The Truth-Teller's Lie (11 page)

‘I’m not sure, sir. I think it’s premature to assume that.’

‘I wouldn’t need to assume anything if you’d taken control of the situation in a professional way!’ Proust yelled at him. ‘Why didn’t you interview Naomi Jenkins properly on Monday, get the full story out of her then?’

‘We did . . .’

‘This woman’s wrapping us round her little finger. She comes in whenever she feels like it, says whatever she fancies saying, and all you can do is nod and write down each new lie in great detail—a missing person report one minute, a rape statement the next. She’s staging a pantomime, and she’s cast you as the hind legs of the donkey!’

‘Sergeant Zailer and I—’

‘What, in the name of all things bright and beautiful, were you thinking of, taking a rape statement from her? Clearly she’s a rabid fantasist, and yet you choose to indulge her!’

Simon thought about Naomi Jenkins’ account of her rape, what she said those men had done to her. It was the worst thing he’d ever heard. He considered telling Proust how he’d actually, honestly, felt when she’d told him. No chance. The physical proximity of the Snowman repelled any ideas he’d foolishly harboured about the possibility of genuine communication taking place; you only had to take one look at the man.

‘If she’s lying about the rape, how do you explain the letter, signed N.J., that she sent to that website in May 2003?’

‘It’s a fantasy she’s had for years—since birth for all I know or care,’ said Proust impatiently. ‘Then she met Haworth and fleshed it out a little, added him to her absurd tale. Nothing she says can be relied upon.’

‘I agree her behaviour’s suspicious,’ said Simon. ‘Her instability’s obviously cause for greater concern about Haworth’s safety.’ We don’t disagree, he might have added. Pointless. ‘Which is why, as soon as I’d finished taking her statement, I
did
get on to Kent police. And they’ve just got back to me.’
In other words, you narrow-minded shit, I’ve got some facts you might be interested in if you’re willing to stop chucking blame at me for two seconds.
Simon had a sense of his words trickling back to him, having failed to get through, failed to permeate the rigid, invisible barrier that surrounded Proust at all times.

He persisted. ‘The address Juliet Haworth gave me exists, but no one there knows anything about Robert Haworth.’

‘She’s unstable as well,’ said the Snowman flatly, as if he suspected the two women in Robert Haworth’s life of deliberately conspiring to create problems for him, Giles Proust. ‘Well? Have you been back to the house and searched it? Have you searched Naomi Jenkins’ house? If you’d read the new missing persons gubbins I gave you—’

‘I have read it,’ Simon cut in. The ACPO 2005 guidelines for the management of missing persons were hardly new. Proust was averse to change. For weeks after the clocks went forward or back, he made a distinction between ‘old time’ and ‘new time’.

‘—you’d know that under Section 17, part c—or is it d?—you can enter any premises if you have cause to believe someone’s at risk—’

‘I know all that, sir. I just wanted to check with you first, as Sergeant Zailer’s away.’

‘Well, what did you think I’d say? A man’s missing. His bit on the side’s a conniving lunatic, and his wife, far from being worried about his whereabouts, is actively trying to put you off the scent. What did you think I’d say? Put your feet up and forget all about it?’

‘Of course not, sir.’
I have to consult you, you fucking wanker.
Did Proust think Simon enjoyed their little exchanges? It wasn’t as bad when Charlie was around: she acted as a buffer, shielding her team from the inspector’s bullying as much as she could. She also, more and more in recent months, made decisions that by rights were Proust’s to make, in order to minimise his stress and allow him to have the sort of short, easy days he liked.

‘Of course not, sir,’ Proust mimicked. He sighed and swallowed a yawn—a sign that he’d run out of steam. ‘Do the obvious things, Waterhouse. Search Jenkins’ house, and Haworth’s. Run the usual credit-card and telephony checks. Talk to everyone Haworth knows: friends, work contacts. You
know
what to do.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Oh, and while I’m underlining the absolutely elementary: bring in Naomi Jenkins’ computer. We’ll be able to tell, won’t we, whether the letter she claims she sent to the rape website originated from her machine?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Simon, thinking, Someone will, you won’t. Proust was an expert on everything that required no expertise, that was his problem. ‘If it’s the same machine. She might have bought a new one since.’

‘Get Sellers and Gibbs on to it too. As of today, it’s our highest priority.’

You get them on to it, Simon nearly made the mistake of saying. Was Proust preparing for retirement, he wondered, handing out his responsibilities to anyone who’d have them?

‘Grill Jenkins again. And go to the Traveltel—’

‘I’ve just got off the phone with the receptionist.’ Simon was pleased to be able to decapitate at least one of Proust’s unnecessary instructions. Giving redundant advice was one of the Snowman’s favourite hobbies, though he marginally preferred issuing completely uncalled-for warnings. He was forever telling Charlie and Simon and the rest of the team not to crash their cars or leave their front doors unlocked or fall off the sides of mountains if they went walking.

‘A man and a woman fitting Haworth’s and Jenkins’ descriptions have spent every Thursday night at the Traveltel, in room eleven, for roughly a year. Exactly as Jenkins said on Monday. I’m waiting for the Traveltel receptionist to get back to me and confirm it’s them. I’ve couriered a copy of the photo over to her—’

‘Of course it’s them!’ Proust slammed his mug down on the desk.

‘Sir, you’re presumably not saying that I shouldn’t have bothered to check?’ Such a basic failure—in a parallel universe in which Simon had still done lots of things wrong, but different things—would undoubtedly have resulted in a bollocking very similar to the one he was getting now.

The inspector looked thoroughly disgusted. Sounded it, too, as he said, ‘Just get on with it, Waterhouse, all right? Anything else, or might you allow me a few minutes’ calm in which to piece together the fragments of my shattered day?’

‘The receptionist said the couple—Haworth and Jenkins, assuming it’s them—seem very keen on one another.’

Proust threw up his hands. ‘That’s one mystery solved, then. That explains why they go to a roadside motel together every week. Sex, Waterhouse. What did you think: they both had a thing for eight-pound-ninety-nine platters?’

Simon ignored his sarcasm. The relationship between Robert Haworth and Naomi Jenkins was crucial, at the centre of this whole peculiar business, and the Traveltel receptionist, as far as Simon knew, was an objective, independent witness. He said firmly, ‘She told me they always had their arms round each other. Stared into each other’s eyes a lot, that sort of thing.’

‘At reception?’

‘Apparently.’

Proust snorted loudly.

‘And the woman always stayed the night, left the next morning. Whereas the man left at about seven the same evening.’

‘Always?’

‘That’s what she said.’

‘What sort of nonsense relationship can that be, then?’ said Proust, looking into his empty mug as if hoping to find that it had filled itself.

‘Possibly an abusive one,’ Simon suggested. ‘Sir, I was thinking about Stockholm syndrome. You know, where women fall in love with men who abuse them . . .’

‘Don’t waste my time, Waterhouse. Get out there and do your perishing job.’

Simon stood up, turned to leave.

‘Oh, and Waterhouse?’

‘Sir?’

‘You might buy me a book about sundials, while you’re out and about. I’ve always found them fascinating. Did you know that sundial time is more accurate than clock time, than Greenwich Mean Time? I read that somewhere. If you’re talking about measuring the precise position of the Earth in relation to the Sun—solar time—then a sundial’s your man.’ Proust smiled, startling Simon: happiness looked wrong on the inspector’s face. ‘Clocks would have us believe that all days are the same length, exactly twenty-four hours. Not true, Waterhouse. Not true. Some are a little bit shorter, and some a little bit longer. Did you know that?’

Simon did, only too well. The longer ones were the ones he was forced to spend in the company of Detective Inspector Giles Proust.

8

Wednesday, April 5

I HEAR MY back door slam. This sound is followed by the sound of footsteps. They are coming from the house towards the shed, where I’m working. When I talk to customers I call it my workshop, but it’s really just a medium-sized shed with a table, a wooden stool and all my tools in it. When I started up the business, I had two windows put in. I couldn’t work in a place that had no windows, not even for one day. I have to be able to see.

There are too many footsteps for it to be Yvon on her own. Without turning to look, I know it’s the police. I smile. A home visit. Finally I am being taken seriously. There are probably police officers on their way to your house as well, if they’re not there already. Knowing I will soon have news of you makes the passing of time bearable. It won’t be long. I try to focus only on getting the news, not on what it will be.

After days of blind, flailing panic, I feel as if I’ve scrambled up on to a small ledge. It’s a relief to be able to rest on it for a while, knowing that while I am passive, others are active.

I continue to apply gold leaf with my badger-hair brush. The motto on the dial I’m working on at the moment is ‘Better today than not at all’. It’s a belated silver-wedding-anniversary present from a forgetful husband to his wife; he told me he hopes the gesture is grand enough to get him out of her bad books. He wanted a standing sculpture, for a particular spot in their back garden. I’m making him a pillar out of Hornton stone, with the dial part on its flat top surface.

I hear the door open behind me, feel the wind on my back, through my jumper.

‘Naomi, two detectives are here to see you.’ There is anxiety in Yvon’s voice, as well as an eagerness to appear natural and relaxed.

I turn. A bulky man in a grey suit is smiling at me. It’s a dubious sort of smile, as if he expects not to be wearing it for much longer. He has a fat stomach, straw-coloured hair that is spiky with gel on top, and a shaving rash. His colleague, short, dark and thin with small eyes and a low forehead, slips in between the fat man and Yvon, and begins to prowl around my workshop, uninvited. He picks up my bandsaw, looks at it and puts it down again, then does the same with my fretsaw.

‘Get your hands off my things,’ I say. ‘Who are you? Where’s DC Waterhouse?’

‘I’m DC Sellers,’ says the fat one. He is holding up a card in a plastic wallet. ‘This is DC Gibbs.’ I don’t bother to check the ID. They’re obviously police. They have a quality in common with Waterhouse and Sergeant Zailer, one that’s hard to define. Inflexibility of manner, perhaps. Behaving as if there are charts and tables in their heads. A thin veneer of politeness masking a knee-jerk dismissiveness. They trust each other, but nobody else.

‘We need to have a look round your house,’ says DC Sellers. ‘And the garden and any outbuildings. Which includes this shed. We’ll cause as little disruption as we can.’

I smile. So the talking is over and there is going to be action. Good. ‘Don’t you need a search warrant?’ I say, though I have no intention of sending them away.

‘If we believe a missing person to be at risk, we’re entitled to search the premises,’ says DC Gibbs stiffly.

‘Are you looking for Robert Haworth? He isn’t here, but search all you please.’ Are they looking for you as a criminal or as a victim, I wonder. Perhaps both. I told DC Waterhouse that I’d considered taking the law into my own hands.

‘We might need to take some things away with us,’ says Sellers, smiling again now that he sees I’m not going to put up a fight. ‘Your computer. How long have you had it?’

‘Not long,’ I say. ‘A year or thereabouts.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ says Yvon. ‘I live here too, and work here. If you’re going to search the house, can you leave my office exactly as you found it?’

‘What work do you do?’ asks Sellers.

‘I’m a website designer.’

‘We’ll need to take your computer as well. How long have you had it?’

‘How long have you lived here?’ says Gibbs, before Yvon’s had a chance to answer the last question.

‘Eighteen months,’ she says shakily. ‘Look, you can’t take my computer, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m afraid we can.’ Gibbs smiles for the first time, a tight, gloating grin. He walks over to the windowsill, picks up a brass pocket sundial and tugs at the string. It’s a sturdy little thing, which I can see disappoints him. He hoped he might break it. Sellers clears his throat, and I wonder if it’s a reprimand.

‘How will I work?’ asks Yvon. ‘When will I get it back?’

‘We’ll get it back to you as quickly as we can,’ says Sellers. ‘Sorry about the inconvenience. It’s just routine, we have to do it.’ She looks slightly reassured. ‘Right, then.’ He turns back to me. ‘We’ll start in the house.’

‘Where’s DC Waterhouse?’ I ask again. The answer comes to me as I’m speaking. ‘He’s at Robert’s house, isn’t he?’

You are there somewhere, at 3 Chapel Lane. I know you are. I think of the panic attack I had outside your window, collapsing on the grass. Every blade was a cold brand on my skin, freezing its length into my flesh. My breath becomes jerky and I force myself to push the memory away before it overpowers me.

‘Robert?’ Sellers looks puzzled. ‘You’ve accused this man of abducting and raping you. How come you’re on first-name terms with him?’

Yvon’s face has turned pale. I avoid her eye. Unless Sellers and Gibbs are completely incompetent, they will find several books about rape and its aftermath in the bottom drawer of my bedside cabinet, as well as a rape alarm and an aerosol spray. I’ve got the accessories to back up my story, all the depressing paraphernalia of victimhood, hidden under a folded pillowcase.

‘A woman can call her rapist whatever she wants,’ I say angrily.

DC Gibbs leaves while I am still speaking, letting the door bang shut behind him. Sellers acknowledges my response with a very slight shift of his features. Then he too turns to go. I watch him as he rejoins his more malignant colleague outside on the path. The two of them set off towards the house.

Yvon doesn’t follow them, even though I turn my back on her and pick up my brush. My back is stiff with tension, hard and flat, to repel what I know she is about to say.

‘I’m sorry about your computer,’ I mutter. ‘I’m sure they won’t keep it for long.’

‘Robert abducted you and raped you?’ she says in a tight voice.

‘Of course he didn’t. Close the door.’

She stands still, shaking her head.

In the end I get up and close it myself. ‘I told a lie—a big one—to make the police think Robert’s dangerous and needs to be found urgently.’

Yvon stares at me, aghast.

‘What choice did I have?’ I say. ‘The police were doing sod all. I want to know what’s happened to Robert. I know
something
has. I needed a way of making them look for him.’

‘That’s why you wanted me to take you to the police station yesterday.’ Her voice is dull, toneless. ‘What was the story? What exactly did you tell them?’

‘I’m not going there, okay?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because . . . I’ve just told you, it was a lie, it was rubbish. Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘You told the police that Robert—the man who according to you is your soul mate, the man you want to marry and spend the rest of your life with—you told the police he abducted you and raped you?’ She is trying to shock me with the stark fact of what I’ve done. It won’t work. I got over my shock a while ago. Now my lie, the extreme step I’ve taken, is simply part of my life like everything else: my love for you, my real ordeal at the hands of a man whose name I don’t know, this stone sundial in front of me with a painted-on smiling sun at its centre.

‘I’ve told you why,’ I insist. ‘The police didn’t care about finding Robert when he was just my missing married boyfriend. I wanted to put a rocket under their arses, and it worked.’ I gesture in the direction of the house. ‘They’re here, looking.’

‘They must think you’re insane. They’re probably wondering if you’ve stabbed him or something.’

‘I don’t care what they think, as long as they look for him as hard as they can.’

‘They know you’re lying.’ Yvon looks tearful. Her voice is laced with panic. ‘If they don’t already, they’ll find out.’ Deep down, she is still an obedient boarding-school girl. She is conventional in the way that almost everybody is. I realise that more people would agree with her about this than with me, which is a strange thought.

I say nothing. The police can’t prove I wasn’t abducted and raped, however hard they try, and they can’t prove it wasn’t you who did it until they find you.

Should I tell Yvon the truth about what happened to me? Yesterday I proved to myself that I could do it, tell the story. It wasn’t as bad as I’ve spent three years imagining it would be. On the way home from the police station, I felt as if I’d clawed back a bit of dignity from the men who’d stolen it from me. I was no longer too frightened to speak.

No one will ever understand this—not even you, Robert—but it helps me to think that I told the story, eventually, in the way I did: as part of a deliberate strategy to manipulate the police. Not in good faith, not as a good girl humiliated. Maybe it even made it easier that Detective Constable Waterhouse spoke to me as if I were a criminal. Technically, I probably am one, now that I’ve made a false statement. I am no longer the prey of the man who attacked me. I am his equal; we are both law-breakers.

‘You can’t love Robert,’ says Yvon in a choked voice. ‘If you love him, how can you tell such an awful lie about him? He’ll hate you.’

‘I’ll withdraw the accusation as soon as they’ve found him. I might get into trouble for lying to the police, but I don’t care about that. Nothing bad can happen to Robert if I admit I was lying.’

‘Are you sure? Can’t the police pursue something like this irrespective of what you say? They’ll still have a record of whatever story you told them yesterday, won’t they? They can use that!’

‘Yvon, there’s no way that’d happen,’ I say patiently, though my brain is starting to feel frayed at the edges. ‘It’s hard enough to get a conviction in a rape case at the best of times, even if the victim’s a credible witness. There’s no way the cops’ll pursue this once Robert’s been found and I’ve changed my story for the second time. It’d be laughed out of court.’

‘You don’t know that! What do you know about how the police and court systems work? Nothing!’

‘Look, I’ve given them a date, okay?’ I pause, unable to say March the thirtieth 2003 out loud. ‘Since Robert didn’t abduct me on that date, he’ll be able to prove he didn’t. He’ll have been working—he works every day. He’ll have an alibi, someone who saw him loading up or who took a delivery from him, someone who saw him at a service station or in a lorry park. Or he’ll have been with Juliet.’ I’ve been through this in my head dozens of times. ‘There’s no risk to Robert.’

‘Bugger Robert!’ Yvon’s anxiety boils over into anger. ‘You know what? I think he’s fine, absolutely fine. Men like him always are!’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You could go to prison, Naomi. Isn’t it perjury, what you’ve done?’

‘Probably.’

‘Probably? Is that all you can say? What’s wrong with you? Have you gone mad? This is so crazy, it’s . . .’ She bursts into tears.

‘There are worse things than going to prison for a bit,’ I tell her calmly. ‘They’re hardly going to lock me up for life, are they? And I’ll be able to say—truthfully—that I lied out of desperation. I’ve never been in trouble of any kind before. I’ve been a model citizen . . .’

‘You can’t even see what’s wrong with it, can you?’

I consider this. ‘On one level, yes. On another, no,’ I say honestly. ‘And the level on which it’s right is the more important one.’ I search my brain for things I could say that might help. How does a person like me get through to a person like Yvon? Her tolerance vanishes at the first hint of trouble and her mind shuts down. Like a country that has introduced strict emergency measures after a frightening and unforeseen attack. ‘Look, by wrong, are you sure you don’t just mean unusual?’ I suggest.

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘Well . . . most people wouldn’t do what I’m doing. I know that. Most people would wait patiently, leave it in the hands of the proper authorities and hope for the best. Most people wouldn’t inflame the situation by claiming their missing lover was a dangerous criminal in the hope that the police would look for him more efficiently.’

‘That’s right! Most people wouldn’t!’ Her concern for me has mutated into fully fledged anger. ‘In fact,
nobody
would, except you!’

‘That’s what you object to, isn’t it? Because ninety-nine out of a hundred women wouldn’t do it, it has to be wrong, according to you!’

‘Can’t you hear how twisted that is? It’s the other way round! Because it’s wrong, ninety-nine out of a hundred women wouldn’t do it!’

‘No! Sometimes you have to be brave and do something that doesn’t fit in with the general pattern, just to shake things up a bit, to make things happen. If everyone thought like you, women still wouldn’t be allowed to vote!’

We stare at one another, both short of breath.

‘I’m going to tell them.’ Yvon takes a step back, as if she’s about to run to the house. ‘I’ll tell the police everything you’ve just told me.’

I shrug. ‘I’ll say you’re lying.’

Her face crumples. She amends her threat. ‘If you don’t tell them, I will. I mean it, Naomi. What the fuck’s wrong with you? You’ve turned into some sort of sick weirdo!’

The last time I had such direct verbal insults thrown at me, I was tied by ropes—first to a bed, then to a chair—and couldn’t do anything about it. There’s no way I’m putting up with it now from my so-called best friend.

‘I’ve done my best to explain it to you,’ I say coldly. ‘If you still don’t understand, tough. And if you tell the police what I’ve just told you, you can start looking for somewhere else to live. In fact, you can leave right now.’

I have crossed another line. I seem to be doing it all the time these days. I wish I could erase my harsh words, swallow them back into my mouth, into non-existence, but I can’t. I have to keep this defiant, set expression on my face. I will not be seen as weak.