Hurting Distance aka The Truth-Teller's Lie

by Sophie Hannah

  Cars line both sides of the street, and there are few spaces. Sergeant Zailer parks unevenly about halfway down and gets out of her Audi. I catch a glimpse of her face and see that she has been crying. A lot. Instantly, I know that she is not here for any reason to do with work. This is where she lives; something’s wrong and she’s come home.

  She slams the car door and opens the red wooden gate, not bothering to lock the Audi. I am in my car, in the middle of her street, only a few metres away from her, but she hasn’t noticed me. She doesn’t look as if she is aware of her surroundings at all.

  Shit. I have no idea what to do now. If something bad’s happened, if there’s been some sort of family tragedy, she won’t want to talk to me. But who else can I go to? DC Waterhouse? I would not be able to persuade him to take me to the hospital again to see you, no matter what information I could give him in exchange. I feel his antipathy towards me every time I’m in a room with him.

  I am being ridiculous. Sergeant Zailer, however upset she might be, and for whatever reason, is the officer in charge of your case. I have new information that I know she’ll want, whatever state she’s in.

  I park in one of the few available spaces by the side of the road and walk back to her house. It’s smaller than mine, which makes me feel guilty in a peculiar sort of way. I’d assumed she must live somewhere much bigger and grander than where I live, because she’s a figure of authority. Not that I’ve always accepted her authority. I won’t accept it now, if she says she won’t take me to see you. I don’t change, Robert. All that matters to me is you, now as always.

  I ring the bell and get no response. She doesn’t know who I am, doesn’t know I’ve seen her go in. I ring again, pressing for longer this time. ‘Go away!’ she shouts. ‘Leave me the fuck alone, whoever you are.’ I ring again. A few seconds later, through the stained-glass panel in the front door, I see the blurred shape of her walking towards me. She opens it and recoils. I’m the last person she wants to see. I don’t care. From now on, I don’t think I will let small things get to me. I will enjoy not caring. Like your wife. She and I have got more than you in common, haven’t we, Robert?

  ‘Naomi. What are you doing here?’ Charlie Zailer’s eyes are watery and puffy, her nose red and raw.

  ‘I was on my way to see you. You were driving away, so I followed you.’ I say nothing about her obvious distress, guessing that this is what she would prefer.

  ‘I’m not at work now,’ she says.

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘No, I mean . . . I’m not working. So this’ll have to wait.’ She tries to close the door, but I push it open with my arm.

  ‘It can’t wait. It’s important.’

  ‘Then find DC Waterhouse and tell him.’ She puts her full weight behind the door and tries again to push it shut. I take a step forward so that I’m inside her hall. ‘Get out of my house, you crazy bitch,’ she says.

  ‘There are things I need to tell you. I know what I saw through Robert’s lounge window, why I had the panic attack—’

  ‘Tell Simon Waterhouse.’

  ‘I also know why Juliet’s acting the way she is. Why she’s not cooperating, and why she doesn’t care that you think she tried to murder Robert.’

  ‘Naomi . . .’ Sergeant Zailer lets go of the door. ‘When I go back to work, whenever that is, I’m not going to be working on Robert Haworth’s case. I’m really sorry, and I don’t want you to take this personally, but I don’t want to speak to you anymore. I don’t want to see you or speak to you again. Okay? Now, will you go?’

  Dread tugs at my heart. ‘What’s happened? Is it Robert? Is he still alive?’

  ‘Yes. He’s the same. Please go. Simon Waterhouse’ll—’

  ‘Simon Waterhouse’ll look at me as if I’m a Martian, like he always does! If you send me away, I won’t tell him or anyone else anything. None of you will ever know the truth.’

  Sergeant Zailer pushes me out on to the street and is about to slam the door in my face. ‘Juliet isn’t involved in the rapes,’ I shout from her front yard. ‘If it’s a business, she’s nothing to do with it. She never has been.’

  She looks at me. Waits.

  ‘The theatre—there was a window,’ I say breathlessly, tripping over my words. ‘I could see it, when I was tied to the bed. I saw what was right outside. It was so close, not more than a few metres away. I only remembered because of a nightmare I had last night, that I’d seen something through that window. I mean, I always knew I’d seen the window, but that was all. I wasn’t aware I’d seen anything else, but I must have, it must have been in my subconscious . . .’

  ‘What did you see?’ Sergeant Zailer asks.

  I want to howl with relief. ‘A little house. A bungalow.’ I stop to catch my breath.

  ‘There are thousands of bungalows,’ she says. ‘The theatre could be anywhere.’

  ‘Not like this one. It’s very distinctive. But that’s not the point.’ I can’t get the words out fast enough. ‘I’ve seen that little house again since then, since the night I was attacked. I saw it through Robert’s lounge window. One of Juliet’s pottery houses, in the cabinet with the glass doors. It’s the same one, the one I saw through the window while I was being raped. It’s made of bricks that look like stone, if that makes sense. They’re the same colour as stone—they’re probably reconstituted stone. And they’re not smooth. They look as if they’d feel abrasive if you touched them. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t seen it. Royal-blue paintwork, a blue front door with an arched top—’

  ‘—and three windows above the door, also with arched tops?’

  I nod. I don’t bother asking, knowing she wouldn’t answer.

  Charlie Zailer pulls her jacket off a peg in the hall and takes her car keys out of her pocket. ‘Let’s go,’ she says.

  For a while we drive in silence, no questions and no answers. There is too much to say; where would we start? We are back on the High Street, turn left at the Old Chapel Brasserie, on to Chapel Lane.

  I promise I will never come to your house.

  This is not where I want to be. It’s not where you are.

  ‘I want you to take me to see Robert again, in hospital,’ I say.

  ‘Forget it,’ says Sergeant Zailer.

  ‘Did you get into trouble for taking me to see him? Is that why you’re upset? Are you in trouble at work?’

  She laughs.

  Three Chapel Lane still has its back turned to the road. I allow myself to entertain a strange fantasy—that only a few moments ago your house was facing forward, welcoming and open; it swivelled round only when it saw me coming. I know who you are. Leave me alone.

  Sergeant Zailer parks badly, the tyres of her Audi scraping the kerb. ‘You need to show me this pottery house,’ she says. ‘We need to know if it’s really there or if you were imagining things. Are you likely to have another panic attack?’

  ‘No. I was afraid of realising what it was I’d seen—that was what my mind was resisting. I got the panic over with last night. You should have seen my bedsheets—you’d think they’d fallen in a swimming pool.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  We walk round the side of your house. Everything is the same as it was on Monday—the neglected rubbish dump of a garden, the impressive panoramic view. How often did you stand here, in the dead and dying grass, surrounded by the detritus of your life with Juliet, and wish you could escape to the beauty that was clearly visible but just out of reach?

  I lead the way to the window. When Sergeant Zailer joins me, I point to the cabinet against the wall. The model of the bungalow with the blue arched door is there, on the second shelf down. ‘It’s the one next to the candle,’ I say, feeling as shocked as I would have felt if it had been absent. But I suppose it’s easy to mistake a sudden awareness that something significant has happened for surprise.

  Charlie Zailer nods. She leans against your back wall, takes a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and lights one. Her
cheeks and lips have turned pale. The pottery bungalow means something to her, but I’m not sure what, and am afraid to ask.

  I am about to mention again the possibility of going to see you in hospital when she says, ‘Naomi.’ From her expression, I know that there’s another shock coming. I prepare myself for the impact. ‘I know where that house is,’ she says. ‘I’m going to get into my car and drive there now. The man who raped you will be there when I arrive. I’m going to get a confession out of him, even if it means tearing his fingernails out with pliers, one by one.’

  I say nothing, fearing she may have gone mad.

  ‘I’ll drop you at the taxi rank,’ she says.

  ‘But how . . . what . . . ?’

  She is walking towards your gate, towards the road. She will not stop to answer my questions.

  ‘Wait,’ I call after her, running to catch up. ‘I’m coming with you.’ I am standing where Juliet stood on Monday. Sergeant Zailer stands where I stood. The choreography is identical; the cast has changed.

  ‘That’d be unwise, from both our points of view,’ she says. ‘Your well-being and safety, my career.’

  If I do this, if I go with her to the place, wherever it is, and see the man, then whatever happens, I will never have to think of myself as a coward again. ‘I don’t care,’ I tell her.

  Charlie Zailer shrugs. ‘Neither do I,’ she says.

  23

  4/8/06

  ‘HAS EITHER OF you seen Charlie?’ Simon was anxious enough to call out to Sellers and Gibbs, in a louder voice than he’d normally think of using, while they were still some metres away.

  ‘We were just coming to find you.’ Sellers stopped by the drinks machine outside the canteen. He reached into his pocket for change.

  ‘Something’s up with her,’ said Gibbs. ‘No idea what. I was talking to her before—’

  ‘Did you tell her Robert Haworth’s real name?’

  ‘Yeah, I started telling her—’

  ‘Shit!’ Simon rubbed the bridge of his nose, thinking. This was a serious problem. How much should he tell Sellers and Gibbs? Laurel and fucking Hardy, he thought. But he had to tell them.

  ‘. . . I’d got as far as telling her Haworth was born Robert Angilley, and she just walked off,’ Gibbs was saying. ‘Out of the building, got in her car and off she went. She didn’t look good. What’s going on?’

  ‘I couldn’t find her, couldn’t find any of you,’ said Simon. ‘Her mobile’s switched off. She never does that—you know Charlie, she’s never out of touch, and she never goes off without telling me where. So I phoned her sister.’

  ‘And?’ said Sellers.

  ‘It’s not good. This holiday she cut short, Spain, it was supposed to be.’

  ‘Supposed to be?’ said Gibbs. As far as he knew, that was where the sarge had been, where she’d flown back from when the Robert Haworth case started to get more complicated.

  ‘The hotel was no good, so she and Olivia sacked it and booked a new place: Silver Brae Chalets in Scotland.’

  Sellers looked up, spilling hot chocolate on his fingers. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘Silver Brae Chalets? The same one that’s run by Robert Haworth’s brother? I just jotted down the name, ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Same one,’ said Simon grimly. ‘Olivia reckons Charlie and Graham Angilley are . . . involved in some kind of relationship.’

  ‘She can’t have been there more than a day!’

  ‘I know.’ Simon saw no need to tell Sellers and Gibbs the rest of what Olivia Zailer had told him: that Charlie had invented a fictional boyfriend called Graham to make Simon jealous, that when she’d met a real Graham she’d leaped at the chance of making her lie true. All that was too much for him to think about right now.

  He stuck to the relevant facts. ‘Naomi Jenkins gave us the business card for Silver Brae Chalets by mistake when she came in on Monday to report Haworth missing. She thought she was handing over her own business card. Charlie still had it after she’d gone—she showed it to me, mentioned that they had some kind of special offer on. Obviously when the hotel in Spain turned out to be a dump, she thought of the chalets.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Gibbs, holding out his hand for Sellers’ drink. Sellers sighed, but gave it to him. ‘So Naomi Jenkins had Haworth’s brother’s business card? Did Jenkins know Haworth’s real name, then? Had she met his family?’

  ‘She’s not answering her mobile either,’ said Simon. ‘But I don’t think so. She was desperate for us to look for Haworth, to find him as quickly as possible. If she’d known he had a brother—or that he’d changed his name, for that matter—she’d have told us when she came in on Monday. She gave us everything she could to help us find him.’

  ‘She must have known,’ said Sellers. ‘It can’t be a coincidence. What, she just happens to be carrying the business card of her lover’s brother, even though she doesn’t know that’s who he is? Bullshit!’

  Simon was nodding. ‘It’s not a coincidence. Far from it. I’ve just looked at the Silver Brae Chalets website. Guess who designed it?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Sellers.

  Gibbs was quicker off the mark. ‘Naomi Jenkins’ best mate’s a website designer, her lodger.’

  ‘Got it in one,’ said Simon. ‘Yvon Cotchin. She did the Silver Brae Chalets website. She also designed one for Naomi Jenkins, for her sundial business.’ He waited, expecting to see dawning awareness on their faces, but all he saw was bewilderment. They hadn’t got there yet. They weren’t conspiracy-minded in the way Simon was, that was why.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Robert Haworth raped Prue Kelvey. We know that, it’s been proved. We also know he didn’t do all the rapes. He didn’t rape Naomi Jenkins or Sandy Freeguard, but someone did, someone Haworth was very probably working with, since the MO was almost identical.’

  ‘You’re saying it’s the brother, Graham Angilley?’ asked Sellers. He still hadn’t got his drink back.

  ‘I fucking hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. If Angilley’s the other rapist, that’d explain how he knew so much about Naomi Jenkins. There’s personal information about her on her website, as well as her address, which is the same as her business’s address. I’m sure that’s how he chose her as a victim: from a list of Yvon Cotchin’s previous clients. If Cotchin did Jenkins’ website before she did Angilley’s, she might well have told him to have a look at some others she’d designed, as a sort of reference.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Sellers quietly.

  ‘Prue Kelvey and Sandy Freeguard—’ Gibbs began.

  ‘Sandy Freeguard’s a writer and has her own website, with personal information and photos, like Jenkins’. And the company Prue Kelvey worked for has an individual webpage for each member of staff, giving personal as well as professional information, and a photograph. That’s how Angilley and Haworth knew so much about them.’

  ‘Naomi Jenkins was raped before Kelvey and Freeguard,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘Exactly.’ Simon had followed the same deductive trail himself, minutes earlier. ‘She might have been the turning point for Angilley and Haworth. They’ve been selling tickets to live rapes since at least 2001. We know that from the date on survivor thirty-one’s story. However they selected their victims in the early days, I reckon it all changed when Angilley had the website done for the chalets. If Yvon Cotchin did tell him to look at some of her other work, including Naomi Jenkins’ site . . .’

  ‘Pretty big if,’ said Sellers. ‘What if the chalets’ site predated Jenkins’?’

  ‘I’ll check,’ said Simon. ‘But I don’t think it did. And that’s how Graham Angilley came to know about Naomi Jenkins. He must have realised that there were hundreds of other potential victims on the Internet, with their own websites. But he couldn’t only rape women Yvon Cotchin had designed sites for, could he? That’d be too obvious, too risky. So they branched out, he and Haworth—they started to look for any websites belonging to professional women . . .’

  ‘With photos, so th
ey could check they fancied them,’ said Gibbs. ‘Sick cunts.’

  Simon nodded. ‘Sandy Freeguard’s website was designed by Pegasus. And another company did the one for Kelvey’s firm—I’ve just spoken to the MD’s assistant on the phone.’

  ‘How does the sarge fit into this?’ asked Sellers. His fingers combed his pocket for more change, but found none. Gibbs had finished his drink and had a small, foamy, brown moustache to prove it.

  ‘I’ll get to that in a minute,’ said Simon, keen to put off thinking about that side of things for as long as he could. ‘Naomi Jenkins got the card for Silver Brae Chalets from Yvon Cotchin. She had no idea there was any connection to Robert Haworth.’

  Sellers and Gibbs looked at him sceptically.

  ‘Think about it. Cotchin’s worked with Graham Angilley, effectively. She’s helped him set up his business. He’d be bound to send her a bunch of cards, so she could give them to people. Naomi took one, and thought—as anyone would—that Silver Brae Chalets was just a holiday place that her mate had done a website for. She had no idea her married boyfriend’s brother was the owner and manager . . .’ Simon’s words tailed off.

  ‘Or that the same brother was the bloke who’d kidnapped and raped her,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘That’s right. There have been no coincidences in this case, not a single one. Every part of the answer to this mess is connected to every other part: Jenkins, Haworth, Angilley, Cotchin, the business card . . .’

  ‘And now our skipper.’ Sellers looked worried.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Simon, speaking on a long out-breath. His chest felt as if it was full of concrete. ‘Charlie got the chalets’ card from Naomi Jenkins. She didn’t know Graham Angilley was anything to do with Robert Haworth, not until you told her Haworth’s real name.’ He looked at Gibbs.