The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  Simon ignored the show. “You decided I needed a new enemy to bring out the best in me. That I’d work better against Sam than with him.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, Waterhouse. I can’t say for certain. I remember none of my thoughts beyond Please make this stop, O Lord.”

  “You knew Sam would tell me,” said Simon. “You also knew he wouldn’t tell me straightaway, and you knew how I’d react when I found out he hadn’t. And you were right. You wanted this reaction from me and you’ve got it. I’m not working with Sam anymore, not on this case. I’m not telling him fuck all: not where I am, not what I’m doing, nothing. He won’t know what I’m thinking, what my plans are . . .”

  “You’re not going to tell him what you’re thinking?” Proust snapped. “My white-hot envy of the man is indistinguishable from hatred. If the invertebrate sergeant were here now, I’d end up doing something to him that I wouldn’t regret.”

  “Everything I’ve said applies to Gibbs too,” Simon told him. “He’s working with me.”

  “I wondered when the ventriloquist would mention his dummy. That red ball your dummy’s so fond of—gift from you, was it?”

  “I should be thanking you,” Simon said. “Without Sam and Sellers’ mediocrity dragging us down, we’ll get there faster. You’re right to be in a good mood. Your plan’s going to pay dividends. If I’ve lost a friend because of it . . .” Simon shrugged. “You don’t care about that, and neither do I. Sam can’t have been as good a friend as I thought he was.”

  The harder he was on Sam now, the easier it would be for Simon to make peace with him at some point in the future. It was important that the worse behavior should be his, Simon’s. It was the only way he’d ever manage to forgive anyone. He didn’t expect Proust to understand. Or Charlie, for that matter.

  “There’s no denying that Sergeant Kombothekra is subprime on almost every level,” the Snowman agreed. “Though you might hold him in higher esteem when you reach the purge stage of your cycle. In case you haven’t worked it out, Waterhouse, you have a bulimic ego. It binges on self-regard until it becomes so bloated it can’t take any more. At which point it spews up all the self-esteem it’s spent the last however long gobbling up, leaving you feeling like the lowest of the low.” Proust stood up, stretched and walked over to the window. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he said.

  Simon would have loved to. The words weren’t there.

  “It won’t be long before you decide that you and Sergeant Kombothekra are about as worthless and immoral as each other. You’ll soon be propping him up again, helping him to pretend he’s a fully fledged person, and he’ll be doing the same for you. One setback: that’s all it’ll take to set your next ego purge in motion.”

  “I’ll be able to tell you who killed Francine Breary in one week’s time, maximum, and I’ll be able to prove it,” Simon heard himself say. He didn’t care that he’d backed himself into a corner; he was about to do it again. “You asked me who told me about the interview transcript—your little conspiracy. I had a visitor last night. She told me.”

  “She?”

  Had Proust still not worked it out? Had he really not heard Simon say “Amanda” before?

  “Does the name Regan Murray mean anything to you?”

  The inspector frowned. “Murray’s my daughter’s surname. I don’t know any Regans.”

  “Regan Murray’s your daughter. She’s changed her name. Legally. She couldn’t stand to keep the name you chose for her.”

  Simon watched the Snowman’s Adam’s apple do a jerky under-the-skin dance. “She’s too scared to tell you she’s not Amanda anymore. Regan’s a character from King Lear, by the way: Lear’s daughter who doesn’t give a shit about him but pretends she does. Sound familiar? She’s also too scared to tell you about the psychotherapist she’s seeing.”

  “No member of my family would waste money on psychotherapy,” said Proust, still facing the window. Simon couldn’t see his face.

  “You’ve cast a shadow over her life. She feels trapped in it. That’s why she’s having therapy.”

  “Your need to invent such a story says more about you than it does about my daughter,” Proust said quietly.

  “I’m trying to say something about you, something you need to hear,” Simon told him. “Regan came to see me to compare notes. I’m her hero, for standing up to you. I said she should tell you how she really feels. She looked terrified. When I said I’d tell you the truth if she didn’t, do you know what she did? Burst into tears, begged me not to say anything. Know what her worst fear is? That you’ll stop her mother from seeing her. She’s furious with Lizzie for not protecting her from you when she was a kid, like any decent mother would have. Same time, she sees her as a fellow victim, too scared to acknowledge what was going on.”

  The Snowman didn’t look like a person listening to another person—more like a stake with a vein-ringed head that had been driven into the floor of his office. Simon couldn’t shake off the sensation of having drifted into a horror film against his will. His heart was pounding; sweat dripped down his sides from under his arms. His conviction that Regan Murray would thank him one day was based on nothing, he realized; he was less convinced now that he’d done the damage and couldn’t undo it.

  “I know lies when I hear them,” said Proust.

  “You think I’m making it up?”

  “My daughter wouldn’t discuss family business with a stranger.”

  “Wouldn’t she? So how do I know about her friend Nirmal’s eighteenth? Amanda’s taxi broke down. She had to get out and flag down another one, and got home ten minutes late. Ten minutes, that’s all. Lizzie was relieved she was safe, but that wasn’t enough for you. How many hours did you make her stand outside in the rain, with Lizzie cringing in the background, too scared to tell you you were being unreasonable?”

  No response.

  “I know the answer,” Simon said, in case Proust had thought the question was rhetorical. “I know how many hours it was, because Regan remembers. Do you?”

  The Snowman walked indirectly back to his desk, stopping in front of his filing cabinet on the way for no reason that Simon could work out. He pulled his jacket off the back of his chair, took his keys from the pocket and, jangling them in one hand, headed out of his office. He was going to lock the door behind him. Simon saw what was about to happen, and did nothing to prevent it.

  Had Proust locked him in deliberately? More likely he’d done it automatically. Was he in shock? He wasn’t the only one, if so.

  The conversation Simon knew he needed to have with reception in order to be set free was the kind he most dreaded: awkward, absurd, humiliating. Charlie could take care of it for him; she’d make it feel manageable and harmless. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and rang her. When she answered, he said, “It’s me. The Snowman’s locked me in his office. I need you to come in and get me out.”

  “So you’re talking to me, are you? Now that you need something.” She sounded upbeat.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “It’s my day off.”

  “That why you’ve been at the Dower House all day, doing Sam’s job for him?”

  “You don’t know the half of it. I don’t want to boast, but there’s been an interesting development, thanks to my efforts. It’s not often I get to boast.”

  “I suppose Buzz Lightweight’s already heard all about this development.”

  “Oh, God! Swear to me that you’ll stop blathering on about traitors and treachery like some fucking neurotic medieval monarch, or I’m going to leave you locked in there!”

  Simon listened to Charlie lighting a cigarette. It was one of his favorite sounds, especially over the phone. He found it comforting: the crackle of cellophane, the metal scratch-crunch of the lighter’s wheel, the deep inhalation.

  He walked over to the desk and sat on it, resting his fee
t on Proust’s chair. “I told the Snowman about Regan,” he said.

  “Uh-huh. I knew you would.”

  Simon listened for clues. That was either a smoke ring or a sigh of desolation.

  “You told me not to.”

  “That’s how I knew you would. Is that why Proust locked you in?”

  “Telling him was the right thing to . . .” The words evaporated in Simon’s mouth as he noticed Proust’s notepad, the one he’d scribbled on while on the phone. The handwriting looked more like germs under a microscope than letters of the alphabet, but Simon could make out a few words. “Attack” was one of them. And the name Gaby Struthers.

  “Get me the fuck out of the Snowman’s office,” he ordered Charlie. “Now!” By the time he remembered to add a “please,” she’d already gone.

  15

  FRIDAY, 11 MARCH 2011

  Can’t see. Wrong, achingly wrong, don’t understand. This can’t be me, can’t be about me, must stop soon. There’s something covering my face and head. Plastic. When I breathe in, it touches my mouth, smells like a cheap raincoat I had as a child. I try to breathe it away, but the wind blows it back, pressing it against my face. Wind. I’m still outside, then. Outside my house. My arms are behind my back, held together. By him?

  Heavyset, short hair. I saw him. His neck . . .

  I want to be unconscious again. That’s where I’m going.

  My mind scatters its pieces. Flooding panic as I come to, washed in terror. I’m upright. I must be standing, though my legs feel shaky and hollow, not solid enough to hold me up.

  Don’t overreact. Don’t react at all.

  I struggle to pull my hands apart. Something peels away, leaves a small patch of skin on my wrist stinging, but the movement is minimal. Try again. No difference at all the second time. Tape. He’s taped my wrists together. Something’s putting pressure on my windpipe. Not crushing it—it’s uncomfortable, but there’s no pain. Neck-brace tight, but not getting tighter.

  This must mean I’m calm: I’m able to distinguish between inconvenient and life-threatening.

  I can control this fear if I focus. It’s an opportunity to be good at something. I mustn’t fail.

  A ripping sound: tape tearing off a roll. Tighter. Pain. He’s winding tape round my neck to keep whatever he’s got over my head in place.

  My brain caves in on itself. I’m going to suffocate and I don’t know why. I can’t die without knowing why and who.

  A man with short hair and things on his neck. I saw him.

  “Gaby, Gaby, Gaby. You’ve well and truly overstepped the mark, haven’t you?”

  The sound of his voice sends my body into spasm. This is real. This is happening. I try to run, blind, and hit a barrier—his body?—which throws me back against a harder, more even surface. My car. I was standing by my car. Leaving Sean.

  He’s going to kill me. Because I overstepped the mark. What mark?

  I can’t give up. No reward, ever, for those who give up. There must be a way out that involves thinking; I just have to find it. I’m good at thinking, better than most.

  “I wish I didn’t have to do this to you,” he says, sending another wave of revulsion rolling through me. “I’m not going to enjoy it.” His talking is the worst thing, worse than the bag over my head: hearing that he thinks he is justified, being too weak with fear to argue.

  He sounds so ordinary. I try to fit his face to a peripheral man in my life: the heating engineer who came to service the boiler last week and made it worse, the parcel man, the takeaway delivery driver. No, he is none of those. I’ve never seen him before. He’s nobody from my world. How can I be the person he means to harm? I’ve never done anything to hurt him. I know life isn’t fair, but it’s fairer than this, fairer to me.

  “All this is for me is a job that needs doing,” he says. “Get things sorted. It gives me no pleasure whatsoever, but you have to learn.”

  I need to be telling him to let me go, but I can’t mold my fear into words he’d recognize.

  Learn what?

  He is going to enjoy it. That’s why he keeps saying he won’t.

  Dread has siphoned the strength out of my muscles. A few seconds ago, I ran. I couldn’t now. My oxygen’s running out, and I can’t have any more once it’s used up. Not fair. The harder I try not to breathe too fast, the faster I breathe: wasteful and helpless, buried alive aboveground. He’s made a plastic coffin for my head and wrapped me in it.

  I suck in, feel fingers in my mouth. Then something bumps against my nose and there’s a ripping sound, a gust of wind in my face. I can see my car window and smell a cigarette. It takes me a few seconds to realize he’s torn a hole in the plastic.

  “Please let me go,” I manage to say. He’s given me air. He doesn’t want me to suffocate. Hold on to that.

  “Have you learned, though?” he asks, close to my ear, through the plastic. “I don’t think you have.”

  I tell him I’ve learned. Over and over, gibbering. My stomach is coming apart inside itself.

  “Oh, yeah? What have you learned? Let’s hear it.”

  Nothing to offer him. Nothing at all. I’d pretend if I knew how.

  Not Jason Cookson, not Sean. I saw him.

  I can’t think of anyone else who hates me enough to do this.

  “You’ve learned nothing because I haven’t taught you yet, but I will.” He presses his disgusting body against mine, wedging me against my car. “Looks like I’ll have to teach you not to lie as well. Open your mouth and stick your tongue out.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t say no.”

  Shuddering with terror, I obey the order.

  “Further. What do you think I’m going to do, cut it off?” He sniggers. If I’d heard only the laugh and no words, I’d think he was younger: a teenager, not a man in his late thirties or early forties.

  I saw him. Does that mean he’ll have to kill me? If he doesn’t, I’ll go to the police. He’ll be punished. He must know that.

  “Tongue out.”

  “I can’t!” Cold tremors rack my body. If I’m going to die, I’d rather it happened immediately. Can’t say so. He might kill me.

  “You’re not trying, Gaby.”

  I try. Whatever’s covering my face has shifted downward, the torn edge touching my upper lip. I can’t see anything anymore.

  “What do you think a liar deserves to have her mouth washed out with?” he asks me.

  I slump. Am falling in a narrow gap, sliding down the sides. He hauls me up by my arms. Any second now, someone will walk past, see us, rush over to help me. Any second. A couple out walking their dog will notice. . . .

  No, they won’t. I parked in front of the garage round the back, not at the road end of the driveway, where I normally park. So that it would take me longer to walk to the front door, so that I could put off facing Sean for a few more precious seconds.

  Whatever this monster does to me, no one will see.

  “I can think of a few things I could wash your mouth out with,” he says. “Spoiled for choice, really.”

  I try not to listen to the pitiful noises I’m making, or to him telling me that I won’t need any more lessons after this one, because he’s such a good teacher. The best.

  I don’t know how much time passes before he says, “You can put your tongue away. And you can thank me for giving you a chance.” He grabs me by the face, his thumb and finger pressing into the bone of my chin through the plastic. “I’m warning you, though: lie to me again and you’ll get your mouth washed out with something you won’t like the taste of.”

  More humiliating than thanking him is meaning it. He’s giving me a chance. He won’t kill me. All he wants is to teach me something. I’m a good learner. Thank you, thank you.

  He turns me round, pushes me against the car. Leaning into me, he circ
les my waist with his arms, takes hold of my belt. Only to scare me. He won’t undo it. It’s an empty threat, like the plastic over my face. See? He hasn’t undone it. I can still feel the belt around me . . . and then I can’t. He must have unbuckled it. I tense, wait for the sound of him pulling it out of its loops. He could strangle me with it. No, he’s tugging my trousers down. He has a different horror in mind. Cause of death: the accelerated draining of hope.

  Every second that I do nothing I let myself down. I scream. He hits me in the side of the head, hard. “Please don’t do this, please,” I sob. He can’t rape me outside my house. It’s not properly dark yet. Things like this only happen when it’s dark.

  “I don’t want to do it,” he says. “Like I said: gives me no pleasure.”

  Then why?

  Because I have to learn.

  “What? Please, just tell me. Tell me what I need to learn. I’ll do whatever you want.” I’d like to say more to convince him, but there’s a blockage in my throat and mouth, a current. I choke, cough, spray the inside of the plastic with bile.

  “I’ve never been as frightened as you are now,” the monster says matter-of-factly. “Can’t imagine what it’s like to be so frightened that you’re sick on yourself. Is it embarrassing? Or just disgusting? How does it feel?”

  What will he do if I ignore the question? I don’t want to find out. I give him an answer, not daring to lie in case he can read my mind.

  “You’re not going to tell the police about this, are you? That’d be the stupidest thing you could do. It’d show you’d learned nothing.” He yanks my underwear down. No, he doesn’t. No, he doesn’t. That’s not what’s happening. This is a passing nightmare. Not real.

  I think about Tim’s recurring dream. “Recurring” means it goes away in between. I would gladly make that deal if I could, if it were the only way out. Let this stop now and happen to me tomorrow instead—next week, next month. Just not now.