now I’m just feel
ing sick,’ Caroline said.
‘Seriously, I’m really grateful, OK? I owe you one.’
‘Big time, you do.’
Caroline put her phone away. With the cigarette in her mouth, she leaned down to rub at her knee, which had been hurting more than usual all day. Smoking, she watched the forklift weave between the stacks and wondered what that bossy cow Yvonne would have to say about the visit from the police.
… THEN
It isn’t as though there is much clearing up to be done. The food left on the paper plates goes straight into a black bin bag, as do the plates themselves and the paper cups. It’s hard for six people to make too much of a mess, especially when nobody is drinking. All the same, Caroline has volunteered to stay behind after everyone has left, to help Heather get the place straight again.
Within a few minutes, it’s pretty much done and Heather is wiping the worktops in the kitchen. The music is still playing, more songs from her playlist, and she sings along quietly when she remembers the words.
Caroline stands in the middle of the living room, looking around. She picks up a paper cup that has been missed. She points. ‘What about the banner?’
‘What?’
Caroline walks across, but it’s too high to reach. ‘And the balloons?’
‘I think I’ll leave them there for a bit,’ Heather says.
‘Yeah?’
‘Cheers the place up a bit.’
‘Fair enough.’ Caroline walks back into the kitchen and watches Heather finish up. ‘Pleased with how it went?’
Heather folds the dishcloth across the edge of the sink; picks it up again and refolds it until the square is perfect. ‘Yeah, I think so. It was all right, wasn’t it?’
‘It was great. Chris was on good form.’
‘Well, that’s always a bit worrying,’ Heather says. ‘When he’s that hyper it usually means there’s a major low coming.’
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