Die of Shame (14 page)

A useful session. The usual bickering, but no red flags. Caroline and Diana seem to have bonded, which is good. Chris less angry than in previous sessions despite the same goading of Caroline and a nasty attack on Robin towards the end. Heather seems calmer after midweek phone call.
 

Caroline unwilling to participate in the shame exercise. Adamant that it is not applicable to her, though not opposed in principle. Hard to gauge truth at this stage, after only three sessions with her. Shows no inclination so far towards one-to-one. Chris remains opposed and I fear that he may seek to disrupt further attempts with others in the group.
 

Interesting discussion at Caroline’s behest about physical effects of H. Became revelatory exercise in sense-memory. Is she being voyeuristic?
 

Heather has invited group members to a birthday party, which could be tremendously useful in terms of forging stronger links. Discussion of my own ethical position vis à vis my inability to attend. Robin’s comment about ‘professional distance’ sparked derisory remarks from Chris. Robin, as always, fighting the urge to retaliate.
 

Key Line:
‘You take it and the pain goes away.’
 

Tony had come sooner than he would have liked, surprised and excited by Nina’s intensity, but she had urged him on, refusing to let him slow down or hold back, insisting that she had come twice already.

He has never really believed the suggestion that make-up sex is better than sex would otherwise be, but there is no denying that it was as passionate as he could remember. As it had ever been, in fact. As it was in those first few months clean, when he was nervous and horny as a teenager, and it felt like the two of them had just discovered what their bodies could do and must immediately make up for lost time.

Equally though, there is no denying that the argument preceding it had been every bit as passionate.

‘You need to back away sometimes,’ Nina had said; had screamed. ‘You can’t be their friend. Why the hell would you ever
want
to be their friend?’

Heather was not the first client of his to overstep the boundaries. Over the years, several had abused his accessibility. He had been accosted in the street more than once and there had been a number of unwelcome visits or phone calls far more inconvenient than Heather’s. He had always believed that it was part and parcel of the job, even when he had discovered one of his clients hiding in the spare bedroom, several hours after a session had finished.

Something about Heather though had seriously rattled his wife’s bars. The sight of her, standing on their doorstep, smiling as if she had every right to be there.

‘As if I should have invited her in for dinner or something.’

Nina had a nose for these things; an instinct which, over the years, Tony had learned to respect, and be afraid of.

‘She’s way too needy.’

‘They’re all needy, and it’s my job to help them. That’s the point.’

‘Right. A job. Not a mission from God.’

‘She’s no different from any of the others.’

‘You didn’t see the way she looked at me when I answered the door.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘Don’t tell me I’m being melodramatic – and don’t you dare pull that shit about me not understanding because I’ve never been a junkie.’

‘I wasn’t going to.’

‘Don’t you fucking
dare
…’

Now, they lie a foot or so apart in the super-king-size bed that Nina had once slept on in a luxury hotel in Bath and insisted on buying. Still breathing heavily, still sweating. Tony could swear he feels the air in the bedroom moving against the skin on his arm, kissing his shoulder.

Nina says, ‘Have a cigarette if you want one.’

He shakes his head. ‘It’s just a Saturday thing. If I start associating smoking with sex, I’m going to be on twenty a day again.’

Nina laughs and leans down to pull the sheet up, then slides a hand across until it finds his. She says, ‘I do love you, you know. I know sometimes you don’t think I do.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘You’re not exactly easy to live with though. I mean neither am I, but…’ She sighs away the rest of it and pulls the sheet a little higher. There is laughter from a group of kids walking past outside and a siren screaming its way along the Broadway, then fading. ‘Everyone’s got baggage, I’m well aware of that, but just when I start to forget about yours I’m confronted with piles of it.’

‘I’m Mr Samsonite,’ Tony says. He puts on a deep, mock-sexy voice and turns towards her. ‘Mr Excess Baggage.’

‘Seriously, though. That business in the car.’

‘Oh, please.’ He rolls back again. ‘Let’s not talk about that again.’

‘It was scary, Tony. It’s always scary.’

The day before, driving back from the cinema, Tony had been cut up by some teenager in a VW Beetle. He had sounded his horn and flashed his lights and on seeing the raised finger had pulled in front of the car at the next set of lights and got out to confront the driver. There was a good deal of shouting. He had called the teenager an ‘irresponsible little wanker’, then slammed his fist on to the Beetle’s bonnet hard enough to dent it, and when the teenager, who by then was looking understandably frightened, had threatened to call the police, Tony had told him to go right ahead.

‘I was worried about you and Emma,’ Tony says. ‘Stupid idiot could have killed us.’

‘He didn’t though, did he? And if anyone looked like they were going to kill someone, it was you.’

‘It’s just road rage. It happens.’

‘Rage is right,’ Nina says. ‘And I get why it’s there, and I know you’re going to tell me that a lot of ex-addicts have that kind of anger bubbling away inside them. Doesn’t make it any easier to live with.’

‘I know.’

They say nothing for a minute or so, then Nina leans to kiss his cheek and turns over. She reaches for the switch on her bedside light and prods her pillow into the required shape.

She says, ‘Don’t forget the recycling tomorrow.’

Tony thinks his wife is overreacting. Before the business with the Beetle driver, he cannot recall the last time he’d lost it like that. Perhaps a year before, when a neighbour had knocked on the door to complain about the noise from the top bedroom and had not accepted Tony’s apology with sufficient grace. He keeps his temper as well as anyone else, he reckons; knows how to lay a damper on things when it looks like flaring up. There are exercises, mechanisms…

‘I’m sorry, OK?’

Tony lies quite still, his light still on. He already knows that sleep isn’t coming any time soon, that he will need to read for a while. Before too long he hears Nina’s breathing change and he turns his head to look at her back and shoulders. She is slender and toned thanks to four sessions a week at the gym and is still brown from the week she has recently spent soaking up some winter sun in Dubai with two girlfriends.

He stares at his wife’s body and knows how lucky he is. He loves his daughter and values his job and is deeply thankful for a life which, a few years ago, would never have seemed possible. So he cannot understand why he is wide awake at one thirty in the morning and thinking about a well-worn, brown suede jacket.

Heather, slowly taking it off.

Tanner bought a sandwich from Pret A Manger, took it back to the office and spent the majority of her lunch hour catching up on paperwork. She disliked it less than a lot of her colleagues did, even if, admittedly, the two hours or more of it that was generated by every hour of what others called ‘proper police work’ was not necessarily the most sensible use of time or resources. Steps were being taken to address the imbalance by issuing some front line officers with tablets and equipping squad cars with laptop computers to speed up the admin process. It had done little beyond generating an outraged column or two in the
Daily Mail
, and Tanner was not sure she fancied lugging an iPad around in her handbag anyway.

Paperwork needed doing, so it had to be done; simple as that. She would not risk scuppering a prosecution by failing to properly liaise with the CPS. When an entire investigation could be jeopardised by failing to check and double check the dozens of individual reports pertaining to it, why wouldn’t she do so?

In truth, she enjoyed filling in forms and always had. At home, the post would be opened and anything remotely official-looking would be handed silently to her across the kitchen table for completion. Bank correspondence, insurance documents, customer-service questionnaires.

Black ink and block capitals.

Slowly working her way through the sandwich and a bottle of orange juice, she typed out three different interview reports and made changes to some pre-trial documentation on a domestic she had been working since the turn of the year. She filed the application for her annual clothing allowance and filled in the first part of her holiday paperwork good and early.

With a few minutes of her lunch hour still remaining, she called home to see how Susan was feeling. Returning from her early-morning run, Tanner had found her partner still in bed, complaining that she was feeling nauseous and that her head was thumping. Saying she would need to call in sick.

‘You still in bed?’ Tanner asked now.

‘Wrapped up on the settee,’ Susan said.

‘OK.’

‘Jeremy Kyle isn’t helping.’

‘Drink plenty of water.’ Tanner was thinking that Susan might not have been feeling quite as bad if she had done so the night before.

Susan said she would, then laughed softly. ‘I’m lying here wondering how the supply teacher’s coping with Paul Murphy.’

‘Listen, call me if you need anything.’

‘It’s a migraine,’ Susan said. ‘Definitely.’

Tanner ended the call and turned to see Chall ambling towards her desk. He raised his chin and smiled at her.

‘Well, we’re bolloxed on the CCTV for Heather Finlay,’ he said.

‘Is that a technical term, Dipak?’

‘It should be.’ He sounded cheerful enough, despite whatever bad news he was about to deliver. ‘Nearest cameras are on the main road, which doesn’t really help us. We might have something down the line, once we know who we’re looking for. That’s if he’s walked there of course; he might have driven, taken a cab, whatever.’

‘Whoever did it knew her,’ Tanner said.

‘So?’

‘So chances are they knew the area, knew exactly where the cameras were.’

‘They’d only have taken the trouble to avoid them if they were planning to kill her, though. If it was a drug thing, isn’t it a bit more likely that it was spur of the moment?’

‘Possibly,’ Tanner said.

‘You want me to start looking at the phone records? De Silva’s might be interesting.’

‘Nothing to justify going down that road just yet,’ Tanner said. Nothing worth the trouble and certainly not worth the cost. Some service providers were quicker than others when it came to providing their customers’ phone records, but all of them made police forces up and down the country eat into their budgets for the privilege. ‘Can’t see the guvnor going for that as things stand.’

‘It’s all starting to look like one for the back burner,’ Chall said.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well you said yourself —’

Tanner was reaching for the phone that had begun to ring on her desk. She answered, said, ‘Thanks,’ then pushed her chair back. ‘Diana Knight’s waiting downstairs.’

Chall looked at his watch. ‘Bloody hell, she’s keen.’

‘She’s bang on time,’ Tanner said. ‘Which earns her brownie points straight away.’

‘Or she’s just trying to create a good impression.’

They began walking towards the stairs. ‘The courtesy of kings.’

‘What?’

‘Punctuality.’

‘Tell that to my wife,’ Chall said. ‘She couldn’t be on time for anything if her life depended on it.’

Tanner said, ‘I’d have divorced her years ago.’

‘Sorry we couldn’t find anywhere a bit nicer,’ Chall said.

‘It is… what it is,’ Diana Knight said. It sounded convincing enough, but still she seemed a little wary as she looked around the room. Off-white walls with a window high up at one end and a camera mounted in the corner above it. A scarred, rectangular table. Two chairs on one side, a single chair on the other. ‘How very different from the home life of our own dear Queen.’

It was an expression Tanner had heard before, though she was still not quite sure what it meant. She smiled anyway. As far as she was aware, the woman sitting across from her had never set foot in an interview room, so wariness to some degree or another was very much to be expected.

Chall said, ‘We have got nicer rooms than this, but they’re all being used, I’m afraid.’

The woman dabbed cautiously at the tabletop. ‘It’s exactly like it is on TV shows.’

‘Except this isn’t being recorded.’ Tanner nodded towards the window. ‘And there aren’t any other officers looking in at us through there.’

‘That’s a relief.’ Her hands moved instinctively to her elegantly styled hair, the only grey on show that of her skirt and matching jacket. Tanner clocked the delicate silver necklace and matching bracelet, the perfectly applied make-up. She decided that for a woman of fifty-three, Mrs Diana Knight was nothing if not well preserved.

She imagined what her mother would have said:
That woman’s had no uphill
…

Tanner sat back and opened her notebook. Knowing why Knight was here, what her connection to the victim was, she guessed that, at some point, there had been plenty.

‘Thanks again for coming in,’ Chall said.

‘Not a problem.’ The voice was not overtly posh, but there was no discernible accent either. ‘I got here early as it happens. Did a bit of shopping.’

Tanner nodded down at the two smart-looking shopping bags next to the woman’s chair. ‘Anything nice?’

‘Oh, you know.’ That slightly nervous smile again. ‘Actually, I would have been happy to have come in first thing, but I was working, so this was the soonest I could do it, I’m afraid.’

Tanner did not remember anything about a job on the printout. ‘What kind of work?’

‘Just a local charity shop. A couple of mornings a week.’

‘Good of you,’ Chall said.

‘Not really. There’s precious little else to do. Plus, I get first crack at the bargains.’

Tanner said, ‘A perk’s a perk,’ though she could not imagine that Knight did a great deal of shopping at Scope or the British Heart Foundation. She leaned forward a little. ‘Now, you know we’re investigating the sudden death of Heather Finlay.’

‘Sudden death?’

‘Murder,’ Chall said. ‘Police speak.’

‘Oh. Right.’ She tugged gently at her necklace. ‘So, how’s it going?’

‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Tanner said. ‘Right now, we need all the help we can get.’

‘Oh.’ It was said as though she had been expecting more; better. ‘That’s a shame.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I’ll try, but the truth is I barely knew her. Only as one of the group, really.’

‘What did you make of her?’

The woman thought for a few seconds. ‘Well… she was a very… positive person, most of the time. Probably the most upbeat of any of us, when I think about it. There aren’t too many glass-half-full types in these sorts of groups.’

‘Most of the time, you said.’

‘Yes, well, there were times she was down, too, but that’s perfectly normal, isn’t it? Recovery was very hard for her, I think.’

‘She suffered from depression, is that right?’

‘I’d rather not… it’s tricky because…’

‘It’s fine,’ Tanner said. ‘I know there’s an issue with discussing what was talked about during your meetings, but the medication was found during the post-mortem.’

‘So you already know.’

Tanner nodded.

‘Why did you ask me, then?’

Tanner was aware of Chall, smiling next to her. ‘Without going into details, unless you’d like to, how did Heather get on with the other members of the group?’

There was more thinking. ‘She got on very well with everyone most of the time. She was closest to Chris, probably. I think they’d had similar issues with their addictions and they were a bit closer in age. She bonded very early on with Caroline… she was friendly enough with Robin. And I don’t remember her and me
ever exchanging a cross word.’

‘What about Tony?’

She looked at Tanner.

‘How did she get on with him?’

‘Well… look, she probably had a bit of a crush on him at some point. I mean so did I, when I first started going. So did Chris, for all I know. If they don’t look like the back of a bus it’s hard not to find yourself drawn to someone who’s helping you so much.’

‘I get it all the time,’ Chall said. ‘Nightmare.’

The woman smiled and looked down at the table, her fingers pulling at the necklace again.

Tanner wrote something down, then sat back. She said, ‘Heather died just a few hours after the last session she attended with you all. You should know that, so you’ll understand why I’m going to ask you about it.’

‘Yes, but —’

Tanner held up a hand. ‘Like I said, I’m not expecting details. Having spoken to Chris and Robin, I fully appreciate how important confidentiality is to you all. But it’s my job to find out who killed Heather and there’s a chance that whatever went on in that meeting had some bearing on what happened to her.’

Knight shook her head and laughed. ‘No, that’s ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.’

‘People get murdered for the most ridiculous reasons,’ Tanner said. She let it hang for a few moments. She looked down at her notebook, then back to Knight. ‘As I said, I’m not expecting chapter and verse.’

The woman was fidgety while she considered her response. She fingered her necklace, straightened the shopping bags at her feet. ‘There was some… shouting, I think, that evening. A few arguments.’

‘About what?’

‘There are always arguments and sometimes people lose their tempers. We talk about a lot of serious things.’

‘Who was doing the shouting that night?’

She shook her head.

‘Heather? You?’

‘I can’t…’

‘Was anyone particularly angry with Heather about something?’

‘You don’t have to tell us what it was,’ Chall said.

‘I can’t.’ She looked at Tanner, then Chall, and the nervousness was suddenly replaced by determination. ‘The group is hugely important to me, you need to understand that. To all of us. Hopefully we’ll be starting up again soon and I simply can’t risk being excluded from it. That’s what would happen if I let outsiders into our confidences.’

‘We’re hardly outsiders,’ Tanner said. ‘It’s not like you’d be blabbing to someone at a bus stop, is it?’

‘I don’t know how I’d get through the week if I didn’t have the sessions to hold on to.’

‘Right, and I’m guessing Heather Finlay felt very much the same.’

The woman looked pained suddenly and it took a few seconds before she began to shake her head again. ‘It’s too much to ask, I’m sorry.’

Tanner nodded as though resigned, but she was every bit as determined as Diana Knight. She began to fire questions across the table a little faster. ‘You all went to the pub afterwards, right? Same as usual.’

‘Yes.’

‘And all of you were there for a while?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you all leave together?’

‘No. I think… Chris left first. Yes, that’s right, then Heather. The rest of us stayed another half an hour or so.’

‘And you went home?’

She nodded. ‘The dogs would have been on their own for a good few hours by then. I needed to let them out.’

‘Anyone at home with you?’

‘I live alone,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’ Tanner tried to look pleased, as though they were making excellent progress and what she was about to ask was of no great importance; trivial, almost. ‘Can you tell us what you talked about when you were all in the pub?’

‘It’s the same thing.’

‘I mean, did the arguments carry on?’

‘I thought I’d explained —’

‘It’s the pub.’ Chall’s voice was raised. He looked at Tanner and puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. Tanner looked at her notebook, tapping her pen against a page that had no more than a few words scribbled on it.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Knight spoke slowly, a hint of condescension creeping in. ‘Whether it’s in Tony’s conservatory or round a table in the Red Lion, what’s said among the group can’t go any further. It’s the cardinal rule. People in the group need to feel safe.’

At least she had the decency to look momentarily embarrassed, so Tanner did not feel the need to point out the horrible irony in what she had just said. ‘What if I told you that by not telling us, you’re actively hindering the investigation into Heather Finlay’s murder?’

‘Is that what you’re saying?’

Tanner waited.

‘Well, I’ve said already that I think it’s ridiculous to suggest there’s any connection with Tony’s group.’

‘But if there was?’

‘If you could show me a single piece of evidence to suggest that telling you these things would genuinely help catch Heather’s killer, I’d tell you everything you wanted to know in a heartbeat. Of course I would. I’m absolutely certain that Tony would tell you himself.’

‘But what I’m asking you to tell us could
be
the evidence. I’m really sorry if I haven’t made that clear.’ Tanner was not the least bit sorry and was feeling a powerful urge to lean across and grab hold of the woman by her fancy necklace.