The Truth-Teller's Lie (21 page)

I nod.

‘DS Kombothekra from West Yorkshire CID showed Prue Kelvey and Sandy Freeguard a photograph of Robert earlier today. That’s what the call was about.’

At first I can’t place any of the names. Then I remember. I close my eyes, relieved. I hadn’t even realised I’d been waiting for this news. ‘Good,’ I say. ‘So you no longer suspect Robert of being a serial rapist.’ The stupid, awful thing I did has been undone and we can all forget it ever happened.

‘Prue Kelvey said she wasn’t sure . . .’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘She didn’t make a positive identification, but she said he was the right type, it might have been him.’

‘That’s ridiculous. She can’t remember. She probably thought it must be Robert, if a cop was showing her his photo, and she didn’t want to ruin things by pointing out that it wasn’t him!’

‘I’m sure that’s true,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘It’s not her response I’m interested in. We’ve got a DNA profile to compare with Robert’s in her case, so if he didn’t do it, that’ll soon prove it . . .’

‘What do you mean,
if
he didn’t do it? You
know
I made up that story. Don’t you? The part about Robert.’

She nods. ‘I think so. But when a person lies as easily as you did, it’s hard to know what to believe. Would you recognise your assailant’s face, do you think, after all this time?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re more confident than Prue Kelvey. Her response to the photograph wasn’t very useful. It’s Sandy Freeguard’s response I’m more interested in. She said Robert definitely wasn’t the man that raped her—’

‘Thank goodness one of them’s got a memory!’

‘—but she also said she knew him. “That’s Robert Haworth,” she said.’

My mind tilts. Once again, everything familiar starts to spin, to rearrange itself into a new, random pattern. Nothing is where I think it is, or what I think it is. ‘Tell me,’ I say.

‘Three months after she was raped, she met Robert. They started going out together.’

‘Where did they meet? That’s bollocks. No woman who’s been through anything like what I went through would get herself a new boyfriend so quickly.’

‘Sandy Freeguard did. They met in Huddersfield town centre. Her car collided with his.’

‘You mean his lorry?’ I am determined to fend off each new fact as it approaches. There must be some mistake. I don’t know this DS Kombothekra, so why should I trust what he says?

‘No, Robert was in his car, a Volvo. The accident was Freeguard’s fault, she says, and she was upset about it. Robert was very understanding, apparently, and they ended up going for coffee. That was how the relationship started.’

‘But . . . no! It’s too much of a coincidence!’

‘You’re telling me,’ Sergeant Zailer says caustically. ‘I don’t understand it either. You and Sandy Freeguard were attacked in the same way, probably by the same man, and you both went on to have relationships with Robert Haworth. How can that be?’

Her confusion scares me more than my own. ‘When?’ I ask. ‘When did this Sandy woman go out with Robert?’

‘November 2004. She was raped in the August of the same year.’

I have heard the word ‘rape’ so many times in the past week. I no longer dread hearing it. It has lost its power. ‘I met Robert in March 2005. When did they split up?’ I have a horrible premonition of what Sergeant Zailer will say next. ‘Oh, God. They didn’t split up, did they?’

‘Yeah, they did. Just before Christmas 2004. You thought Robert was two-timing you with her?’

‘No. Only because—’

‘Would you care? He was two-timing you with his wife, wasn’t he? It wasn’t as if you thought he was faithful to you.’

‘It’s totally different. I knew about Juliet. Of course I’d care if I found out Robert had been lying to me all the time we were together, hiding a secret girlfriend.’ I take a few deep breaths. ‘Why did they split up, Robert and this Sandy Freeguard? Did she say?’

‘DS Kombothekra asked her about the relationship in detail, including the break-up. Apparently Robert was the model boyfriend—very attentive and keen—until one day he told her it was all over, completely out of the blue. He just switched off, she said. Came over all dutiful and husbandly, said he didn’t feel he was being fair to his wife and that was it. So . . .’ She shrugged.

‘So what?’ I say angrily. ‘So you’re trying to make out he’s unreliable, the sort of person who’d blow hot one minute and cold the next? No way. He’s loved me for a year. There’s no way he’d turn against me.’

‘Sandy Freeguard couldn’t understand it either,’ Sergeant Zailer says patiently. ‘Naomi, loads of men—especially married ones— declare undying love right up until the point when they want nothing more to do with you.’

‘Robert’s not like other men, and his motives are nothing like theirs. You wouldn’t understand unless you knew him.’

Sergeant Zailer starts the car engine. ‘Close your door,’ she says. ‘I’ve got to get back. We’re not going to work this out just sitting here.’ She lights a cigarette as she drives. I wish I smoked. ‘Sandy Freeguard and Robert never had sex. I assume that’s not true of you and Robert.’

‘No. We had sex every Thursday, for three hours. I’m not surprised she didn’t want to, though, if it was only three months after.’

‘She wanted to. It was Robert who insisted on waiting, said she couldn’t possibly be ready. She told him about what had happened to her.’

Wetness clouds my eyes. ‘That sounds like him,’ I say. ‘He’s really thoughtful.’

‘Sandy Freeguard found it irritating. She wanted to be treated normally, and he kept telling her to take it slowly, not to do too much too soon. She said he discouraged her from setting up a support group and training as a counsellor and all the positive things she wanted to do. He said she wasn’t ready and she wouldn’t be able to cope if she took on too much.’

‘He was probably right.’ I defend you even though you’ve just smashed my heart up. One day we’ll resolve the misunderstanding and you’ll take back what you said today. Why were you in Huddersfield, in your car instead of your lorry? Why weren’t you working that day?

Sergeant Zailer is shaking her head. ‘From what Sam Kombothekra says, Freeguard’s a bit of a dynamo. She copes by putting herself and her experiences out there and trying to turn them into something positive, for herself and for others. He says she’s a real inspiration.’

‘Well, bully for her,’ I say pettily. I can’t help it. How does she expect me to react to hearing that I’ve been beaten hands down in the Best Rape Victim Contest?

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ She sighs. ‘Sandy Freeguard told Kombothekra that she didn’t believe Robert’s reason for ending the relationship. Let’s face it, if he cared that much about saving his marriage he wouldn’t have started an affair with you only a few months later, would he? I’m inclined to agree with Freeguard: he couldn’t handle knowing about the rape, so in the end he left her. That’d explain why he didn’t want to have sex, too.’

‘That’s a terrible thing to say! Robert would never be like that.’

‘Are you sure? Maybe you feared he would be, and that’s why you didn’t tell him about what happened to you.’

‘I didn’t tell anyone.’

‘And yet Juliet Haworth knows what happened to you. Who told her, if not Robert?’

‘You’re twisting everything to fit in with—’

‘I’m trying to,’ she agrees. ‘But no matter how hard I try, I can’t get my head round this one. You say Robert didn’t rape you, and, for what it’s worth, I believe you. But I don’t believe in coincidences.’

‘Neither do I,’ I say quietly.

She grimaces. ‘Then, whether you like it or not—whether
I
like it or not—we have to face facts. Robert Haworth’s connected to these rapes somehow.’

18

4/7/06

‘HE’S UNCONSCIOUS AGAIN?’ Unreasonably, Sellers felt slighted, as if Robert Haworth might have done it to spite them.

‘An epileptic fit, a rebleed, swollen brain tonsils. And he’s been having small but regular epileptic fits ever since. It’s not looking good.’ Gibbs shook his jacket off his shoulders and took a sip of his pint. He and Sellers were in the Brown Cow, not the nearest pub to work, but the only one in Spilling that served seven different kinds of Timothy Taylor beer. The walls and ceiling were covered in dark wood panelling, and there was a no-smoking room to the left of the front door, with a framed portrait of the eponymous brown cow on the wall. No bobby or detective would risk sitting in there, even the ones who didn’t smoke, in case someone saw them. The sarge, who did, thought it wasn’t fair that the non-smokers got the picture of the cow in their room, the pub’s only painting. ‘All we get is the crappy menu boards,’ she often complained. A sign to the right of the bar warned customers that, from Monday 17 April, the entire pub would be a smoke-free zone.

‘
Status epilepticus,
’ said Gibbs, in a hard, bitter voice. ‘Just our fucking luck. What did you order me?’ He took another large gulp of his pint, and belched.

‘Steak pie and chips. I haven’t ordered for Waterhouse.’

‘He’ll have a pint, no food. He’s got some fucking weird hang-up about eating in front of other people. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.’

When all was well, Sellers and Gibbs sometimes discussed Simon Waterhouse’s peculiarities, but Sellers was reluctant to do so with Gibbs in this mood.

‘I bet you’re having chicken with something fancy stuffed up its arse, fruit or some shite like that.’

‘Where’s the sarge?’ Sellers ignored the sneery tone. In fact, he had ordered a perfectly respectable haddock and chips.

‘At the hospital, brushing up on boffin jargon.’ Everything Gibbs said sounded like an excellent way to end a conversation.

Sellers tried again. ‘I see we’ve got some extra bodies drafted in to help with the donkey work. How did Proust wangle that?’

‘Waste of time. Half of them are on to the theatres, half are ploughing through rape porn sites on the Net, but so far, nothing. That cunt Juliet Haworth’s still not talking, and we can’t do a fucking thing about that, can we?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, she smashed her husband’s head in with a rock. She’s made it pretty clear our words will never hurt her, the cocky bitch. Time for some sticks and stones.’

‘You want to start beating up women now? Look good on your CV, that will.’

‘If it stops
innocent
women getting pulled off the street and raped . . .’

‘How can that be down to Juliet Haworth?’

Gibbs shrugged. ‘She knows something. She knew what had happened to Naomi Jenkins, didn’t she? Know what I reckon? Haworth’s our rapist, whatever Jenkins is saying now. And his cunt of a wife helped him.’

So why are you looking at me like it’s my fault? Sellers wondered if he was getting paranoid in his old age.

‘I spoke to the people at SRISA about Tanya from Cardiff,’ said Gibbs. ‘They had her details.’

‘And?’

‘Killed herself. Overdose.’

‘Shit. When?’

‘Last year. Want some more good news? Speak Out and Survive were a wash-out. They had nothing. New computers, very little paperwork. I’ve got someone on it, but I doubt we’ll be talking to survivor thirty-one any time soon.’

‘
Shit.
’

‘Yeah. It is, really. Still, don’t let it get you down.’ Gibbs faked a sickly smile. ‘You’re off away with Suki soon, aren’t you? Sun, fun and sex. You won’t want to come back.’

‘You’re telling me,’ Sellers murmured, ignoring the snide delivery. He was already getting worried about what he’d do when the holiday was over, when he no longer had it to look forward to. He was of the view that it was the anticipation of the sex more than the sex itself that made adultery and infidelity well worth the risk.

‘If Stacey finds out where you are, you won’t have the option of coming back, even if you want to. Maybe I could invite Suki to my wedding. That’d be a nice surprise for Stacey, wouldn’t it?’

It took a lot to make Sellers lose his temper, but Gibbs had been putting in the hours recently. ‘What the fuck’s your problem? Are you jealous, is that it? You’ve got your honeymoon coming up. Where is it you’re going? Seychelles?’

‘Tunisia. My honeymoon. Of course—an age-old tradition. If you get married, you have a honeymoon.’

‘What?’ Sellers couldn’t grasp the implication, if there was one.

‘Traditions are important, aren’t they? Wouldn’t want to miss out,’ said Gibbs. The last two words sounded clipped, exaggerated. Foam from his pint coated his upper lip.

Hearing the song that had begun to blare from the jukebox, Sellers realised that every day he liked Chris Gibbs less and less. ‘Are you having second thoughts?’ he asked.

‘Second thoughts about what?’ contributed a voice from behind them.

‘Waterhouse! What are you . . . Oh, you’ve got one.’ Sellers was pleased to see him. Anything to avoid a heavy conversation with Gibbs about feelings. Was Gibbs even capable of such a feat?

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Simon. ‘There’ve been some developments. I just got off the phone with forensics.’

‘And?’

‘The stain-remover on the Haworths’ stair carpet. There’s blood underneath it—Robert Haworth’s.’ Sellers opened his mouth, but Simon answered before he had a chance to ask. ‘The stairs are visible from the front door. The master bedroom isn’t. Anyway, there was too much blood in the bedroom. There’d have been no point even trying.’

‘What other developments?’ asked Sellers.

‘Robert Haworth’s lorry. Traces of semen all over the floor. Not his.’

‘I bet loads of lorry drivers have a wank in the back of the van when they stop at services,’ Gibbs mused.

‘
Not
his?’ Sellers echoed. ‘Definitely?’

Simon nodded. ‘That’s not all. The keys to the lorry were in the house, and they’ve got Juliet Haworth’s fingerprints on them as well as her husband’s. That in itself might not be significant. All the keys in the Haworths’ house live in a pottery bowl on the table in the kitchen, so Juliet could have touched the ones for the lorry when she was replacing her house keys, but . . .’

‘The long, thin room Kelvey and Freeguard mentioned . . .’ Sellers thought aloud. ‘Haworth’s lorry.’

‘That was my first thought too,’ said Simon. ‘But where’s the mattress? It wasn’t in the lorry, and forensics got nothing from the one Robert Haworth was found lying on in his bedroom, just Haworth’s DNA and Juliet’s.’

‘Naomi Jenkins mentioned a plastic cover on the mattress in her statement,’ Sellers reminded him.

‘Kelvey and Freeguard didn’t,’ said Simon. ‘I rang Sam Kombothekra, asked him to check. There was no plastic cover in either case. Just a bare mattress. Which, let’s face it, was probably taken to some tip and dumped.’ He exhaled slowly. ‘You’re right, though. Kelvey and Freeguard were raped in Haworth’s lorry. One of the long sides isn’t metal—it’s made of a sort of thick canvas. It’s just a huge flap of material, basically, with ties all along the bottom to attach it to the side of the floor. Freeguard said something about a cloth wall. It’s got to be the lorry.’

‘I reckon Juliet Haworth’s the driving force behind the rapes,’ Gibbs tried his theory out on Simon. ‘She’s got a male accomplice, the one who’s been dripping his cum all over the back of Haworth’s lorry, but she’s the brains behind it. She’s been using hubby’s lorry as a venue, selling tickets to live rapes. Nice little earner. So much for her not working.’

‘Naomi Jenkins looks down on her for being a kept woman,’ said Simon thoughtfully. ‘She’s always making jibes about it.’

‘Kept, my arse.’ Gibbs snorted. ‘She probably makes more money from her little business than Haworth does from his driving.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Sellers. ‘We only know of four definites: Jenkins, Kelvey, Freeguard and survivor thirty-one. And only two of those were in the long, thin room. The others were in this theatre place, wherever the fuck.’

‘Why the change from theatre to van?’ said Simon.

‘There might have been a lot more who didn’t report it,’ said Gibbs. ‘Jenkins, Kelvey and Freeguard all said the rapist threatened to kill them. And if that wasn’t enough of an incentive to keep quiet, let’s face it, a lot of women wouldn’t want to go public and be seen as damaged goods, and a lot of men
would
see them that way. Whatever they say.’

‘All right,’ said Sellers wearily. ‘But assuming you’re right about Juliet and her accomplice, did Robert Haworth know? Was he in on it?’

‘My gut feeling is that he didn’t. Maybe he found out, and that was why Juliet went for him with the doorstop,’ said Simon. ‘Here’s something, though: when Charlie spoke to Yvon Cotchin, Cotchin told her that Naomi Jenkins had said Robert didn’t do overnight jobs any more. Apparently Juliet didn’t like him being away from home—that was the reason he gave Jenkins, anyway . . .’

‘But you’re thinking maybe she didn’t like the lorry being away from home, because she needed it for her own work,’ Sellers completed Simon’s hypothesis for him. ‘If you’re right, it’d explain a few things. Robert Haworth started going out with both Sandy Freeguard and Naomi Jenkins
after
they were raped—three months after, in Freeguard’s case and two years after in Jenkins’. Maybe Juliet fixed him up with them somehow.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Gibbs sneered. ‘How exactly would she have managed that?’

‘How, and why?’ Simon chewed the inside of his lip, thinking. ‘And even if she tried to, would Haworth really go along with it? I wondered about that, and decided it was impossible. Unlikely, at least.’

‘I can answer the why,’ said Gibbs. ‘She’s a pervert. She gets a sexual kick out of knowing her husband’s knobbing these women who have already been knobbed by the rapist. Whoever he is.’

‘But then Haworth’d have to contrive to meet them and strike up a relationship with them—it’s too much effort. What’s in it for him? Is he also a pervert? And who’s to say the women’d want to get involved with him?’

‘That’s the kick, for both of them,’ Gibbs persisted. ‘Her arranging the rapes, then him fucking the victims. Spices up their sex life.
That
’s why Robert Haworth isn’t doing the rapes himself. The women’d hardly go out with him if they recognised him as the man who raped them, would they?’

Sellers couldn’t see it. ‘Kombothekra said Sandy Freeguard never had sex with Haworth. She wanted to, he didn’t. And he’s been seeing Naomi Jenkins for a year. Why so long, if it’s just so he and his wife can get their rocks off?’

‘Is it possible for a couple to suffer, jointly, from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy?’ Simon wondered aloud. He wasn’t hopeful, but it was a theory. Sometimes the bad ones led on to good ones. ‘If it is, perhaps the idea’s that Juliet arranges the ordeal, then Robert comes along afterwards and looks after the women, helps them recover, rebuilds their confidence. Kombothekra said Sandy Freeguard complained about Haworth trying to mollycoddle her. He didn’t want her to do too much too soon. Wouldn’t have sex with her, for that reason.’

He frowned, seeing the flaw in what he was putting forward. ‘But Naomi Jenkins didn’t even tell him she was raped, and from what she’s told us, it sounds as if he treated her completely differently, not like a victim at all. The two of them went to bed together within a couple of hours of meeting.’

‘It’s bollocks.’ Gibbs yawned. ‘I’ve never heard of couples having Munchausen’s by proxy. It’s an individual thing. You wouldn’t talk about it, would you? How would they find out they both had it?’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Simon. ‘I might check with an expert, though.’

‘Expert!’ Gibbs scoffed.

‘It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever come across,’ said Sellers, his forehead creased with concentration. ‘Robert Haworth’s got to be the link—Juliet knew the MO for the rapes, and two of the victims went on to be Haworth’s girlfriends . . . but that’s it, isn’t it? They
went on
to be his girlfriends. Does it make sense to say he’s the link when he only met Freeguard and Jenkins
after
they’d been kidnapped and raped?’

Simon ran his finger around the circumference of his pint glass. ‘“Human uncertainty is all that makes the human reason strong. We never know until we fall that every word we speak is wrong.”’

‘What the fuck’s that?’ Gibbs snapped.

‘Juliet Haworth wrote it down for us,’ said Sellers.

‘It’s by a C. H. Sisson,’ said Simon. ‘He died recently. The poem’s called “Uncertainty”.’

‘Great. Let’s set up a fucking reading group,’ said Gibbs.

‘Do you think it means anything?’ asked Sellers. ‘Was Juliet Haworth trying to give us some sort of message?’

‘Loud and clear.’ Gibbs looked disgusted. ‘She’s taking the piss. Give me ten minutes alone with her . . .’

‘She’s implying that we’re wrong about everything.’ Simon tried not to sound as depressed as he felt. ‘That we’ll only realise
how
wrong when it’s too late.’ Or perhaps that she herself had only realised, too late, that she was wrong about Robert, and that was why she tried to kill him? No, that was reading too much into it, surely.

Simon changed the subject. ‘How did you do with the backgrounds? Is there anything in Juliet Haworth’s that looks like it might lead us to her accomplice, assuming she’s got one?’

‘I’ve got a list of names of old friends, one or two business contacts, ’ said Sellers. ‘Her parents were helpful.’ And distraught to hear that their only child had been charged with attempted murder. Telling them that hadn’t been a pleasant task.

‘Business as in making and selling her pottery cottages?’

‘Yeah. She did pretty well with it. Remmicks stocked some of her stuff for a while.’

‘So she’s got a head for business.’ Gibbs looked pleased with himself. ‘Tell him the interesting bit.’

‘I was just about to.’ Sellers turned back to Simon. ‘She’s not seen them for years, the names on the list. She’s not seen anyone but her husband, basically, since she had a nervous breakdown in 2001 due to overwork.’