Conspiracies: 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 nail
s into the palms of her hands to 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.
Charlie didn’t want to think about her, whatever her real name was. She’d got the innocent waif look down to a T: waist-length golden wavy hair, flared faded jeans, cheesecloth shirt embroidered with flowers round the neck, irritatingly feminine shoes with ribbons wound round her ankles. No socks or tights—no wonder she couldn’t stop shivering. Unless that was all part of the act. Her pleading eyes, her helpless shrugs . . . Charlie had almost been convinced she was genuine. Then she’d found an article about herself in the pocket of the coat the woman had left behind. She’d needed to sit down and close her eyes for a few seconds until her panic subsided. She’d hardly slept last night, wondering, worrying. One more reason why she was in no mood for a party.
She heard her mother’s laugh and turned. Oh, no. Simon’s parents were talking to her own. Listening to them, rather. Kathleen and Michael Waterhouse cowered against a wall the colour of bile; they appeared to be huddling together against the onslaught. Charlie’s father, Howard Zailer, was telling one of his stories. Linda, her mother, emitted loud, theatrical chuckles in all the right places. Neither of Simon’s parents cracked a smile.
Charlie couldn’t bear to watch. Clutching her glass of champagne, she pushed through the mass of people towards the door that led to the stairs. The escape route. Before leaving the room, she turned and caught Simon watching her. He looked away quickly, nodding at whatever Debbie Gibbs was saying. Debbie was looking elegant in a long, high-necked black dress that was clingy without being at all revealing. Her hair was pulled back in a chignon. ‘Thanks a lot, thanks ever so fucking much,’ Charlie hissed as she stomped downstairs, splashing champagne on her clothes. She knew that she and Simon were the hosts—sort of; insofar as the landlord of the Malt Shovel wasn’t. She knew they had to mingle, pay more attention to their friends than to each other, but would it have killed him to smile at her?
She went outside into the cold night, found a wall to sit on, started to feel pleasantly cool, though she knew it wouldn’t be long before she was freezing. She’d lit a cigarette when she heard footsteps approaching. Kate Kombothekra. Kate’s husband Sam—dubbed ‘Stepford’ by Sellers and Gibbs because of his pleasant, polite manner and his desire to please everybody—was Charlie’s replacement in CID, Simon’s new skipper. Like Debbie Gibbs and Stacey Sellers, Kate was dressed for the special occasion to end all special occasions. Her shimmery green off-the-shoulder number was the exact colour of the Mediterranean sea under a warm summer sun, and swished around Kate’s full figure as she walked. A gold shawl and gold pumps provided the perfect top and tail to the outfit.
Had the CID wives got together and resolved to take the piss out of Charlie’s pathetic engagement party by overdressing, show it up for the farce that it was? Charlie wished she’d worn her only dress instead of a cerise V-necked top, black trousers and black pumps. The thin strip of velour around the V was her outfit’s only fancy touch, one tiny concession to the celebration tonight was supposed to be; without it, she would have looked as if she was off to a committee meeting.
‘If you can’t stand the heat . . .’ said Kate, wiping her forehead. ‘I’d have had to pour one of your ice buckets over my head if I’d stayed in there.’
‘Not my ice buckets. The pub’s.’
Kate gave Charlie an odd look, then smiled knowingly. ‘I met your in-laws-to-be. No wonder you’re looking deathly.’
‘Thanks a lot.’ Charlie took a long, deep drag of her cigarette, sucking hard, trying to give herself proper pulled-in skull-cheeks.
‘You know what I mean. Deathly of mood, not deathly of appearance.’ Kate’s blonde hair and glowing skin always looked as if experts had finished buffing them only seconds earlier.
‘It’s funny how meeting someone’s close family can bring into focus everything that’s wrong with them,’ said Charlie. Kate had insulted her; being made privy to one of Charlie’s more obnoxious thoughts was her punishment. ‘You suspect there’s something deeply amiss about a person, and then you meet their parents and think, “Now I understand.” I wonder if Simon, having met mine, can see clearly everything that’s wrong with me. And bound to get steadily wronger as I get older.’
Kate chuckled. ‘Sometimes it’s possible to defy both nature and nurture,’ she said. ‘Look at Sam—he’s the kindest, most considerate man alive, and his parents are lazy, selfish tossers. His brothers and sister too—the whole Kombothekra clan. When we have them round they sit immobile in armchairs like the human equivalent of a druid stone circle while Sam and I wait on them hand and foot. They do nothing for themselves. They’re worse than my boys have ever been, even as toddlers.’
Charlie couldn’t help smiling. It was reassuring to know that even women with silky blonde hair had problems.
‘They’re going to get what’s coming to them,’ said Kate, her eyes narrowing. ‘I’m not inviting them for Christmas dinner this year. They don’t know it yet. I do, and I’ve got nine months to gloat in secret.’
‘It’s only the first of March. Please don’t put Christmas in my head.’ What would Charlie and Simon do? Would he want to spend Christmas Day with her? Would it be a merging of the Zailer and Waterhouse families? Charlie felt her blood temperature drop by several degrees.
The situation with Sam’s folks had to be dire, she thought, if Kate was planning to withdraw her hospitality. She was the sort of person who seemed to want nothing more than to drag strangers in off the street and cook f
or them, then insist they stay the night. Charlie had been a virtual stranger when Kate had first started to demand her presence at Kombothekra family meals; now, after countless such occasions, Charlie supposed she had to regard Kate as a friend. It couldn’t hurt to have a friend who made staggeringly good apple and cranberry crumbles, could it? Kate always said that whisky was the crucial ingredient, but in Charlie’s view it was even more crucial to start off as the sort of person whose notions of pudding extended beyond unwrapping a Cadbury’s mini roll.
‘Did you and Sam have an engagement party? Of course you did,’ Charlie answered her own question. ‘I bet it was at one of your houses.’
Kate dragged herself out of whatever revenge fantasy had temporarily consumed her. ‘My mum and dad’s. Huh! Sam’s parents wouldn’t . . .’ She stopped. ‘But you didn’t want the party at yours, you said. Simon didn’t want it at his.’
‘Exactly,’ Charlie said quietly. ‘What’s wrong with us?’
Kate shrugged. ‘Simon wouldn’t have been able to relax with people all over his house, would he? And you’re in the middle of decorating.’ She grinned. ‘Though I’m not sure something that never ends can be said to have a middle.’
‘Don’t start.’
‘I did try to tell you that an undecorated house was the ideal party venue—no expensive wallpaper for people to puke on.’
‘And you were right,’ said Charlie. ‘But I still went ahead and booked a dingy room in a pub, because I’m not like you and Sam. Neither is Simon. We’re incapable of making anybody feel welcome. If we have to pretend to like the people we know, we’d rather do it on neutral territory.’ For some reason, Charlie enjoyed being vicious about herself; she felt it compensated for those occasions on which she was vicious about other people. ‘Did anyone give a speech?’ she asked.
‘At our engagement party? Sam did. It was earnest and endless. Why, are you going to? Is Simon going to?’
The Dead Lie Down: A Novel Page 4