The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  “But then you’d get back in and lock the doors again, knowing the effect it would have on you. Inviting the panic to recur.” Waterhouse sounds unimpressed.

  Is he serious? “I was inconsistent, yes. Well spotted. Sorry, are most victims of terrifying attacks more focused than I am? Do they dust themselves off and immediately set about pursuing a coherent goal?”

  “No,” he says. “Though you’re not what I’d call typical.”

  “Really? I suspect I’d have to visit another solar system to find anything you’d call typical.” I turn my chair so that I’m facing Charlie. “I couldn’t stand next to the car all night. It was freezing. I couldn’t . . . I felt as if the cold would kill me if I stayed out in it, and I didn’t know where he was—Jason. He could have crept up on me again. I was in an empty car park in a silent part of town, no one around. I know it sounds stupid.”

  “It doesn’t at all,” Charlie says.

  “He attacked me outside my house when I thought I was totally safe. There was no warning; I didn’t hear him coming. What was to stop him doing it again?” I laugh, surprising myself as much as Waterhouse and Charlie. “If I asked myself that question now, I’d have an answer, wouldn’t I? Violent death. The best possible answer to the Jason Cookson question.” I like the sound of my voice saying those words: as if I coolly planned his extermination. “How was he killed?” Did he suffer enough?

  “Can you fill in a gap for me?” says Waterhouse. “You were attacked behind your house early evening, but you didn’t arrive at the Teago Street car park till eleven. Where were you in between?”

  “Driving. I drove to Combingham Airport and back, twice.” More atypical behavior; I wonder if Waterhouse will be able to cope. “I didn’t want to risk going to the Proscenium car park too early in case anyone else was there and saw me.”

  “Why Combingham Airport?”

  “No reason in particular. I drive there all the time. I couldn’t think of anywhere else.”

  “Why not park up somewhere? On a side street, in a lay-by?”

  “Someone who knew me could have seen my car. People walk down streets, don’t they? He could have walked past, or anybody. If someone had knocked on the window, I’d have had to talk to them.”

  “Why the Proscenium car park as a destination for the night?” Waterhouse asks. “Why not a hotel, or a friend’s house?”

  “You’re not listening to me. I didn’t want to have to deal with anyone. I knew no one would drive into the car park at that time of night, and you can’t walk in when the gate’s shut—it’s physically impossible.”

  “It’s okay, Gaby. We do understand.”

  “You might. He doesn’t.”

  “I don’t,” Waterhouse backs me up. “Two minutes of talking to a receptionist in a light, warm hotel lobby and you could have locked yourself in a comfortable room for the night. Instead, you chose a cold, deserted car park.”

  “Yes. You’re right. That’s what I chose—not being typical.” I spit the word at him. “So what? You’ll soon be watching a black-and-white silent CCTV movie starring me not killing Jason Cookson, all night long. You wanted proof, and I’ve given it to you.”

  “And now I want something else,” says Waterhouse quietly. “I want to be confident that you had nothing to do with Jason’s murder. Not killing him and not being involved are two different things.”

  I laugh. “You think I whipped out my BlackBerry and quickly arranged to have him killed? My assassin of choice happened to have a free slot at short notice?”

  “You’re not short of money for a nice hotel,” Waterhouse tells me. “You’ve got parents or siblings you could go to, presumably. Colleagues, friends at the Dower House—Kerry and Dan Jose. I’m wondering why you made a point of spending an uncomfortable night under the square eye of a state-of-the-art security camera when you had so many other options.”

  “She didn’t want to see anyone, Simon,” Charlie says impatiently.

  “There’s something she’s not telling us.” Waterhouse keeps his eyes on me.

  “You think I went to the Proscenium car park knowing I’d be filmed, to give myself an alibi?” I ask him.

  “Did you?”

  “No!”

  “There’s something you’re not telling us, Gaby. What is it?”

  Why isn’t Waterhouse a photograph I can tear up? Why does he have to be real?

  “I assume you still want to go and see Tim today?” he says.

  “Simon, for God’s sake,” Charlie murmurs.

  “Be gentle with the almost rape victim,” that’s what she means; “don’t threaten the human wreckage—it might release harmful toxins.”

  If she’s trying to make him feel guilty, it’s not working.

  I don’t require special treatment, and I want them both to know it. “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you, but don’t blame me when you wish you hadn’t asked. During the attack, I was sick all over myself. I also lost bowel control. When it was over, once I was sure he’d gone, my first thought was How do I clean myself up? The most basic thing, but I couldn’t think of a way. If I hadn’t just walked out on Sean—” I break off. “No. Even if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gone back into the house in that state. Sean’s never made me feel better about anything. The more difficult the situation, the worse he makes me feel.”

  “I wish you’d come straight here,” says Charlie.

  I ignore her. It’s an unreasonable wish that doesn’t take any of mine into account. She probably only said it to sound sympathetic and because she knows Waterhouse won’t try; I’ve struck him dumb again. “I had clean clothes with me in the bag I’d packed before I left, but I was filthy. I needed to wash, but I couldn’t think of anywhere to go where I wouldn’t have to come into close contact with anyone. If I couldn’t wash, then I didn’t want to be seen, obviously. The Proscenium car park was the best idea I had—the only idea. I thought about the camera, how much it would reveal, if anyone watched the footage. Not that I thought they would in a million years.”

  “Simon? I think you should tell Gaby that you believe her now.”

  “She hasn’t finished yet,” he says stonily. “You interrupted her.”

  “There’s not much else to say.” Hasn’t he heard enough? What if he’s still not convinced? I’ve told him everything now; there’s nothing more I can do.

  Yes, there is.

  One small but crucial detail will prove I’m telling the truth. “I turned the car round before getting out of it the first time,” I say. “Watch the CCTV footage. You’ll see that I came in, parked, then about an hour later I did a three-point turn and reversed back in again, into the same parking space, but with the car facing in the opposite direction. I did it so that the car would be a barrier between me and the camera, when I got out on the driver’s side. I didn’t want to be filmed in that state, even if no one was ever going to see it.” Pitiful, isn’t it? “Why else would I have done that? Can you think of a single other reason?”

  “No. Where did you go when you left the car park at seven-fifteen on Saturday morning?”

  No. He definitely said it; I didn’t imagine it. Does that mean he believes me?

  “I went home. My former home,” I correct myself. “Sean goes to the gym every Saturday: sets off seven-fifteen, gets there seven-thirty, stays till nine-thirty. I let myself in, washed, bagged up my dirty clothes. Then I had to drive somewhere to dispose of them, and . . .”

  “What?” Waterhouse pounces on my hesitation.

  “I’d been sitting on a pile of old cardboard all night, from the boot of the car. I needed to get rid of that too.”

  “Thank you for being so honest with us, Gaby,” says Charlie. “I’m going to give you the phone number of someone I think you should get in touch with. A counselor.”

  “Really?” I feign excitement. “Why di
dn’t you say so before? That’ll solve everything.”

  “You’ve been through the worst kind of hell. You should speak to someone who can help you deal with it.”

  Waterhouse pulls an envelope out of his file. My envelope, with Lauren’s name on it. He puts it down on the table between us. “We haven’t given this to Lauren Cookson.”

  “So I see.”

  “I’ve read it, though. I’d like you to give it to her in person if you can.”

  “Did Lauren kill Jason?” Did she kill him because of what she saw him do to me? Would I rather she hadn’t seen, if that meant Jason would still be alive?

  “We don’t know. Lauren does—that’s the problem. She knows everything I want to know and everything you want to know: who killed Jason, who killed Francine Breary, why Tim Breary doesn’t belong in prison, why he’s ended up there and seems to want to stay.” Waterhouse sighs. For a few seconds, he sounds and looks human. “If we give her your letter, we run the risk of her associating you with us. If she does that, she’ll tell you no more and no less than she’s telling us.”

  “Lies, fuck all, and more lies,” Charlie chips in.

  “If she thinks you’re nothing to do with us, if you can convince her that you’ll keep her secrets . . .”

  “It won’t work,” I say. “Lauren’s stupid, but she’s not that stupid. She knows I’d do or say anything to get Tim out of prison.”

  “Wrong,” says Waterhouse. “She knows you’d do anything for Tim, and she knows he wants to stay where he is. You could try to persuade her that if that’s what he wants, then you want it too. Then she might feel safe telling you the truth.”

  Tears prick my eyes. “How do you know that’s what he wants?” I whisper. “How could anyone want to take the blame for a murder they didn’t commit? I don’t care what Tim wants! If he wants to be in prison when he’s done nothing wrong then he’s insane!”

  I don’t want to love a man who’s that crazy. I want to invent a better version, one that doesn’t do any of the infuriating, baffling things the real Tim does.

  He lied to me when he said that I’d invented him. He was banking on appealing to my vanity, and it worked. The truth is that I failed to invent the Tim I wanted—the ideal Tim—though I tried for years.

  Can’t stop trying now. Gaby Struthers didn’t get where she is today by giving up.

  “I can persuade Tim to tell you the truth,” I say. “I know I can.” Take me to see him.

  “Going back to Lauren,” says Waterhouse. “I’ve read the notes DC Gibbs made after speaking to you on Friday. You told him something Lauren said to you, her outburst at Düsseldorf Airport. I’m going to read it back to you. Tell me if it’s correct, as you remember it. ‘Little Miss Stuck-Up Bitch, you are! So much better than me. Course you are! I bet you’d never let an innocent man go to jail for murder.’”

  “Word perfect,” I confirm.

  “You assumed—like I did at first, and like Gibbs did—that Lauren was criticizing herself for being unethical: she was letting a man be framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and she felt guilty about it. You took her outburst as a flare-up of guilt that she couldn’t keep down.”

  “Not quite,” I say. “There was some guilt, definitely, but it slipped out by accident. Her intention was to accuse me of ivory-tower cluelessness.”

  “Explain,” Waterhouse orders. Half man, half Dalek.

  “She was implying that I couldn’t possibly understand how hard things are for her. I might think she’s unethical for letting Tim go to prison, I might think I’d never do something so immoral, but I’ve got a nerve congratulating myself on my superiority when I don’t know what she’s up against. A case of ‘Don’t throw stones until you’ve lived in my glass house.’”

  “Interesting,” says Charlie.

  “Here’s another interpretation,” says Waterhouse. “‘You think you’re better than me, but that’s crap. You’d assume it was always wrong to let an innocent man go to jail for murder, whereas I understand that it’s right for Tim to do this. You never would because you’re too conventional, too black-and-white. Not ethically sophisticated or nuanced.’”

  I laugh. “Ethically sophisticated? You’ve met Lauren Cookson, right?”

  “She used the word ‘let.’ ‘Let an innocent man go to jail for murder.’ True, she could have meant stand by and allow it to happen. Or she could have meant grant his wish.”

  “That would explain a lot,” Charlie says. From her face, it’s clear she hasn’t heard this theory of Waterhouse’s before. More worrying, it’s equally clear that she’s happy to buy into it on the basis of no proof whatsoever. “Kerry and Dan Jose, Tim’s best friends—they’re also granting his wish by letting him stay in prison. Their lies are keeping him there; their lies and his.”

  “How can it be good for Tim to go to prison for his wife’s murder when he didn’t do it?” Waterhouse asks me. “Why’s that what he wants? Any reason you can think of, Gaby, however unlikely it seems, I want to hear it.”

  I nod, numb inside, trying to ignore the voice in my head that’s telling me things I don’t want to hear.

  He wants to be in prison because he needs a way of avoiding you, now that Francine’s dead.

  No. Can’t be. I know Tim loves me. I know it.

  Really? Is that why his principles and his fear of Francine meant more to him than you did? Is that why he told you to get out of his life, and hasn’t been in touch since?

  Waterhouse reaches into his file again and pulls out a crumpled sheet of A4 paper. He unfolds it and hands it to me.

  “Tim asked me to give you this,” he says. “It’s a poem.”

  I take the page from his hand. Mine is shaking.

  “He told me to tell you it was from The Carrier. Do you know what that means?”

  You bastard, Tim.

  I can’t concentrate on the poem at first. Tim’s writing is all I see; its only significance is that it’s his. He held the pen, touched the paper, folded it . . .

  “Yesterday you told Charlie that Tim’s not The Carrier, and that Kerry Jose is. What did you mean?”

  Waterhouse can wait until I’ve finished reading. I start to cry halfway through. I read the sonnet again and again.

  “Gaby?” Charlie says gently.

  I shake my head.

  “Does Kerry know that she’s The Carrier?”

  “Oh, yes. She knows.”

  “Carrier of what?” asks Waterhouse. “A disease? A burden of some kind?”

  I wipe my eyes. “Neither. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s personal.”

  “Who and what is The Carrier?” Waterhouse asks again, as if he hasn’t just heard me say I’m not going to tell him. “Do you know why Tim wanted you to have this poem? What it means?”

  Falling in love’s a paradox like this. / Either it happens like a thunderbolt, / So when it makes our lives make sense, it lies . . .

  “That’s easy,” I say.

  “What does it mean?”

  Or we had long been hoping for the kiss / That changed us, and, aware how it would jolt / Our beings, we could suffer no surprise.

  “I can’t speak for the poet, but I can tell you what Tim means by it.”

  Ridiculous and immature though it is, I have a sudden urge to run to the Proscenium and search every volume until I find the perfect poem to send back to him. Stupid; I’m about to see him in person. Anything I want to say to him I can say directly and not in rhyming quatrains.

  And he won’t hear it as clearly.

  “It means that he doesn’t trust love,” I tell Waterhouse.

  22

  13/3/2011

  Sam took a deep breath before going back into the interview room. Wayne Cuffley had brought a cloud of bad smell in with him, and it wouldn’t leave until he did: a combination of strong after
shave, stale smoke and clothes that hadn’t dried soon enough after being washed. “Your brief’s on her way,” Sam said. “Her name’s Rhian Broadribb. If you want, we can wait till she arrives before continuing with the interview.”

  “What’s the point?” said Cuffley. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  Something about his tone made Sam uncomfortable. People normally described themselves as having nothing to hide when they were innocent.

  Or proud. Was Cuffley here to do more than confess to the murder of Jason Cookson? Was there an element of boasting?

  Sam sat down so that he was facing Cuffley across the large table. The nick’s audio-visual equipment grew ever more sophisticated, and each interview room had a different setup. This one could only be operated with a remote control. Sam picked it up and pressed the button that meant, though unhelpfully didn’t say, record. “DS Sam Kombothekra interviewing Wayne Cuffley on Sunday, thirteenth of March 2011. Interview resumed at two-fifteen p.m. Mr. Cuffley, you’ve confessed to the murder of your son-in-law Jason Cookson. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like you to repeat what you told me before we took a break.”

  “Why? To check I don’t slip up and say something different?”

  “It’s standard. You might have inadvertently left out an important detail.”

  No reaction from Cuffley apart from a visible tensing of the arm muscles. His “IRONMAN” tattoo shifted, stretched. Never had body art been more guilty of false advertising, Sam thought. Cuffley was no hulking superhero. His head was too small for his short, wiry body, and his rats’-tails hair made it look even smaller.

  “I killed Jason, I wrapped his body in Bubble Wrap, I put it on the backseat of my car and I brought it here, to the police station. My wife, Lisa, drove the car. I sat in the backseat with the body. I pushed it out of the car in the car park, then we drove away, back home.”

  He’d left out a detail he’d included first time round.