Outer Mongolia? I should be so lucky.
“Unless you have the equally weird habit of constantly edging backwards whenever you have a conversation, at exactly the same rate that he edges forwards. Then you wouldn’t notice. You’d both be weirdos, but your weirdness would be camouflaged when you were together. See what I mean?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Saying that I see doesn’t stop Lorna from wanting to tell me again. “Both you and Tom Rigbey are predatory stalkers and grateful stalkees in equal measure. Hence, you’re both able to maintain the illusion that you’re just two normal people who are attracted to one another. Mystery solved!”
“Not the Nadine mystery,” I say.
“Yes, Chloe! Ugh, get real. When Nadine described him as a plague and a danger, that must have been what she meant. Maybe he came on strong to her the way he is with you. She found his zealous persistence intimidating and told him to sod off. He then did something unspeakable to her as payback for the rejection—God knows what—and that’s what she was hinting at. Chloe, Nadine was sacked hours after you mentioned her name to Tom in a she-might-be-jealous context. If that doesn’t convince you, nothing will. He clearly panicked about what she might say to you if you met her again, and decided to get shot of her sharpish.”
“You say ‘clearly’, but it’s not clear. It’s speculation.”
“No, it’s fact. Tom Rigbey is unhealthily obsessed with you. You don’t see it because you’re equally unhealthily obsessed with him. Something disastrous is almost definitely going to happen here! Men like that, who put you on a pedestal and call you ma’am . . . they’re the ones who end up caving your skull in with a metal pipe when you burn their dinner and all their illusions about your perfection are shattered. Take my advice and heed Nadine’s warning.”
“No.”
“Chloe, you don’t know what he did to her! What would someone have to do to you to make you call them a plague in human form? Set fire to your house? Plant a bomb in your car?”
Lorna’s words make my brain jolt. It’s the strangest feeling: my mind does a full-circle turn and, at the end of it, everything looks different.
It’s obvious what I must do.
“Chloe!” Lorna snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Did you hear what I just said?’
“Yes.” Sort of. It was something about her knowing someone who could probably help me. “I don’t need help.”
Lorna sprays shandy across the table in her attempt not to laugh. “You forgot to add ‘with my temporary insanity,’ ” she says. “Tough. You’re getting the help whether you want it or not. They’re only in Cambridge for a couple more days—it’s too good an opportunity to miss. And . . .” She glances at her watch. “At the risk of pissing you off still further, I’ve made the arrangement already. We’d better get a move on—we’re meeting them in twenty minutes.”
“Who?” I ask.
Lorna rolls her eyes. “I knew you weren’t listening,” she says.
Chapter 10
“THEY” TURN OUT to be Lorna’s old schoolfriend Charlotte and her husband, Simon. We’ve met them in the Eagle. Both are police officers—he’s some kind of hotshot murder detective and she’s more in the social-work sphere of policing: community crime forums, suicide prevention initiatives, that kind of thing.
I don’t want to be here, but I can’t deny I’m finding them interesting so far. I’m enjoying wondering about them. She, Charlotte, seems to flinch every time Lorna speaks, which makes me warm to her.
Her husband has hardly said a word, and keeps directing the fiercest of evil stares at anyone nearby who laughs or clinks their glass too loudly, but he earned my admiration on arrival by asking if we could move to a quieter part of the pub. Thanks to him, we’re sitting in the room I always want to sit in and am never normally allowed to by Lorna because it’s not historical enough—the one to the right of the front door.
Why is he so resentful of normal pub noise? It’s odd. Also strange is their reason for being in Cambridge. Apparently Charlotte’s sister is staying at the Varsity Hotel for a week with her boyfriend. That was the explanation offered, with no extra detail provided, apart from, “We’re here to keep an eye on them.” Perhaps that was a joke and the four are all on holiday together, but that wasn’t my impression. Charlotte made it sound more as if she and Simon were spying on her sister and the boyfriend.
I feel guilty for taking up any of their time, and pathetic for allowing Lorna to bring me here and subject me to this. I close my eyes and try to magic myself out of the room while she tells the story so far in her own special way. Once she’s finished, Charlotte says, “Chloe? You haven’t said anything. Do you disagree with Lorna?”
I don’t know what to say. I’m sure of my answer, but I feel no need to share my opinion of the matter with anyone. It would be rude to say nothing, though, and I don’t want to be rude to anyone who prefers me to Lorna, as Charlotte seems to.
“There’s no proof of anything,” I say. “Maybe Tom’s dangerous, but maybe Nadine Caspian was mistaken. Or just plain lying for some reason. I don’t know. I have higher standards of evidence than Lorna.”
She can’t let that go unchallenged. “There’s no proof, but there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence,” she says. “More than enough for a guilty verdict, in my view.” So now she’s making a court case out of it: I’m the defense to her prosecution. Poor judges. I bet they wish they’d never agreed to meet us.
“Chloe’s right that what Nadine says is hearsay only,” says Charlotte.
Thank you.
“Nadine got fired,” Simon says. “She was worried she’d get fired if she spoke up, and she did. I agree with Lorna that her use of extreme language—the plague stuff—makes a real threat more likely. Not only because of the language itself, but because of what went before it.”
“What do you mean?” I ask him.
“The conversation you and Nadine had before you mentioned Tom Rigbey’s name, assuming Lorna described it accurately—there were no unusual turns of phrase. The opposite, in fact. She spoke in clichés: ‘have a nosey’, ‘the man in your life’, ‘a prezzie for me, and it’s not even my birthday’. Then when you mentioned Rigbey, her vocabulary became more distinctive: ‘give him nothing, tell him nothing, trust him not at all.’ That’s pretty memorable—some might say poetic. ‘A plague in human form’—also strong and attention-grabbing. It’s not evidence of anything, but if I had to guess, I’d say a sudden burst of fear or anger, provoked by hearing Rigbey’s name when she didn’t expect to, caused her to switch from clichéd conversational coasting-along to vivid authentic expression.”
I nod and try to look as if I appreciate this insight.
“On the other hand . . .” Simon scratches his badly shaved chin. “I don’t know. From what you’ve told us, Rigbey’s handsome, confident, successful. Probably more dazzlingly brilliant than his colleagues. Put someone like that in a workplace and you’ll see a breakout of Tall Poppy syndrome—people will set out to mow him down.”
“Not the admin staff, surely?” Charlotte says. “Is it likely that Nadine the receptionist would be jealous of the CSO? I reckon she’s more likely to envy a better-paid receptionist.”
“Woman scorned,” Simon mutters. “That’s the simplest explanation, if she’s lying about Rigbey. Which means it’s unlikely to be that.”
“It’s unlikely to be the simplest explanation?” I say, wondering if I’ve misheard.
Simon nods. “Nothing is simple. The true explanation for anything you don’t understand is likely to be so complex, you’ll never fully grasp it.”
“How comforting,” says Lorna sarcastically. “I disagree. The simplest explanation is that Tom Rigbey’s dangerous and best avoided. Anyone who can’t fully grasp that is mentally challenged. He butted into Chloe’s conv
ersation with Freya and demanded that she hand over her car keys. He sucked up to Freya, calling her ‘Your Highness,’ deliberately ingratiating himself with her to win Chloe over. Then, in response to Chloe’s present, he stakes out Freya’s rehearsal, knowing Chloe will be there, and in their next conversation—only the second they’ve ever had— he mentions marriage and hints at diamond engagement rings. As if that’s not enough, he jokingly refers to imprisoning Freya in a cellar.”
“It was a joke,” I say to myself more than anyone else.
“Yeah, one that tells us a lot about him.” Lorna’s eyes flare with anger. “His idea of humor is interesting. It seems to consist of . . . lying, basically. ‘Where did you get the tiepin from? Oh, I know: the Folk Song Tiepins Warehouse just off the M11.’ We all know no such place exists! I know you’ll say that was also only a joke, Chloe, but the fact is, Tom Rigbey habitually peppers his small talk with bullshit. So, it’s likely he does the same with his . . .” Lorna stops, searching for the right word.
“With his big talk?” I suggest.
“Yes. Every tiny detail—everything!—points in the direction of him being untrustworthy and unsafe. What about the ‘If I ever fake my own death’ joke? And calling himself the ‘Talented Mr. Rigbey’—that’s a reference to the Talented Mr. Ripley, a charming and devious fictional murderer. A psychopath.”
“That might be stretching a point,” says Simon. “His name’s Tom. Mr. Ripley’s name: also Tom. The similarity would occur to most people, I think. If my name were Tom Rigbey, I’m sure I’d make that joke more than once in my life.”
“You wouldn’t,” Charlotte tells him. “I’d have to make it for you, and you’d get cross with me.”
“What about him saying that Chloe had better not choose Bridesmaids or Pretty Woman as her favorite film? You don’t think that’s sinister control-freaky at all, telling her what movies are acceptable? And look at his self-confessed favorites: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?—about twisted people who aren’t what they first appear to be—and Prisoners, which sails close to the wind in condoning torture.”
“My favorite movies are Jaws and An Officer and a Gentleman,” says Charlotte. ‘I’m neither a naval aviator nor a shark.”
“Every single word out of his mouth is just . . . off,” says Lorna wearily. I remind myself that she has never heard any of his words—only what I’ve relayed back to her. “How can you not see it, Chloe? What about when he reveled in the fact that lyrics of Joseph are so terrible? You told me he said, ‘It’s just awful,’ gleefully, as if he enjoyed awful things most of all.”
“But you could do that with anyone’s speech!” I snap. “Twist it, analyze it so closely that—”
“There’s no point in any of this,” Simon cuts in abruptly. “We’re going back and forth, getting nowhere. Chloe, would you like us to check this guy out, put your mind at rest?”
“Yes, she would,” says Lorna.
“Chloe?” Charlotte asks pointedly. I’m grateful to her for noticing that I’m a person with a mind of my own, not a ventriloquist’s dummy.
I’m torn. Yes, I want to know, especially if there’s something about Tom that he’ll never tell me. I want to know every single thing about him, the best and the worst, but if I say that, I’ll be misunderstood.
I have to take the risk. I can’t pass up this chance. “Are you allowed to . . . check people out, when they’ve committed no crime?” I ask.
“No,” says Charlotte. “So don’t tell anyone we did, okay?”
“It depends,” says Simon, as if the question hasn’t just been answered. “If there’s possible danger involved, it’s a different story.”
“What we’re allowed to do and what’s the right thing to do aren’t always the same thing,” Charlotte tells me.
“My hunch is that if we look, we’ll find something of interest,” says Simon. “I don’t like threats that linger unnoticed. They tend to grow and keep growing. Plus, I’m curious. I’d send you to Cambridge police, but they’ll be by-the-book about it, so . . . tell me everything you know about Tom Rigbey and I’ll get on it. In the meantime, stay away from him.”
I can’t do that—I’m having dinner with Tom tonight—but I’m happy to share everything I know about him with Simon. It’s not much.
“He grew up in Manchester,” I say. “His parents now live in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They moved there five years ago. He has a brother who’s a dentist in Fallowfield in Manchester—Julian—and a friend called Keiran who’s got a very expensive BMW sports car—a hundred grand, Tom said. Some people broke into it recently and left it full of burger wrappers and cider bottles. He’s had one serious relationship with a woman called Maddy. They were together four years, but then she moved to Australia for work.”
“Girlfriend escapes down under, parents flee to Florida,” Lorna mutters. “Sounds to me like everyone can’t wait to get away from the Talented Mr Rigbey.”
“Anything else, Chloe?” Charlotte asks. “Literally, anything at all might be useful, however daft it seems.”
“Um . . . he told me his Twitter avatar is a photo of an armadillo he saw next to his parents’ pool in Florida. He used to have two English bull terriers as pets: Butch and Sundance.”
“Butch and Sundance?” Lorna pounces. “You never told me that!” She turns to Simon. “Could this be any more obvious? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—two outlaws!”
“Or, if we want to be reasonable about this . . .” says Charlotte, who seems to like contradicting Lorna, and is braver about it than I am, “ . . . English bull terriers are a butch-looking breed of dog. Aren’t they the ones with the enormous protruding faces that look as if they’re made of rock? If I had a dog like that, the name Butch might well spring to mind.”
“Sundance,” I say. “Dancing merrily in the sun. Must mean Tom’s a happy person who loves dancing.”
Charlotte laughs appreciatively.
“Leave it with us, Chloe,” says Simon. “Let’s meet here again the day after tomorrow.”
Chapter 11
I STAND APART from the other parents in the school playground as we wait for the end-of-day bell to ring, and use my phone to search the Internet for references to Nadine Caspian.
I can’t wait two days for more information. I have to do something right now. Every nerve in my body is buzzing with a need to act. I might not be a police detective, but I care more than Simon and Charlotte do. And they aren’t the only ones who can check things out.
If I can find Nadine’s address, I’m going to pay her a visit. She can’t say what she said to me, then change her mind and disappear. It’s not fair.
Her name is unusual. That should make it easier to find her. There can’t be many Nadine Caspians in Cambridge.
First I’ll force it out of her: what she knows, what she thinks will make me turn my back on Tom. I want to tell her that nothing will. Nothing ever could.
This is the realization that jolted my brain while Lorna was harassing me earlier: I’ve been sick with fear since Nadine said what she said on the stairs at CamEgo, but I shouldn’t have been. I only need to worry if it would make a difference—if there is something, anything, I could learn about Tom that would change the way I feel.
If my love for Tom were conditional upon him being a good, harmless person, then I would right now be at the mercy of Nadine, Simon, Charlotte, Lorna. Any of them, at any time, could present me with a previously unknown fact about him that would ruin everything.
I realized earlier that the opposite is true.
Nothing could put me off Tom. Whatever he’s done, whatever he is, I love him and will always love him. I can’t help it. There’s no point pretending that any moral principle could make the blindest bit of difference. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. Since our first meeting, there has bee
n no room in my head for anything but Tom Rigbey. I’ve been floating on the happiness that his existence and interest in me has brought into my life. If he’s bombed a car or set fire to a house, I don’t care. If he’s killed someone, or tried to and failed, I don’t care. If every word out of his mouth is a calculating lie, so what? No one else has ever made me feel as elated as I feel in his presence— not even for ten minutes.
Not at all.
So. I have to not care. It’s the only way I can be immune to what Simon and Charlotte might be about to find out and tell me.
If Tom is a plague in human form, and I’m ready to condone all of his sins, then I must be one too.
I should do something wrong, to prove that we belong together, that we’re right for each other. Something Nadine Caspian can find out about and say, “Ugh, Chloe Daniels is every bit as bad as Tom Rigbey. They deserve each other.”
Maybe I could do something wrong to Nadine Caspian. Now there’s an idea . . .
The school bell rings, startling me, at the exact same moment that I find Nadine on Twitter. There’s her horrible face as her avatar, smiling. Like a doll made of flesh-colored stone. I have a quick look up and down her timeline. Her communications are mostly inane: clothes, booze, cake baking. A new tweet appears, moving the others down on my phone’s screen. She must have just done it. It’s a quote. It says, “ ‘Pour yourself a drink put on some lipstick and pull yourself together’—Elizabeth Taylor.” There should be comma after drink.
I press the “Reply” icon at the bottom of Nadine’s latest offering, and write, “Why are you so against Tom Rigbey? What’s he ever done to you?” Then I press the “tweet” button.
Her reply appears on her timeline a few minutes later. “He’s a sociopath. Leave me alone. Blocking you now.”
The Warning Page 5