The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  I watch as she walks over to the window and yanks open the curtains as if she’s trying to rip them off the rail. “Jason’s dead,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “I know.”

  She picks up the remote control from the bed, turns off the TV. “Who told you? The police? They tell you who did it?”

  Do they know? Obviously they do.

  “My dad’s turned himself in.”

  I look at her “FATHER” tattoo, then quickly look away. I want to ask all kinds of questions. Should probably wait. Express sympathy first. “Lauren, I . . . I don’t know what to say. That’s terrible. Are you . . .” No. Of course she isn’t okay.

  “I’m fine.” She wipes her eyes.

  “I’m not close to my family, and I’m not married, but if my father killed my husband . . .” Once upon a time, I would have been confident that that sort of thing would happen in someone like Lauren’s world, but never in mine.

  “I begged him not to do it.”

  “You were there?” Jesus Christ, did “FATHER” kill Jason in front of his own daughter?

  “Course I was there. I begged him to stay out of it—Lisa did too. He ignored us both. Said he was doing it for me, but I didn’t want him to. No one cares what I want—ever. No one listens!”

  I stand and watch helplessly as she works herself up into a state.

  “I don’t want my dad going to prison, Gaby! Another innocent man in prison—I don’t want that!”

  “What do you mean ‘another innocent man’? If he killed Jason—”

  “Killed Jason?” Lauren laughs bitterly through her tears. “He didn’t. He’s saying he did, the fucking . . . stupid lying bastard! Haven’t you been listening?”

  I freeze, my breath suspended in my chest, Lauren’s words going round in my mind. Yes, I’ve been listening. But not understanding. Not until now.

  Course I was there. I begged him to stay out of it.

  “You begged your dad not to take the blame,” I say.

  Lauren nods frantically. “At first he was on about burying the body—that was okay, I was all right with that. But then he started saying I’d worry myself sick if Jason stayed missing for long, wondering if he was dead, and some shit about turning himself in so’s the police don’t suspect me. Don’t ask me what the fuck he was on about!”

  “Did he mean that was what he told the police?” I ask. That’s the only way it makes sense.

  And it can only mean one thing.

  “It’s fucking daft if you ask me,” Lauren says. “I wasn’t worried, was I? I knew Jason was dead.”

  She doesn’t get it. No surprise there.

  “And you knew who killed him,” I say. “Who killed Jason, Lauren?”

  “Me! I killed him!” Her voice rocks as if someone’s shaking her body.

  “Did you . . .” My throat closes on my words, choking them off. “Did you do it because of what he did to me?”

  “No. Not everything’s about you, you know. I did it for Francine, and Kerry—and for me, mainly, because I was fucking sick of the bastard, all his shit I’d put up with for years. Maybe a bit for you,” she adds grudgingly. “You were the lucky one last Friday—I got the worst of it in the car, once he’d finished with you.”

  “What do you mean you killed him for Francine? She was dead long before last Friday night.”

  “Nothing,” Lauren mutters.

  “Revenge?” It’s a guess, nothing more.

  For Francine, and Kerry.

  “Did Jason attack Kerry?” I ask.

  Lauren stares at me as if I’m insane.

  “You said you killed him for Kerry.”

  She looks as if she’s considering denying it.

  “Please tell me, Lauren.”

  She sits down on the bed. Her legs, in black jeans, look like two thin pipes. I’m surprised she managed to stand on them for so long. I’m amazed I’m still standing on mine.

  I have an idea. More of a superstition, really. Not based on anything solid. If I sit down next to her on the bed, she’ll start to talk.

  Worth a try.

  She looks at me oddly. Shuffles to one side, putting more distance between us. “When we got home on Friday, after . . . When we got back, Jason went upstairs, locked himself in the bathroom,” she says. “Walked straight past Dan and Kerry, really ignorant, like they weren’t there. I knew he wasn’t going to be out for at least half an hour. Kerry asked me if I was all right. I must have looked a bit off. You know when someone asks if you’re all right and it’s just the worst fucking thing they can ask?”

  Yes. Know it well.

  “I couldn’t hold it in, Gaby. I went to pieces, told Kerry everything: what Jason had done to you, forcing me to watch. Look, I thought you were a snobby cow in Germany, I won’t pretend I didn’t, but you didn’t deserve that. Ah, you should have seen Kerry, Gaby. She was in pieces, hearing that had happened to you, but what could she do?”

  I flinch. She could have contacted the police. She didn’t. Because Jason Cookson knew the truth about who killed Francine, and keeping that truth hidden was more important to her.

  So that Tim would stay in prison. So that he and I couldn’t be together, now that Francine was dead and he should have been free.

  “Seeing Kerry like that, I couldn’t stand it,” Lauren sobs. “She’s always been good to me, and there she was: a wreck because of Jason, my husband. I had to do something, didn’t I, to put things right? It was my fault, everything. What he did to you was my fault.”

  “No, it wasn’t, Lauren. How? You couldn’t have stopped him.”

  “You’ll hate me if I tell you.”

  “You tweeted for help.” Later I will thank her. I can’t bring myself to do it now.

  “You’ll think I’m an evil bitch and you won’t forgive me,” she insists.

  “Forgive you for what, Lauren? Yes, I will. Course I will.”

  She covers her face with her hands. “I said the only thing I could think of, to make him angry with someone else, not me. He found out I’d gone away without telling him. I did that whole lying thing like you said, about being sick at my mum’s, and then my dickhead dad went and ruined it all, mouthing off to Jason about me being stuck in Germany, so of course he phones me! I was at the airport, waiting to board the flight Dad had booked me on. ‘I know where you are,’ he says. Fuck, I nearly had a heart attack and dropped dead on the spot, I swear. I’d never lied to him before—I wouldn’t dare. And then he’s like, ‘What the fuck, you’ve gone to fucking Germany and told me you’re at your mum’s?’ I don’t even know what I said to him, I was that panicking. I started on about wanting to see you because of all this shit with Tim, not that I was ever going to do anything or tell you anything, I just—” She breaks off, shakes her head.

  There are so many questions I want to ask, but I’m afraid to interrupt her.

  “Jason starts yelling his head off: how fucking mental am I, and what do I think I’m playing at, why can’t I keep my nose out? How can he ever trust me again? He wanted to know what I’d told you. I was in bits. I had to tell him I’d not said a word about Tim or Francine. When Jason’s in that mood, you tell him what he wants to hear, whatever, doesn’t matter. Being honest, I didn’t give a shit about Tim or you, or even Francine, soon as I heard his voice. I knew he was going to go off on one ’cause I’d lied—worse than anything I’d had from him before. For Jason, thinking I’d ever hide anything from him or sneak around behind his back, that’d be his worst nightmare. I had to think of something.”

  I still can’t see where she’s going with this. What will I never forgive her for? “So you told him . . . what?”

  She swears under her breath, almost reverently. The way some people pray. “What you said about how you were going to become a lesbian in the middle of the night. If we shared a bed.”
>
  “What?” My voice rings in my ears. Shock comes out as a hollow laugh. A lesbian? This is the very last thing I expected her to say. Then I remember. “Lauren, I didn’t say I was going to become a lesbian. You thought I was coming on to you? I was making a joke.”

  Her features have set in a stubborn expression. “You said you might turn into a lesbian,” she insists. “Why would you say that if you didn’t mean it?”

  “Jesus, Lauren, fucking . . . Is that why you ran away?” I can’t believe this. I cannot believe it.

  “One of the reasons. I’m not into anything like that.”

  “Neither am I! I was joking. You were worried about us sharing a bed. I said, ‘Don’t worry, even if lesbianism overpowers me in my sleep, my good taste will protect us both.’ Or words to that effect.”

  “Yeah, and now you’ve just said it again! You’ve admitted it.”

  Oh, God.

  I take a deep breath. “Lauren. What I meant was, even if I suddenly became a lesbian—which never happens to any sleeping heterosexual woman, by the way . . . That was the bedrock of my joke, that absurd hypothetical premise.” Seeing her puzzled frown, I say, “Oh, forget it! Look, my point was: even in the unlikely event of it happening to me, I wouldn’t try my luck with you because I would be a lesbian with good taste. I wouldn’t fancy you.”

  “Oh. Right.” Hurt flickers across her face. Now she understands.

  “Lauren, I’m sorry. I was in a foul mood and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. Tell me what you told Jason. Word for word.”

  “I’ve told you!”

  “You told him I threatened to . . . what, molest you? Have my wicked way with you?”

  “Yeah! That’s what I heard,” she says tearfully. “How was I supposed to know you were just being a bitch as usual, saying you wouldn’t shag me even if you were . . . like that? I told him I’d been straight up about that not being my cup of tea and you said you were going to . . . whatever it was that you said. Overpower me in the night.”

  “No. Just . . . no.” I’m shaking. Trying to understand why this makes it so much worse. The needlessness of it. The stupidity.

  “I’m so sorry, Gaby.”

  “And that’s why Jason did what he did to me? Because he thought I was some kind of sexual predator, pursuing his wife?”

  “I only told him because he’s obsessed with it anyway: lesbians. He’s always asking me about my mates, even about Kerry—if any of them’s ever suggested anything like that with me. Looking for someone else to take his anger out on, to put in his sick pervy fantasies. I didn’t realize how far he’d take it, Gaby, I swear. I thought you’d be okay. You’re strong—not like me. And I’d never seen it before, what he did. It’s different when it’s you. You don’t see it, do you? Not like watching, like when it’s someone else.”

  I stand up, walk over the window. I want to open it, but there’s no way of doing that. Unopenable windows; every claustrophobically crap hotel has them. Four floors down, an endless spool of cars loops round the roundabout. “Jason didn’t attack me because I was asking questions about Francine’s death,” I say, hoping that by speaking the truth aloud I’ll be able to come to terms with it, make it part of a reality I can live with. “He didn’t do it because he killed her and didn’t want me to find out.”

  It’s your fault, what he did to you. You made a cruel joke at Lauren’s expense. What goes around . . .

  “He did it because he’s a fucking pervert,” Lauren says fiercely. “Always has been. Always been jealous as fuck too. I used to like it, first few months. I thought, All this fuss over me, until he turned nasty with it. He didn’t give a fuck if Francine lived or died, didn’t care who got sent down for her murder as long as his life carried on like normal. He liked having the power over us all: ‘I keep the secret, you’ll do whatever I say.’”

  “Jason’s dead. You don’t have to keep any secrets anymore.”

  Lauren sniffs. “Are you going to tell the police I killed him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? I want them to know. He deserved what he got.”

  I can’t argue with that. “Do Dan and Kerry know you killed him?”

  “Yeah. They won’t say anything. Never do, do they? Stupid bastards. Like me—we’re all fucking stupid!” Lauren shudders and pushes her fingers into the corners of her eyes. Tears spill over her hands, down her arms.

  “Who killed Francine, Lauren? It wasn’t Tim, was it?”

  “No,” she says scornfully. “I told you that the first time I met you. It wasn’t him, but he told the police it was, and he wouldn’t let any of us say different. He begged me. Kerry did too. Gaby, he got down on his knees, grabbed me round the waist. He was in bits. I couldn’t say no, not after what he’d done for me.”

  So Simon Waterhouse was right. “Tim wants to be in prison,” I say, praying I’ve misunderstood. “He wants to be convicted of Francine’s murder.” Not to protect someone else. He’s pretending he killed her for no one’s sake but his own. Taking advantage of someone else’s crime, turning it to his own advantage.

  Tim the opportunist. Yes, I can see that.

  But why? For God’s sake, Tim, or even just for mine—why?

  I wonder how Francine’s killer feels about it. Does he resent Tim taking credit for his handiwork? Or is he—or she—relieved? Not many murderers are so lucky.

  “He’s doing it for you!” Lauren blurts out. “All this is because of you, and you haven’t got a clue what’s going on? That’s mad, that is.”

  “What do you mean?” How can it have anything to do with me?

  “Why don’t you ask Kerry? She knows. No one’s told me fuck all—they all think I’m stupid, like you do. You lot are all so clever-clever, aren’t you?” This is the voice she used with Bodo Neudorf at Düsseldorf Airport, the tone that made me dislike her instantly. “So clever, you think it’s okay for an innocent man to get banged up and a killer to walk around free! That’s not clever, that’s all wrong, that is. I might not be clever enough to book my own flight to Germany, I might have had to get Kerry to do it for me, but I was the one who knew you were going there! If Kerry’s so much cleverer than me, how come she believed me when I said I wanted to visit a mate? What mates have I got in Germany? No one! I wouldn’t want any German mates either.”

  I want to shake her. “Who’s walking around free, Lauren? Who killed Francine?”

  “Don’t ask me! I promised Tim I’d never say anything, never. I promised Kerry.”

  “Lauren, you don’t need to be scared of me.”

  “I’m not scared,” she fires back, insulted, wrapping her arms around herself for protection.

  “I am,” I tell her. “More than I’ve ever been. But you don’t need to be, not of me. I just want to understand. You read my letter. You know how I feel about Tim.”

  “Yeah.” She sneers. “That’s how I felt about Jason when I met him. Thought the sun shone out of his arse. Can’t think about that now, or it’ll do my head in.”

  “What did Tim do for you?” I ask her. “You said, ‘After what he’d done for me.’”

  “He knew about Jason. What he used to do to me. He . . . saw something. It was after we’d been talking one time, me and Tim. Arguing. About Francine. We were losing it with each other, just the two of us in a room together, trying to keep our voices down so Kerry wouldn’t come nosing in. Jason got the wrong idea.” Lauren’s eyes widen. “It was the wrong idea, Gaby, I swear—there’s never been anything like that between me and Tim. Between me and anyone! As if I’d risk it, married to Jason. Kerry and Dan thought Tim ignored me because he was too much of a snob to bother with me, but it wasn’t that—he knew Jason’d take it out on me if he paid me any attention. Maybe on him too. That scared the shit out of him. That’s why he ignored me, to keep us both safe.”

  She’s looking through m
e, as if I’m not here. I’m afraid to move in case I interrupt her train of thought.

  “I begged him not to tell Kerry and Dan, and he didn’t. They’d not have wanted Jason in the house if they’d known, and if he’d lost his job, he’d have been ten times worse. Most of the time I could keep him under control, no problem. I thought Tim’d be shocked but he understood. Said you never know what goes in marriages and it’s no one else’s business.”

  Did you say that, Tim? How very fucking convenient. How respectful of Lauren’s privacy, to leave her in the clutches of a monster.

  “What did you and Tim argue about—the row Jason overheard?”

  “Tim heard me talking to Francine. I used to . . . you know, tell her stuff. About Jason, mostly. I couldn’t tell anyone else, not without getting a load of hassle: why don’t I leave him, why don’t I go to the police, find myself someone better? Even you said it to me and I’d told you nothing!”

  Because you’re so obviously the sort of woman who’d waste her love on a man who doesn’t deserve it.

  Takes one to know one.

  “I didn’t blame you for saying it. It’s what anyone would have said, except Francine: leave him, he’s not worth it. Francine never said anything. She couldn’t.”

  “You confided in her.”

  “Didn’t matter what I said to her. She never said anything back.” Lauren smiles. Her words are ambiguous but her expression makes it clear: Francine’s unresponsiveness was a point in her favor. The main attraction, even.

  I remember thinking something similar on the coach to Cologne: that Lauren was so thick, it didn’t matter what I said to her.

  “I just needed someone to know, Gaby. Not do anything about it, just know. All the worst things that have happened to me in my life—no one knows about them! It was like, I’d look at my mum and dad and Lisa and my mates and think, Why am I bothering talking to you when you haven’t got a clue?”

  “I’ve felt exactly the same,” I tell her. “Not being able to tell Sean or any of our friends about Tim.”