The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘I don’t believe in God,’ I told them. ‘But if he exists, I hope he doesn’t forgive you. I hope he lights a match under both your souls.’ All those years of trying so hard not to upset them-I suddenly found I was aching to devastate their sad little fantasy world, to say things that would torture them, that they’d never be able to forget. I didn’t hold back. I inflicted as much pain as I could using only words, then walked out of their house, leaving them ravaged and howling.

  I moved to Spilling shortly afterwards. Things were better in Spilling. No one seemed to know anything about me-I could say my name without getting the looks I was so sick of getting in Lincoln. I sent my parents a PO box address, but they’ve never used it. I ought to feel terrible about this, probably, but I don’t. I feel free. I found a house in Blantyre Park, the opposite of an enclosed, private garden. There was nowhere where I could be tied up and tortured. How sick to think that was what first attracted me to the place. But life is sick. It was sick when it sent you, Mary, into the gallery where I’d been working happily with Saul to ruin things for me all over again. It was sick when I went to see Charlie Zailer at the police station and a stone got into my shoe and cut my foot so badly I could hardly walk. I couldn’t take it out, couldn’t bear to see or touch a stone that had been pressed against my skin. I can’t even say the word ‘stone’. I’m surprised I can write it.

  I went to see Charlie Zailer last Friday. Did she tell you that? I know she’s been here and spoken to you about Aidan. I went to her because Aidan told me he’d killed you and I was frightened and didn’t know what to do. He believes he strangled you, or says he does. He told the police that you were naked when it happened, in a double bed in the front bedroom of your house. It wasn’t long after he made his ‘confession’ that I discovered who you were: the woman who had attacked me at Saul’s gallery. Why would my boyfriend say he had murdered someone who was still alive? I know you know something about this, Mary. You must do. I don’t care how bad the truth is. All I want is to understand.

  Ruth

  11

  Tuesday 4 March 2008

  ‘Your turn,’ I say to Mary when she looks up from my letter. ‘You promised. A fair exchange, you said. Where’s Aidan?’

  ‘Aidan Seed,’ she says softly. ‘The man you’re so sure I know.’

  ‘Did he kill Martha Wyers? Did you? Both of you together?’ The painting is still imprinted on my mind. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. No one would paint someone dead like that, in such lurid detail, unless they relished the death in some way, wanted to savour it. The picture had an atmosphere of triumph about it; I don’t think I can have imagined that. I want to see it again, but I’m scared to go charging upstairs like I did before, scared that Mary wouldn’t be here when I came back down. I’m not letting her out of my sight, not until she’s answered my questions.

  ‘Martha killed Martha,’ she says, lighting a cigarette. ‘She hanged herself. I suppose you think I’m sick, painting her like that.’

  I don’t acknowledge the question. She’s getting nothing from me until she gives me something back.

  ‘People deal with grief in different ways.’ Her voice hardens, as if it angers her to find herself caught up in justifications. ‘When you lose everything that matters to you, you want something to show for it.’

  ‘You loved Martha.’

  ‘Very much. At the same time, nowhere near enough.’

  ‘You think you could have saved her?’

  ‘Could and should.’

  ‘What happened?’ I ask, leaning forward in my chair. I don’t know what time it is, but it’s late. Dark outside. Mary hasn’t closed the curtains. Every now and then she looks out at the lamplit street beyond the window, her sharp eyes scouring the night. For Aidan?

  ‘This man,’ she says, waving my letter at me. ‘Was there anyone before him? Men, boys? Girls?’ She smiles.

  How many more questions will she make me answer before she answers mine? ‘At first I only dated good Christian boys,’ I say. ‘The sons of my parents’ friends.’

  ‘I’m surprised they let you date anyone,’ says Mary.

  ‘Only once I was sixteen, and only trips to public places like the cinema. When I left home and they couldn’t keep tabs on me as easily, I went for anybody who was nothing like the people I’d known through church. The further removed from that world, the better. I went for the sort of men who would have reduced the church boys to quivering wrecks.’

  ‘That sounds dangerous.’

  ‘Not really. I didn’t respect or care about any of them. I just wanted to prove I could sleep around and the world wouldn’t fall apart. And it didn’t. The first man I really felt anything for was… Him.’

  ‘What about Aidan Seed?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You love him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mary smiles at my hesitation. ‘A man who tells you he’s killed someone who you know is alive: me. A man who fucks with your brain so badly that it drives you half insane.’

  I hate this.

  ‘Don’t you see the pattern?’

  ‘You’re not a shrink,’ I tell her. She hates Aidan. Hates him more than anything. With this insight, the conspiracy I’ve constructed in my mind-Mary and Aidan against me-starts to dissolve. At first I’m relieved-I can forgive him anything but that, anything at all, I know I can-but the respite doesn’t last long. Not good enough, I think to myself. Not the same as being able to forgive him anything, not unconditional.

  ‘I could be a shrink,’ says Mary. ‘I don’t believe I’d need any training whatsoever. All I’d need is experience, which I’ve got, and a brain, which I’ve got.’

  ‘We made a deal. I’ve told you everything.’

  ‘No, you haven’t.’

  How does she know? My mind fills with all the things I’ve kept back: the Access 2 Art fair, Aidan’s prediction about the nine paintings, his insistence that I bring Abberton to him as proof. Proof that he didn’t murder Mary. Why would anyone who knew they’d strangled someone demand to see proof that they hadn’t? Sometimes, because my understanding nothing has become normal, I forget how little sense it all makes. Then I remember again and am as shocked as if I were realising it for the first time.

  ‘We made a deal,’ I say again.

  Mary lets air out through clenched teeth, a hiss of disgust. ‘You’re here because you want the truth about Aidan. You think I must be able to explain it to you. You don’t care how bad it is-you want to know.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’ve still got a choice. You could leave this house, forget him, forget about Martha. Forget me. The safe option.’

  ‘I don’t want to be safe. I want to know.’

  ‘I don’t know Aidan Seed,’ says Mary, looking past me into the distance.

  No. Not possible.

  ‘I used to, though. I knew him a long time ago.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Aidan since the day Martha died. The tenth of April, 2000.’ Mary puts my letter down on the table and bends over it, pushing her bushy hair out of her eyes. ‘When were your seventy-two hours?’

  I don’t need to ask what she means. To me, that number will only ever mean one thing. ‘Later.’ I force myself to give her one more piece of information, of my life. ‘It started on April the twenty-second.’

  ‘Close enough,’ she says. Then her face goes blank. ‘Aidan was there when Martha jumped.’

  I hardly dare to breathe.

  ‘He also didn’t stop her.’

  ‘You were there too?’

  ‘Three’s a crowd,’ she says in a sing-song voice. ‘I don’t think Aidan wanted Martha dead. I’m the one he wants dead. Maybe he did. If he did, he’d have stopped wanting it when she jumped. Too late. You freeze, I suppose. It happens too quickly.’ Mary’s hands are shaking. ‘Once she’d gone down, there was no way I could get her up. I tried-’ She breaks off. ‘Aidan could have got her up, he could have lifted her, but he didn�
�t try. He called an ambulance. He ran to the phone. Ran away. He saw I was struggling, but he didn’t help me.’ She breathes hard, locked into the terrible memory. ‘He froze. When you can’t stand the situation you’re in, you tell yourself it’s not real-it’s an illusion. I told myself the same thing.’

  ‘Why didn’t he tell me any of this?’ I blurt out.

  ‘Did you tell him about Cherub Cottage?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I shake my head. ‘I couldn’t.’ Couldn’t tell anyone. Until I had to.

  ‘Maybe he wanted you to carry on loving him,’ says Mary. ‘How could you, once you knew he’d stood by and let someone die?’

  ‘He told me he’d killed you. Why did he say that?’

  She rubs her thumb along her lips and back again. ‘He wants me dead. He’s going to kill me, or try to. It’s a threat.’

  ‘No! Aidan’s not a killer.’

  She laughs. ‘Don’t kid yourself.’

  ‘It makes no sense. If he wanted to threaten you, why not do it to your face?’

  ‘He’s clever. I’d have called the police, wouldn’t I? I assume it’s an offence to threaten someone’s life.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I can’t think straight, can’t process any of this.

  ‘Of course it is. It must be. There’d have been reprisals for him, and he doesn’t want that. He thinks he’s suffered enough.’

  ‘Why? Why has he suffered?’

  ‘His childhood,’ says Mary, assuming I know what she’s referring to.

  I feel ashamed of my ignorance. Aidan never wanted to talk about his family. I didn’t push it; I was equally reluctant to talk about my parents. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

  ‘He tried to save her later,’ Mary mutters.

  ‘Aidan tried to save Martha?’

  ‘Once he’d rung the ambulance. He’s no weakling-well, you know that. It was easy for him to get her down. The emergency services operator must have told him to do it: lift her up, or cut her down or whatever. Stop the rope from strangling her.’

  I don’t want to have to visualise it.

  ‘I’ve thought about this a lot,’ says Mary. ‘A man rings up saying a woman’s just hanged herself in front of him. If you were the person on the switchboard, what would you think? You’d assume he’d rushed to save her first, wouldn’t you, and only rung you afterwards? Soon as you found out she was still hanging there, dying while he wastes time on the phone, you’d tell him to get back in there and save her.’

  I wince.

  ‘How do you feel about your boyfriend now? A man who only tries to save a dying woman once a disembodied official voice has told him to, who dreams up a sick, devious way to threaten my life. You know he described me in great detail, right down to my birthmark?’ She points to the patch of brown skin beneath her bottom lip. ‘That was him letting me know I’m his target. If he tells the police he’s strangled me, murdered me, what are they going to do when they find me alive and well?’

  She lights another cigarette, coughing. ‘Alive, anyway. I’ve probably got lung cancer, the amount I smoke. The police aren’t very bright. Aidan knew they’d rush back to reassure him once they’d found out his story wasn’t true. Poor, deluded man, they’d think-what a shame. His determination to make them believe him sent them back here twice, three times. What if he’s right? they thought. Even though we’ve all met this woman he claims to have murdered, we’d better check again. And then you turn up, and I hear from you as well that he says he’s killed me…’

  She stands up, wrapping her wild hair round her hand, yanking it straight. ‘Evil bastard! He knew it would scare me more than a straightforward threat. How do you think it feels to have your death discussed as if it’s already happened?

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  She looks at me oddly.

  It’s a simple question, an obvious one. ‘Why would Aidan want to frighten you? Why would he want to kill you?’

  ‘Will you let me take you somewhere?’ she asks.

  ‘No. Where?’ I think of Charlie Zailer’s advice: Don’t go to Mary’s house.

  ‘Villiers.’ The name on the tea towel in Mary’s kitchen. I saw it last time I was here. ‘My old school. There’s a house in the grounds, Garstead Cottage. I use it for painting, when I’m not here. Martha used to write there. Her parents rent it from the school. We’ll be safe there. Martha was a writer-did I tell you that?’

  ‘No.’

  Mary sighs, starts to rub her temples with her fingertips. ‘Then you don’t know how Aidan and Martha met.’

  ‘No.’ How could I? ‘Why did Martha kill herself?’

  ‘Come with me to Villiers,’ she says. ‘If you want the truth about me, Martha and Aidan, there’s something you need to see.’

  12

  5/3/08

  ‘DC Dunning’s already heard everything I can tell you,’ Simon said to DS Coral Milward. Dunning sat beside her, clutching his own arms as if miming a strait-jacket. He reeked of the same acid-seaweed aftershave he’d had on yesterday-his version of a chemical weapon, thought Simon; all the better for being legal.

  Dunning had interviewed Simon and Charlie last night, together and separately. Each time, the room they were in was dingier. This one wasn’t much bigger than a toilet cubicle, and had some kind of hard, woven substance on the floor that looked like the plaited bristles of a brush. It was decayed to a rusty colour around the edges, coarse hairs sprouting round one or two dark-rimmed holes in the middle. The room was too hot as well as ugly. They were all sweating, Simon most of all. He didn’t care. Stench-wise, as in every other respect, he was proud to give as good as he got.

  ‘You don’t need us to go over it again,’ he said. ‘We’ve both told you everything we know.’ He was acutely aware of the details Charlie hadn’t volunteered: Mary Trelease’s post-mortem portrait of a dead woman called Martha Wyers, Ruth Bussey’s bedroom wall. Simon knew her silence was down to embarrassment. There was probably no connection between Martha Wyers and the murder Dunning and Milward were investigating; Charlie didn’t want to look stupid, and she wanted even less to tell a pair of hostile strangers about Bussey’s collection of Charlie Zailer memorabilia.

  Simon felt uneasy about his role in the lie. Even an arsehole like Neil Dunning had the right to do his job unimpeded. On the other hand, if Dunning ever got round to taking the interest in Bussey and Trelease that Simon had told him countless times he ought to, he could find out for himself about Martha Wyers and Bussey’s collection of cuttings, decide for himself if they were important.

  Last night, all Dunning had seemed to want to talk about was Simon’s ‘irregular’ behaviour on Monday. He persisted in using this description, even after Simon had explained that taking things too far was something he did habitually. Funny, the situations you find yourself in. He’d never thought he would end up in someone else’s nick telling stories of his own recklessness to another DC, to prove that irregularity was something that had been with him for a long time and had never led to a violent death.

  Simon knew Dunning didn’t really fancy him for Gemma Crowther’s murder, but Dunning wanted him to think he did. Coral Milward was an unknown quantity, a fat middle-aged woman with short blonde hair, three thin gold chains round her neck and gold rings with pink cameos of women’s faces at their centres on three of her stubby-nailed fingers. Probably coral, Simon thought, in honour of her name. This was the first he had seen or heard of DS Milward. Unlike Dunning, she smiled a lot. She was smiling now. ‘You don’t ever ask witnesses to repeat their stories?’ she asked in a soft west-country accent.

  ‘I’m glad you said “witness”, not “suspect”.’

  Another smile. ‘I was being tactful. I want to show you a photograph.’

  ‘Of Len Smith?’ asked Simon.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Show me a photograph of Len Smith, so I can tell you that the man you know as Len Smith is Aidan Seed.’

  Milward hesitated befor
e saying, ‘We have no photograph of Len Smith.’

  ‘There is no Len Smith. Have you found Seed yet? Have you looked for him?’ Simon only ever felt this alert and on form when he was under attack; might as well make the most of it. It was what his life was about: triumphing over persecution. Not hard to find low-level persecution being beamed your way if you looked hard enough.

  Milward consulted her notes. ‘Aidan Seed. The picture-framer. ’

  ‘The Aidan Seed who killed Gemma Crowther. The only Aidan Seed I know, the one I’ve been talking about until I’m hoarse.’ Simon couldn’t resist adding, ‘If I knew of more than one Aidan Seed, I’d have mentioned it. To avoid confusion. Show me your photograph.’

  ‘I will,’ said Milward. ‘You were right about Seed’s car, incidentally. It’s parked outside Gemma Crowther’s house.’

  ‘It’ll stay there,’ Simon told her. ‘Seed won’t be back for it.’ He heard Charlie sigh. She hated it when he played prophet. ‘If I had to guess, I’d say he’s still in London: easiest place in the world to melt into a crowd and disappear. Plus, he’ll think it more likely you’ll look for him on his home turf or, at the other extreme, ports and airports, St Pancras-’

  ‘Enough,’ Milward cut him off. ‘Assuming you’re right and Seed’s our killer, why would he have left his car at the scene? One, he’d have needed it to get away, and two, why leave evidence of his presence when he could have taken the car and we might never have known he was there?’

  Simon counted them off on his fingers. ‘One, he didn’t need the car if he was heading into town-no one drives into central London. We know Seed doesn’t-I saw proof of that on Monday night. Check CCTV footage between Ruskington Road and Highgate underground-he’ll have gone for the tube within half an hour of killing Gemma Crowther, or jumped on a bus on Muswell Hill Road.’