The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  “No.” Lizzie sighed. “Of course it isn’t. I’m not proud of any of this, but I’m afraid panic did rather set in. You know what Giles can be like. It wasn’t just me and Amanda in a tizz. You should have seen my son-in-law, he was white as a sheet. Anyway, as I say, Amanda—Regan—didn’t think Giles would believe her if she denied it outright—”

  “Lizzie, for fuck’s sake!” Charlie blurted out. “This is all totally mental.”

  “I know,” Lizzie said mournfully. “I do know, Charlie, really. And I’m so sorry to involve you in it.”

  “Forget me. Think about yourself, and Regan. Tell Proust the truth, let him see the situation as it really is: his daughter’s got a problem with him. A big one.”

  “I can’t do that. Giles has always relied on his family. More than most people, perhaps. We’re his rock.”

  Why was it always a rock? Charlie wondered. Were rocks particularly helpful to ordinary people in urban and suburban settings? Why did no one say, “He’s my central heating,” or “He’s my fitted carpet?”

  “If Giles thought his loyal wife and his only daughter had anything but love and respect for him, he’d be devastated.”

  “Do you love and respect him?” Charlie asked.

  “Of course I do!”

  “Why ‘of course’? Regan doesn’t.”

  “Oh, I can sort her out,” said Lizzie impatiently, as if it was as easy as doing the weekly shop. “It’s this therapist she’s been seeing. These people are wicked, Charlie. Wicked. They help themselves to your hard-earned money and fill you so full of grudges and grievances that you’re worse off than when you started, and not only financially. Honestly, they do more harm than good. Some of them implant false memories of abuse. I read an article—”

  “Lizzie,” Charlie cut her off. “I have to go. If you want to bury your head in the sand, that’s up to you, but I think you should listen to Regan. She’s right about Proust: he’s a bully. Has been for as long as I’ve known him. I’m sure he has redeeming features, but . . . well, I’ve only ever seen the tiniest glimpse.”

  “Why are you saying that?” Lizzie’s voice shook. She’d dropped the world-weary organizer persona and sounded about eight years old. “Giles is immensely fond of you, and Simon. He thinks the world of both of you. ‘Redeeming features’ implies there’s some terrible . . . sin or something that’s been committed. If you’d said ‘sterling qualities,’ you’d have been closer to the mark! You’re the one who should listen to Amanda—now, I mean. She’s dreadfully embarrassed by her outpouring to Simon. She admits she went way over the top.”

  “Because she’s frightened,” said Charlie.

  “Of what, exactly? Giles is devoted to her, and to her children. She knows that perfectly well.” Lizzie’s tone was clamping down again: zero tolerance. She’s imitating Proust, Charlie thought with a shudder. That had to be it: she alternated, in her mind, between her voice and his, her own thoughts and her master’s. Like a schizophrenic. “Giles has never laid a finger on Amanda, and he never would.”

  “Fingers aren’t the only thing to fear. Psychological cruelty can hurt more, and it’s easier to get away with. No visible scars.” Keep going, Zailer. If anyone can undo the brainwashing of a forty-year marriage in one telephone conversation, you can’t. Don’t let that put you off, though. “If Giles is so jam-packed with sterling qualities, why do you think Regan felt the need to create a new identity? And why are you willing to call her Regan? Aren’t you buying into her disloyalty every time you do?”

  “Probably,” said Lizzie defiantly. “It’s all a bloody stupid charade, Charlie. If you want to know how I really feel, I think Amanda’s wallowing in negativity and blowing every tiny thing that’s ever happened out of proportion—but, of course, I can’t tell her that. I have to placate her and call her by her silly new name so that she’ll smooth things over with Giles, or else I might end up not being able to see my grandchildren, which is, frankly, unthinkable. If Giles decides we can’t see Amanda anymore . . .”

  “Tell him to fuck off. Go and see the grandchildren on your own.”

  Was Lizzie blowing up a balloon on the other end of the line? Didn’t people give her this sort of advice all the time: her female friends, acquaintances, neighbors?

  “Charlie, you’re not making this easy for me. I didn’t ring to talk about my high-maintenance daughter.”

  “Stop talking about her, then, before I start leafing through the Yellow Pages to see if there’s such a thing as a Barnardo’s for grown-ups.” Adoption for the over-eighteens: why had no one invented it? It was a brilliant idea: new parents for adults.

  “Giles has said nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s behaving as if nothing’s happened, nothing’s changed,” said Lizzie. “Regan and I have been waiting for the explosion, but . . . nothing. It’s as if he doesn’t know, Charlie. Are you absolutely sure Simon told him?”

  “I can’t see why he’d lie about it.”

  “Then why hasn’t Giles brought it up?”

  “Why don’t you bring it up?” Charlie asked.

  “I’m clinging to the hope that Simon didn’t tell him.”

  “Lizzie, if he told Regan he did, then he did. I know why Proust’s not saying anything, and so would you, if you thought about it. Like all despots, he didn’t get where he is today by giving away any power. Think about it: the minute he reacts, he’s a bomb that’s gone off. You’re all busy dealing with the wreckage. No one’s scared of what’s already happened, are they? By not reacting, he can keep you suspended in a state of fear, waiting for what’s coming. Wondering why it never arrives, too scared to ask. You’re not even sure he knows. That’s even better—he’s depriving you of certainty as well as acknowledgment. He gets to keep all the power.”

  “What kind of monster do you think my husband is, exactly?” Lizzie snapped.

  Saddam Hussein, Harold Shipman, Osama bin Laden. Giles Proust.

  Charlie had it, suddenly: the answer to the question Simon hadn’t got as far as asking. “I’ve got to go, Lizzie.”

  “Wait! I’m sorry I raised my voice. Look, I do take your point. You’re probably right, in the main.”

  Would this ever end?

  “I need to ask you a favor, Charlie. That’s why I rang. Could you . . . Would you mind asking Simon if he could have another go, try to talk to Giles about it again? Maybe pop round one evening, so that they wouldn’t have to have the conversation at work? I could arrange to be out, that’s no problem. I just . . . I’d be able to deal with this so much better if I knew what Giles was—”

  Thinking. Charlie didn’t hear the last word; she’d pressed the end-call button and put the phone back on its base. It started to ring again. She unplugged it, went back to the kitchen, poured Simon’s tea away and made him a new cup.

  Lizzie would never have let her go.

  Simon hadn’t moved, and didn’t look up when she got back into the car. There was no point telling him now about the most dysfunctional telephone conversation in human history; he had fallen into a deep, dark pocket of obsession and would be there for a while yet.

  “Ask me,” Charlie said, handing him his drink.

  “Hm?”

  “The question in your head. No Harold Shipman, no Fred and Rose West . . . I think I might have the answer.”

  “Why those murderers? The books in Tim Breary’s room: why Pinochet, that old Nazi, the Lockerbie bomber, Myra Hindley? Why the mixture of political and non-political murder?”

  “Coincidence? Random?”

  “That’s your answer?”

  “It’s an answer. Probably the one most people would come up with.”

  “You’re not most people. You’re better than most people.”

  “Then let me hasten to prove my worth,” Charlie said sarcastically. “Hindley, th
e concentration camp guard, all the killers in Tim Breary’s books—they’re all distanced from their crimes in a significant way, either by time, or contrition, alleged contrition . . .”

  “Which doesn’t apply to the killers Tim Breary wasn’t reading about.” Charlie heard the excitement in Simon’s voice. “Harold Shipman, the Wests, Saddam Hussein, bin Laden. Shipman was still at it, wasn’t he? Only stopped killing when he was caught. Fred West: the same. He and Rose would have carried on, probably, if the police hadn’t stopped them.”

  “Do we know enough about any of these people to be able to say that for sure?” asked Charlie.

  “I think so,” said Simon. “Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were both still openly proud of their murderous achievements when they carked it, weren’t they? They might have found time to fit in a few more murders if they’d lived.”

  So you don’t know for sure, then. Charlie was sensible enough to keep her mouth shut.

  “Some murderers will always be murderers,” Simon said. “It’s how they are. Others you know won’t do it again. Pinochet and that Nazi guy—didn’t people say about both of them that there was no point making them stand trial now that they were old and infirm?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Charlie.

  “They’d both been free for years, decades, and not clocked up any new victims,” Simon said. “Same with the Lockerbie bomber. He’s been sick and dying and claiming he’s innocent for as long as I can remember. His killing days were over long ago, assuming he ever was a killer.”

  “Myra Hindley,” Charlie put her doubts to the back of her mind and joined in. “Contrite, BA Hons, claiming to be a whole new shiny person, that idiot Lord Whatsit lobbying to let her out.” She took Simon’s tea from him and sipped it. He didn’t seem to notice. “So . . . what? Tim Breary wanted to kill Francine, but he didn’t want to be saddled with the guilt and the blame forever? He wanted to know if it was possible to shake off the taint of evil, once you’ve done something terrible?”

  “No, not the taint of evil, not in himself,” said Simon. “This is about trying to detect the presence of evil. Or guilt.”

  “In who?” Charlie could think of only one possible candidate. “Francine?”

  “Hold on. Let’s be sure we’re right about this. Hindley’s different from the others in Tim Breary’s collection. She never had the chance to prove she wouldn’t reoffend if released.”

  “But . . .”

  “But she wouldn’t have, would she? No one believed she’d have killed or tortured again.”

  “No. It was the combination of her and Ian Brady that was lethal,” said Charlie. “Without him, she’d never have done it. Wait, is that another thing they’ve got in common, the monsters in Breary’s books? The Nazi—did he come out with the old excuse about having to obey orders?”

  “What, you mean without Hitler he wouldn’t have done it? Probably. Most Nazis who weren’t ringleaders said afterward that they were just following orders. Pinochet’s defenders certainly claimed he’d never known about the murder and torture his minions had been involved in. The Lockerbie bomber—some people, including him, seem to think he isn’t guilty.”

  Simon turned to face Charlie. “This is about the presence of guilt,” he said. “Or the absence of it. Breary’s collection of murderers—they’re all people you might argue about: to what extent can they still be blamed? Were they ever evil? Are they still evil now, and just hiding it more successfully than people like Harold Shipman and the Wests?”

  “So before Francine had the stroke, she made Tim’s and everyone else’s life a misery,” said Charlie.

  “But she couldn’t have done it without his willing participation, to go back to your point about it taking two to tango.” Simon sounded excited again. “He stayed with her, so how far could she be held individually responsible for whatever happened between them?”

  “He was just obeying orders, if we believe Kerry Jose,” said Charlie. “Orders he could and should have disobeyed.”

  “After the stroke, Francine was harmless, powerless, almost unrecognizable, but she was still Francine,” Simon said. “Her mind was at least partly intact. Perhaps she was sorry and couldn’t say so.”

  “There’s no reason to assume she was sorry, is there? Apart from for herself.”

  “No,” said Simon. “That’s the point: Breary didn’t know what to think, and he wanted to know. Needed to. The stroke put Francine at a distance from the person she used to be. Breary had no idea if it was still acceptable to have all the same feelings about her that he’d had before.”

  “To want to kill her, you mean?”

  “Maybe. Think about it: imagine he had wanted to kill her, before. In his position, could you have done it once she’d had the stroke, and been sure you were killing the same person? What if she didn’t remember anything from when she and Breary lived together? What if the stroke had affected her mind as radically as it had her body, and she was desperately sorry, but couldn’t say so?”

  “And you think Breary was looking for answers in his books about monsters who might have stopped being monsters, or who might never have been monsters in the first place?”

  “If I had to guess—and this is just a total guess . . .” Simon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “He couldn’t forgive Francine. He read those books to see if they could help him decide who was more guilty, him or her. Him for being unable to forgive her even in her weakened, altered state, or her for having been the person she was before the stroke—and maybe still was, until her death. Most people feel their feelings and leave it at that. Not Breary—he analyzes them right down to their tiniest components. That sonnet he gave me for Gaby Struthers, it’s all about love being a paradox. The poet’s trying to work out what love is.”

  “Isn’t it freezing your arse off in a cold car?” said Charlie. “That’s what I heard.”

  “Tim Breary’s obsessed with love, and with guilt. He wants to understand them both better: his love for Gaby and his blaming of Francine. Big question is: which matters more to him, the love or the hate?”

  “Explain?” said Charlie hopefully.

  “When he left the Culver Valley and moved west, was it his love for Gaby that drove him away or his hatred for Francine?”

  “Dunno. I couldn’t have less of a clue if I tried.”

  “He left them both: love and hate. Then when Francine had her stroke, he moved back to the Culver Valley. Was it his love for Gaby that brought him back, or his loathing of Francine?”

  “That’s . . . easier?” said Charlie doubtfully. “Had to be the love, surely? Though Gaby says he didn’t contact her at any point. But why come back and look after your invalid wife if you loathe her and you’re not even together anymore?”

  “Because you can see how easy it would be to kill her,” said Simon, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Then, once she’s dead and you’re unencumbered, that’s when you think about getting in touch with the woman you really love.”

  “But Tim Breary didn’t get in touch with Gaby, even after Francine’s death. And you don’t think he killed Francine,” Charlie reminded him.

  “I didn’t,” Simon conceded. “I don’t know what I think anymore, except that whatever the fuck’s going on, it’s stranger and more complicated than anything I’ve come across before.”

  “Well, that’s a lucky coincidence,” said Charlie, swallowing a sigh. “Stranger and more complicated is exactly what you need. Virtually everyone I meet comments on the disappointing lack of strangeness and complication in your professional life.”

  “Do they? No, they don’t.”

  “No. They don’t.”

  “This case is all about feelings, Charlie.”

  You’d better ask to be taken off it, then. She didn’t say it; it would have been cruel. Wasn’t every case about feelings? Did he mean
romantic feelings, specifically? He seemed to have latched on to the idea of Gaby Struthers and Tim Breary as the hero and heroine of a doomed love story; so far, Charlie hadn’t had the heart to point out that Breary might want Simon to think precisely that, or to tell him to stop staring at that sodding sonnet as if it was suddenly going to offer up an ingenious solution. She’d been woken at three this morning by Simon switching on his bedside lamp, and had opened her unwilling eyes to find him lying flat on his back and pillowless, holding the poem directly above his face as if to fend off non-existent rain.

  Charlie hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. She’d been hoping for an earlyish night tonight to compensate. Who am I to judge Lizzie Proust? she thought. Would Lizzie be able to understand Charlie not daring to say, “I’m going inside now—I refuse to spend the whole night in the car,” in case it broke some kind of spell?

  “I should be able to make sense of this case,” Simon said. “I’m exactly like Breary. I put every emotion under the microscope.”

  “Even your passionate love for me?” Charlie asked, having first put all the usual low expectations in place.

  “No. Too big. Wouldn’t fit under the lens.” Simon smiled at her.

  “Excuse me? Could you say that again?”

  He turned away. “One day we’ll never see each other again. Do you ever think about that?”

  “No. What do you mean?”

  “When one of us dies.”

  “I never, ever think about that.”

  “I do. All the time. I try not to let it ruin everything,” Simon added in a more upbeat tone.

  “Well, that’s . . . good. I think.” Charlie wished she’d brought the vodka out to the car. Her heart was doing athletics inside her chest.

  “It’s not true, is it? Those stupid West Side Story lyrics: ‘Even death won’t part us now.’ Yes, it will. It has to. You’re going to be reading out a lie.” Simon pushed his seat farther back, put his feet up on the dashboard on either side of the wheel. “Why don’t they care about living a lie? Do you think Liv pretends when she’s with Dom? Pretends he’s Gibbs?”