I nod.
‘She’s unharmed?’
‘Yes. You can check . . .’
‘I will.’
‘. . . you’ll see I’m right.’
‘Then why does Aidan think he killed her?’
I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. He won’t tell me.’
Her eyebrows shoot up. ‘Is this some sort of joke?’
‘No. It’s ruining both our lives.’
She slaps the palm of her left hand flat on the table. ‘I need a bit of context here. Who is this Mary Trelease? What does she do? Where does she live? How old is she? How do you and Aidan know her?’
‘She lives in Spilling. She’s an artist. A painter. She . . . I don’t know how old she is. I think maybe about my age. Thirty-eight, forty. Maybe older.’ None of the answers I know are the answers we need. Charlie Zailer hasn’t realised this yet, but she will. I’m terrified that, as soon as she does, she’ll give up on me.
She looks the way I am sick of feeling: at a loss.
Eventually she says, ‘Well, this is a new one. You’re saying that Aidan—how long has he been your boyfriend, by the way?’
‘Since last August.’
‘Okay. So pretty much since you started working for him?’
I nod.
‘Aidan believes he’s killed Mary Trelease, yet you know for a fact that she isn’t dead or even injured?’
‘That’s right.’ I flop back in my seat, grateful to be understood, finally.
Charlie Zailer’s eyes are narrow.
‘Forgive me if this seems like a stupid question, Ruth, but . . . have you told Aidan that Mary Trelease isn’t dead?’
‘Yes.’ I start to cry. I can’t help it. ‘I’ve told him over and over. I’ve told him until my throat’s sore and my voice is gone.’
‘And how does he respond?’
‘He shakes his head—he looks so
certain
. He says she can’t be alive, because he killed her.’
‘You’ve had this conversation many times?’
‘Hundreds. I’ve told him where she lives. He could go to her house and prove to himself that she’s still alive, but he won’t. He won’t go and see for himself, he won’t take my word for it—I’m getting desperate.’
Charlie Zailer taps her pen against the side of her face. ‘What you’re telling me is very odd, Ruth. Do you realise how odd it sounds?’
‘Of course I do! I’m not stupid.’
‘How do Aidan and Mary know each other?’
‘I . . . I don’t know.’
‘Brilliant,’ she mutters. ‘Are you sure Aidan isn’t having you on? He didn’t tell you on April Fool’s Day, did he?’ Seeing my expression, she straightens her face and says, ‘When did he tell you? Where were you, what was the situation? I’m sorry, Ruth, but this story is too way out for me.’
‘We were in London. It was last year, December the thirteenth. ’
‘Any particular reason you were in London that night?’
‘We . . . we went to an art fair.’
She nods. ‘Carry on.’
‘We were in our hotel. It was late. We’d been out for dinner and got back about half past ten. We went straight up to our room and . . . that’s when he told me.’
‘Out of the blue? With no warning, just, “Oh, by the way, I’ve murdered someone”?’
‘He didn’t say murdered. He said killed. And, no, it wasn’t out of the blue. Aidan was upset. He said he didn’t think our relationship was going to work unless we . . . unless he confided in me, but he obviously didn’t want to. I could tell he was dreading it. I was too.’
‘Why?’ Charlie Zailer leans forward. ‘Most people don’t dread being confided in by their partners. Most women, especially, would be gagging to know. Did you have reason to believe Aidan might have committed a violent crime?’
‘No, I . . . no. None.’
Most women.
She is talking about people for whom the word ‘secret’ means a tantalising prospect, not a source of anguish.
‘What exactly did Aidan say?’
I close my eyes. ‘He said, “Years ago, I killed someone. I killed a woman. Her name was Mary Trelease.” ’
‘ “Her name was Mary Trelease”?’ Sergeant Zailer looks puzzled. ‘So he said it as if she was someone you’d never heard of, then? He didn’t know you knew her?’
I should have anticipated this question. My mind starts to churn. ‘I don’t know her.’
‘
What?
’
‘I don’t know Mary Trelease.’
‘Then . . . Again, Ruth, you’ll have to forgive me if I’m being slow here, but if you don’t know her, how did you know she was still alive when Aidan first said he’d killed her?’
She wouldn’t believe me if I told her. Still, I’d risk it if I thought I could say the words without bringing my first meeting with Mary to life again, as if it was happening now. Even thinking about telling the story makes me feel hot and panicky. I stare into my half-drunk tea, squirming, wishing she’d ask another question, but she doesn’t. She waits. When I can no longer bear the silence, I say, ‘Look, all you need to do is check that she’s alive. She lives at number 15 Megson Crescent . . .’
‘On the Winstanley estate?’
‘Yes, I . . . I think so.’ I can’t appear too certain, having claimed not to know her.
‘Megson Crescent is a contender for the title of roughest street in Spilling. Most of the ground-floor windows are boarded up.’ Sergeant Zailer raises an eyebrow. ‘Ms Trelease is a struggling artist, I take it? She can’t be making much money from her painting if that’s where she lives.’
I feel a hysterical laugh rising inside me. ‘She makes no money from it.’
‘Does she have a day job?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t you?’ Charlie Zailer says smoothly, as if passing comment on the weather. ‘Do you think I don’t know when I’m being lied to, Ruth? Do you think I don’t meet liars every day? I do—liars of the highest grade. Shall I tell you about some of them?’
‘I’m not a liar. I
don’t
know Mary, and I hadn’t heard of her when Aidan told me . . . when he told me . . .’
‘When he told you that he’d killed her, years ago.’
‘That’s right.’ My words sound like someone else’s, as if they’re not coming from inside me but from somewhere far away.
‘You’re panicking, Ruth, and you’re spewing up lies faster than the magic porridge pot spewed up porridge. Remember that story from when you were a kid?’ Sergeant Zailer yawns, leans back in her chair. ‘Is it possible Aidan killed another woman with the same name?’ she says, as casually as if she were suggesting the answer to a crossword clue. ‘I know Trelease isn’t a common surname, but . . .’
‘No,’ I say, my voice cracking. ‘I could see the details were familiar to him when I told him. That she lives on Megson Crescent, that she’s an artist, forty-ish, with long black curly hair, silver streaks in it where she’s starting to go grey.’
His face: the absolute recognition, the fear, in his eyes.
‘It’s the same woman, the one he’s sure he killed. I’m not making this up! Why would I?’
‘Silver-grey hair and she’s only forty? Still, they say people with very dark hair go grey youngest.’ Charlie Zailer drums her fingers on the table, raises an eyebrow at me. ‘So, you’ve seen her, then? If you know what kind of hair she’s got, you must have seen her, even if you don’t know her personally.’
I say nothing.
‘Or perhaps you’ve seen a picture of her? No, I think you’ve seen her in the flesh. A picture wouldn’t have put your mind at rest. Aidan told you he’d killed her, and you needed to see her in person, see for yourself that she was still alive. Undeterred by the sheer unlikeliness of anyone pretending they’ve killed someone when they haven’t, you set out to find this dead woman and, lo and behold, she wasn’t dead at all. Is that how it happened?’
The silence between us is unbearable. I try to pretend she isn’t here, that I’m alone in the room.
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ she mutters. ‘Okay, here’s a question you might be happier about answering: what are you doing here, apart from wasting my time?’
‘What?’
‘Why are you here? Aidan hasn’t killed anyone—fine. Mary Trelease is alive—hooray. What do you want from me, exactly?’
Now I can talk freely. ‘I want you to check that what I’m saying is true. If it is, you could . . . convince Aidan. I’ve tried and failed. You’re the police—he’d listen to you.’
‘
If
it’s true? So you’re not a hundred per cent sure Aidan didn’t kill this woman who’s alive. Make up your mind.’
‘I’m as sure as I can be, but . . . what if the woman I think is Mary Trelease isn’t? What if . . . I know it sounds insane, but what if she’s some other woman who fits Mary’s description, a relative or . . . or . . .’
Or someone pretending.
I don’t say it; it would make me sound paranoid. ‘There are things the police can find out that I can’t.’
Charlie Zailer sighs. ‘The police
find things out
in the process of investigating crimes. Nothing’s happened here, according to you. There’s no crime to investigate. Correct?’ She opens and closes her lips several times, making a popping noise. She appears to be thinking. Perhaps she’s bored, daydreaming. After a few seconds, she says, ‘From my point of view, there are three questions. One: did Aidan kill the woman you’re talking about, the person you know as Mary Trelease?’
‘He didn’t. He can’t have. She’s alive.’
‘All right. Then did he kill another person called or known by the name of Mary Trelease? And lastly, question number three: did he kill or injure anyone? Is there a body somewhere, waiting to be found? Not that it’ll still be a body by now, if the killing happened years ago.’
‘Aidan couldn’t hurt anybody. I know him.’
She puffs her cheeks full of air, then blows it out in one breath. ‘If you’re right, you should be consulting a shrink, not me.’
I shake my head. ‘He’s sane. I can tell from the way he reacts to other things, normal things. That’s why this makes no sense.’ It occurs to me that perhaps Sergeant Zailer asked me all those pointless questions about my job and my rent for the same reason: to test my reaction to ordinary enquiries. ‘Have you heard of the Cotard delusion?’ I ask her.
‘No. I’ve heard of
The God Delusion
.’
‘It’s a mental illness, or a symptom of mental illness, usually associated with despair and an extreme lack of self-esteem. It’s where you believe you’re dead even though you’re not.’
She grins. ‘If I had that, I’d worry less about smoking fifteen fags a day.’
I’m not interested in her jokes. ‘As far as I know—and I’ve looked into it—there’s no mutation of that syndrome, and no other syndrome that I could find, where sufferers believe they’ve killed people who are still living. I ruled out psychological explanations a while ago. I
don’t
think Aidan’s committed any violent crime. I know he hasn’t, and wouldn’t, but . . . I’m worried something’s going to happen, something really bad.’ I didn’t know I was going to say this until the words are out. ‘I’m frightened, but I don’t know what of.’
Charlie Zailer looks at me for a long time. Eventually she says, ‘What has Aidan told you about the details of what he did? What he says he did. When, why and where did he kill Mary Trelease, by his own account?’
‘I’ve already told you everything he told me: that he killed her, years ago.’
‘How many years?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘How, why and where did he kill her?’
‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘What was their relationship? When and how did they first meet?’
‘I told you already, I don’t know!’
‘I thought Aidan wanted to confide in you. Did he change his mind halfway through? Ruth? What did he say, when you asked him for more details?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You
didn’t
? Why not?’
‘I . . . I did ask him one question. I asked him if it was an accident. ’ I can’t bear the memory. The way he looked at me, as if I’d stamped on his heart.
No questions.
He stuck to the deal we made; I broke it.
‘Right,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘Because you couldn’t believe he’d harm anyone deliberately. What did he say?’
‘Nothing. He just stared at me.’
‘And you didn’t ask him any more questions?’
‘No.’
‘Frankly, I find that impossible to believe. Anyone would ask. Why didn’t you?’
‘Are you going to help me or not?’ I say, mustering what’s left of my hope and energy.
‘How can I, when you’re withholding at least half the information you know is relevant, assuming you’re not making all this up. A strange way to behave if you want my help.’ She straightens up in her chair. ‘Aidan made this confession to you on the thirteenth of December last year. Why did you wait until now, two and a half months later, before coming in?’
‘I hoped I’d be able to make him see sense,’ I say, knowing how feeble it sounds in spite of being true.
‘I see conspiracies everywhere, that’s my trouble,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘What I don’t know is, who’s on the receiving end of this one: you? Me? One colossal piss-take—that’s what this sounds like to me.’
I feel as if I might pass out. There’s a sharp pain between my shoulder-blades. I picture myself pressing a big red button:
stop
. I imagine my finger holding the button down—it’s supposed to make the bad thoughts go into retreat. Whichever book said it worked was lying.
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?