‘Ruth Bussey mentioned none of this.’ Charlie pulled a cigarette out of a packet on the window-sill. She had nothing to light it with. ‘Was he in the bedroom with her when she took her clothes off? Had they gone to bed together?’
‘He wouldn’t say.’
‘Did he have his clothes on when he strangled her?’
‘Wouldn’t say.’
Charlie doubted she’d be able to come up with a question Simon wouldn’t have put to Seed. Everything Gibbs would have neglected to ask, Simon would have asked several times over.
‘He answered some questions willingly and in great detail-others, he wouldn’t open his mouth.’
‘His girlfriend was exactly the same,’ said Charlie.
‘I’ve never come across anything like it before.’ Simon shook his head. ‘You know what it’s like normally: people talk or they don’t. Sometimes there’s nothing doing at first, then you twirl them and they spill the lot. Other times they spout crap until you point out to them how they’ve landed themselves in it, at which point they clam up. Aidan Seed: none of the above. It was like he had this… this checklist in his head. Two lists: the questions he was allowed to answer and the ones he wasn’t. When I asked him the questions on the first list, he went out of his way to be informative. Like I said, I got every detail of Mary’s appearance, from the tiny caramel-coloured birthmark beneath her lower lip-he actually said “caramel-coloured”-to her small earlobes, her wiry, curly hair, black with the odd strand of silver.’
‘Is she attractive?’ Charlie asked. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m not asking if you fancied her. I just wondered.’
‘She’s not pretty,’ said Simon after some thought.
‘But striking? Sexy?’
He shrugged. ‘Dunno.’
Aidan Seed’s not the only one with a list in his mind of questions it’s not safe to answer, thought Charlie. ‘Did he say if he killed her in the bed or moved her body there later?’ she asked, a question she knew would be on Simon’s acceptable list. Is there anything I wouldn’t do to please him? Would I take early retirement and roam the country with a set of golf clubs, wearing dreadful sweaters?
‘She was in the bed when he killed her, he said. But… listen to us.’ Simon took a swig of his beer. ‘ “Did he move the body?” If Seed and his girlfriend are mad, we’ve nearly caught them up. What body? Mary Trelease is alive.’
‘You said “the questions he’s allowed to answer”,’ said Charlie. ‘Who’s doing the allowing? Ruth Bussey? She also seemed eager to talk, but only in response to certain prompts. And then I’d ask her something else-in most cases, the obvious next question-and she’d button it. Not a word, not even, “Sorry, I can’t answer that.” ’
‘Could there be a third person involved, someone who’s telling them what they can and can’t say?’
‘Mary Trelease?’ Charlie suggested.
Simon waved the idea away. ‘Why would she tell them both to go to the police and pretend Seed believes he killed her? Why would they go along with it?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, knowing she didn’t have one. ‘Gibbs asked Trelease if she knew an Aidan Seed. She said no, but he thought she was lying. I asked her again today, told her he was a picture-framer, how old he was. She said no. Seemed genuine enough, but then she’d had a day to polish up her act. Seed, though-he wasn’t acting. He feels guilty about something, that’s for sure. Whatever’s in his head, I wouldn’t want it in mine. He kept saying, “I’m a murderer.” Said he’d felt like he was dying himself when his hands were round her neck, the nail of his left thumb pressing into his right thumb…’
‘He said that?’
Simon nodded.
‘But he hasn’t strangled her. Nobody has.’ Charlie shuddered. ‘This is starting to do my head in. I’ve heard plenty of people confess to crimes they haven’t committed, but they’re always crimes someone’s committed. Why would anyone confess to the murder of a woman who isn’t dead? According to Ruth Bussey, Seed didn’t tell her any of that stuff about the bedroom, or strangling Mary-why not?’
‘You wouldn’t want to put that sort of image in your girlfriend’s head,’ Simon suggested.
‘What did Seed say his relationship with Mary Trelease was? How did he know her?’ Seeing Simon’s expression, Charlie guessed the answer. ‘He wouldn’t say.’ She cast around for something else to ask, as if the right formulation of words might shed sudden light. Nothing came to mind. ‘We should be doing the pair of them for wasting police time,’ she said.
‘Not my decision. For once, I’m glad. Seed’s not like any bullshit artist I’ve ever seen. Something was bothering him, something real.’
Charlie had felt the same about Ruth Bussey until she’d found the article.
‘Kombothekra’s got to decide where to go next with it,’ said Simon. ‘If it was my call, I don’t think I’d want to risk not taking statements from everyone involved. From Seed at the very least. Though I’ve no idea what I’d do with his statement once I had it.’ He frowned as a new thought occurred to him. ‘What did you decide to do? After you spoke to Ruth Bussey?’
Charlie felt her face heat up. ‘Err on the side of negligence, that’s my motto,’ she said bitterly. ‘I wasn’t planning to follow it up, even though she told me she was afraid something really bad was going to happen, and even though a fool could have seen she was seriously fucked up. I hadn’t even checked, like you and Gibbs did, that Mary Trelease was alive.’ Charlie put the cigarette she was holding in her mouth: comfort food.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Simon.
She left the room, started to go downstairs.
‘What?’ He followed her. ‘What did I say?’
‘Nothing. I’m getting a lighter.’
There were a few to choose from on the mantelpiece in the lounge, all plastic and disposable. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ Simon asked.
‘That’s a question from the wrong list. Sorry.’ Charlie tried to laugh, lighting her cigarette. The wonderful tranquillising power of nicotine started to do its work.
‘You said before that Ruth Bussey was waiting for you when you went into work yesterday.’
‘Did I?’ Too clever for his own good. And everyone else’s.
‘Why you?’
Charlie walked over to her handbag, which she’d left dangling from the door handle, and pulled out the newspaper article. ‘She left her coat behind. This was in the pocket.’ Did he have any idea how hard it was for her to show it to him? Chances were he hadn’t seen it at the time; Simon didn’t read local papers.
She left him alone in the lounge, took her cigarette through the kitchen and out to the backyard, even though it was cold and she had no coat or shoes on. She stared at what Olivia called her ‘installation’: a pile of broken furniture, things Charlie had dismantled and thrown out two years ago. ‘How hard is it to hire a skip?’ Liv said plaintively whenever she visited. Charlie didn’t know, and didn’t have the time or the inclination to find out. My neighbours must pray every night that I’ll move, she thought. Especially the ones who’d replaced their neat, paved yard with a little lawn and flower-beds as soon as they moved in. Now they had colour-coordinated borders: red, white and blue flowers in a pattern that was overbearingly regular. What a waste of time, when your garden’s the size of a fingernail.
Charlie felt something touch her and cried out in alarm before realising it was Simon. He put his arms round her waist.
‘Well? Did you read it?’
‘Slander,’ he said. ‘Like the way you described yourself tonight. ’
‘It wasn’t negligent, to take no action over Ruth Bussey?’ She knew he was talking about the party, but chose to misunderstand.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Simon. ‘As we both keep saying, no crime’s been committed. Bussey told you Trelease was alive and well-turns out she is.’
‘So Sam Kombothekra will tell you to leave it. It’s not a police matter. Just three oddballs behaving oddly, none of o
ur business.’
Simon sighed. ‘Are you happy with that explanation? Seed and Bussey come in on the same day, separately, and tell two versions of almost the same story? You want to let it lie?’
‘Ruth Bussey said she was frightened something was going to happen.’ That was the part Charlie kept coming back to in her mind, now that she knew the whole thing hadn’t been about her.
‘One thing’s going to have to happen if we want to take it any further,’ said Simon.
‘What?’
He’s still touching me. He didn’t have to, but he did, he is.
He started to hum a tune, Aled Jones’ ‘Walking in the Air’.
‘You, not we,’ said Charlie. One of the advantages of leaving CID-the only one-was that she no longer had to negotiate with the Snowman. She tried not to sound as if she was crowing when she said, ‘I don’t work for him any more.’
3
Sunday 2 March 2008
A noise startles me: my house, breaking its long silence with a sharp ringing. The woolly feeling in my head clears. Adrenalin gets me moving. I crawl into the lounge on my hands and knees to avoid putting weight on my injured foot, and manage to grab the phone on the third ring, still holding the blanket I’ve been using as a shawl around my shoulders. I can’t say hello. I can’t allow myself to hope.
‘It’s me.’
Aidan. Relief pours through me. I clutch the phone, needing something solid to hold on to. ‘Are you coming back?’ I say. I have so many questions, but this is the one that matters.
‘Yeah,’ he says. I wait for the part that comes next: I’ll always come back, Ruth. You know that, don’t you? For once, he doesn’t say it. The thudding of my heart fills the silence.
‘Where have you been?’ I ask. He has been gone longer than usual. Two nights.
‘Working.’
‘You weren’t at the workshop.’ There’s a pause. Does he regret giving me a key? I wait for him to ask for it back. He gave it to me when I first started to work for him, the same key for Seed Art Services as for his home. It was a sign that he trusted me.
I spent parts of both Friday and Saturday nights in his messy room behind the framing studio, crying, waiting for him to come back. Several times, drained and exhausted, I fell asleep, then came to suddenly, convinced that, if Aidan returned at all, he would go to my house. I’m not sure how many times I drove from one end of town to the other, feeling as if wherever I went I would be too late, I would miss him by a fraction of a second.
‘We need to talk, Ruth.’
I begin to cry at the obviousness of it. ‘Come back, then.’
‘I’m on my way. Stay put.’ He’s gone before I can reply. Of course I’ll stay. I’ve got nowhere else to go.
I crawl back to the hall, where I was before Aidan phoned, where I’ve been sitting cross-legged since six o’clock this morning, staring up at the small monitor on the shelf above the front door. My body is stiff and sore from being in one position too long. The underside of my damaged foot looks like decayed puff pastry. I don’t feel strong enough to clear up two days’ worth of mess, but I must.
The remote control: if Aidan sees it on the floor he’ll know I’ve been watching the tapes. He’ll be angry. I glance up at the screen, scared that if I take my eyes off it, I’ll miss something. The image changes a second later: a grainy black and white picture of the path outside my house, with English yew hedges sculpted into rounded abstract forms bordering the grass along one side, is replaced by the cluster of poplars on the other side of the house and a clear view of the park gates. Nobody coming in or out. Nobody.
I pick up the remote control, try to stand at the same time, and knock over the stinking, overflowing ashtray that’s been keeping me company lately. ‘Shit,’ I mutter, wishing I’d thought to ask Aidan how far away he was. Will he be back in five minutes or two hours? As well as the upturned ashtray and its contents, there’s an empty wine bottle next to me and an empty packet of Silk Cut. My blood-soaked shoe lies on its side by the front door, where I dropped it on my way to the bathroom to clean myself up on Friday.
If I’d told Charlie Zailer I’d got something in my shoe, she’d have said, ‘Take it out, then.’ How could I have explained why it was so much easier to pretend it wasn’t there?
There’s still some blood in the bath. I should have given it a proper scrub on Friday afternoon, but I couldn’t face it. It was hard enough to hobble down the hall, put my foot under the tap and turn it on. I’d come home to find my boiler had packed in again. The house was as cold as the park outside, and the water coming out of my taps was colder. I kept my eyes closed as I rubbed the torn, pulpy flesh with my hand, shivering, trying to dislodge the thing that had cut me. My foot throbbed as liquid cold flowed over it. I felt sick when I heard something hard hit the enamel.
Walking on my heel, I throw my ruined shoes in the outside bin, along with the wine bottle and cigarette packet. Moving thaws my chilled bones a little. I sweep up the ash and cigarette butts, put them in the bin too. Then I give the bath a good going over, stopping now and then to get my breath back when dizziness threatens to lay me low. I’ve eaten nothing today but a Nutri-Grain cereal bar and a packet of Hula Hoops.
We need to talk, Ruth.
I have to keep moving, or I’ll imagine all the worst things Aidan might say to me. I’ll panic.
I’m about to pick up the remote control and put it on the shelf next to the monitor when I hear a noise outside, a movement in the trees close to my lounge windows. I stop, listen. Almost a minute later, I hear another sound, louder than the first: branches moving. Someone is standing next to my house. Not Aidan; he’d come straight to the door. I sink to my knees in the hall, slide across into the lounge and position myself behind an armchair.
Charlie Zailer. I left my coat at the police station. She might have brought it back. I pray it’s her-someone who won’t hurt me-even though on Friday I couldn’t wait to get away from her.
Then I hear laughing, two voices I don’t recognise. I edge out from behind the chair and see a teenage boy framed in my lounge window. He is undoing his flies, turning back towards the path to shout at his friend to wait for him while he has a slash. A shaving rash covers his neck and chin, and he’s wearing jeans that reveal a good three inches of the boxer shorts beneath. I close my eyes, steady myself on the arm of the chair. It’s nobody, no one who knows about or is interested in me. I hear the more distant voice, the friend, calling him an animal.
As he walks away, I watch to check he doesn’t look back. He adjusts his jeans and scratches the back of his neck, unaware of my eyes on him. If he turned round now, he would see me clearly.
It was one of the things I liked most about this little house, the way the lounge stuck out like a sort of display box at the front of the park, with large stained-glass-topped windows on three sides. Malcolm told me he’d had trouble finding a tenant after the last one left. ‘No privacy, you see.’ He pointed as we approached the park gates, keen to list Blantyre Lodge’s flaws before I crossed the threshold: there were bollards I’d have to lower and raise every time I drove my car into or out of the park. The lounge and bedroom weren’t perfect squares-each had a corner missing, as if a triangle had been cut out of the space. ‘I might as well be honest,’ Malcolm said. ‘It’s not as if you wouldn’t notice.’
‘Privacy’s the opposite of what I want,’ I told him. ‘If people can see me and I can see people, that suits me fine.’ I was surprised by my own words, unsure if this was the truth or the exact reverse of how I felt. I remember thinking, if I’m invisible, nobody will be able to help me if I need help.
‘Get yourself some good net curtains,’ Malcolm said, and I flinched, imagining faces obscured by densely-patterned white material: His face and Hers.
‘No,’ I made a point of saying, and making sure Malcolm heard me. I doubt he cared one way or the other, but I needed to assert myself. ‘I want to be able to see the park, if it’s going to be my gard
en.’ I was happy to share it with children, joggers, passers-by. A garden I wouldn’t have to touch but that would always be well maintained because it was a public resource; a beautiful green space that was neither secluded nor enclosed-it was ideal.
‘The last tenant had some big Japanese screens,’ said Malcolm, apparently oblivious to what I’d just said. ‘You know, the sort people use for dressing and undressing. He put one at each window.’
‘I won’t cover the windows with anything,’ I said, thinking that I might even take down the curtains, assuming there were some. I’d spotted two large square lights attached to the side of the house facing the wide path that cut the park in half. ‘Do those come on automatically when the natural light falls below a certain level?’ I asked. Malcolm nodded, and I thought, So they’ll show colour, even in the darkness. At night, each of the lodge’s windows would be a stunning still life of trees, plants and flowers: rich, deep greens, reds and purples, all bathed in a gold glow. Whoever was responsible for planting in the park knew what they were doing, I thought, looking at the blue hob-bits and astilbes that circled a large pink-edged phormium. ‘When can I move in?’ I asked.
‘You’re keen. Don’t you want to see inside first?’ Malcolm laughed.
I shook my head. ‘That’s my house,’ I said, standing back to take a mental photograph of the small building in front of me with feathery red Virginia creeper leaves all over its roof. I could have gazed at it for hours. Its pleasing aspect was bound up, in my mind, with the idea of getting better. It was seeing a beautiful object-a painting-that had first tripped something inside me and made me realise I could rejoin the world if I wanted to. Blantyre Lodge wasn’t art; it was a place to live: something functional, something I needed. Yet to me it was also beautiful, and I felt at the time that each beautiful thing I saw and felt a connection with-made a part of my spirit, however pretentious that sounds-took me one step closer to recovery.
The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down Page 6