Kind of Cruel

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘While we’re on the subject of whens and wheres, I don’t suppose you’d be able to tell me what you were doing on 22 November 2008?’ Sam asked.

  ‘No idea. Sorry.’

  ‘A woman called Sharon Lendrim was killed that night, not too far from here. Did you hear about it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘You didn’t know her, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The name doesn’t ring any bells?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What about Katharine Allen?’

  Ritchie shook his head. ‘Sorry. No.’

  ‘Do the words “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel” mean anything to you?’

  ‘You mean apart from kind meaning nice, and cruel meaning—’

  ‘That’s right.’ Sam cut him off more forcefully than he’d meant to. ‘Apart from that.’

  ‘Then no,’ said Ritchie. ‘Sorry I’m not being much use to you.’

  Either he was politely concealing his curiosity, or he had none.

  ‘What about Tuesday 2 November. Do you remember what you were doing then, between eleven and one?’ Were you beating a primary school teacher to death with a metal pole? Sam wished he knew why he was asking these questions of this particular man. Ritchie was related to Amber Hewerdine, sort of; he was one of the few people who had known yesterday that Amber had been interviewed by the police on Tuesday. Was that a good enough reason to be asking him about Kat Allen?

  If you’d already asked everyone in Kat’s life everything you could think of to ask, then, yes, Sam supposed it was.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ritchie said again. ‘I don’t really need to remember much, so I tend not to. I probably couldn’t tell you what I did yesterday. I was ill yesterday, so I remember it for that reason, but if I wasn’t, I mean.’

  ‘What about checking your diary?’ Sam suggested. Normally, he’d have assumed the person he was talking to would think of this on their own. He believed that Ritchie was doing his best, and that was the problem. A more imaginative person deliberately trying to mislead him would almost certainly have been more help. ‘And if you’ve kept your diary from two years ago . . .’

  ‘I don’t have one. Never have. I don’t work, and I don’t see that many people – if I go out, I tend to go to Jo’s. Or Mum’s, sometimes, but usually Jo’s.’

  In other words, you don’t have a life. Sam wondered if this alone was grounds for suspicion. ‘You’ve never had any kind of diary, not even for appointments?’ You and your loved ones don’t spend your evenings cross-checking to make sure that anything that’s written in one person’s diary is written in everybody’s? There were as many ways of living as there were people, Sam concluded, and his own wasn’t necessarily the best.

  ‘I tend not to prearrange things,’ Ritchie said. ‘I do what I feel like doing, as the mood takes me.’

  All right, don’t rub it in. ‘What do you do when you stay in?’ Sam asked, then regretted it. An image of Ritchie sitting on the lavatory with his black jeans round his skinny ankles had to be hastily banished. ‘What are your interests? Are you looking for a job at the moment?’ There were no books in the flat that Sam could see, no magazines, no CDs, music system, radio – nothing to indicate that Ritchie had much enthusiasm for anything. Or maybe everything was on his computer: films, music, even friends.

  ‘There aren’t that many jobs I’d want to do,’ Ritchie said. ‘I don’t see any point in doing a job just for the sake of it, if I’m not passionate about it.’

  ‘For money?’ Sam suggested.

  Ritchie looked vaguely confused, as if this was a consideration that would never have entered his head if Sam hadn’t mentioned it. ‘I’m lucky, I suppose. Jo and Neil kind of support me. Jo’s brilliant. She sticks up for me when Mum has a go about me being lazy. I feel bad, because she and Neil haven’t got much themselves, but Jo says they’ve got all they need and that’s what family’s for. Says she’d rather I took my time to decide what I want to do with my life than have me rush into the wrong kind of work and get trapped. That’s happened to loads of people she knows.’ Ritchie pushed his hair out of his eyes. ‘It’s too easy to carry on doing what you’re doing, even if you don’t like it.’

  ‘Your mum disagrees with Jo?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ Ritchie smiled. ‘Mum’s a typical mum, really. She wants me to achieve something so that it can count as an achievement for her, by proxy – that’s what Jo reckons. Mum never had the chance to do anything much because of looking after Kirsty. I think she finds it hard seeing me having what looks to her like . . . well, like a pretty easy time of it, I guess. Jo’s more like Mum in that sense: putting other people first, looking after them. Mum doesn’t resent Jo like she does me. It’s stupid, really. We all end up going round in circles: Mum sticking up for Jo, Jo sticking up for me . . .’

  ‘Does your mother think you’re exploiting Jo by letting her support you?’ Sam asked, thinking that it would be understandable if she did. He wondered how Jo’s husband Neil felt. Were there rows?

  ‘Yeah.’ Ritchie nodded. ‘Some years back, Jo asked Mum to change her will, asked her to leave the house just to me, said she was more than happy to give up her share. She had a house already, she said. I’m the one who needs Mum’s house when she dies, if I’m not going to be renting this dump forever.’

  Sam avoided eye contact, concentrated on writing in his notebook. Was this the information Simon wanted? It certainly sounded as if it might be. Sam had given up asking himself how Simon was able to sniff out the presence of an as-yet-unheard story where no one else could. It wasn’t one of Sam’s strengths, but he had others. He was already feeling better about Olivia Zailer than he’d expected to. He’d yelled at her, but she’d asked for it. And so what if he didn’t have the benefit of her ideas about Kat Allen’s murder? Was he really going to start worrying that he wasn’t privy to the speculations of every civilian who had nothing to do with his case? No. His strength, one Simon lacked, was the ability to look at a situation in a balanced way.

  ‘Mum said her will was her business and she wasn’t changing it,’ Ritchie went on. ‘She came out with some spiel about fairness: how parents have to treat all their children equally, no matter the circumstances, even if one’s loaded and one’s skint. Not that Jo’s loaded, but . . . she’s comfortable.’

  ‘You disagree?’ Sam asked. The more he heard about Ritchie Baker’s mother, the more he approved of her.

  ‘I wouldn’t, normally,’ said Ritchie. ‘I always assumed Mum’d divide things equally between all of us. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to want the house for myself if Jo hadn’t had the idea. But she suggested it, she said it was what she wanted, and Mum still wouldn’t. That’s just pig-headed, isn’t it? That’s trying to make a point.’

  Perhaps one that needed making, Sam thought. Never having met Jo Utting, he was finding Ritchie’s version of her difficult to believe in. ‘Your sister’s really that selfless that she’d gift you her share of your mother’s house?’

  Ritchie smiled. ‘Ask Jo if she’s selfless,’ he said. ‘She’ll piss herself laughing. She’s got everything she could possibly want, she says. Nice husband with a successful business, nice house that they own outright, two beautiful kids, Sabina to help her with day-to-day stuff . . . All Jo wants is for me to be in as fortunate a position as she is. She says to me all the time, “Don’t sell yourself short and get any old job just to please Mum. Hold out for something that matters.”’ Ritchie chuckled to himself. ‘Tell you the truth, I think she likes it that I don’t work. She likes it that she can ring me or pop round any time and I’m always here.’

  He was genuinely fond of his sister, Sam thought, and not only for materialistic reasons. ‘So your mother didn’t change her will?’

  ‘As far as I know she hasn’t,’ said Ritchie. ‘We haven’t discussed it again, for obvious . . . Oh.’ He stopped. ‘I guess the reasons won’t be obvious to you, if you don’t know.’

  Sam
waited.

  ‘The day after Jo and Mum rowed about it the first time – the only time – something weird happened. Jo . . . kind of disappeared without telling anyone where she was going or why. With Neil and the boys. Oh, she came back, but only after they’d missed the whole of Christmas Day. No one’s ever said anything, but I think Mum’s always thought that their vanishing act had something to do with that argument on Christmas Eve about the will and the house. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if Mum did change her will after that, without saying anything to anyone. She was pretty frightened when Jo disappeared. We all were.’

  Was Sam missing something here? Everything about this story sounded wrong to him. ‘But – Jo came back, you said. Didn’t she tell you where she’d been and why?’

  ‘No. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘But if your mother subsequently changed her mind and altered her will to leave her house only to you, why wouldn’t she have told Jo? Jo would have been pleased, presumably, to have got what she wanted.’

  ‘I don’t know that Mum ever did change her mind,’ said Ritchie. ‘I was just speculating.’

  ‘If she did, though. Hypothetically.’ It was the lack of communication, and Ritchie’s presentation of it as normal, that interested Sam most. ‘Why do you think she wouldn’t tell Jo straight out?’

  Ritchie considered the question. ‘Hard to put into words,’ he said eventually. ‘I guess . . . if Mum thought the row about the will had upset Jo enough to make her do that, she’d have been afraid to raise the subject again, no matter what she had to say about it. When Jo decides a subject’s closed, it’s closed. If she doesn’t want to talk about something . . .’ He left the sentence hanging in the air.

  ‘And you haven’t asked your mum about the will since, when Jo’s not been around?’

  ‘No. It’s not my place, is it?’

  ‘You and Jo haven’t discussed it between yourselves?’

  ‘No way. She disappeared for the whole of Christmas Day,’ Ritchie emphasised, as if Sam might have missed the point the first time. In his mind there was a causal link, clearly. Sam had yet to be convinced that it wasn’t a coincidence. Often, when one thing followed another, people assumed a cause and effect relationship between the two that didn’t exist.

  ‘No way I’m bringing that subject up again.’ Ritchie looked upset suddenly. ‘The whole family was together, Jo had hired this mansion place in Surrey . . . we were supposed to be having a nice time.’

  ‘Instead, you spent the day worrying,’ said Sam.

  ‘Yeah, and trying to persuade the police to give a toss. Not you. Surrey police. Whatever dealings I’ve ever had with local police, they’ve been great.’

  Sam nodded, appreciating the concern for his finer feelings, wondering why he didn’t disapprove of Ritchie as much as he imagined most people would, as much as he felt he ought to. He made a note to remind himself to check if Ritchie’s details were on any of the police databases.

  ‘I love Jo to bits and I see her all the time, like I said, but I learned my lesson after Surrey, however many years ago it was. Five or six, maybe? No, Barney was a baby, so more like seven years.’

  Timekeeping for people without diaries, Sam thought. It sounded like the title of a novel his wife Kate might read for her book group. ‘Learned your lesson how?’ he asked.

  ‘They still all get together every year, but I don’t. I make an excuse, usually a pretty lame one. I don’t think anyone ever believes me.’

  ‘Excuse for what?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I’ve spent Christmas Day on my own, every year since then,’ Ritchie said proudly.

  Simon pushed Charlie out of his way when she tried to kiss him. ‘This stops right here and now,’ he said.

  Don’t follow him. Charlie stayed where she was, in the hall. She heard his coat hit the floor, the fridge door open and slam shut. ‘Is that shorthand for “I want a divorce”?’

  ‘It will be, if you can’t get your jealousy under control.’

  ‘Jealousy?’ What was he talking about?

  ‘Three text messages asking who Johannah Utting is, when you know I’m working and can’t text you back and I haven’t got time for that shit anyway. I’m sick of it. Every woman’s name I mention . . .’

  ‘You think I’m jealous of Johannah Utting,’ Charlie deduced aloud.

  ‘If I’d told you who she was, your next question would have been is she attractive.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t.’

  ‘You’re not pathetic, so don’t act it,’ Simon raged on, impervious. ‘There’s no need to be jealous of every woman I meet. You’re the one I’m with. I’m married to you. I don’t give a shit about anyone else, and you know it, or you ought to know it. My whole life is you. You and work, but you mainly. Is that the sort of thing you want me to say? If I say it more often, will you stop interrogating me every time I mention a woman’s name?’

  Charlie took a deep breath. He scared her when he was this angry, but what scared her even more was knowing she could still provoke him. She lacked the soothing instinct that most women seemed to have. ‘To answer your questions in order: yes, that’s exactly the sort of thing I want you to say, though you might want to work on your delivery. But that’s a minor quibble. Will I stop interrogating you when you drop strange women’s names into the conversation? All right, yes. Unless there are extenuating circumstances.’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘It means I still want to know who Johannah Utting is.’

  ‘She’s attractive. Very. Prettier than you, but so what? I don’t love her and I never will. I love you!’

  Charlie flinched. ‘Going back to what I said earlier, about your delivery . . . Yelling it at me from the kitchen . . .’

  ‘You’re lucky I’m not yelling “Get the fuck away from me,” because that’s how I feel at the moment!’

  ‘Now, you see, that detracts a bit from the otherwise romantic message you’re hoping to put across.’ So did the two-litre carton of semi-skimmed milk in his hand that he was about to take a swig from. Charlie decided not to mention it.

  ‘Just because I don’t . . . Ah, fuck it. Forget it.’ He turned away. In a different room, facing in the opposite direction. He was the perfect poster boy for breakdowns of communication everywhere.

  ‘Just because you don’t what?’ said Charlie. ‘Don’t have sex with me any more, if you can help it? Don’t allow me to explain why I might have asked a question, but assume the worst and attack me instead? I don’t give a toss what Jo Utting looks like! I’m not jealous of her and never have been. Did I mention that I have no idea who she is? Who is she? There you go, I asked again. I’m not getting the hang of this surrendered wife thing, am I?’ Was it worrying that Charlie was only now getting angry? Her first reaction had been to try to accommodate Simon’s unprovoked attack as if it were a high-maintenance house guest he’d invited to stay.

  ‘Do you want to know the real reason I’m paying through the nose to see a hypnotherapist?’ she said.

  ‘Proust reckons it’s nothing to do with wanting to give up smoking.’ Simon put the milk back in the fridge.

  ‘I can’t give up anything. I’ll never be able to. Not you, not cigarettes, none of the things I love that are killing me. I haven’t actually asked her yet, but I’m pretty sure that if and when I do, Ginny’ll tell me there’s no way she can brainwash me so that I stop loving you and fall for someone normal instead.’

  ‘Anyone normal’d run a mile if they saw you coming,’ said Simon. He seemed calmer. Because he was thinking about something, Charlie realised. Her? Did she dare to hope? Probably work, she decided.

  ‘I’m going to save myself some money,’ she said, making the decision as she heard herself say it. ‘I won’t see Ginny again.’

  ‘Our sex life. That’s the problem from your point of view, right?’

  Charlie froze. Had she misheard?

  ‘Everything’d be fine between us
, except we don’t . . . do it often enough?’ Simon stood in the doorway, his body nearly filling the gap between the kitchen and the hall.

  ‘I’m a little bit scared,’ Charlie admitted. ‘Are we really going to have this conversation?’

  ‘I like sex as much as the next person.’

  ‘That’s not true, and if you don’t want there to be a next person, you’re better off admitting it,’ she told him. Had she just threatened to have sex with someone else? She hadn’t meant to. There had been nights when she’d thought about it, thought about leaving him asleep in bed and driving to the sort of place where she could easily pick someone up, someone she didn’t know, would never see again and could screw for the sake of it, because it was what both she and Simon deserved.

  She knew she’d never do it; the sexual practice involved in her revenge fantasy had a name, a sufficiently disgusting one to put her off making it a reality.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to do it, and it’s not that I want to do it with someone else,’ Simon said. ‘I swear to you. All right?’

  ‘Er . . . not really. What are you talking about?’

  ‘I should have tried to explain before.’

  ‘Try now. Trust me, if you think your work is done on the explanation front, you couldn’t be more wrong.’

  ‘I’m actually attracted to you. Physically.’

  Charlie laughed. He made it sound like a recent discovery, one that amazed him.

  ‘I’d want nothing more than to go to bed with you if I didn’t know it was what you wanted too.’ He swore under his breath. ‘I don’t mean . . .’

  ‘You don’t mean you want to rape me,’ Charlie clarified.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s okay, Simon. I know you don’t mean that.’ She kept her tone steady. If anything happened to panic him now, they might lose this thread forever.

  ‘I mean that your wanting it to happen means it can, and . . . I suppose I’d rather it couldn’t because . . . it doesn’t feel right. It’s never felt right. Not because of you. None of this is anything to do with you. It’s me, something fucked up in me.’