The Dead Lie Down: A Novel

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie.

  ‘And that she doesn’t speak to them or see them, hasn’t for several years?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No,’ Simon said again. Making Dunning’s day, no doubt.

  Why the fuck hadn’t Charlie told him? Probably she’d figured Ruth Bussey’s family background had nothing to do with anything. There had been too much to talk about last night and this morning, not least whether the two of them had fucked up their careers beyond all repair. It wasn’t much comfort that they hadn’t been officially suspended. Neither of them was wanted back at work for as long as they were ‘helping’ DC Dunning with his inquiries; anything more official would wait until the results of those inquiries were in.

  ‘If you had a girlfriend who’d turned her back on her religious background, mightn’t you lie to her if you wanted to hang out with Quakers?’ Dunning asked. ‘Even more so if you were one of them, or thinking of signing up?’

  ‘Signing up?’ said Milward. ‘It’s not the army, Neil.’

  ‘So you’re taking an interest in Ruth Bussey,’ said Simon. ‘I didn’t think you’d even registered the name. Do you know where she is? Far away from Seed: that’s where you want her to be. He’s dangerous, and he’s no Quaker. He was playing a part. Phoney name, phoney faith. And why Len Smith? Is there a Len Smith in Seed’s past? Have you looked?’

  ‘No, we haven’t,’ said Dunning tonelessly. When he spoke, Milward looked ill at ease, and vice versa. Was it a competitive thing?

  ‘Did anyone apart from Seed have a reason to want Crowther dead?’ Simon asked.

  ‘I can’t answer that,’ said Milward, tipping Simon an easily deniable nod. Had he imagined it?

  ‘The boyfriend, Stephen Elton—why didn’t he go home with Crowther after the Quaker Quest meeting? They lived together. If he stayed behind to clear up, wouldn’t Crowther and Len Smith have waited for him, so that they could all go back together? Were Seed and Crowther having an affair? Did Elton find out?’

  Milward folded her arms, waiting for the questions to stop.

  ‘What was Stephen Elton doing between the end of Quaker Quest and midnight? It wouldn’t take him two hours to clear away some chairs and get back to Muswell Hill at that time of night.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t know where he was all that time,’ said Simon. ‘You like him as a suspect—it’s usually domestic if it’s not drug- or gang-related. So he also had a motive to kill Crowther, did he?’

  ‘Excuse him,’ Charlie said to Dunning. ‘He gets carried away.’

  ‘I’m interested in hearing all you can tell me about Seed.’ Milward had started to behave as if she and Simon were alone in the room. ‘You’ve met him. We haven’t. Forget about his car being outside Gemma’s house, forget about his being at Quaker Quest and using a false name—what can you tell me about him as a person? Is he a killer?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Charlie. ‘Simon doesn’t know.’ Was there a note of satisfaction in her voice? ‘He told us both he’d killed a woman who’s still alive. His girlfriend seems intermittently scared of him, though she’s insisted several times that he wouldn’t hurt her or anyone else. We’ve told you all this . . .’

  ‘I believe Seed’s a killer,’ said Simon. ‘All right, I don’t know. But he described a murder to me in vivid detail—too vivid to be invention, I thought when I heard it. Mary Trelease is alive, though, which means Seed’s also a liar, unless he’s crazy. If he is a liar, he’s the best kind.’

  ‘What kind is that?’ asked Milward.

  ‘One who blends lies seamlessly with the truth and counts on you spotting the truth but not the join. He killed another woman, maybe more than one, before he killed Gemma Crowther. He might still kill Ruth Bussey and Mary Trelease, which is why you need to find them.’

  ‘Aidan Seed the picture-framer. The two of you visited his picture-framing workshop on Monday afternoon.’

  ‘Why do you keep saying that?’ Simon asked. ‘Are you suggesting he isn’t a picture-framer?’

  ‘What about this photo you wanted to show us?’

  ‘We’ll come to it,’ said Milward. She turned her attention to Charlie, who’d asked the question. ‘I don’t understand your role in all this. You were worried about Ruth Bussey when she first came to see you, yet you didn’t take a statement from her. Then you found out Aidan Seed had been in and spoken to a CID officer, DC . . .’

  ‘Chris Gibbs,’ said Simon wearily.

  ‘That’s right. Gibbs and DC Waterhouse both checked out Seed’s claim, and DC Waterhouse relayed the result of those checks to Seed. End of story, and even if it wasn’t, your CID were dealing with it. Why did you go to Mary Trelease’s house on Monday morning when you should have gone to work?’

  ‘I went on my way to work,’ Charlie corrected her. ‘I knew Ruth Bussey was frightened . . .’

  ‘But you didn’t take a statement from her,’ said Milward.

  ‘She ran away before I had a chance. I had a bad feeling about what she’d told me, and, after talking to Simon, I had a bad feeling about the whole business. I wanted to see Mary Trelease for myself and hear what she had to say.’

  Milward looked down at her notes again. ‘A conversation that left you with the impression that Aidan Seed had killed somebody, though obviously not Ms Trelease.’

  ‘That’s right. She said, “Not me”. She clearly implied that he’d killed somebody. Look, can you at least tell us what’s being done to find Ruth and Mary? Sam Kombothekra went to both their houses and Ruth Bussey’s place of work this morning and there’s no sign of either of them.’

  ‘Does DI Proust know DS Kombothekra’s been doing favours for you instead of the job he’s supposed to be doing?’ asked Milward. ‘Maybe I ought to ask him.’

  That shut Charlie up.

  ‘Perhaps it’s different in the provinces, but in London police officers work on the cases they’ve been allocated, not on whatever takes their fancy. My understanding, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that your CID is neither investigating Bussey, Seed and Trelease nor keeping them under surveillance. Mary Trelease in particular . . . Even you, DC Waterhouse, will have a hard job persuading me she’s pertinent to my case.’

  ‘You can’t be that stupid, surely,’ said Simon. ‘Ruth Bussey and Aidan Seed share an obsession with Mary Trelease. If they’re involved, she is. You can’t shunt her to one side. Look for a connection between Trelease and Gemma Crowther, if you haven’t already.’

  ‘So now Mary Trelease killed Gemma Crowther?’ said Dunning. ‘Make your mind up.’

  ‘You know I’m not saying that.’ Simon looked at Milward. ‘Does he know, or is he too dense to keep up? If a man pretends he’s killed one woman, then goes and kills another, the first question I’d ask is: what’s the connection between the two women?’

  Nobody had ever asked Olivia Zailer to list her least favourite words, but if they had, ‘logic’ and ‘research’ might well have been among them, suggestive as they were of excessive amounts of time and effort. Yet here she was, immersed in both and even quite enjoying it. The dearth of decent telly programmes helped, as did the raspberry liqueur cocktails she’d been drinking. Olivia didn’t think they were scrambling her brain too much.

  There was no Wikipedia entry on Martha Wyers; the online world seemed largely unaware she’d ever lived and died. Olivia could find nothing about Wyers’ suicide or murder, whichever it was. She’d phoned a few of her literary journalist friends but none of them knew anything. A couple said the name ‘rang a vague bell’, so noncommittally that Olivia wasn’t sure she believed them; more likely they didn’t want to admit to never having heard of an author who, for all they knew, had just won a prestigious award or secured the highest advance since the dawn of time for her latest book.

  The Amazon website, at least, knew who Martha Wyers was. She’d published only one novel, Ice on the Sun, in 1998. It was unavailable, even from Amazon marketplace; out of p
rint, and not a single used copy advertised. Must have failed quite spectacularly to make any impact at all, thought Liv. There was a short synopsis of the novel which was interesting, but not as interesting as the only customer review, dated 2 January 2000, contributed by one Senga McAllister: a four-paragraph five-star rave about the book’s bleak, searing beauty.

  Liv knew Senga. They’d worked together briefly before Liv went freelance. Senga was still at The Times, and remembered both Liv and Martha Wyers. She’d known nothing about Wyers’ death but declared herself unsurprised. Her first question was, ‘Did she kill herself?’

  Suicide, then, thought Liv, re-reading Ice on the Sun’s blurb. Definitely. Bleak, searing suicide. Not murder.

  Now she was waiting for Senga to email her the text of a Times feature she’d written years ago that included an interview with Martha Wyers. Before reading her novel, Senga had met Wyers and interviewed her. Decided she was the sort of person who might one day take her own life. Olivia smiled to herself, feeling quite the detective.

  The new message icon flashed on her screen and she clicked on it. She started to read what Senga had sent her and saw that it was incomplete: a headline, an introductory paragraph, then space, then a chunk of text about Martha Wyers.

  What if . . .? She tried to cast the idea from her mind but it wouldn’t shift. Punching the air in triumph, she imagined herself proved right already. God, she was clever! Time for a celebratory cocktail while she waited for Dom to arrive. No, not yet. First the important stuff. Let no one accuse Olivia Zailer of putting an urgent need for a pink drink before a selfless crusade for the truth. She emailed Senga asking to see the whole of the feature. It was worth a try. If she turned out to be wrong, Charlie didn’t need to know anything about it.

  ‘You’ve had your turn in the limelight,’ Milward told Simon coolly, from which he inferred that she hadn’t thought to look for anything that tied Gemma Crowther to Mary Trelease. Stupid. She hadn’t liked it when he’d called her that. Tough. ‘Sergeant Zailer, did you ask DS Kombothekra to check up on Ruth Bussey and Mary Trelease?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Charlie. ‘If you tell DI Proust, make sure you blame me and not Sam. I didn’t give him much choice. I led him to believe he’d find each of them with Aidan Seed holding a knife to her throat.’

  ‘Your maverick methods are legendary,’ Milward told her. ‘I’ve heard they include having sex with murder suspects.’

  ‘Then you heard wrong,’ said Charlie. ‘I believe you’re referring to a serial rapist I dated for a while. No one ever thought he was a murderer. Anyway, we weren’t serious. Just a bit of fun, you know.’

  Simon tensed. Why couldn’t she ever stop?

  ‘I see,’ said Milward, smiling. ‘My mistake.’

  ‘You mentioned a photograph,’ said Charlie. ‘Where is it? I want to see it.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘What are you waiting for? Has it occurred to you that if you were straight with us instead of playing games, we might actually get somewhere?’

  ‘What time did you leave Ruth Bussey’s house on Monday evening?’

  ‘Here we go again. Half past ten.’

  ‘After which you drove home.’ Milward was reading from notes. ‘DC Waterhouse joined you at your house shortly after eleven, and the two of you spent the night there.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Milward and Dunning were bound to be wondering how Simon felt about sharing a bed—sharing a life—with the ex-lover of one of the sickest psychos in the UK prison system. He wondered himself.

  ‘And then, on Tuesday morning, you phoned work and pretended to be ill. Why?’

  ‘I didn’t pretend. I felt ill, then I felt better.’

  ‘Better enough to fancy a day-trip to London,’ said Milward caustically.

  ‘Yes. I thought I’d go shopping. We don’t have real shops in Spilling, only mud huts selling painted masks.’

  ‘How did you travel?’

  ‘By train, as I said last night. My answers aren’t going to change.’

  ‘You caught the slow train—the 9.05 from Rawndesley to King’s Cross?’

  ‘And got in at 10.55. Yes.’

  ‘What did you do in London?’

  ‘For the third time, I looked round art galleries in the morning and went to see my sister in the afternoon. Then Simon rang me and told me about all this shit, and I came here.’

  ‘All this shit being Gemma Crowther’s murder?’ Milward leaned forward. ‘Are you always this flippant about the deaths of young women?’

  ‘No. Only on Wednesdays.’

  ‘The trouble I’m having, Sergeant Zailer, is that I haven’t spoken to Ruth Bussey. You might be lying about what time you left her house. How do I know you didn’t drive to London on Monday evening?’

  ‘And kill Gemma Crowther, you mean? Why would I want to kill a woman I hadn’t heard of until yesterday afternoon? Oh, and I don’t kill people. Though I endlessly long to.’

  ‘DC Waterhouse, your fiancé, was seen prowling round Gemma’s house, looking in her window, only hours before she died. Let’s say you did drive from Spilling to London on the Monday night . . .’

  ‘Say it if you want, but I didn’t.’

  ‘You’d be unable to provide an alibi for DC Waterhouse, wouldn’t you? If you weren’t at home, you don’t know he got back at eleven. If he didn’t get back at eleven, that means he didn’t set off from Muswell Hill at nine thirty. We’ve got a pathologist’s report telling us Gemma Crowther died no earlier than ten p.m. Do you see what I’m saying?’

  ‘Let me check: I’m lying to protect Simon, because I know he murdered Gemma Crowther. Is that it? Or I left Ruth’s before ten thirty, went to London and murdered Crowther myself?’

  ‘This is bullshit,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll collate the CCTV footage for you if you like, since I’m exiled from my job indefinitely. I’ll find you lots of black and white pictures to prove we were both where we say we were at all the right times.’

  ‘Don’t show them the one of me smoking next to the “No Smoking” sign outside Rawndesley station,’ Charlie chipped in. ‘They might tell.’

  ‘Which art galleries did you go to?’ Milward asked her.

  ‘I didn’t notice their names. I was just browsing. Oh—one of them might have been called TiqTaq. Apart from that, I don’t remember. Sorry.’

  ‘Tell them the truth, for God’s sake,’ said Simon, sick of her attitude and her games. ‘She had lunch with a lawyer called Dominic Lund.’

  ‘My sister’s boyfriend,’ said Charlie quickly, smiling. ‘He’s right. I had lunch with Dommie at Signor Grilli, an Italian on Goodge Street.’

  ‘And you lied about it why?’ said Milward.

  ‘It’s complicated. My sister’s boyfriend?’ Charlie gave her a meaningful look. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out.’

  Simon stared at the sprouting carpet at his feet. What the fuck was she playing at? Dommie?

  ‘So you didn’t go to any art galleries?’ said Milward.

  ‘Yes, I did. After lunch.’

  ‘Mary Trelease is a painter. Aidan Seed is a picture-framer.’

  ‘I know.’

  Milward licked her front teeth. Eventually she said, ‘I don’t believe you felt ill on Tuesday morning. I don’t believe you had lunch with Dominic Lund at Signor Grilli, though he might be seeing your sister and you might know that’s where he was yesterday lunchtime. I don’t believe, frankly, that you spent all of Monday obsessing about Aidan Seed, Ruth Bussey and Mary Trelease when you should have been working, only to decide the next day that you fancied a completely unconnected day-trip to London.’ Milward slapped her hands flat on the table. ‘I know when two people are lying, and you two are those people.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Simon muttered. ‘Do we ever get to leave this room?’

  ‘We ought to take a break,’ Dunning said to Milward.

  ‘The photo.’ Charlie made a show of yawning.

  ‘Oh, that.
I almost forgot.’ Milward pulled a large photograph out of her file and threw it down on the table.

  At first Simon wasn’t sure what the livid mess was that he was looking at. Then he saw, and had to count in his head and make his eyes blur over. It had been a while since he’d had to do that. He’d got used to the ordinary unpleasant sights his job afforded him, but this went way beyond. He felt Charlie stiffen beside him.

  The picture was of a mouth. Open. Gemma Crowther’s, Simon guessed. Post-mortem. Her top and bottom lips had been cut on both sides, pulled back and nailed to her face. Symmetrically: five nails along each lip. Most of her teeth were missing, and in their place were picture hooks, nailed in wonky lines into the gums of both her top and bottom jaw. They looked as if they had been arranged as neatly as possible, hanging down into her mouth like thin gold teeth.

  Simon heard Charlie say, ‘You told us she was shot.’

  ‘She was,’ said Milward. ‘He did this after he killed her. Don’t ask me why. Could be he—or she, if the killer’s a woman—wanted to frame, if you’ll excuse the pun, a picture-framer.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ said Charlie. ‘Have you made any progress? Whoever did this is a sick fuck—you need to catch him, not waste time fucking us around.’

  ‘Where did they come from?’ asked Simon slowly. ‘The picture hooks and the nails. Did he bring them with him, or . . .’

  ‘Or?’ Milward waited, eyebrows raised.

  ‘The pictures on the walls, in Crowther’s flat. Were they still up when you got to the scene?’

  ‘What pictures, detective? You’ve been asked to describe the room you saw several times. You’ve said you can’t be sure there were any pictures.’

  ‘Tell us,’ Simon snapped. ‘Were the pictures still on the walls?’

  ‘No,’ said Milward, after a short pause. ‘The only pictures in the flat were photographs of the happy couple in a range of sizes. In every room, they’d been taken down and leaned against walls and furniture. Leaving only holes. No nails, no hooks.’

  ‘So, what—he shot her, then knocked her teeth out with . . . what? A hammer?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Milward.