‘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 before 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.’
‘Simon,’ Charlie muttered, ‘you don’t know that.’
‘Two, I agree the car’s evidence of his presence at the scene, which could mean one of two things. Either he’s hoping you’ll have him down as missing, possibly also dead, as likely to be another of the killer’s victims as to be the killer himself . . .’
‘Bit of a stretch, isn’t it?’ Milward frowned.
‘I’m keener on the second possibility: he knew that as soon as Gemma Crowther turned up murdered, he’d be high up on the list of suspects whether you found his car or not.’
Dunning rubbed his nose. Milward looked perky again—a contented piglet.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ said Simon. ‘There’s a link between Aidan Seed and Gemma Crowther. Which you wouldn’t have found as quickly as you did if I hadn’t given you Seed’s name.’
Silence from the other side of the table.
‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘You’re welcome. How long are you going to wait before searching Seed’s car? Or have you impounded it already?’
‘Let’s not waste words,’ said Milward. ‘You know I can’t tell you anything. I’m interested to hear your thoughts, though.’
Simon had plenty. ‘If there’s a link between Seed and Crowther, is it one that supplies Seed with a motive for murder?’
Milward ran her tongue over her lower lip before saying carefully, ‘Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that it were.’
‘Crowther can’t have known,’ said Simon. ‘She knew him as Len Smith, she invited him back to her house. She didn’t know about whatever it was that linked them and gave him a reason to want her dead. Her boyfriend didn’t know either—only Seed knew.’
‘Cloud-cuckoo-land,’ said Dunning impatiently, turning the Vegas croupier eyes on Simon, eyes that had seen it all before: the worst humanity had to offer. ‘Either Gemma knew Aidan Seed or she didn’t. If she knew him, not much point in him changing his name to fool her. If she didn’t know him, why bother?’