The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  Simon had nearly said to Charlie on the way to the restaurant that this was the most puzzling and frustrating case he’d ever worked on, but he’d held back, knowing she’d have laughed and called him a drama queen. This was his boy-who-cried-wolf moment, Simon acknowledged to himself. He’d complained before to Charlie, countless times, about cases that were so unfathomable, they made his brain hurt. He should have kept quiet, saved his hyperbole for Tim and Francine Breary, the couple that made no sense at any point in their story.

  He hates her, so he stays. He leaves her, then, finally free, attempts suicide. He tells Dan and Kerry Jose he can’t ever go back to the Culver Valley because Francine’s there, then goes back to look after her when he hears she’s had a stroke. He smothers her, admits it, and expects everyone to believe he had no reason for doing so.

  Beside him, Liv was saying, “Dom’s happy at the moment, because he has no idea. In a way I do still love him, Char—in the way that I love you, or Mum, or Dad. Gibbs loves Debbie in the same way, probably.”

  “I don’t love your parents at all, or Charlie, so . . . yeah,” Gibbs agreed. “In the same way.”

  “What, not even in a close-friendy ex-skipper kind of way?” Charlie pretended to be hurt. “Thanks a lot!”

  “I’m not allowed to walk out on my kids.” Gibbs stared down at his sea bass filet.

  “Not allowed by who?” Simon asked.

  “Olivia.”

  “I just don’t want to hurt anyone,” said Liv. “This way, we fulfill our obligations to the people who depend on us, and pain is kept to a minimum.”

  “Unless Debbie or Dom finds out,” Charlie said. “In which case, there might be a bit of a max-out on the pain front, mightn’t there?”

  “Yes,” Liv said defiantly. “But I can’t make important life decisions based on fear and worst-case scenarios.”

  I could give you lessons, thought Simon.

  “No one ever finds out the complete truth, in a nice convenient package, Char. Not even you, Simon, with your luminescent brain. Even if someone walked in now and saw me and Chris together, that’s all they’d see: one instance of us being together. Would it really devastate Debbie or Dom to hear we’d been together in a restaurant once? It’s impossible for them to find out the emotional truth, or any more than whatever one thing they happen to witness, unless we tell them. Which we never will.”

  “I recognize that!” Charlie announced triumphantly. “The recycled wisdom of Colin Sellers. His influential treatise: How to Get Away with Screwing Around. Gibbs? Anything to declare?”

  “Sellers is right,” said Gibbs. “Unless you let someone film you in bed, you’re not going to get caught in a way you can’t talk your way out of. Most cheaters crack at the first challenge from a suspicious partner.”

  “It’s the feelings that hurt in these situations, not the catching in bed,” said Liv. “And you can’t prove feelings. No one can film another person’s emotional landscape.”

  Simon pushed away his plate and stood up. The beginning of an idea was gathering in the lower reaches of his mind, so provisional that it was trying not to be noticed. “Every cheater’s different, right?” he said. “Some crack, some don’t. Some hope for the best, some fear the worst.”

  “I could stop cheating on Dom, quite easily,” Liv said. “But then I’d feel as if I was cheating myself, and Chris, and . . . life’s generosity toward me.”

  “I sense we’re leaving,” said Charlie, stuffing a forkful of lasagne into her mouth. “Simon’s not thinking about you anymore, Liv. Sorry. Good line, though.”

  A new waiter came over. “Sir, is everything all right?”

  “It’s not random. They were chosen for a reason.”

  “Sir?”

  “What reason?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking me, sir,” said the waiter.

  Simon wasn’t asking him and wasn’t interested in discussing. He needed to get out of the restaurant so that he could think. As he unlocked his car, he heard Charlie call out to Liv, something about practicing her Puerto Rican accent. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  —

  “You’re still here,” Sam said to Proust, who was sitting in his dark office with the door ajar. Sam hadn’t seen him; he’d sensed the presence.

  “I’m like a small boy with a gap in his teeth.” The Snowman’s voice emerged from the shadows. “Hoping to catch a glimpse of the tooth fairy bringing a shiny new pound coin.”

  “Prepare to be disappointed,” said Sam. “I’ve got nothing new and shiny for you. I’ve got the same Dower House liars I’ve had from the start, all still lying, sticking to the new story: Jason Cookson was outside cleaning the lounge windows when Francine Breary was killed, and they all somehow forgot to tell us originally. Oh, and they all got confused in exactly the same way too—all mistakenly telling us he was in the lounge the first time we interviewed them. And they’re all echoing what Kerry told Charlie yesterday, about Tim Breary picking up the pillow he used to smother Francine and holding it at chest level—suddenly, that detail’s part of each of their stories and they all express it in exactly the same way: ‘chest level.’ Before you say separate them and twirl them, we’ve tried. No luck so far.”

  “Luck?”

  “Sir, we’ve talked and threatened and sweetened and done everything. If you think you could do better, go ahead and try.”

  “Are those the only two options, then? You doing badly or me doing better? How about you doing better? Or Sergeant Zailer, since I notice she’s involved herself: CID’s very own Woman in Black, whose spirit we can’t seem to lay to rest.” A strange noise emerged from the blackness: a sigh-groan hybrid. “Switch on the light, Sergeant. Or shall we have a séance? If there’s a chance your initiative might try to make contact . . .”

  “My initiative’s been at it all day and can’t think of anything else.” That sounded too final. “I’m sure I’ll feel differently in the morning,” Sam qualified, turning on the light. The Snowman was pinch-rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger as if he’d invented a new obscene gesture.

  “We shouldn’t neglect the possibility that Tim Breary killed his wife, sir. He says he did, and Charlie could be right: it might be a double bluff. Breary knows suspicion’s going to fall on him, so he preempts, confesses, gets his disciples on board. Between them, they make the whole thing feel so shaky that we assume there can’t be any truth in their lies.”

  “Disciples?”

  “I’m fairly sure Breary’s the mastermind of whatever’s going on,” Sam said. “For what it’s worth, I still think he’s our man. He had no money of his own, no income. Francine’s death meant he could cash in her life insurance policy. No one else had a motive as far as I can see.”

  “The Joses?” Proust suggested. “Francine was a drain on their resources. Do you enjoy having friends to stay for the weekend, Sergeant?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “No, you don’t. Think how pleased you are when they leave. Now imagine they’ve brought their vegetative former partners with them and intend to stay not for a weekend but for the rest of their lives.”

  Sam would have bet his own life insurance policy that neither Dan nor Kerry Jose had smothered Francine Breary with a pillow. “If Tim Breary didn’t kill his wife, my second choice would be Jason Cookson,” he told the Snowman. “He’s got a history of violence. I had Sellers do a bit of digging around.”

  “And?”

  “Two dropped GBH charges—one from 1998, the other in 2007. Second victim lost an eye. Sellers is chasing the details of the first, but the second charge fell apart because the vic changed his tune at the last minute, pronounced himself unable to ID Cookson as the man who went for him with a knife in a care-home car park.”

  “So Cookson got to him somehow,” said Proust.

  “Cookson wa
sn’t around today. He’s working on a friend’s house renovation, apparently. They all alibied him for last night, but I’m sure they’re lying. I think he did it.” Sam held up his hands, seeing the disbelief on the Snowman’s face. “I know Gaby Struthers says the man who attacked her wasn’t Jason Cookson. I think she could be lying too. For the same reason: fear. Cookson took a man’s eye out, sir. Dan, Kerry and Lauren, they’re all frightened—”

  “Not necessarily of Cookson,” said Proust. “Perhaps they’re scared because they know they’re lying to the police in a murder inquiry and will soon have to face the consequences. And if Gaby’s so scared of Cookson after he attacked her, why report the attack at all?”

  “I don’t know.” Sam had wondered that himself. Jason Cookson seemed by far the most obvious contender; if not him, then who? Dan Jose? No, no way. “Let’s say Gaby’s right and Cookson sent an associate of his to scare the living daylights out of her, because he doesn’t want her getting any more information out of Lauren. Let’s say we even find this thug—where does that get us? We still won’t know what it is that the Dower House lot are hiding.” Sam sighed. “I think we’ve got a problem we can’t easily solve, sir.”

  “Could that be because we’re a major crimes investigation unit, not the Brownies?” Proust snapped. “You’re right: this isn’t going to be fixed by DC Gibbs leaping over a toadstool, chanting, ‘We are the gnomes, we help in the homes.’ Not that Gibbs does help in any homes, his own least of all.” The Snowman chuckled. “Ah, look, the thunderer returns,” he said as Sellers walked in. “The weighty wanderer.”

  “First GBH charge went the same way as the second, Sarge,” Sellers addressed Sam and ignored Proust. He was out of breath. He needed to lose a few pounds, that was for sure. “Victim and two witnesses went from being a hundred percent certain Jason Cookson was the assailant to having seen nothing at all. The first GBH wasn’t just a drunken brawl either. It was a bloke who made the mistake of chatting to Cookson’s then girlfriend, Becky Grafham, in a Chinese takeaway. Ended up in hospital with multiple broken bones. When I heard that, I thought it might be worth asking about motive for the second.”

  “And?” said Proust.

  “Same. Cookson was married to Lauren by then. The man he stabbed in the eye was the son of one of the . . . inmates at the care home where Lauren worked, if that’s what you call them. Poor bloke made the mistake of exchanging a bit of harmless friendly banter with Lauren when he came in to visit his mother. One day Jason was there picking Lauren up from work and overheard it.”

  “That’s a mistake you often make, isn’t it, Sellers?” said Proust. “Exchanging harmless banter with other men’s womenfolk, as a prelude to other exchanges. I suppose you’d weigh less if you lost an eye, on the plus side.”

  “Sir, I’ve tried to contact this Becky Grafham—”

  “Why?” Proust barked.

  “Maybe I’m being daft, but I couldn’t square the GBH temper stories about Cookson with what happened to Gaby Struthers yesterday. I know Charlie said she hadn’t got anything like the full story out of Struthers, but she’s seen her, spoken to her. There’s no broken bones, no missing eyes or other body parts, no serious physical injuries. I suppose I just wondered if Jason Cookson’s in the habit of attacking both men and women, and, if so, does he attack differently depending on the sex of the victim?”

  “And?” said Proust impatiently.

  “I spoke to Becky Grafham’s mum, who said it was Cookson who dumped Becky for another girl, which I don’t suppose means anything necessarily, but she also mentioned that she’d told Becky at the start that Cookson would dump her. It was only a matter of time, she said, and she was right. Before he met and married Lauren, Jason Cookson had a reputation for not sticking around. He might stay a week, a year, two years, but he’d be off to pastures new in due course. He left every girlfriend he ever had.”

  “Someone who stays in a relationship for two years can hardly be described as flighty,” said Proust. “That’s a significant time investment, two years.”

  “Right.” Sellers looked pleased. “That’s what I thought too. So I wondered: how come a guy who has a series of normal, varied-length relationships ends up with a rep as a leaver?”

  Proust held up his hands in an exaggerated gesture of bored and irritated confusion. His body language had always been fuller and more complex than that of anyone else Sam had ever known.

  “What if it was because no one ever left him—ever?” Sellers persisted. “What if not a single girlfriend left because they felt as if they couldn’t? Either they’d been told they weren’t allowed, or they were too scared.”

  Proust drummed the flats of his hands on his desk. “I don’t see where that gets us, even if it’s true,” he said eventually.

  “We’ll only see where it gets us if we pursue it,” said Sam. “Track down Cookson’s exes,” he told Sellers. “Let’s see how many of them are still too scared of him to talk openly, even at a distance of several years.”

  —

  Simon pulled up outside the house and switched off the engine. He made no move to get out of the car. He was always slower to emerge than Charlie, as if driving had sent him into a trance from which he couldn’t easily extricate himself. Sometimes she lost patience and went inside alone. Tonight she didn’t move. “Are you going to tell me?” she asked.

  “No Harold Shipman, no Fred and Rosemary West. No Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.”

  “True,” said Charlie. “It’s a big plus that none of those guys will be there.”

  “What?”

  “At Liv and Dom’s wedding.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.” Simon slid his seat farther back to give himself more legroom.

  “We’ll have a better time without them than we would with. If only because they’re nearly all dead.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Charlie cheered silently and tried not to laugh. Why hadn’t she thought to use this tactic before? She blamed excessive sobriety; tonight she’d had three large glasses of wine and felt inspired. Normally she was ineffectually straightforward when she didn’t have a clue what Simon was mumbling about: telling him she didn’t understand, asking him every five seconds to explain, until eventually he did—when it suited him and not one second sooner. This new technique was more fun: for every baffling statement he made, she would fire one back at him. Why should she be the only one unable to follow the thread of the conversation?

  “Think about Tim Breary’s room,” said Simon. “The books by his bed.”

  “The ones about murderers?”

  “I need strong black tea,” Simon said suddenly.

  “Traditionally, that would involve going into the house.”

  “I can think better out here.”

  “You’re insane. Oh . . . bloody hell! Fine.” Charlie got out of the car and slammed the door. “I can practically feel a massive rod growing very near my own back,” she muttered, pulling her keys out of her bag. The phone was ringing as she let herself in. She ignored it and headed for the kitchen, thinking it could only be Liv. It rang five more times while she made Simon’s tea. Each time sounded more urgent somehow, though the ringing sound was exactly the same.

  Charlie’s curiosity got the better of her. “What?”

  “Charlie? It’s Lizzie Proust.”

  “Oh. Hi, Lizzie. Everything okay?” Or has my husband trashed your entire family dynamic?

  “Yes, fine. I’m sorry to phone so late.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not late.”

  “Oh, good.” Lizzie sounded surprised: as if, without Charlie’s help, she’d have had no way of working out for herself if now was an acceptable time to ring. “Charlie, this is a bit awkward. I assume you know about Amanda—Regan, as she is now. You know Simon had a word with Giles and . . . explained the situation to him?
”

  “I tried to stop him.”

  “But you didn’t succeed?”

  “Well, obviously not.” If she’d succeeded, Lizzie wouldn’t be ringing her at nine forty-five on a Saturday night. Nor would she know that her daughter had changed her name to Regan.

  “It’s just that . . . well, Ama—Regan and I are somewhat baffled.”

  “Shall I ask Simon to ring you?” Charlie was keen to stay out of it. She didn’t feel up to the task of unbaffling anybody; that was Simon’s department.

  “Giles hasn’t said anything, you see. Nothing. He’s behaving exactly as if nothing’s changed. I only know about it because Simon rang Amanda earlier and . . . sorry.” Lizzie laughed nervously. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the new name but I’ve promised her I’ll try, as long as Giles isn’t around. Simon rang Regan earlier and told her what he’d done, and she rang me in a terrible flap. She was beside herself—talking about having to move abroad, coming out with all kinds of hysterical nonsense. She said Simon had told Giles everything, and how could she ever face him again, knowing he knew?”

  “I hope Simon apologized to Regan for having landed her in the shit,” said Charlie. “I told him to.”

  “I said on no account must she run away—she should come home with me and we’d face him together. I thought the best thing would be if she denied it all, said it was a lie from start to finish, but she didn’t think Giles would believe that, and since Regan’s now her legal name . . .”

  “Wait a second.” Charlie took a sip of Simon’s tea. It confirmed her suspicion that no one who preferred tea without milk could be entirely sane. “You want to get yourself and Regan out of trouble by portraying Simon as a liar when he’s telling the truth? I know he’s an annoying arse, but that doesn’t seem very fair.”