by Nicci French
The two men looked thoughtful.
“Yes,” said Links. “We'll just ask a couple of routine questions. You've just moved into this house. Did you live in this area before?”
“No. We lived miles away, south of the river, in Battersea.”
“Do you know a school called Laurier?”
“Why?”
Links sat back.
“One of the things we try to do is to establish connections with other threats that may have been made. Do you have children?”
“Yes. Three boys.”
“Laurier is a state primary school just off Kingsland Road in Hackney. Is it possible you ever considered it for your children?”
I couldn't suppress a smile.
“A state primary school in Hackney? Are you serious?”
The two men exchanged glances.
“Or maybe you've met one of the teachers. A woman called Zoe Haratounian, for example.”
“No. What can the school have to do with this letter?”
“There were . . . er, incidents associated with the school. There may be a connection.”
“What sort of incidents?”
“Letters like the one you received. But can we continue with our questions? Has this letter come out of the blue? You don't connect it with anything else, or any other person, no matter how remotely?”
“No.”
“I would like to assess how many people have access to this house. I see that you're having work done.”
“That's right. It's like Waterloo Station here.”
He smiled.
“Which estate agent did you use?”
“Our house was sold by Frank Dickens. Bunch of sharks.”
“Have you ever used Clarke's?”
I shrugged.
“Maybe,” I said. “I was looking for ages. I must be on the books of almost every estate agent in London.”
They looked at each other again.
“I'll check it out,” Stadler said.
One of the officers came down the stairs. Yet another woman was with her. Tall, with long blond hair, some of it up on top of her head, looking as if it had been pinned up by a blind man in a dark room. She was wearing a business suit that looked as if it could do with a run-over from an iron. She was carrying a case and had a raincoat over one arm. She looked harassed and out of breath. Both detectives looked round and nodded at her.
“Hello, Grace,” said Links. “Thanks for coming so quickly.” He turned back to me. “This may seem strange to you. Somebody has picked on you. We don't know why. We don't know who this person is, or anything about him. But we have you. We can't look at his life but we can look at your life.”
I felt suddenly alarmed and irritated. This was becoming tiresome.
“What do you mean, look at my life?”
“This is Dr. Grace Schilling. She's a very distinguished psychologist and she specializes in the psychology of, well, of people who do things like this. I'd be very grateful if you'd talk to her.”
I looked at Dr. Schilling. I expected her to be blushing or smiling at Links's flattery. She wasn't. She was looking at me with narrowed eyes. I felt like something stuck to a card with a pin.
“Mrs. Hintlesham,” she said. “Can we go somewhere quiet?”
I looked around.
“I'm not sure there is anywhere quiet,” I said with a forced smile.
THREE
“Sorry about the mess,” I said as we tiptoed across the room between packing cases toward a sofa. “This is going to be a drawing room in about twenty years.”
She took off her crumpled linen jacket and sat down in the uncomfortable old basket-weave chair. She was tall and slim, with dark blond hair, long thin fingers. No rings.
“Thank you for giving me your time, Mrs. Hintlesham.” She put on a pair of spectacles, the kind with no frames at all. She took a notepad and a pencil out of her bag and wrote something at the top. Underlined it.
“As a matter of fact, I haven't got a great deal of time to give. I'm very busy, as you can see. I've a lot to get through before the boys get back.” I sat down and smoothed my skirt over my knees. “Do you want coffee or tea or something?”
“No, thanks. I'll try to be quick. I just wanted us to meet.”
I was feeling agitated. I wasn't quite sure what was going on, why she seemed so serious.
“Quite honestly, I think the police have got themselves in a bit of a sweat about it all, haven't they? I mean, it's just a stupid letter. I wasn't going to call them at all and then suddenly it's like Piccadilly Circus in here.”
She looked thoughtful. So thoughtful that she hardly seemed to be paying proper attention to what I was saying.
“No,” she said. “You did the right thing.”
“I'm terribly sorry, but I can't remember your name—my mind's like a sieve. Early senility, I expect.”
“Grace. Grace Schilling. This must all be strange for you.”
“Not at all, actually. I told the police, I just thought it was a joke.”
Dr. Schilling was the one with the suit and notebook; she was the doctor. Yet she was shifting uncomfortably in her seat as if she didn't know quite what to say. Of course that wretched chair is enough to make anybody uncomfortable, but I still didn't know what she was playing at.
“I don't want to give you a psychology lecture. I just want to do anything I can to help you.” She paused as if she was trying to make up her mind. “Look, as you know, there are men who just attack women at random. This letter you received is obviously something different.”
“I can see that,” I said.
“He's seen you. Chosen you. I wonder if this person has been close to you. He says that you smell nice. That you have beautiful skin. How does that make you feel?”
I laughed a bit self-consciously. But she didn't. She leaned closer and looked at me.
“You do have beautiful skin,” she said.
She didn't say it as if it was a compliment but just as if it were an interesting scientific observation.
“Well, I try hard enough with my skin, for goodness' sake. I have this special cream.”
“Are you often aware of people finding you attractive?”
“What a question. I can't think how this is going to help you. Let's see. Some of Clive's friends are awful flirts. I suppose there are men who look at me, you know the way men do.” Grace Schilling didn't say anything, just gazed at me with that calm and mildly anxious expression on her face. “I'm nearly forty, for goodness' sake,” I said, to break the silence. My voice came out louder than I had intended.
“Do you work, Jenny?”
“Not in the way you mean,” I said, almost belligerently. “I don't have a job the way you do. I have children, and this house.” Take that, I thought to myself with some satisfaction. “I haven't worked since I got pregnant with Josh, fifteen years ago now. Clive and I always agreed that I would give up. I used to be a model. Not in the way you probably think. I modeled hands.”
She looked baffled. “Hands?”
“You know, in posters for nail varnish and things like that, consisting of nothing but a giant hand. In the early and mid-eighties lots of those hands were mine.”
We both looked at my hands, lying in my lap. I try to keep them nice. I have a manicure once a week, and get the cuticles seen to, and I rub this expensive lotion on them that I've always used, and I never wash anything up without wearing gloves. But they're not like they were. They're plumper, for a start. I can't take off my engagement and wedding rings any longer, not even when I use butter. Dr. Schilling smiled for the first time.
“It's a bit like someone's fallen in love with you,” she said then. “From afar. Like in a story. Or someone close to you. It might be somebody you've never seen before or someone you see every day. It would be useful if you could think about men you meet, if any of them act strangely, inappropriately, towards you.”
I gave a grunt.
“The boys, for a start,�
� I said.
“Maybe you could describe your life to me.”
“Oh dear, you mean a day in the life?”
“I want to get an idea of the things that are important to you.”
“This is ridiculous. You can't catch somebody by finding out what I think about my life.” She waited, but this time I beat her at her own game. I just stared back. In the background, I could hear a great crash, as if somebody had dropped something heavy. Probably some oafish policeman.
“Do you spend a lot of time with your sons?”
“I'm their mother, aren't I? Though sometimes I feel more like their unpaid chauffeur.”
“And your husband?”
“Clive is madly busy. He's—” And then I stopped myself. I didn't see why I should give this woman a detailed explanation of something I didn't understand myself. “I hardly see him at the moment.”
“You've been married how long? Fifteen years?”
“Yes. Sixteen this autumn.” God, was it that long? I gave an involuntary sigh. “I was very young.”
“And would you describe it as a happy marriage, close?”
“I wouldn't describe it to you at all.”
“Jenny.” She leaned forward in her chair and for one horrible moment I thought she was going to take hold of my hands in some touchy-feely way that would make me sick. “There is a man out there who says he wants to kill you. However ridiculous this sounds, we have to take it seriously.”
I shrugged.
“It's a marriage,” I said. “I don't know what you want me to say. We have our ups and downs, our silly squabbles, like everybody.”
“Have you told your husband about the letter?”
“The detective asked me to. I left a message at work; he'll phone later.”
She looked at me as if she could see through me. It made me feel uncomfortable. There was a long pause.
“Jenny,” she said finally. “I know that one of the things that you feel, or will feel, is violated. And what's worse is that some of our efforts to help you may feel like a violation as well. There are things I need to know about.” She looked around at the chaos of the house and gave her knowing smile again. “Think of me as like your surveyor going round the house looking for bits where the water might get in.”
“Tell me about it,” I said in mock bitterness.
She leaned forward again.
“Has your husband been faithful, Jenny?”
“What!”
She repeated the question, as if there was nothing strange about it.
I glared at her and felt my face going red. My head was starting to hurt. “I think you should ask him,” I said as coolly as I could.
She made a mark on her notepad.
“What about you?”
“Me?” I snorted. “Don't be stupid. When on earth would I find time for an affair, even if I wanted one, unless it was with the gardener or the odd-job man or the tennis coach? I virtually never meet anybody else. Look, you say you are just doing your job and you have to ask about these things, but really, you've done it and now I just want to get on with my day, whatever is left of it, that is.”
“Do you find these questions intrusive?”
“Of course I do. I know it's an unfashionable view, but I like to keep private things private.”
She stood up at last, but she wasn't ready to leave quite yet.
“Jenny,” she said. I was irritated by the way she kept using my first name. I hadn't told her she could. It felt like an insurance salesman keeping his foot in the door. “All I want, all any of us want, is to put a stop to this and get out of your life. If anything comes into your mind that seems significant in any way, let the police know or let me know. Let us decide what is or isn't important. Don't be embarrassed to tell us, will you?”
She almost seemed to be pleading with me. It made me feel better, more in control.
“All right,” I said. “I'll put on my thinking cap.”
“Do that.” She turned to go. “And Jenny.”
“Yes.”
She hesitated, then thought better of it. “Nothing. Take care.”
Later, they all went—except that Stadler man, the one with the bedroom eyes. He told me they would be opening my mail in the morning, just to be on the safe side.
“No more nasty shocks for you,” he said, and gave me a smile that was perilously close to a leer. Honestly! I glared at him. “And,” he added, as if it was an afterthought, “we're leaving a couple of police officers outside the house.”
“This is getting beyond a joke,” I said.
“Just a precaution,” he said soothingly, as if I were a horse. “And during the day there will be a woman officer who'll be here most of the time.” He smiled. “Continuity for you.”
I opened my mouth to say something but couldn't think of anything that wasn't obscene, so I just glared.
“She's here now. Hang on a minute.” He strode to the door and shouted: “Lynne! Lynne, can you come in here for a minute? Mrs. Hintlesham, this is Officer Burnett. Lynne, Mrs. Hintlesham.”
The woman was almost as small as me, but much younger, almost young enough to be my daughter, with light brown hair, pale lashes, and a birthmark on her left cheek that made her look as if she'd been smacked in the face just before she came in. She smiled at me but I didn't smile back.
“I'll try and keep out of your way,” she said.
“Do,” I snapped. I pointedly turned my back on her and Stadler until they had both left the room and I was blessedly alone again.
The kitchen was full of empty mugs, and there were a couple of cigarette butts by the back door. You would have thought the least they could do was clear up after themselves. I rang Clive again, but he still wasn't available.
Lena brought Chris and Josh back. Harry was being dropped off by another mum after football practice. I told Josh, in vague and reassuring terms, about a stupid note and there being policemen outside. I thought he might be a bit alarmed, or impressed. But he just leaned against the kitchen door, chewed his lower lip, and shrugged before loping off to his bedroom with two peanut butter sandwiches and a tankard of milk; I don't know where all the food goes.
I dread to think what he gets up to in his room. He closes the curtains and there's loud music, and bleeps and shrieks from his dreadful computer games, and incense, probably to cover up the cigarettes he smuggles in. I make sure it's always Mary who tidies up in there and changes his sheets. I don't go in his room, I just shout through the door for him to do his homework, practice his saxophone, turn down the music, bring down his dirty washing. He's grown up all of a sudden. His voice has broken, he's got little pimples on his forehead, soft hair on his upper lip. And he's so tall. Much taller than me. He's got that odd, man's smell about him, as well, underneath all the lotions and gels that he and his friends seem to wear nowadays. Not like when we were young.
Chris is too young to understand, of course; I didn't say anything to him, just gave his squashy little body a hug. He's my baby.
Then I drove to the reclamation center but it had just closed so I didn't get the hooks, which was the last straw.
Clive rang to say he wouldn't be home until late, so after Harry got back, and after I had put Chris to bed with a story, I had supper with Josh and Harry. Lasagne that I'd taken out of the freezer earlier, with peas, and for pudding ice cream with chocolate sauce. No one spoke much. I watched them shovel food down their throats as if it were fuel. I didn't eat very much. It was too hot.
The boys drifted off into their own rooms again, so I poured myself a glass of white wine and sat downstairs with the TV on, leafing through magazines. We needed a dining room table. I knew what I was looking for, something in grainy dark wood, long and simple, a refectory-type table. I'd seen one I quite liked recently with little mosaics of different-colored wood set into the surface, like coasters. Jeremy said I ought to find the perfect chairs first, since they are always more difficult. He told me about a client of his who had wa
ited eight years for the perfect chairs. I told him I wasn't that patient.
Clive still hadn't come home. From Josh's room came a booming bass note from the awful electronic music he listens to. I drew the curtains, seeing as I did so the two policemen sitting in their car. We should have a dinner party as soon as we buy the table, I thought. I could wear my black dress and the diamond choker Clive had given me for our fifteenth wedding anniversary. I picked up a cookbook and thumbed through the summer recipes. Champagne to begin with. Then iced chervil and cucumber soup, tuna scented with coriander, apricot sorbet, cold white wine, on the table those peachy roses from the garden that Francis planted when we arrived. I put my glass against my forehead. So hot.
I heard the key turn in the door. Clive kissed me on the cheek. He looked gray with tiredness.
“God, what a day,” he said.
“There's lasagne if you want some.”
“No, I ate with some clients.”
I looked at him: expensive charcoal-gray suit; black shoes, well polished; purple and gray tie I'd given him for Christmas; slight paunch beneath his well-ironed white shirt; little threads of silver in his dark hair; a hardly discernible double chin; frown marks just beginning to appear in his high forehead. A distinguished man. I always thought that in a strange way he looked at his best when exhausted, late at night, just after walking through the door. First thing in the morning he was busy, fussy, nervous, distracted, before he put on his lawyer's mask and went to work. He took off his jacket and hung it carefully on the back of a chair, then lowered himself onto the sofa, sighing. There were circles of sweat under his arms. I went to the kitchen and came back with two glasses of white wine, very cold from the fridge. My head was still sore.
“I've had an extraordinary day,” I began.
“Oh yes?” He kicked off his shoes, loosened his tie, changed the channel on the TV with a flick of the remote control zapper. “Tell me.”
I think I told it badly. I couldn't convey how strange it felt, how seriously the police had taken it. When I finished he took a sip of wine and looked away from the screen.