I feel a hysterical laugh rising inside me. ‘She makes no money from it.’
‘Does she have a day job?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t you?’ Charlie Zailer says smoothly, as if passing comment on the weather. ‘Do you think I don’t know when I’m being lied to, Ruth? Do you think I don’t meet liars every day? I do-liars of the highest grade. Shall I tell you about some of them?’
‘I’m not a liar. I don’t know Mary, and I hadn’t heard of her when Aidan told me… when he told me…’
‘When he told you that he’d killed her, years ago.’
‘That’s right.’ My words sound like someone else’s, as if they’re not coming from inside me but from somewhere far away.
‘You’re panicking, Ruth, and you’re spewing up lies faster than the magic porridge pot spewed up porridge. Remember that story from when you were a kid?’ Sergeant Zailer yawns, leans back in her chair. ‘Is it possible Aidan killed another woman with the same name?’ she says, as casually as if she were suggesting the answer to a crossword clue. ‘I know Trelease isn’t a common surname, but…’
‘No,’ I say, my voice cracking. ‘I could see the details were familiar to him when I told him. That she lives on Megson Crescent, that she’s an artist, forty-ish, with long black curly hair, silver streaks in it where she’s starting to go grey.’ His face: the absolute recognition, the fear, in his eyes. ‘It’s the same woman, the one he’s sure he killed. I’m not making this up! Why would I?’
‘Silver-grey hair and she’s only forty? Still, they say people with very dark hair go grey youngest.’ Charlie Zailer drums her fingers on the table, raises an eyebrow at me. ‘So, you’ve seen her, then? If you know what kind of hair she’s got, you must have seen her, even if you don’t know her personally.’
I say nothing.
‘Or perhaps you’ve seen a picture of her? No, I think you’ve seen her in the flesh. A picture wouldn’t have put your mind at rest. Aidan told you he’d killed her, and you needed to see her in person, see for yourself that she was still alive. Undeterred by the sheer unlikeliness of anyone pretending they’ve killed someone when they haven’t, you set out to find this dead woman and, lo and behold, she wasn’t dead at all. Is that how it happened?’
The silence between us is unbearable. I try to pretend she isn’t here, that I’m alone in the room.
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ she mutters. ‘Okay, here’s a question you might be happier about answering: what are you doing here, apart from wasting my time?’
‘What?’
‘Why are you here? Aidan hasn’t killed anyone-fine. Mary Trelease is alive-hooray. What do you want from me, exactly?’
Now I can talk freely. ‘I want you to check that what I’m saying is true. If it is, you could… convince Aidan. I’ve tried and failed. You’re the police-he’d listen to you.’
‘If it’s true? So you’re not a hundred per cent sure Aidan didn’t kill this woman who’s alive. Make up your mind.’
‘I’m as sure as I can be, but… what if the woman I think is Mary Trelease isn’t? What if… I know it sounds insane, but what if she’s some other woman who fits Mary’s description, a relative or… or…’ Or someone pretending. I don’t say it; it would make me sound paranoid. ‘There are things the police can find out that I can’t.’
Charlie Zailer sighs. ‘The police find things out in the process of investigating crimes. Nothing’s happened here, according to you. There’s no crime to investigate. Correct?’ She opens and closes her lips several times, making a popping noise. She appears to be thinking. Perhaps she’s bored, daydreaming. After a few seconds, she says, ‘From my point of view, there are three questions. One: did Aidan kill the woman you’re talking about, the person you know as Mary Trelease?’
‘He didn’t. He can’t have. She’s alive.’
‘All right. Then did he kill another person called or known by the name of Mary Trelease? And lastly, question number three: did he kill or injure anyone? Is there a body somewhere, waiting to be found? Not that it’ll still be a body by now, if the killing happened years ago.’
‘Aidan couldn’t hurt anybody. I know him.’
She puffs her cheeks full of air, then blows it out in one breath. ‘If you’re right, you should be consulting a shrink, not me.’
I shake my head. ‘He’s sane. I can tell from the way he reacts to other things, normal things. That’s why this makes no sense.’ It occurs to me that perhaps Sergeant Zailer asked me all those pointless questions about my job and my rent for the same reason: to test my reaction to ordinary enquiries. ‘Have you heard of the Cotard delusion?’ I ask her.
‘No. I’ve heard of The God Delusion.’
‘It’s a mental illness, or a symptom of mental illness, usually associated with despair and an extreme lack of self-esteem. It’s where you believe you’re dead even though you’re not.’
She grins. ‘If I had that, I’d worry less about smoking fifteen fags a day.’
I’m not interested in her jokes. ‘As far as I know-and I’ve looked into it-there’s no mutation of that syndrome, and no other syndrome that I could find, where sufferers believe they’ve killed people who are still living. I ruled out psychological explanations a while ago. I don’t think Aidan’s committed any violent crime. I know he hasn’t, and wouldn’t, but… I’m worried something’s going to happen, something really bad.’ I didn’t know I was going to say this until the words are out. ‘I’m frightened, but I don’t know what of.’
Charlie Zailer looks at me for a long time. Eventually she says, ‘What has Aidan told you about the details of what he did? What he says he did. When, why and where did he kill Mary Trelease, by his own account?’
‘I’ve already told you everything he told me: that he killed her, years ago.’
‘How many years?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘How, why and where did he kill her?’
‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘What was their relationship? When and how did they first meet?’
‘I told you already, I don’t know!’
‘I thought Aidan wanted to confide in you. Did he change his mind halfway through? Ruth? What did he say, when you asked him for more details?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You didn’t? Why not?’
‘I… I did ask him one question. I asked him if it was an accident. ’ I can’t bear the memory. The way he looked at me, as if I’d stamped on his heart. No questions. He stuck to the deal we made; I broke it.
‘Right,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘Because you couldn’t believe he’d harm anyone deliberately. What did he say?’
‘Nothing. He just stared at me.’
‘And you didn’t ask him any more questions?’
‘No.’
‘Frankly, I find that impossible to believe. Anyone would ask. Why didn’t you?’
‘Are you going to help me or not?’ I say, mustering what’s left of my hope and energy.
‘How can I, when you’re withholding at least half the information you know is relevant, assuming you’re not making all this up. A strange way to behave if you want my help.’ She straightens up in her chair. ‘Aidan made this confession to you on the thirteenth of December last year. Why did you wait until now, two and a half months later, before coming in?’
‘I hoped I’d be able to make him see sense,’ I say, knowing how feeble it sounds in spite of being true.
‘I see conspiracies everywhere, that’s my trouble,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘What I don’t know is, who’s on the receiving end of this one: you? Me? One colossal piss-take-that’s what this sounds like to me.’
I feel as if I might pass out. There’s a sharp pain between my shoulder-blades. I picture myself pressing a big red button: stop. I imagine my finger holding the button down-it’s supposed to make the bad thoughts go into retreat. Whichever book said it worked was lying.
Conspiraci
es: they’re what I fear most. I was wrong before. My nightmare didn’t start when I went to London with Aidan. It started earlier, much earlier. The list of possible starting points is endless: when Mary Trelease walked into my life, when I met Him and Her, when I came into the world as Godfrey and Inge Bussey’s daughter.
Sergeant Zailer holds up her hands. ‘Don’t worry-if there’s any chance a crime’s been committed, I’ll do whatever it takes to bottom that out,’ she says. Her words are no comfort. Aidan and Mary Trelease, conspiring together against me. If it’s true, I don’t want to know. I couldn’t bear it. Is that where he’s been, all the nights he hasn’t been with me?
I stand up, wincing as my weight lands on my injured foot. ‘I made a mistake coming here. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Have a seat. If I’m going to take this forward, we need to sort out a proper statement…’
‘No! I don’t want to make a statement. I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Ruth, calm down.’
‘I know the law. You can’t force me to be a witness. I haven’t done anything wrong. You can’t arrest me-that means I can leave.’
I limp to the door, open it, hurry down the corridor as fast as I can, which isn’t very fast. Sergeant Zailer soon catches me up. She strolls alongside me, saying nothing as we pass reception and head out into cold air that’s like a slap in the face. She whistles and examines her long fingernails, as if our walking side by side is a coincidence. Eventually she says, conversationally, ‘Do you know what’s happening tomorrow night, Ruth?’
‘No.’
‘It’s my engagement party. You wouldn’t… this whole thing wouldn’t by any chance be related to that, would it? You aren’t going to pop out of a cake tomorrow night and say “Surprise!”, are you? And if you are, it wouldn’t be anything to do with a certain Colin Sellers, would it?’
I stop, turn to face her. ‘I don’t know who or what you’re talking about. Forget everything I said, all right?’ And then I start to run, properly run, grinding the pain further into my foot, and she doesn’t follow me. She shouts after me that she’ll be in touch. I pull open my car door, feeling her eyes burning into my back.
She knows where I live; she won’t let this drop. But she isn’t coming after me now. For the moment, that’s all I care about. If I can just get away from her for a few moments, I’ll be okay.
I lock the car doors as soon as I’ve turned on the engine. My tyres screech as I reverse too quickly, then I’m on the road and I can’t see her any more. Thank God.
It’s a few minutes before I realise I’m shaking from the cold. I haven’t got my coat. I left it in the room at the police station, draped over the back of my chair. With the article about Charlie Zailer in the pocket.
2
1/3/08
Somebody needs to say something, thought Charlie. A speech. Oh, God. It was too late; it had only occurred to her now, this second. She hadn’t prepared anything and she doubted Simon had either. Unless he was planning to surprise her. Of course he isn’t, fool-he’s as clueless as you are about engagement party protocol. Charlie laughed to herself as her mind filled with the image of Simon clinking a fork against his glass, saying, ‘Unaccustomed as I am…’ And what better way for his imaginary speech to begin; the word ‘unaccustomed’ might have been invented for Simon Waterhouse.
I’ll make him do it, thought Charlie, running through a list of possible threats in her head. The party had been his idea. I’ll force him to stand up in front of nearly a hundred people and declare his undying love for me. Charlie turned away from the packed room, the shouting, dancing and mingled laughter. What right did her guests have to be happier than she was?
She filled the last of the champagne glasses, lifted the yellow tablecloth and bent to put the empty bottles out of sight. Crouching by the table leg, she wished she could stay there for ever, or at least until tonight was over. She didn’t want to have to stand up and face everyone with a this-is-my-special-night smile.
Not that they were her guests, or Simon’s-that was part of the problem. Neither of them had been willing to host the party at home, so they, their friends, relatives and colleagues were all-for a price, of course-guests of the Malt Shovel in Hamblesford for the evening, a pub that, as far as Charlie knew, was known and loved by nobody present. It was the first place she’d phoned and been given the answer ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you have a function room?’ Too busy to research the matter further, Charlie had decided it would have to do. Hamblesford was a pretty village with a green, a memorial cross and a church at its centre. The Malt Shovel had window boxes stuffed full of yellow and red flowers, a white-painted stone exterior and a thatched roof. It was advantageously positioned opposite a stream and a small bridge; it looked the part.
Because tonight was all about faking; Charlie knew that even if Simon didn’t. She couldn’t understand why he’d insisted on having an engagement party; it was so unlike him. Did he really want to make their relationship the centre of everybody’s attention? Apparently so, and he’d clammed up whenever Charlie had asked why. ‘It’s normal, isn’t it?’ was all he was willing to say on the matter.
It couldn’t be a bid to please his mother. Kathleen Waterhouse rarely left the house, apart from to go to church and to the care home for the elderly where she worked part-time. It had taken Simon weeks to persuade her to come tonight, and even when she’d agreed it had been with the proviso that she would only stay for an hour. Would she really leave on the dot of nine? She’d arrived at exactly eight, as Simon had predicted she would, clutching her husband Michael’s arm, white-faced, saying, ‘Oh, dear, we’re not the first, are we?’ Simon and Charlie had enthused about how nice it was to see them, but they hadn’t responded in kind. Nor had they brought a gift. Charlie had waited for them to say, ‘Congratulations’, but all Kathleen had said to her, shrinking against her husband as if she wanted to dissolve into him, was, ‘Do you know we’re only staying for an hour, dear? Did Simon tell you? I don’t like to be where people are drinking and getting rowdy.’ Her eyes had widened in horror as they took in the array of bottles and cans on the table at the entrance to the room. At the moment, Charlie thought, I’m not linked by marriage to a rabidly devout teetotaller, but all that’s about to change.
Something shiny appeared beside her arm as she rummaged under the table. She turned and saw a silver shoe with a heel so high it bent the foot it was supposed to support into a right angle, and, above it, an expanse of spray-tanned ankle. ‘Hiding, are you?’ DC Colin Sellers’ wife Stacey nudged Charlie’s shoulder with her leg, nearly making her lose her balance. ‘Yum!’ she said. ‘Lovely jubbly bubbly. You’re going to love the prezzie me and Colin got you.’
Charlie doubted it. Stacey had a sticker on her car saying ‘Honk if you’re horny’. Her taste in most things was poor. Husbands especially; Colin Sellers had been screwing a singer called Suki Kitson for as long as Charlie had known him. Everyone knew but his thick-as-a-brick wife.
Charlie waited until Stacey had moved away before coming out from under the table. She looked at her watch. Quarter to nine. Only fifteen minutes left of Kathleen’s hour. If Simon’s parents left promptly, as promised, the volume could go up again. As it was, Charlie could barely hear the Limited Sympathy CD that was playing in the background. Kathleen had asked for it to be turned down, claiming loud music gave her a migraine.
Charlie looked round the room, through the gaps in the clusters of sweaty bodies that surrounded her on all sides, trying to catch a glimpse of her future mother-in-law. Ugh, what a thought. Her next one was even worse, and made her eyes prickle with tears: It won’t happen. Simon doesn’t really want to marry me. He’ll pull out, when it’s almost but not quite too late.
Did she want it to be too late? she asked herself, not for the first time. Did she want to see Simon trapped, by his own foolishness and lack of self-knowledge, in a marriage that she wanted and he didn’t? She dug her nails into the palms of her hands t
o put a stop to the nonsense in her head. It was nonsense; of course it was. The one thing about Simon that was beyond dispute was his intelligence. Clever people didn’t propose marriage over and over again to people they didn’t want to marry. Did they?
Am I as stupid as Stacey? Charlie wondered.
The function room was like a sauna-a split-level, squalid one with mustard-coloured wallpaper in a geometric pattern of diamonds within diamonds, and sash windows with grease-smeared panes that were so original their frames were rotting. All the money that had been spent on the Malt Shovel in recent years had been spent on its exterior. Here’s to deceptive appearances, thought Charlie, raising her glass in a private toast. She looked around for a member of pub staff, someone who could turn off the heating.
Simon was over by the window, talking to DC Chris Gibbs and his wife Debbie. Charlie couldn’t catch his eye. She tried to beam the word ‘speech’ into his brain using telepathy. When that failed, she tried the word ‘parents’. Where were Kathleen and Michael? Charlie was annoyed, convinced she was more worried about them than Simon was. Please let them be having a pleasant chat with someone respectable. Inspector Proust and his wife Lizzie-that might not be a total disaster. On the other hand, Proust, though not a drinker, could be relied upon to open any conversation with a remark that would offend his interlocutor to the core. But then he generally let Lizzie do the talking when they were together, so maybe it would be all right.
Charlie liked the inspector’s wife a lot. Lizzie was petite with cropped white hair and a surprisingly youthful face for a woman in her late fifties. She was down-to-earth, socially adaptable, a pacifier rather than an agitator. Charlie felt guilty for calling her Mrs Snowman behind her back; it wasn’t fair to extend Proust’s nickname to his wife, whose warmth was one of the few things that could thaw her husband’s freezer-compartment demeanour.
Charlie spotted Giles and Lizzie Proust talking to Colin Sellers by the buffet table. Sellers was visibly drunk already, red in the face and dripping sweat. Proust looked unimpressed, but then that wasn’t unusual for the Snowman. He looked that way most of the time, even when not faced with a moist inebriate. Something jarred in Charlie’s mind: a twitch of discomfort beneath the surface of her thoughts. What was it? Something to do with Sellers… The woman yesterday, the one who’d called herself Ruth Bussey. Charlie had asked her if Sellers had put her up to telling that preposterous story about her boyfriend killing someone who wasn’t dead, as a prank to be revealed here at the party. If only.
The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down Page 3