The Soul of Discretion

by Susan Hill

  ‘Of course we can talk about holidays, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I just wondered if you had any leave blocked out – so we might book to go away somewhere? I haven’t had a proper holiday since Kenneth’s illness. I haven’t had one for years. It was always the odd weekend when I could get care for him – well, you know all that.’

  ‘A holiday,’ Simon said slowly. ‘A holiday would be beyond good.’

  Her face lit up with relief and delight.

  ‘Only problem is something that came up today which means I won’t be able to commit myself to definite dates.’

  ‘But you have to – you get leave.’

  ‘I do but not always when I want it and this has made things very fluid for the foreseeable months, maybe till the autumn. I just don’t know.’

  ‘So what is this “something” that’s come up?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, well, I understand. But you must have some idea when it will be and roughly how long for?’

  ‘No,’ Simon said. ‘I have absolutely no idea at all.’

  He looked at Rachel, and saw her struggle not to show disappointment. She was right, they ought to have a holiday, two or three weeks far away. But his holidays were not her holidays. He walked and spent hours drawing and next leave he had been planning the Norwegian fjords and the Northern Lights. Rachel loved sun, white sand, reading for hours with a long cool drink beside her. Romantic evenings. Those were things she had not had for many years with Kenneth, things she deserved. Things he realised that he too could not, or would not, give her.

  She was looking out of the window into the empty Lanes in the lamplight. Phoney old-fashioned-style lamplight, but pleasing nevertheless. She was as beautiful in profile as full face, and she was sad.

  I don’t deserve you, Simon thought but did not say. Too much of his life had contained the unsaid. That would not change.

  ‘There just are some things I can’t tell you. You do understand that?’ he said, his arm round her shoulders as they walked back.

  ‘Yes. If it’s the job that goes without saying.’

  ‘What else would it be? This assignment is open-ended – they often are.’

  ‘Will it take you away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Far?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  They walked through Cathedral Close, where the huge old magnolias had finished flowering and the trees were in first fresh leaf. He could never leave here. Not for anything. Or anyone.

  ‘I was thinking that you won’t want to be on your own in the flat for weeks on end,’ Simon said.

  Rachel did not answer. Was she afraid to look at him, for fear of reading something in his face that she was desperate not to know?

  Fourteen

  All right, women could be bores but never such bores as men, Shelley thought. The neighbours seated to her left and right were the usual, old, well-meaning bores, pillars of the Lafferton Masonic Lodge, intent on telling her everything about their working lives. Not even the grandchildren, she thought, accepting a second refill of Côtes du Rhône from the waiter, not even holidays. Why do they think I’m interested in taxes? Why do they think I want to know about traffic regulation? Why do they never ask a single question about me?

  The food was edible but undistinguished, the wines better than at most of these deadly events. She looked for Tim and saw him listening with interest to the woman on his left, a large woman in electric-blue lace with eyeshadow to match. Tim knew how to behave at dinners, taking equal notice of the one on his right, then on his left, and never, ever ignoring women.

  She could not catch his eye but then she saw Richard Serrailler looking in her direction. Shelley smiled slightly. Richard winked.

  She drank half her glass of red wine quickly. The noise level had risen, the main course plates were being cleared away with too much clatter. It was only nine thirty. Another couple of hours had to drag by before they could think of leaving.

  Between the dessert and the coffee, Shelley got up, smiling to her neighbours vaguely, and headed for the cloakrooms, through the wide doors of the banqueting room and down a flight of stairs. The buzz from the big room was shut out and it was blessedly quiet. Corridors to hotel rooms went off left and right, all empty. Even the turn-down teams had finished and left. Who, in heaven’s name, designed cloakrooms like this? A small lobby led into a huge plush-carpeted, plush-wallpapered outer room, with lines of mirrors, pink downlit basins, scent and handcream in expensive brand bottles that were probably only refilled with the cheapest, sets of tortoiseshell-backed brushes that no one used. Gilt chairs. Two plush-covered sofas.

  She had not needed to come down here, she would just have gone mad if she hadn’t got away for a few minutes.

  She took her comb and hairspray out and as she did so, the door opened an inch or two. Shelley glanced in the mirror. Probably some other woman bored out of her skull. ‘Ladies’ night’ – how many ‘ladies’ actually wanted or enjoyed it?

  The door opened another inch.

  ‘Richard? This is the Ladies!’

  He came in swiftly, and immediately took one of the gold chairs and jammed it against the door handle. Shelley stared at him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Now now … you know perfectly well. Naughty girl.’

  She was still in a state of confusion when he had grabbed her round the waist and pushed her onto a sofa.

  ‘For God’s sake, Richard, you’re drunk – get out of here, what are you thinking?’

  ‘You know full well what I’m thinking – exactly the same as you, and no, I am not drunk. Careful not to be or it would have spoiled everything.’

  The next few minutes were like none Shelley had ever known. She felt Richard’s strength and determination, panicked, bit him, lashed out, only to have him press his hand on her mouth, swearing.

  ‘Listen, it’s extremely ill-mannered of you to flirt with me, send out clear signals, to the extent of leading me out of the dining room with an obvious look …’

  She tried to speak, furious and struggling, but his hand pressed harder and then she was afraid that he might actually smother her. She went limp.

  ‘That’s better …’

  His knee was in her groin, his hand pushing up her skirt. Fear, disbelief, shock, nausea, fury … but she knew better than to try and fight such focused strength and instead prayed for someone to come in, rattle the knob, push the door hard enough to overturn the chair. But no one came. The room was oddly silent, muffled by the plush furnishings. She heard a sound coming from her own throat, and then the grunts from his, tried to struggle again and felt his elbow jab her so hard in the stomach that for a few seconds she could not breathe.

  And all the time, round and round in her head, round and round, was the thought that he had spoken the truth, that she had flirted with him, not just tonight but often in the past, exchanged looks, let his hand linger on her shoulder or her back, smiled with her eyes looking into his. What did she expect then? What else did she expect?

  Fifteen

  ‘How long has he been in your sights?’

  They were in room 9, a bland office in a bland office block in south London – Jed Nichols, the DCI attached, and Serrailler. Nichols was Afro-Caribbean, taller than him, lithe and very focused – Simon had never met a man more intense about his job, more dedicated, more … the word ‘enthusiastic’ seemed wrong in context, but it was right. He wore jeans and an open-neck denim shirt. Purple Converse trainers. A thin gold wire bangle on his left wrist, thin gold earring in his right ear. Simon had liked him on sight, as he had bounded down the stairs to meet him in the lobby.

  ‘We ought to be several steps ahead of them,’ Jed had said, ‘and we’re not, we’re always, always behind – a combination of this being a rapidly expanding area of crime, an explosion of people with Internet access and technological expertise, plus the usual …’

  ‘… l
ack of resources.’

  Jed had nodded.

  Two laptops open on the desk. No pens, no paper. No waste bin. No traces. They took their empty paper cups away and dropped them in a container outside.

  Will Fernley.

  His face was on Simon’s screen, several times over. The images ranged from his official police and prison ID photos, to more personal ones. Will as a teenager, leaning on a gate. Will as a young man at Oxford. Will with an older man, both walking across a field carrying shotguns. Will in a touched-up professional portrait, aged thirty. Will in morning suit as someone’s best man. Will, presumably, with a jacket over his head and handcuffed, being led by two shirt-sleeved police officers.

  He was rather gentle-looking, with an engaging smile, clean-shaven, light brown hair, worn slightly long – a young man at ease with himself, confident, relaxed, open, his expression without any angst. An untroubled face.

  They spent a few minutes looking at it in silence. Then Jed leaned back, hands behind his head.

  ‘Thoughts?’

  Simon looked one last time, then turned away. ‘First thought is an odd one maybe. I am still absolutely certain that I’ve never seen him in my life before – as I said to Lochie and Linda. Quite certain. But looking at these – I know him.’

  Jed nodded.

  ‘He’s a type,’ Serrailler said. ‘A classic upper-middle-class, public-school- and Oxbridge-educated son of a country landowner. He’s pretty conventional though he probably sports jeans rather than pink cords – his dad wears those – and he wouldn’t be seen dead in tweeds except when shooting. Or brogues. He’s easy to talk to, gets on well with most people, affable, good host. He’s an open book. I know him.’ He paused and looked out of the window onto a section of corrugated roof. A pigeon. A rectangle of blue sky. Like being in prison, he thought. Better get used to it. ‘But obviously I don’t. I don’t know the half.’

  ‘You do know the half and you’re spot on about it. You probably even know three-quarters. It’s the hidden part you don’t know. No one does. Has anyone ever known? Fernley himself doesn’t know because he won’t let himself. Most of the time he can’t admit that this part even exists.’ Jed jumped to his feet and paced a few times round the room. ‘Or so the psychs would tell us.’

  ‘You don’t agree?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not my concern. It’ll be yours though. You’ll be the one who hears all about that hidden person. You’ll have a deeply hidden persona of your own before long. Listen –’ he leaned over Simon, hands on the table – ‘I know there’s a why, I know there’s a whole string of whys – but what I’m here for – what we’re all here for – isn’t to dig out the why, it’s to dig out the truth – the facts. Who. Where. When. How. Not Why. That’s someone else’s job. We’re here to catch them. To stop them doing any more damage. We’re not even here to prosecute and punish – we pass that on. I want to ferret out every one of these child abusers and every scrap of information they’ve got about the others. Who. Where. Everything we do in here, every day, is about that. You know what abusers are? Thieves and robbers. They rob children, they rob them of their innocence and their trust and their sense of self-worth. They rob them of their childhood and a childhood is something you can never get back.’

  His voice had grown not more strident but quieter and quieter as his words became more passionate. Now, he went silent and did not catch Serrailler’s eye.

  You, Simon thought. That’s why. Somehow, sometime, it happened to you.

  ‘This is only a sample of what Fernley had on his computer. You ever seen any of this stuff before?’ He held up his hands. ‘Not a leading question, sorry – but you haven’t worked in this area much and your average CID officer doesn’t come on it very often, not in this category. We’re dealing with level 5 child pornography.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be on this job if you couldn’t cope with looking at it, goes without saying – all the same, it doesn’t make for easy viewing, Simon. One tip – it’s a weird thing, but it takes on a life of its own. It’ll try to burrow its way into your head, into your memory, into every corner of your waking and sleeping. Don’t let it. There’s a trick you’ll learn, with experience – not sure how it’s done, to be honest, you just find yourself doing it and you get better at it. You watch and you let it slide over the surface of your mind but you don’t give it permanent space inside your head. Make sense?’

  ‘Perfect sense.’

  ‘Only with that knack comes the risk – that you’ll stop being disturbed by it and start to get used to it, which is one thing, but getting used to it must never mean “accepting”. You never accept it, you never tolerate it, you never stop being 110 per cent focused on eliminating it from God’s earth. Right – leave you to it. Back in an hour.’

  It was one of the most draining hours of Serrailler’s life. He began by reminding himself of Jed’s advice and had to remind himself of it several times as he viewed the material from Fernley’s laptop. When he had finished going through it, sometimes flipping over images so fast he barely noted what they contained, he closed the computer and instinctively drank an entire glass of water. He did not let his mind recall what he had seen. Instead, to steer himself in another direction entirely, he tried to remember a poem – any poem – and hit upon one he had learned at school.

  Day after day, day after day,

  We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

  As idle as a painted ship

  Upon a painted ocean …

  After a while, he recalled the whole of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and repeated it twice, so that the images in his head were of the bearded old man, the huge bird, the still ship and the sea under a burning sky.

  ‘OK?’ Jed looked into Serrailler’s face the moment he came through the door.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So?’ He set down two cups of black coffee.

  ‘If I was up for this at the start …’ He realised that he was clenching his fist round the paper cup.

  ‘Good man. You won’t have to look at this stuff again. No point.’

  ‘What’s next?’

  ‘Read through the account of Fernley’s trial. Not that he gives anything away. Read his file – everything we know about him down to the brand of boxers he wears, everything we’ve got about his life, from birth. It’s all been put on disk. You don’t have to stay here to go through it. You sign it out and keep it on your person at all times when it isn’t in the laptop. You sign it back in when you’re done.’

  Jed signed him, his laptop and ‘all material’ out of the building, the reception clerk took his pass, the door locked behind him and he was on a scuzzy London backstreet, with the sound of metal on metal from a bodywork repair shop and the smell of rain on dirty pavements.

  Dearest Simon

  I hope you reached wherever you were going safely and I do understand that you can’t make contact. Of course I do. It’s your work and I have never, ever minded it taking you away for long hours or days and even weeks – as maybe this will? – because you are so totally committed to your job. How could anyone mind that?

  But this isn’t really about work, as maybe you already realise, this is about something that’s gone wrong and someone who longs for that not to be the case and to know how to put it right. I love you – that is the simple truth. It’s not something fleeting or shallow. I don’t doubt that you love me and that you have committed yourself to our relationship in a way you have perhaps never done previously with anyone. Yet I feel what was a hair’s distance between us is widening to a gap and I don’t want it to become a chasm.

  I need you to talk to me and tell me what you want me to do, how you want me to be with you. I need you to tell me because I just cannot guess – or not all of the time and then it is only about unimportant things. What have I said or done that makes you uncomfortable or unhappy? What has happened to distance you?

  I love you so so much and it is lonely and bleak without you
, but all this makes it much worse. It isn’t that you are absent in person, it’s that I feel your absence from me in some deeper way. Even when you’re there. We were so happy together – even through the hardest time, we seemed so able to cope and support one another, because we loved. What’s changed?

  If you can find a way to communicate – preferably to talk, but if not, email is fine – just tell me what has happened, what I have done, what you want me to do. I can’t bear any sort of coldness to develop. We’re too close for that and I love you too much.

  I am working at the bookshop all next week, to give Emma a break. Wish me luck.

  You thought I wouldn’t like to be in the flat by myself and I did wonder, because of the empty offices below and no one about at night. But I love it. I love the flat whenever I’m there, but best of all with you – that goes without saying.

  Look after your so-beloved self.

  Rachel

  He had checked into the office block that was a standard chain hotel, showered, changed, glanced into the bar thinking he might get a drink before heading out to eat, saw what it was like, and just headed out. He had walked a mile or so before finding a decent Thai restaurant, eaten well, drunk a couple of cold beers, and walked back. He felt perfectly at ease – just glad he was a copper and six foot two.

  He stopped at a late-night supermarket and bought a bottle of overpriced Famous Grouse. Put up the Do Not Disturb notice on his door, then locked it. Half drew the curtains, though there was only the playground of a junior school opposite, with black metal poles at intervals between twelve-foot-high wire panels. He gave the room a quick check, sat down at the flimsy table and opened up his laptop.

  Dearest Simon …

  He read the email through, then read it again more slowly and as he read he felt the long-familiar knotting in the pit of his stomach, the needles of panic and anxiety probing their way into his mind.

  Dearest Simon …

  He closed his eyes. Images. Images. He opened them again. Got up. Poured a whisky and ran the tap until the water was as cold as he could make it. Sluiced it round his throat. Topped up his glass.