Hurting Distance aka The Truth-Teller's Lie

by Sophie Hannah

  Yvon has stopped trying to defend you. ‘While that man was attacking you, Robert was in the kitchen,’ she says, giving up, letting me know I’ve convinced her. ‘He cooked the meal.’

  I jolt awake, with a scream trapped in my throat. I am soaked in sweat, my heart drumming fast. A bad dream. Worse than being awake, than real life? Yes. Even worse than that. Once I’ve waited long enough to check I’m not having a stroke or a heart attack, I turn to the radio alarm clock by my bed. I can only see the tops of the digits, small glowing red lines and curves poking out behind the tall pile of books on my bedside cabinet.

  I knock the books on to the floor. It’s three-thirteen in the morning. Three one three. The number terrifies me; the hammering in my chest speeds up. Yvon wouldn’t hear me if I called her, even if I screamed. Her room is in the basement, and mine is on the top floor. I want to run downstairs to where she is, but there isn’t time. I fall back; fear pins me to the bed. Something is about to happen. I must let it happen. I have no choice. Pushing it away only works for so long. Oh, God, please let it be over quickly. If I have to remember, then let me remember now.

  I was Juliet. I pulled that certainty out of the nightmare with me. I’ve dreamed of being your wife for so long, but always while I’m awake. And the dream was that I, Naomi Jenkins, was your wife. I have never wanted to be Juliet Haworth. You talked about her as if she were weak, craven, pitiable.

  In my dream, the worst I’ve ever had, I was Juliet. I was tied to the bed, to the acorn bedposts, on the stage. I had turned my head to the right, so that my cheek was flat against the mattress. My skin stuck to the plastic covering. It was uncomfortable, but I couldn’t turn to look straight ahead, because then I’d have seen the man, seen the expression on his face. Hearing what he was saying was bad enough. The men in the audience were eating smoked salmon. I could smell it—a disgusting pink fishy smell.

  So I kept my head where it was and stared straight ahead, at the edge of the curtain. The curtain was dark red. It was designed to go round three sides of the stage, every side apart from the back. Yes, that’s how it looked. I didn’t remember that before. And there was something else unusual about it. What? I can’t remember.

  Beyond the edge of the curtain was the theatre’s inside wall. I looked down at a small window. That’s right: the window wasn’t at eye level, it was lower than that. It wasn’t at eye level for the men around the table either.

  I wipe sweat from my forehead with the corner of my duvet. I’m sure I’m right, the dream was accurate. That window was odd. It had no curtain. Most theatres don’t have windows at all, not in the auditorium. I had to cast my eyes downwards to see it, and the men would have had to look up. It was between the two levels, in the middle. As it got darker, I stopped being able to see anything. But before, when I was Juliet in the dream and I was lying on the bed, and that man was cutting off my clothes with a pair of scissors, I could see what was outside. I fixed my eyes on it, trying not to think about what was happening, what was going to happen . . .

  I throw the duvet off me, feel the chill night air rush in to cover me instead. I know what I saw through the small theatre window. And I know what I saw through the window of your living room, Robert. And why I had the dream I’ve just had; I know what it all means now. It changes everything. Nothing is as I thought it was. Thought I knew it was. I cannot believe how wrong I’ve been.

  Oh, God, Robert. I have to see you and tell you everything—how I worked it out, put it all together. I must persuade Sergeant Zailer to take me to the hospital again.

  20

  4/8/06

  EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF AN INTERVIEW SPILLING POLICE STATION, APRIL 8, 2006, 8.30 A.M.

  Present: DS Charlotte Zailer (C.Z.), DC Simon Waterhouse (S.W.), Miss Naomi Jenkins (N.J.), Mrs Juliet Haworth (J.H.).

  J.H.: Morning, Naomi. What is it they say? We must stop meeting like this. Did you and Robert ever say that to each other?

  N.J.: No.

  J.H.: I’m relying on you to help me talk some sense into these morons. They all woke up this morning convinced that I’m a porn magnate. [Laughs.] It’s ridiculous.

  N.J.: Is it true you first met Robert in a video shop?

  J.H.: Why would a woman run a company that profited from other women being raped? [Laughs.] Though I suppose you might say that someone who tries to pulverise her husband’s brain with an enormous stone is capable of anything. Do you think I did it, Naomi? Do you think I sold tickets to men who wanted to watch you being raped? Paper tickets, torn in two at the door, like when you go to the pictures? How much do you think you were worth?

  S.W.: Cut it out.

  N.J.: I know you didn’t do that. Tell me about how you met Robert.

  J.H.: Sounds like you already know.

  N.J.: In a video shop?

  J.H.: Oui. Si. Affirmative.

  N.J.: Tell me.

  J.H.: I just did. Have you got Alzheimer’s?

  N.J.: Did he approach you, or did you approach him?

  J.H.: I bashed him over the head with a video, dragged him home and forced him to marry me. The funny thing was, all the time he was shouting. ‘No, no, Naomi’s the one I love.’ Is that what you want to hear? [Laughs.] The story of how I met Robert. Picture poor little me in the queue for the till, clutching the video case in my sweaty paws, shaking with nerves. It was the first time I’d left the house in ages. I bet you can’t see me as a nervous wreck, can you? Look at me now—I’m an inspiration to us all.

  N.J.: I know you had a breakdown, and I know why.

  [Long pause.]

  J.H.: Really? Do share.

  N.J.: Go on. You were in the queue.

  J.H.: I got to the front and found I’d forgotten my purse. It felt like the end of the world. My first trip out—my parents were so proud—and I’d gone and ruined it by forgetting to bring any money. Nearly wet myself, I did. I knew I’d have to go home empty-handed and admit I’d failed, and I knew I wouldn’t dare to go out again after that. [Pause.] I started mumbling to the woman behind the till—don’t remember what, really. Actually, I think I just kept apologising over and over again. Everything’s my fault, you see. Ask our good detectives here. I’m a wannabe murderess and a theatrical porn entrepreneur. But back to the story: next thing I know, someone’s tapping me on the shoulder. Robert. My hero.

  N.J.: He paid for the video.

  J.H.: Paid for the film, scooped me up off the floor, walked me home, reassured me, reassured my parents. God, they were keen to get me off their hands. Why do you think I married Robert so quickly?

  N.J.: I imagine it was a whirlwind romance.

  J.H.: Yes, but what made the wind whirl? I’ll tell you: my parents didn’t want to look after me, and Robert did. It didn’t scare him like it scared them. Madness in the family.

  N.J.: Didn’t you love him?

  J.H.: Course I bloody did! I was a total wreck. I’d given up on myself, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was comprehensively worthless, and Robert came along and told me I’d got it all wrong: I wasn’t worthless at all, I’d just been through a bad patch and needed to be looked after for a while. He said that some people weren’t cut out for working, that I’d already achieved more than most people did in a lifetime. He promised to look after me.

  N.J.: This great achievement—he meant those ugly pottery houses of yours? I’ve seen them. In your lounge. In the cabinet with the glass doors.

  J.H.: And?

  N.J.: Nothing. I’m just telling you I’ve seen them. It’s funny. Your work made you have a nervous breakdown, yet you’ve got those models all over your living room. Don’t they remind you? Bring back memories you’d rather forget?

  [Long pause.]

  C.Z.: Mrs Haworth?

  J.H.: Don’t interrupt, Sergeant. [Pause.] My life’s had its ups and downs, but do I want to erase it from my memory? No. Call me vain if you want to, but it’s important to me to hang on to some sort of evidence that I’ve existed. If that’s all right wi
th all of you? So that I know I didn’t imagine my entire fucking life?

  N.J.: I can understand that.

  J.H.: Oh, I’m so pleased. I’m not sure I want to be understood by someone who pulls her pants down for the first stranger she bumps into in a service station. A lot of rape victims go on to become promiscuous, I believe. It’s because they feel worthless. They give themselves to anyone.

  N.J.: Robert isn’t anyone.

  J.H.: [Laughs.] That’s certainly true. Boy, is that true.

  N.J.: Did you get to know him properly before you fell in love with him?

  J.H.: No. But I know a lot about him now. I’m a real expert. I bet you don’t even know where he grew up, do you? What do you know about his childhood?

  N.J.: I told you before. I know he doesn’t see his family, that he’s got three sisters . . .

  J.H.: He grew up in a small village called Oxenhope. Do you know it? It’s in Yorkshire. Just down the road from Brontë country. Which is a greater masterpiece—Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights?

  N.J.: Robert raped a woman who lived in Yorkshire. Prue Kelvey.

  J.H.: So I’ve been told.

  N.J.: Did he do it?

  J.H.: You should get Robert on the subject of the Brontës. Assuming he ever speaks to you again. Or anyone, for that matter. He thinks Branwell was the one with the real talent. Robert goes for the underdog every time. When he was growing up, he had a poster of a painting of Branwell Brontë on his wall—a feckless drunkard and a layabout. Odd, isn’t it? With Robert being such a hard worker.

  N.J.: What are you implying?

  J.H.: He only told me all this after we were married. He saved it, he said, like people used to do with sex in ye olde days. I assume you’ve noticed my husband’s addiction to deferred gratification. What else? His mum was the village bike, and his dad was involved with the National Front. Left the family for another woman, in the end. Robert was six. It really fucked him up. His mum never stopped loving his dad, even though he’d discarded her, even though he’d used her as a punchbag for most of their marriage. And she didn’t give a shit about Robert, even though he adored her. She just ignored him, or criticised him. And because they were so poor after the dad left, she had to stop shagging everything in trousers and go out to work. Guess what line of work she chose?

  N.J.: Did she make ridiculous pottery ornaments?

  J.H.: [Laughs.] No, but she was a businesswoman. Started her own company, just like you and me. Except hers was telephone sex. She made a lot of money from it, enough to send the kids to a posh private school. Giggleswick. Heard of it?

  N.J.: No.

  J.H.: Robert’s dad never loved him. He labelled Robert the thick one, and the difficult one, the second child he’d been tricked into having that he’d never wanted. So when he upped and left, the mum blamed Robert for driving him away. Robert became the official black sheep. He failed his exams, despite the expensive education, and ended up working in the kitchen at the Oxenhope Steak and Kebab House. Maybe that’s why he identifies with Branwell Brontë.

  N.J.: You could be making this up. Robert’s never told me any of this. Why should I believe you?

  J.H.: Do you have a choice? It’s the information I give you or it’s no information. Poor Naomi. My heart bleeds.

  N.J.: Why do you hate me so much?

  J.H.: Because you were going to steal my husband, and I didn’t have anything else.

  N.J.: If Robert dies, you’ll have nothing.

  J.H.: [Laughs.] Wrong. You’ll notice I used the past tense: I didn’t have anything else. I’m fine now. I’ve got something much more important than Robert.

  N.J.: What’s that?

  J.H.: Work it out. It’s something you ain’t got, I’ll tell you that much.

  N.J.: Do you know who raped me?

  J.H.: Yes. [Laughs.] But I’m not going to tell you his name.

  21

  4/8/06

  ‘THE BRONTËS CAME from Haworth,’ said Simon. ‘Robert’s surname is Haworth.’

  ‘I know.’ Charlie had had the same thought.

  ‘Know the name of the man Charlotte Brontë married?’

  She shook her head. It was the sort of thing Simon knew and most normal people didn’t.

  ‘Arthur Bell Nicholls. Remember Robert Haworth’s sister Lottie Nicholls, the one he told Naomi Jenkins about?’

  ‘Jesus. The three sisters! Juliet hinted that they were dead.’

  ‘Looks like Haworth took his identification with Branwell Brontë a bit too far,’ said Simon grimly. ‘What about his surname? Think it’s a coincidence?’

  Charlie told him what she’d told Naomi Jenkins the previous day: ‘I don’t believe in coincidences. Gibbs is pursuing the Giggleswick School and Oxenhope angles, so we should have something concrete soon. No wonder we got nothing from the Lottie fucking Nicholls connection.’

  ‘I don’t like these interviews.’ Simon swirled an inch of lukewarm tea around the bottom of his Styrofoam cup. ‘Robert Haworth’s two crazy women. They give me the creeps.’

  He and Charlie were in the police canteen, a bare-walled, windowless hall with a broken one-armed bandit machine in one corner. Neither was happy with the backdrop, or the tepid, weak tea. Normally, they would have had a conversation like this in the Brown Cow over a proper drink, but Proust had made a comment to Charlie about how in future he wanted his detectives to do their work at work, not slope off to sleazy lap-dancing clubs in the middle of shifts.

  ‘Sir, the only thing you’re likely to find in your lap at the Brown Cow is one of Muriel’s red napkins, before she serves you your lunch,’ Charlie had objected.

  ‘We come to work to work,’ Proust roared. ‘Not to indulge our tastebuds. A quick dash to the canteen every day—that’s the lunch I’ve had for twenty years and you don’t see me complaining.’

  Funny, that was exactly what Charlie saw. Nor was it an unfamiliar sight. The Snowman was in a foul mood at the moment. Charlie had got him some prices from the most economical sundial-maker she’d been able to find, an ex-stonemason based in Wiltshire, but even he had said the final price, for the sort of dial Proust was after, would be at least two thousand pounds. Superintendent Barrow had vetoed the plan. Funds were limited, and there were higher priorities. Like fixing the one-armed bandit machine.

  ‘Do you know what the cretin told me to do?’ Proust had ranted to Charlie. ‘He said the garden centre near where he lives sells sundials for much less than two grand. I’ve got his permission to buy one from there if I want to. Never mind that those ones are freestanding and our nick’s got no perishing garden! Never mind that they don’t even attempt to tell the time! Oh, did I forget to mention that crucial fact, Sergeant? Yes, that’s right: Barrow doesn’t see the difference between an ornamental, garden-centre dial that’s just for show and a real one made to keep solar time! The man’s a liability.’

  Charlie heard Simon say, ‘Proust.’

  She looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘I think what we’re doing’s unethical. Tossing Naomi Jenkins into Juliet Haworth’s cage, using her as bait. I’m going to talk to the Snowman about it.’

  ‘He approved it.’

  ‘He doesn’t know what’s being said. Both women are lying to us. We’re getting nowhere.’

  ‘Don’t you bloody dare, Simon!’ Threats wouldn’t work with him. He was a contrary bugger, prone to thinking he was the sole guardian of propriety and decency. Another thing to blame on his religious upbringing. Charlie softened her tone. ‘Look, the best chance we’ve got of working out what the fuck’s going on here is if we let those two keep going at each other and hope something comes out of it. Something already has: we know more about Robert Haworth’s background than we did yesterday.’

  Seeing Simon’s sceptical expression, Charlie added, ‘All right, Juliet might be lying. Everything she says might be a lie, but I don’t think so. I think there is something she wants us to know, something she wants Naomi Jenkins to know. We’ve got to
give it time to come out, Simon. And unless you’ve got a better plan, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t run snivelling to Proust and try to persuade him to fuck up mine.’

  ‘You think Naomi Jenkins is tougher than she is,’ said Simon in a level voice. He didn’t rise to the bait anymore, Charlie had noticed. ‘She could crack at any time, and when she does, you’ll feel shit about it. I don’t know what it is with you and her . . .’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous . . .’

  ‘Okay, she’s intelligent, she’s not a scuzz like a lot of the people we deal with. But you’re treating her like she’s one of us, and she’s not. You’re expecting her to do too much, you’re telling her too much . . .’

  ‘Oh, come on!’

  ‘You’re telling her everything to arm her against Juliet because you’re sure Juliet’s the one who tried to kill Haworth, but what if she isn’t? She hasn’t confessed. Naomi Jenkins has lied to us from the get-go, and I say she’s still lying.’

  ‘She’s withholding something,’ Charlie admitted. She needed to get Naomi on her own. She was sure she’d be able to get the truth out of her if they were alone.

  ‘She knows something about whatever Juliet’s not telling us,’ said Simon. ‘And Juliet can see that, and doesn’t like it one bit. She wants to be the one with all the knowledge, releasing it piece by piece. She’s going to stop talking, I reckon. No more interviews. It’s the only way she can exercise her power.’

  Charlie decided to change the subject. ‘How’s Alice?’ she said casually. The question she’d resolved never to ask. Damn. Too late now.

  ‘Alice Fancourt?’ Simon sounded surprised, as if he hadn’t thought about her for a while.