Not until Aidan said, ‘Her name was Mary. Mary Trelease.’
1
Friday 29 Feb 2008
Here she is. I see her face in profile and only for a second as her car passes me, but I’m sure it’s her. Detective Sergeant Charlotte Zailer. If she drives past the part of the car park that’s reserved for visitors, I’ll know I’m right.
She does. I watch her silver Audi slow down and stop in one of the spaces marked ‘Police Parking Only’. I reach into my coat pockets, allowing my red-cold hands to rest in the fleecy warmth for a few seconds, then pull out the article from the Rawndesley and Spilling Telegraph. As Charlotte Zailer gets out of her car, unaware of my presence, I unfold it and look at the picture again. The same high cheekbones, the same narrow but full mouth, the same small, bony chin. It’s definitely her, though her hair is longer now, shoulder-length, and today she isn’t wearing glasses. She isn’t crying, either. In the small black and white picture, there are tears on her cheeks. I wonder why she didn’t wipe them away, knowing the press were there with their cameras. Perhaps someone had told her it would go down better with the public if she looked distraught.
She hitches her brown leather bag over her shoulder and starts to walk towards the looming red-brick building that casts a long, square shadow over the car park: Spilling Police Station. I instruct myself to follow her, but my legs don’t move. Shivering, I huddle beside my car. The winter sun warming my face makes my body feel colder by contrast.
There is no connection between the building in front of me and the only other police station I have been inside—this is what I must tell myself. They are simply two buildings, in the way that cinemas and restaurants are also buildings, and I am never stiff with fear when I walk past Spilling Picture House or the Bay Tree Bistro.
Detective Sergeant Zailer is moving slowly towards the entrance: double glass doors with a sign saying ‘Reception’ above them. She fumbles in her handbag. It’s the sort I like least—long and squashy, with a silly number of zips, buckles and protruding side pockets. She pulls out a packet of Marlboro Lights, throws it back in, then pulls out her mobile phone and stops for a moment, jabbing the keys with her long-nailed thumb. I could easily catch her up.
Go. Move. I stay where I am.
This time is nothing like last time, I tell myself. This time I am here by choice.
If you can call it that.
I am here because the only alternative would be to go back to Mary’s house.
Frustrated, I clamp my mouth shut to stop my teeth chattering. All my books advocate the technique of repeating encouraging mantras in your head. Useless. You can issue yourself with sensible instructions endlessly, but making those words take root in your mind and govern how you truly feel is another matter. Why do so many people believe that words have an innate authority?
A lie I told as a teenager pushes to the front of my mind. I pretended I’d said something similar to my father about the Bible, boasted to my friends about the terrible row it caused. ‘It’s only words, Dad. Someone, or maybe lots of people, sat down thousands of years ago and made it up, the whole lot. They wrote a book. Like Jackie Collins.’ The lie was easy to tell because those words were always in my head, though I lacked the courage ever to speak them aloud. My school friends knew Jackie Collins was my favourite writer; they had no idea that I hid her books under my bed inside empty sanitary-towel packets.
Disgust finally gets me moving: the realisation that I’m thinking about my father in order to dishearten myself, offering myself an excuse to give up. Charlotte Zailer is heading towards the doors, about to disappear inside. I start to run towards her. Something has found its way into my shoe and it’s hurting my foot. I’m going to be too late; by the time I reach reception, she’ll be in an office somewhere, making a coffee, starting her day’s work. ‘Wait!’ I yell. ‘Please, wait!’
She stops, turns. She has been unbuttoning her coat on her way up the steps, and I see she’s wearing a uniform. Doubt stills me, like an invisible blow to the legs, then I lurch forward again, staggering. Detective sergeants don’t wear uniforms. What if it isn’t her?
She is walking towards me. She must think I’m drunk, swaying all over the car park. ‘Are you after me?’ she calls out.
Other people are looking at me too, those getting into and out of their cars; they heard me shout, heard the desperation in my voice. My worst nightmare, to be seen by everybody. Strangers. I can’t speak. I’m confused, hot and cold at the same time, in different parts of my body. I can’t work out any more if I want this woman to be Charlotte Zailer or not.
She draws level with me. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks.
I step back. The thing in my shoe presses into the skin between my little toe and the next one as I put my weight on my left foot. ‘Are you Detective Sergeant Charlotte Zailer?’
‘I was,’ she says, still smiling but more guardedly. ‘Now I’m just plain sergeant. Do we know each other?’
I shake my head.
‘But you know who I am.’
I have rehearsed what I will say to her countless times, but not once did I think about what she might say to me.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Ruth Bussey.’ I steel myself for signs of recognition, but there are none.
‘Right. Well, Ruth, I’m part of the community policing team for Spilling now. Do you live in Spilling?’
‘Yes.’
‘This isn’t a community matter, is it? You wanted to speak to a detective?’
I can’t let her pass me on to someone else. My hand closes around the piece of newspaper in my pocket. ‘No, I want to talk to you. It won’t take long.’
She looks at her watch. ‘What’s it about? Why me in particular? I’d still like to know how you knew who I was.’
‘It’s . . . my boyfriend,’ I say in a monotone. It won’t be any easier to get the words out once we’re inside. If I tell her why I’m here, she’ll stop asking how I knew her name. ‘He thinks he killed somebody, but he’s wrong.’
Charlotte Zailer looks me up and down. ‘Wrong?’ She sighs. ‘Okay, now you’ve got my attention. Look, come inside and we’ll have a chat.’
As we walk, I move my foot around inside my shoe, trying to dislodge whatever’s digging into the pad of soft skin beneath my toes. It won’t budge. I can feel a sticky wetness: blood. Ignore it, block it out. I follow Sergeant Zailer into the reception area where there are more people—some in uniform, others in blue Aertex tops with the words ‘Police Staff’ printed on them. There’s a lot of blue here: the herringbone carpet on the floor, two suede-effect sofas forming a right angle in one corner. A long counter of pale, varnished pine with a semi-circular end protrudes from one wall like a breakfast bar jutting out into the middle of a kitchen.
Sergeant Zailer stops to speak to a middle-aged man with a pot belly, a dimpled chin and fluffy grey hair. He calls her Charlie, not Charlotte. I press down on my coat pocket with my right hand and listen to the faint rustle of the newspaper, trying to remind myself of the connection between us—between me and Charlie—but I have never felt lonelier in my life, and only the pain charging up from my foot through all the nerves in my body stops me from running away.
After what I’ve told her, she would run after me. How could she not? She’d chase me and she’d catch me.
‘Come on,’ she says to me when she’s finished talking to the grey-haired man. I limp after her. It’s a relief once we’re alone, in a corridor with uncovered brick walls that looks much older than the reception area. There is a background noise of running water; I look around, but its source isn’t obvious. Along the walls on both sides, against the brick, are pictures at eye level. On my right is a series of framed posters—domestic violence, needle exchanges, building safer communities. Opposite these are framed black and white etchings of different streets in Spilling. They’re atmospheric in a jagged sort of way, conveying the narrow, claustrophobic feel of the interlocking roads in th
e oldest part of town, the uneven house- and shop-fronts, the streets with their slippery cobbles. I feel a pang of sympathy for the artist, knowing that his or her exhibition is displayed here purely for its local relevance; no one values these pictures in their own right, as works of art.
‘Are you all right?’ Charlie Zailer asks me, waiting for me to catch up. ‘You’re limping.’
‘I sprained my ankle yesterday,’ I say, feeling a flush spread across my face.
‘Did you?’ She turns and stands in front of me, forcing me to stop. ‘Sprained ankles generally swell to twice their size. Yours doesn’t look swollen. It looks to me as if it’s your foot that’s sore. Has someone hurt you, Ruth? You seem very far from all right to me. Has your boyfriend hurt you, maybe?’
‘Aidan?’ I think about the way he kisses the straight line of pink scar tissue that starts below my ribcage and runs down over my stomach. He’s never asked what caused it, neither on that first night in London nor since.
He is incapable of harming anybody. I know he is.
‘Aidan?’ Charlie Zailer repeats. ‘Is that your boyfriend’s name?’
I nod.
‘Has Aidan hurt you?’ She folds her arms, blocking the corridor so that I can’t pass her. I don’t know where we’re going anyway; I have no choice but to wait.
‘No. I’ve got a . . . a bad blister on my foot, that’s all. It hurts when my shoe rubs against it.’
‘Why not say so, then? Why pretend a blister’s a sprained ankle?’
I can’t understand why I’m out of breath. I clench my teeth, against the pain in my foot and against her attitude. Knowing what she’s been through, I expected her to be kind. Understanding.
‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ she says in a loud, clear voice, as if she’s talking to a small child. ‘I’ll settle you in one of our reception rooms, sort us out with some tea, see if I can find a plaster for your foot . . .’
‘I don’t need a plaster,’ I say. New beads of sweat prickle my upper lip. ‘It’s fine, honestly. You don’t need to—’
‘. . . And then we’ll talk about your boyfriend. Aidan.’ She starts to walk again. I have to half run to keep up with her. Is it a test? The pain is constant now; I picture a wide, weeping gash beneath my toes, with whatever caused it embedded in the wound, pushing its way deeper in with every step. The effort I’m making not to think about it is like a tight thread in my mind, winding tighter and tighter. My eyes ache to close. I’m aware of the sound of my breathing, of the air rushing out of my lungs and having to be dragged back in.
I follow Charlie Zailer round a corner and we are in another corridor, colder than the last, with windows all along one side. No pictures here, only a row of framed certificates, all with some sort of official-looking stamp on them, but they’re high up on the wall and we’re going too fast for me to read the writing.
I stop when I see a pale green door ahead. I’ve done this before: walked down a long passageway towards a closed door. Green. Dark green.
‘Ruth?’ Sergeant Zailer is calling me, snapping her fingers in the air. ‘You look as if you’re in shock. What’s wrong? Is it your foot?’
‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.’
‘Are you asthmatic? Have you got an inhaler?’
Asthmatic? I don’t know what she’s talking about. ‘I’m all right,’ I tell her.
‘Well, come on, then.’ When I don’t move, she doubles back on herself, takes my arm and, with one hand on my back, steers me down the corridor, saying something about tea and coffee that sounds more complicated than a simple either-or offer. I mumble, ‘Thanks,’ hoping it’s the right answer. She unlocks the green door, directs me to a chair, tells me to wait. I don’t want her to leave me alone but I’m unwilling to ask her not to, knowing how pathetic I’d sound.
The room contains two chairs apart from the one I’m sitting on, a waste-paper basket and a table with a white-flowered cyclamen on it. The plant is too big for its pot. It must have been for some time, yet someone has been watering it regularly, or else its foliage wouldn’t look so lush. What fool would water a plant day after day and not realise it needed re-potting?
Green. The door of our room at the Drummond Hotel in London was green. One night of my life, one night out of thirty-eight years, but part of me is still there, trapped in the night that Aidan told me. Part of me never left that hotel.
All my books say there’s no point wasting your energy on ‘if only’s. They offer no advice about what to do if you’re hooked on them. There are no patches available in chemists’ shops that an ‘if only’ addict can stick on her arm to help break the destructive habit.
If only Aidan and I hadn’t gone to London last December, the nightmare I’m living now would never have started.
‘My boyfriend told me he killed a woman, but he didn’t.’
‘I need the woman’s name, and details of where we can find her,’ says Sergeant Zailer, ready to write down whatever I say. When I don’t answer immediately, she says, ‘Ruth, if Aidan’s beaten somebody up so badly that—’
‘No! He hasn’t touched her.’ I have to make her understand. ‘She’s fine. Nobody’s hurt. I . . . He hasn’t been anywhere near her, I’m sure he hasn’t.’
‘Nobody’s hurt?’ Charlie Zailer looks stumped.
‘No.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘Yes.’
She thinks for a few moments, then smiles at me. ‘All right. Let’s come back to your boyfriend and this woman later,’ she says. ‘I’m going to take a few basic details first, if that’s okay.’ Suddenly, she has an entirely different manner; she is no longer impatient, suspicious. She’s ditched her too-loud patronising voice and is acting as if we’re friends; we might be at a pub quiz, on the same team—she’s writing down the answers. ‘Name? Ruth Bussey, right? B-U-S-S-E-Y?’
‘Yes.’
‘Middle name?’
Does she really want to know? Is she joking? ‘Zinta.’
She laughs. ‘Really?’
‘My mother’s Latvian.’
‘It’s a great name,’ she says. ‘I’ve always wanted a more interesting middle name. Mine’s Elizabeth. And your address?’
‘Blantyre Lodge, Blantyre Park, Spil—’
‘You live in the park?’
‘In the lodge house, just inside the park gates.’
‘That funny little house with the black and white top?’
Timber-panelled gables. I don’t correct her. I nod.
‘I see that house every day on my drive to work. That’s yours?’
‘I rent it. I don’t own it.’
‘One thing I’ve always wondered: how do you get those red leaves to grow down the roof like that, like a fringe? Did you plant something in the chimney? I mean, I can understand a plant growing up the side of a house, but . . .’
‘Why does any of this matter?’ I blurt out. ‘I’m only the tenant. I didn’t plant anything anywhere.’
‘Who’s your landlord?’
‘The council.’ I sigh, recognising the need to be patient, however impossible that might seem. If I try to speed things up, she will make sure to slow them down. Her cheery determination is like a restraint around me, pinning me in my chair for as long as she wants me there.
‘How long have you lived there, Ruth?’
‘Nearly four years.’
‘And no trouble paying your rent on time during those years?’
Another odd question. There must be a reason for it. ‘No.’
‘Not tempted to buy a place? Get on the property ladder?’
‘I . . .’ This is ludicrous. ‘I’m not ready to . . .’
‘Commit to home-ownership? Put down roots?’ Charlie Zailer suggests, still smiling. ‘Fair enough. I felt that way for a long time.’ She taps her pen against the hard cover of her notebook. ‘What was your address before Blantyre Lodge?’
‘I . . . Could I have a drink, please?’
‘Tea’s on t
he way. Where did you live before Blantyre Lodge?’
With my eyes fixed on the table in front of me, I recite my old address: ‘84 Pople Street, Lincoln.’
‘Also rented?’
‘No. That house was mine.’
‘So you’d put down roots in Lincoln. Why did you move?’
I open my mouth to lie, then remember what a hash I made of my last attempt at dishonesty: my fake sprained ankle. I rub the palms of my hands against my jeans, wiping off the sticky dampness. ‘Why are you asking me all these questions? What does it matter why I moved? I’m here to talk about my boyfriend . . .’
The door opens. A tall, thin man who looks too young to have left school comes in holding two mugs of tea. Proper mugs that look like bone china, one with green stripes and one with brown. Mine is chipped at the top. ‘Perfect timing.’ Sergeant Zailer smiles at her colleague, then at me. He mouths something at her, pointing at her notebook. She says, ‘Apparently nobody’s hurt,’ and gives him a look I can’t decipher. ‘Thanks, Robbie.’ Once Robbie has left us alone, closing the door behind him, she says, ‘Drink your tea and relax, Ruth. There’s no hurry. I know you’ve got something you want to tell me, and we’ll get there, I promise. The questions I’m asking—they’re all standard. Nothing to worry about.’
In other words, there is no way I can avoid answering them. What a fool I was to imagine Charlie Zailer would be more sensitive than any other police officer. After what happened to her, she probably resolved to fill the space her feelings used to occupy with sheet metal. I tried to do the same thing myself for a long time; I understand the logic behind it.
To my relief, she doesn’t ask again why I left Lincoln. Instead, she wants to know if I have a job. I lean forward. Steam from my tea wets my face. Somehow it’s comforting.
‘I work for my boyfriend,’ I tell her.
‘What’s his name?’ She watches me carefully.
‘You know his name.’
‘Aidan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Surname?’
The Dead Lie Down: A Novel Page 2