The Truth-Teller's Lie (23 page)

Given what Graham had said about being ditched in favour of her work, Charlie had felt bad asking him the questions she needed to ask. She hadn’t told him she’d been planning to phone him solely for that reason, instead of to suggest that they arrange to meet. What was wrong with her? Why hadn’t she been bursting to see him again? He was sexy, funny, clever. Good in bed, albeit in a slightly overeager-to-please sort of way.

When she’d finally plucked up the courage to ask him, Graham hadn’t minded at all. He’d phoned Steph straight away. They were now waiting for her to ring back. ‘You didn’t tell her I wanted to know, did you?’ asked Charlie. ‘If you did, she’ll never call.’

‘You know I didn’t. You were here when I rang her.’

‘Yeah, but . . . didn’t she know you were coming to see me?’

Graham chuckled. ‘Course not. I never tell the dogsbody where I’m going.’

‘She said you tell her about all the women you sleep with, in graphic detail. She also said a lot of them start out as customers.’

‘The second part’s not true. She meant you, that’s all. She was trying to upset you. Most of my customers are fat middle-aged fishermen called Derek. Imagine the name Derek being moaned gently in the dark—it just doesn’t work, does it?’

Charlie laughed. ‘And the first part?’ Did Graham think he could charm her into letting it drop?

He sighed. ‘Once—and only because it was such an irresistible story—I told Steph about a woman I slept with. Static Sue.’

‘Static Sue?’ Charlie repeated slowly.

‘I’m not kidding, this woman didn’t move a muscle, just lay there, rigid, throughout. My stunning performance had no effect whatsoever. I kept wanting to stop and check her pulse, see if she was still with me.’

‘I take it you didn’t.’

‘No. It would have been too embarrassing, wouldn’t it? The funny thing was, the minute we disentangled ourselves, she started moving again, normally. She got up as if nothing had happened, smiled at me and asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. I tell you, I had a few worries about my technique after that little episode!’

Charlie smiled. ‘Stop fishing for compliments. So . . . why would Steph want to upset me? Just because I used your computer, or . . . ?’

Graham gave her a wry look. ‘You want to know what’s going on with me and Steph, guv?’

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Charlie.

‘I wouldn’t mind knowing what’s going on with you and Simon Waterhouse.’

‘How . . . ?’

‘Your sister mentioned him, remember? Olivia. No nicknames from now on, I promise.’

‘Oh, right.’ Charlie had done her best to forget that awful moment: Olivia’s outburst from the literal and moral highground of her mezzanine bedroom.

‘Have you two patched things up yet?’ Graham leaned on one elbow. ‘She came back, you know.’

‘She
what
?’ He’d sounded a little too offhand for Charlie’s liking. Anger rose inside her. If he meant what she thought he meant . . .

‘To the chalet. The next day, after you’d gone. She seemed disappointed not to find you. I told her something important had come up at work . . . Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘You should have told me this straight away!’

‘That’s not fair, guv. You’ve only just given me my mouth back. We’ve been busy, remember? It’s not as if I’ve been twiddling my thumbs. Or, if I have, it was with the best possible intentions . . .’

‘Graham, I’m serious.’

He shot her a knowing look. ‘You haven’t kissed and made up, have you? You thought your sis was still sulking, so you left her to it. Now you feel guilty and you’re trying to pin it on me. An innocent bystander!’ He stuck out his lower lip, curling it over in mock unhappiness.

Charlie was unwilling to acknowledge how right he was. ‘You should have phoned me straight away. You’ve got my number. I gave it to Steph when I booked.’

Graham groaned and covered his eyes with his hands. ‘Look, most people don’t appreciate it when the proprietors of their holiday accommodation take an active interest in their family feuds. I know we almost—’

‘Exactly.’

‘—but we didn’t, did we? So I was playing hard to get. Briefly, yes—I admit it, Officer—but at least I had a go. Anyway, I thought
she’d
phone you. She didn’t seem annoyed anymore. She apologised to me.’

Charlie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you sure? Are you sure this was my sister, not just someone who looked like her?’

‘It was Fat Girl Slim as I live and breathe.’ Graham rolled away so that she couldn’t hit him. ‘We had quite a nice chat, actually. She seemed to have revised her opinion of me.’

‘Don’t assume that, just because she wasn’t laying into you.’

‘I didn’t. No initiative or guesswork was required. She told me. Said I’d be much better for you than Simon Waterhouse. Which reminds me: you didn’t answer my question.’

Charlie was furious with her sister for interfering. She wondered if Olivia’s new approach was a more subtle way of trying to ensure that Charlie and Graham didn’t start a relationship. Was she relying on Charlie’s rebellious streak to kick in?

‘Nothing’s going on with me and Simon,’ she said. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

Graham looked worried. ‘Except you’re in love with him.’

I could easily deny it, thought Charlie. ‘Yes,’ she said.

He bounced back quicker than most men would have. ‘I’ll grow on you, you’ll see,’ he said, chirpy again. Charlie thought he might be right. She could make him right if she tried, surely. She didn’t have to be another Naomi Jenkins, falling apart because some bastard told her to leave him alone. A bigger bastard than Simon Waterhouse; Charlie was doing better than Naomi on every front. Robert Haworth. A rapist. Prue Kelvey’s rapist. Charlie was still struggling to take in the implications.

Against Simon’s advice, she’d given Naomi a full update on the phone this afternoon. She couldn’t exactly say she’d grown to like the woman, and she certainly didn’t trust her, but she thought she understood how Naomi’s mind worked. A bit too well. An otherwise intelligent woman made foolish by the strength of her feelings.

Naomi had taken the news about the DNA match better than Charlie had expected her to. She’d gone silent for a while, but when she spoke, she sounded calm. She’d told Charlie that the only way she could deal with any of this was by finding out the truth, all of it. There wouldn’t be any more lies from Naomi Jenkins—Charlie was convinced of that.

Naomi was due to talk to Juliet Haworth again tomorrow. If Juliet was involved in some kind of sick money-making scheme with the man who’d raped Naomi and Sandy Freeguard, Naomi was possibly the only person who could provoke her into letting something slip. For some reason that Charlie couldn’t discern, Naomi was important to Juliet. Nobody else was, certainly not her husband—Juliet had made that abundantly clear. ‘I’ll
make
her tell me,’ Naomi had said shakily on the phone. Charlie admired her determination, but warned her not to underestimate Juliet’s.

‘Well, I’m not in love with the dogsbody, you’ll be glad to hear,’ said Graham, yawning. ‘Though I have . . . taken a dip, shall we say. Every now and then. But she’s nothing compared to you, Sarge, however corny that sounds. I’ve had more than enough of her. You’re the one I want, with your tyrannical charm and your impossibly high standards.’

‘They are not!’

Graham snorted with laughter, folded his arms behind his head. ‘Sarge, I can’t even begin to understand what you require of me, let alone deliver it.’

‘Yeah, well. Don’t give up too easily.’ Charlie feigned sulkiness. Graham had slept with Steph.
Taken a dip.
She could hardly complain, given what she’d just told him.

‘Aha! I can prove that Steph means nothing to me. Wait till you hear this.’ His eyes twinkled.

‘You’re a ruthless gossip, Graham Angilley!’

‘Remember the song? Grandmaster Flash?’ He began to sing. ‘White lines, going through my mind . . .’

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Steph, the dogsbod, has got a white line dividing her bum in half. Next time you come to the chalets, I’ll get her to show you.’

‘No thanks.’

‘It looks as ridiculous as it sounds. Now, you
know
I could never be serious about a woman like that.’

‘A white line?’

‘Yeah. She spends hours on sunbeds, and as a result her arse is bright orange.’ Graham smiled. ‘But if you were to—how shall I put this?—separate one buttock from the other—’

‘All right, I get the gist!’

‘—you’d see a clear white stripe. You can see it a little bit even when she’s just walking around.’

‘Does she often walk around naked?’

‘Actually, yes,’ said Graham. ‘She’s got a bit of a thing for me.’

‘Which you’ve done nothing to encourage, of course.’

‘Of course not!’ Graham faked outrage.

His mobile phone began to ring and he picked it up. ‘Yup.’ He mouthed, ‘White line,’ at Charlie, so that she didn’t have to wonder who he was speaking to. ‘Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Great. Well done, mate. You’ve earned your stripes, as they say.’ He nudged Charlie.

She couldn’t help laughing. ‘Well?’

‘No Naomi Jenkins. Never been to the chalets.’

‘Oh.’

‘But she checked for any Naomis, being the thorough little terrier that she is. There was a Naomi Haworth—H, a, w, o, r, t, h—booked a chalet for a weekend last September. Naomi and Robert Haworth, but Steph said the wife made the booking. Is that any use to you?’

‘Yes.’ Charlie sat up, pushing Graham’s hand off her. She needed to concentrate.

‘Before you get your hopes up . . .’

‘What?’

‘She cancelled. The Haworths never turned up. Steph remembers her cancelling and says she sounded upset. Sounded like she was crying, in fact. Steph wondered if the husband had dumped her or died or something, and that was why she was having to cancel.’

‘Right.’ Charlie nodded. ‘Right. That’s . . . great, that’s really helpful.’

‘Are you going to tell me now what it’s all about?’ Graham tickled her.

‘Stop it! No, I can’t.’

‘I bet you’d tell this Simon Waterhouse character all the details.’

‘He already knows as much as I do.’ Charlie grinned at his hurt look. ‘He’s one of my detectives.’

‘So you see him every day?’ Graham sighed, falling back on the bed. ‘Just my luck.’

19

Friday, April 7

YVON SITS BESIDE me on the sofa and places a small cake plate between us. There’s a sandwich on it. She doesn’t look at it, doesn’t want to draw it to my attention in case that inspires me to reject it.

I stare at the television’s blank grey screen. To embark upon eating anything, even this soft white bread, would be too much of an undertaking. Like setting off to run a marathon while you’re still recovering from a general anaesthetic.

‘You haven’t eaten all day,’ says Yvon.

‘You haven’t been with me all day.’

‘You’ve eaten?’

‘No,’ I admit. I don’t know how much of the day is left. It’s dark outside, that’s all I know. What does it matter? If Yvon hadn’t turned up, I wouldn’t have left my bedroom. There is only space in my head for you at the moment, nothing else. Thinking about what you said and what it meant. Hearing the coldness and the distance in your voice over and over. In a year, in ten years, I’ll still be able to play it in my mind.

‘Shall I turn on the TV?’ Yvon asks.

‘No.’

‘There might be something light, something—’

‘No.’ I don’t want to be distracted. If this enormous pain is all I have left of you, then I want to concentrate on it.

I prepare myself to say something more substantial. It takes a few seconds, and energy I don’t feel I can spare. ‘Look, I’m really glad you came and I’m glad we’re friends again, but . . . you might as well go.’

‘I’m staying.’

‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ I tell her. ‘If you’re hoping for progress, forget it. There’s not going to be any. I’m not going to start to feel better, or put it to one side and chat about something else. You can’t take my mind off it. All I’m going to do is sit here and stare at the wall.’ Somebody ought to paint a big black cross on my door, like they did during the Plague.

‘Maybe we should talk about Robert. If you talk about it—’

‘I won’t feel better. Look, I know you’re only trying to help, but you can’t.’ I long to let my grief pull me under. Fighting it, making an effort to appear civilised and in control, is too hard. I do not say this, in case it sounds melodramatic. You’re only supposed to talk about grief when someone has died.

‘You don’t have to put on any kind of act for me,’ says Yvon. ‘Lie on the floor and howl if you want. I don’t care. But I’m not leaving.’ She curls up at the other end of the sofa. ‘Have you thought about tomorrow?’

I shake my head.

‘What time’s Sergeant Zailer coming to get you?’

‘First thing.’

Yvon swears under her breath. ‘You can’t speak or eat, you can barely summon the energy to move. How the hell are you going to get through another interview with Juliet Haworth?’

I don’t know the answer to that. I’ll get through it because I have to.

‘You should ring Sergeant Zailer and tell her you’ve changed your mind. I’ll do it for you, if you want.’

‘No.’

‘Naomi . . .’

‘I have to speak to Juliet if I want to find out what she knows.’

‘What about what
you
know?’ Yvon’s voice is loaded with frustration. ‘I’ve never been Robert’s greatest supporter, but . . . he
loves
you, Naomi. And he’s not a rapist.’

‘Tell that to the DNA experts,’ I say bitterly.

‘They’ve got it wrong. So-called experts make mistakes all the time.’

‘Stop, please.’ Her false consolations are making me feel even more wretched. ‘The only way I can handle this is to face up to the worst possibility. I’m not going to let myself latch on to some unlikely theory, and be disappointed again.’

‘Okay.’ Yvon humours me. ‘So what is the worst possibility?’

‘Robert’s involved in the rapes,’ I say, in a dull, dead voice. ‘He does some, the other man does some. Juliet’s involved, maybe even in charge. They’re a team of three. Robert knew all along that I was one of the other man’s victims. Same with Sandy Freeguard. He went out of his way to meet us for that reason.’

‘Why? That’s crazy.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe to check we weren’t going to go to the police. That’s what spies do, isn’t it? They infiltrate enemy territory, report back.’

‘But you said Sandy Freeguard had already been to the police, before she started seeing Robert.’

I nod. ‘The boyfriend of a rape victim would know how the investigation was progressing, wouldn’t he? The police would keep the victim informed and the victim’d confide in her boyfriend. Maybe Juliet—or the other man, or Robert, or all three of them—wanted to be able to keep tabs on what the police were up to, in Sandy Freeguard’s case. Haven’t we always said Robert’s a control freak?’ I cannot stop the tears from escaping as I say this.

Do you know what the worst thing is? All the kind, loving, sweet things you’ve said and done have been so much more concrete and tangible in my mind since you rejected me in the hospital. It would help if I could make the bad times stand out, step forward into the spotlight. Then I might find a pattern I’ve overlooked until now and prove to my heart how wrong it has been about you. But all I can think of are your passionate words.
You have no idea how precious you are to me.
You said that at the end of every phone call, instead of goodbye.

My memory has turned against me, is trying to overwhelm me with the contrast between how you were this morning and how you have been in the past.

‘Why did Juliet smash Robert’s head in with a stone?’ asks Yvon, picking up half of my sandwich and taking a bite. ‘Why does she want to provoke you and taunt you?’

I can’t answer either question.

‘Because Robert
is
in love with you. It’s the only possible explanation. He finally got round to telling her that he was leaving her for you. She’s jealous—that’s why she hates you.’

‘Robert’s not in love with me.’ I am crushed by the weight of these words. ‘He told me to go away and leave him alone.’

‘He wasn’t thinking straight. Naomi, she tried to kill him. If your brain had been bleeding and swelling, if you’d been unconscious for days, you wouldn’t know what you were saying either.’ Yvon brushes crumbs off the sofa on to the floor. It’s her idea of cleaning. ‘Robert loves you,’ she insists. ‘And he’s going to get better, all right?’

‘Great. I get to live happily ever after with a rapist.’ I stare at the bread on the floor. For some reason it makes me think of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. Food is essential to any rescue mission.
Magret de Canard aux Poires
from the Bay Tree. There was food on the table in the little theatre where I was attacked, course after course.

‘Put that sandwich down,’ I tell Yvon. ‘Are you hungry?’

She looks caught out, ashamed to be thinking of food at a time like this. I’m also thinking about it, though I don’t think I could eat even a mouthful. ‘What time is it? Will the Bay Tree still be taking orders?’

‘The
Bay Tree
? You mean the most expensive restaurant in the county?’ Yvon’s expression changes; the agony aunt has been replaced by the strict headmistress. ‘That’s where Robert got that food from, wasn’t it, the day you met him?’

‘It’s not what you think. I don’t want to go there because I’m nostalgic for the good old days,’ I say bitterly, mortified to think of what I used to believe in: the past, the future. The present. What you’ve done to me is worse than what the rapist did. He made me a victim for a night; thanks to you, I’ve been mocked, debased and humiliated for over a year without even knowing about it.

Yvon could see there was something wrong with our relationship from the start. Why didn’t I see it? Why can I still not see it? I am determined to think the unthinkable about you, believe the unbelievable, because I have to kill the part of me that loves you in spite of everything I’ve been told. It should be small and ailing by now, but it isn’t. It’s huge. Rampant. It has spread inside me like a cancer, conquered too much territory. I don’t know what’ll be left of me if I succeed in wiping it out. Just scars, emptiness, a gaping hole. But I have to try. I must be as ruthless as a hired assassin.

Yvon doesn’t understand why I suddenly want to go out, and I’m not ready to explain it to her. One horror at a time. ‘If it’s not nostalgia, then why the Bay Tree?’ she says. ‘Let’s go somewhere else and not bankrupt ourselves.’

‘I’m going to the Bay Tree,’ I tell her, standing up. ‘Are you coming or not?’

The building that houses the Bay Tree bistro is one of the oldest in Spilling. It’s been standing since 1504. It has low ceilings, thick uneven walls and two real fires—one in the bar area and one in the restaurant itself. It resembles a well-turned-out grotto, though it’s entirely above ground level. There are only eight tables, and normally you have to book at least a month in advance. Yvon and I were lucky; it’s late, so we got a table somebody had booked weeks ago for seven-thirty. By the time we arrived, they were long gone—sated and not insignificantly poorer.

The restaurant has an outer door, which is always locked, and an inner door, to ensure that no cold air from the High Street dilutes the warmth inside. You have to ring a bell, and the waiter who comes to let you in always makes sure to close the first door before opening the second. Most of the staff are French.

I’ve been here once before, with my parents. We were celebrating my dad’s sixtieth birthday. He banged his head on the way in. The Bay Tree’s ceilings are a hazard, if you’re tall. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I, Robert? You know the place better than I do.

On that night, with my parents, we had a waiter who wasn’t French, but my mother persisted in speaking to him in very slow simple English and in a quasi-continental accent: ‘Can we av zee bill, pleez?’ I restrained myself from pointing out that he was probably born and brought up in Rawndesley. It was a celebration, so no carping was allowed.

You’ve never met my parents. They don’t even know about you. I thought I was protecting myself from their criticism and disapproval, but it turns out that they are the protected ones. It’s an odd thought: that the large majority of people in the world—Mum and Dad, my customers, shoppers I pass on the street—have not had their lives devastated by you. They don’t know you and never will.

And it’s the same the other way round. The waiter who is looking after me and Yvon tonight—a little too attentively: he hovers too close to our table, his posture stiff and formal, one arm behind his back, surging forward to replenish our wine glasses each time one of us takes a sip—he has probably had his life shattered, at one time or another, by somebody whose name would mean nothing to me.

Only in a very minor, trivial sense do we inhabit the same world as others.

‘How’s your food?’ asks Yvon.

I ordered only a starter, the foie gras, but she can see I haven’t touched it. ‘Is that some sort of trick question?’ I say. ‘Like, have you stopped beating your wife yet? Is the present king of France bald?’

‘If you aren’t planning to eat anything, what the hell are we doing here? Do you realise how much this meal’s going to cost? The minute we walked in, I felt as if my bank account had turned into an hourglass. All my hard-earned money is sand, trickling away.’

‘I’ll pay,’ I tell her, waving the waiter over. Three steps and he’s at our table. ‘Could we have a bottle of champagne, please? The best one you’ve got.’ He scuttles off. ‘Anything to get rid of him,’ I say to Yvon.

She stares at me, open-mouthed. ‘The
best
? Are you crazy? It’ll cost a million quid.’

‘I don’t care what it costs.’

‘I don’t understand you! Half an hour ago . . .’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Forget it.’

‘Would you rather I was back on my sofa, staring into space?’

‘I’d rather you told me what’s going on.’

I grin. ‘Guess what?’

Yvon puts down her cutlery, steels herself for an unwelcome revelation.

‘I don’t even like champagne. It makes the inside of my nose itch and gives me really bad wind.’

‘Jesus, Naomi!’

Once you accept that nobody is ever going to understand you, and overcome the enormous feeling of isolation, it’s actually quite comforting. You’re the only expert in your own little world, and you can do what you want. I bet that’s how you feel, Robert. Isn’t it? You picked the wrong woman when you picked me. Because I am capable of understanding how your mind works. Is that why you now want me to leave you alone?

The waiter returns with a dusty bottle, which he presents to me for inspection. ‘That looks fine,’ I tell him. He nods approvingly and disappears again.

‘So why’s he taken it away?’ asks Yvon.

‘He’s gone to get one of those posh cooling buckets and special champagne glasses, probably.’

‘Naomi, this is freaking me out.’

‘Look, if it’ll make you happy we can go to the drive-through Chickadee’s tomorrow and you can buy a bucket full of birds’ wings boiled in fat, okay? If you can’t handle the high life.’ I giggle, feeling as if I’m speaking lines written by someone else. Juliet, perhaps. Yes; I am aping her brittle, glib delivery.

‘So, what’s the deal with you and Ben?’ I ask Yvon, remembering that her life has not ended even though mine has.

‘Nothing!’

‘Really? That big a nothing? Wow.’ Ben Cotchin is not that bad. Or if he is, he’s bad in a normal way. Which, the way I’m feeling at the moment, seems quite benign—perhaps the best anybody can hope for.

‘Stop it,’ says Yvon. ‘I was upset and I didn’t have anywhere else to go, that’s all. And . . . Ben’s given up drinking.’

The waiter returns with our champagne in a silver bucket full of ice and water, a stand on wheels to support the bucket, and two glasses. ‘Excuse me,’ I say to him. Might as well do what I came here to do. ‘Have you worked here long?’

‘No,’ says the waiter. ‘Only three months.’ He is too polite to ask me why, but there is an enquiry in his eyes.

‘Who’s been here the longest? What about the chef?’

‘I think he has been here for a long time.’ His English is meticulously correct. ‘I could ask him, if you wish.’

‘Yes, please,’ I say.