Lasting Damage

by Sophie Hannah

  Is she going to give me the same remedy she gave me last time? Kali Phos, it was called. For people who have an aversion to their own relatives. Kit threatened to steal the bottle for himself when I told him that.

  ‘Kit’s so unhappy,’ I tell Alice. ‘I’ve made him unhappy. He can’t understand why I don’t believe him. Neither can I. Why can’t I accept that strange things happen sometimes, and put it behind me? I know Kit loves me, I know he’s desperate for things to go back to normal. I’m all he’s got, and . . . I love him. It’ll sound crazy, but I love him more than ever – I feel outraged on his behalf.’

  ‘Because he’s probably innocent, and his own wife doesn’t believe in him?’ Alice guesses.

  I nod. ‘How can I tell Mum and Dad, and Fran, and make them suspect him too, when there’s no way to end that suspicion, ever? Haven’t I made him miserable enough already?’

  ‘So it’s for Kit’s sake that you’re keeping it from your family?’

  ‘His and theirs. Mum and Dad couldn’t live with it – I know they couldn’t. They’d try not to allow me to live with it. They’d hire a private detective . . . No, that would mean admitting they were mixed up in something unsavoury, if they did that. I know what they’d do.’ It feels like a revelation, though on one level I know I’m making it up. ‘They’d put pressure on me to leave him and move back to Thorrold House. Just in case. They’d say, “If you’re not a hundred per cent sure he’s trustworthy, you can’t stay with him.” ’

  ‘Is that such a stupid thing to say?’

  ‘Yes. I’d rather have the rest of my life ruined by suspicions that achieve nothing than leave a man I love who’s very probably done nothing wrong.’

  Alice puts her glasses back on and leans forward. Her leather swivel chair creaks. ‘Explain something to me,’ she says. ‘You say there’s no way for the suspicion to end, ever, but in the next breath you mention the possibility of hiring a private detective. You might not want to do that, and I’d understand if you didn’t, but wouldn’t that be one way to find out for sure if Kit’s lying?’

  ‘Are you saying you think I should hire a detective?’ If she says yes, I’m never coming back here. ‘Wouldn’t it be dangerous for someone as paranoid as me to imagine that I can pay for certainty whenever I need it? Wouldn’t I be better off trying to cultivate trust? What if the detective followed Kit for a month and found nothing? Would I finally accept that nothing’s going on, or would I worry that the detective had been slapdash and missed something?’

  Alice smiles. ‘And yet only this morning, you told a detective all about seeing a dead woman on the internet. He might be slapdash – he might miss something.’

  ‘Then I’ll go to Cambridge and find a conscientious detective, and make him listen to me,’ I say fiercely.

  ‘Because you want to find out the truth.’

  ‘It’s not about me, it’s about the woman I saw, whoever she is. Someone murdered her. I can’t just—’

  ‘You want to find out the truth,’ Alice says again.

  ‘All right, then, yes! I saw a dead woman on the floor in that house. Wouldn’t you want the truth, in my position?’

  ‘Connie, can I speak frankly? When it comes to the dead woman, your truth-seeking energy is really strong. I can feel it – it’s tangible in this room. Normally, that would help to attract the truth to you. When we focus on something we want with all our energy, believe we’re going to get it one day and pursue it with great determination, resolved that we will never give up, usually what we’re seeking comes to us – it’s just a matter of how long it takes to reach us. In your case, there’s a complication: in another area of your life, you’re terrified of finding out the truth, and you’re transmitting an equally strong truth-repelling energy.’ She folds her arms, waits for my reaction.

  ‘Kit, you mean? That’s not fair. You know how hard I’ve tried.’

  ‘You haven’t,’ says Alice gently. ‘You’re lying to yourself if you think you have.’

  I must be quite exceptionally convincing, in that case. ‘What, so you’re saying that the contradictory energies are getting mixed up and sending out a muddled signal? That my fear of finding out the truth about Kit is repelling all truth?’

  Alice says nothing.

  ‘So, whoever’s in charge of all this energy and attraction stuff, up there in the cockpit of the universe – God, or Fate, or whatever you want to call him – he’s short-sighted, is he?’ I say irritably. ‘He can’t quite read the shopping list – item one: truth about dead woman; item two: no truth about possibly treacherous husband. They blur together, do they, so that he doesn’t know what exactly he’s supposed to deliver? Can’t he focus really hard and attract a decent pair of reading glasses? As the all-powerful controller of the universe, that shouldn’t be beyond him.’

  ‘Nothing has blurred together,’ says Alice. ‘The two items were never separate. They’re linked by an address: 11 Bentley Grove, Cambridge.’

  I feel as if I’m going to throw up.

  Kit didn’t kill her. He can’t have. He’s not a killer. I wouldn’t love a killer.

  ‘Do you want only part of the truth, or do you want all of it?’ Alice asks. ‘What if it was all or nothing? Which would you choose?’

  ‘All,’ I whisper. My stomach twists.

  ‘Good. Your phone’s ringing.’

  I didn’t hear it.

  ‘Nothing like an immediate result to convince a hardened sceptic,’ Alice says.

  ‘Do you mind if I . . .? Hello?’

  ‘Is that Connie Bowskill?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Sam Kombothekra.’

  ‘Oh.’ My heart jolts. Kombothekra, Kombothekra. I try to remember the name.

  ‘Can you get to Spilling police station by nine thirty, Monday morning?’

  ‘I . . . Has something happened? Have you spoken to Cambridge police?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to you face to face,’ he says. ‘Monday morning, nine thirty?’

  ‘All right. Can’t you even—?’

  ‘I’ll see you then.’

  He’s gone.

  Alice raises her water glass in what looks like a toast. ‘Well done,’ she says, beaming at me. I have no idea what she’s congratulating me for.

  *

  POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/21IG

  D,

  Don't forget to nip to supermarket and buy:

  Pitta breads, passata, bag of salad, lamb mince, feta cheese, cinnamon, chargrilled artichokes (in oil in jar, from deli section – NOT a tin of artichokes from canned veg section) new pencil case for Riordan, something for Tilly so she doesn't feel left out – Barbie mag or something. Ta!

  E xx

  Chapter 6

  19/07/2010

  ‘Okay. You’ve put your house up for sale . . .’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘Suppose you have. You want to move, and you’ve put your house on the market,’ said Sam. ‘Why might you go and stay in a hotel?’ For the past ten minutes, he’d been orbiting Gibbs’ desk – glancing at him occasionally, then looking away, as if he had something on his mind but wasn’t sure how to broach it.

  Gibbs had been waiting for him to spit it out, whatever it was. ‘If I fancied a holiday, and self-catering felt like too much effort . . .’

  ‘No, not a holiday. You wouldn’t choose a hotel within walking distance of your house, would you? Sorry, I’m not explaining myself very well.’

  You’re not explaining yourself at all.

  ‘Why would you decide to go and stay in a hotel while you waited for your house to sell? However long that took.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Gibbs, annoyed that Stepford was his skipper and therefore couldn’t be told to piss off and stop wasting his time. ‘I’d stay in my house until it sold, and then I’d move to my new house. Isn’t that what most people do?’

  ‘It is. Exactly.’

  ‘Even if you were lucky and your house sold q
uickly, you’d be looking at minimum six weeks, I reckon. Six weeks in a hotel’d be unaffordable for most people – it would for me, anyway.’

  ‘Let’s say you could afford it – you’re a high earner, or you’ve got private wealth.’

  ‘I still wouldn’t do it. No one would. Why not just stay in your house?’

  ‘What about if you couldn’t stand the thought of prospective buyers and surveyors getting under your feet all the time, traipsing in and out while you were trying to entertain friends, ringing the doorbell at 9 a.m. on a Saturday when you were hoping for a lie-in? Mightn’t it be more convenient to shift to a hotel?’

  ‘No,’ said Gibbs flatly. Entertain friends? Debbie’s mates popped round for a cup of tea now and then – did that count as entertaining? Who did Stepford think Gibbs was, Nigella Lawson?

  Colin Sellers slouched in looking worse than he’d looked last week, which Gibbs wouldn’t have believed possible if the evidence hadn’t been looming in front of him. ‘Your hair looks like a furball a cat coughed up,’ he called out. No reaction. He tried again. ‘Some barbers’ll slit your throat for the price of a haircut – solve all your problems in one go.’

  Sellers grunted and headed for his desk. Suki, his girlfriend of many years, had dumped him a fortnight ago. Gibbs had tried to cheer him up at first, pointing out that he still had his wife, Stacey, and at least she’d never found out about the affair, but Sellers wasn’t so easily consoled. ‘I’ve got a gaping girlfriend gap,’ he’d mumbled gloomily. ‘If you want to help, find me a new woman. Can you think of anyone?’ Gibbs couldn’t. ‘Anyone,’ Sellers had repeated, dejectedly. ‘Old, young, flabby, bony, a minger if that’s all you can find – as long as she’s new.’ The idea that there were females in the world that he might never get to have sex with was Sellers’ mobilising grievance.

  Gibbs liked that phrase. It was a useful way of pinning people down in your mind. Stepford was tricky: he didn’t have any grievances, as far as Gibbs knew. The Snowman had too many. Gibbs wondered if there needed to be one that stood out above the rest in order for it to count. Could you have a mobilising cluster of grievances?

  ‘Poor old Colin,’ Stepford muttered. ‘He’s taken it really badly, hasn’t he?’

  ‘How big’s my house?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.’

  ‘The house I’ve put up for sale,’ Gibbs clarified.

  ‘Oh, sorry. For one person living alone, it’s big. Four bedrooms, lounge, family room, conservatory, dining room, decent size kitchen. Massive garden.’

  ‘Then I’m used to having the space, aren’t I? I wouldn’t be prepared to live in one room in a hotel for however long my gaff took to sell. I’d get cabin fever.’

  ‘Imagine you’re a woman . . .’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ said Gibbs, nodding in Sellers’ direction. ‘I don’t want to be mounted by the Fornicator.’

  ‘You’re sentimental. You’re moving because you have to relocate to another part of the country for work, but you love your house. You can’t stand to carry on living in it knowing you’ll be leaving soon – you’d rather move out immediately and . . . No?’

  Gibbs was shaking his head. ‘I might do it if I hated my house and couldn’t stand to live there any more,’ he said. ‘If I’d lived there for years with a bloke who beat the shit out of me, or if something fucked-up had happened there – my kids had died in a fire, or I’d been burgled and gang-raped . . .’

  DI Giles Proust stomped past without looking up. When he reached his glass office-cubicle in the far corner of the room, he turned, raised his briefcase in the air and said, ‘Don’t mind me, Gibbs. Continue with your edifying and uplifting conversation, your inspirational Monday morning thought for the day.’ He went in and slammed the door.

  Go fuck yourself, Frosty.

  Stepford was rubbing his forehead, looking worried. ‘I can’t believe I’m in this situation,’ he said. ‘In a minute, a woman called Connie Bowskill’s going to walk in here and very probably tell me a pack of lies, or a mixture of lies and half-truths, and I won’t know if she’s lying or not because I can’t get hold of Simon Waterhouse. I’ve no way of reaching him – can’t be done, simple as that. Whereas if I could speak to him for two minutes – one minute, even – I’d be able to get my bearings.’

  Gibbs knew where Waterhouse was. What he didn’t have was permission to pass that knowledge on.

  The Snowman’s office door opened and he stuck out his bald head. He was still holding his briefcase. ‘Are you expecting a visitor, Sergeant? There was a woman at reception asking for you. Youngish, dark, attractive. Connie Bowler, I think her name was. I avoided her.’

  ‘Connie Bowskill,’ said Stepford. Gibbs heard the reluctance in his voice; no doubt Proust did too.

  ‘I’m good with names, and hers didn’t ring a bell. Who is she?’

  ‘Connie Bowskill?’ Sellers looked up from the Mars bar he was unwrapping. ‘Never heard of her.’

  You’re itching to shag her, though, aren’t you? Sight unseen.

  Stepford shifted from one foot to the other, avoiding Proust’s eye.

  ‘Who is she, Sergeant? A clairvoyant? Your flute teacher? I could stand here guessing all day, or you could make life easier for both of us by answering the question.’

  ‘She’s . . . someone I’m trying to help. It’s a long story, sir, and about to get longer. It involves a possible murder.’

  ‘So do the staff-training initiatives I devise in my mind every night before falling asleep. If it’s a murder, why don’t I know about it?’

  ‘It’s not our patch.’

  ‘Then what’s she doing here? Why isn’t she in St Anne’s-on-Sea? Why isn’t she in Nether Stowey, Somerset?’

  ‘I haven’t got time to explain, if she’s at reception,’ said Stepford. ‘Let me talk to her and then I’ll put you in the picture.’

  A possible murder. Did that mean Gibbs was duty-bound to tell Stepford where Waterhouse was? Possibly. Probably.

  ‘I already don’t like the sound of it,’ Proust barked. ‘You should try being less helpful, in future – to everyone but me. You’d have shorter stories to tell and fewer pictures to put people in.’ He stepped back into his office and closed the door, but instead of going straight to his desk as he normally did, he stood and stared out through the glass, briefcase in hand, expressionless – like something old and ugly in a museum display cabinet. The man was a freak; he belonged in a nuthouse. Gibbs decided to try and outstare him. After a few seconds he lost interest, and gave up.

  PC Robbie Meakin appeared in the doorway of the CID room. ‘There’s a Mr and Mrs Bowskill waiting for you in the canteen, Sarge.’

  ‘The canteen?’ Stepford sounded disappointed. It was as close to angry as he ever got.

  ‘Best I could do, sorry. All the rooms are taken.’

  ‘You could always book a room down the road, at the Blantyre,’ Gibbs suggested. ‘Talking of hotels.’ Or was he supposed to call it ‘Blantyre’? No, it said ‘The Blantyre Hotel’ on the front. He wondered how many nights at Blue Horizon he and Olivia could afford before all their money ran out. Quite a few, if she sold her two-thousand-quid dress.

  He should ring her before saying anything to Stepford about Waterhouse’s whereabouts; it was only fair to warn her. He had her number; Charlie must have given her his, and she’d texted him last week to say she was looking forward to ‘witnessing’ with him. In retrospect, now that Waterhouse’s wedding was in the past, Gibbs realised he’d been looking forward to it as well. Without something to look forward to, what was the point of anything?

  He decided not to ring Olivia straight away. It could wait an hour or so.

  Where had he gone now? Charlie had assumed, when she’d booked Los Delfines, that it would be exciting and luxurious to live in an enormous house for a fortnight. It was turning out to be more frustrating than anything else. At home, when Simon disappeared and she went to look for him, she alway
s found him within seconds. Here, it wasn’t so easy; the last thing Charlie wanted to do was run round thirty rooms in this heat. ‘Simon?’ she called up the white marble staircase. Was he on the bog? Not for so long, surely – not without taking Moby Dick with him, and she’d just seen it by the pool. He couldn’t be in bed; that was the last place he’d risk being found by her. In the kitchen, preparing lunch? Yesterday Charlie had complained about having to peel the shells off the prawns they’d bought from the supermarket down the road. Maybe Simon had decided to pre-peel them today, to save her the inconvenience. She laughed to herself. As if.

  She adjusted her bikini top, and was heading for the kitchen when something caught her eye: a piece of paper on the sideboard with something written on it in capital letters. Had he gone out, left her a note? No, she’d have seen him while she was baking on her lounger; he’d have had to walk right past her.

  She picked it up. It wasn’t paper; it was Simon’s plane ticket. On it, he’d written, ‘11 BENTLEY GROVE, CAMBRIDGE, CB2 9AW’. Charlie frowned. Whose address was that? Had he wanted her to find it, or was it a reminder to himself about something? Who did he know in Cambridge? No one, as far as she was aware.

  She heard footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘Did you call me?’ Simon asked. ‘I was on the roof terrace, looking at the face in the mountain. You should come up – you’ll see it instantly.’

  Was he still on about that? ‘I don’t care about not seeing the face.’

  ‘I want you to see it,’ Simon insisted. He started back up the stairs.

  ‘What’s 11 Bentley Grove, Cambridge?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘CB2 9AW.’

  Simon looked confused. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘This.’ Charlie waved the plane ticket at him.

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ He moved closer. Stared at it, then at her. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Is that your ticket from the aeroplane?’