The Truth-Teller's Lie (26 page)

Steph hadn’t known it was Charlie on the phone, so why would she lie? She wouldn’t.

Steph knew Graham had spent part of Wednesday night in Charlie’s chalet, in bed with Charlie. In the lodge, after the row about the computer, Graham had ordered Steph to bring him and Charlie a full English breakfast in bed in the morning. He’d been specific: Charlie’s bed, he’d said. ‘That’s where we’ll both be.’ Flaunting his infidelity in front of his wife.

And Charlie wasn’t the only one, or the only one Steph was party to. There had been Static Sue as well. And countless other chalet customers, if Steph was to be believed.

Had Graham lied? Not technically. He’d admitted he’d slept with Steph, more than once.

Yes, he’d fucking lied.

He not only called Steph ‘the dogsbody’; he treated her like one. He treated her terribly. No wonder Steph had been so antagonistic towards Charlie. And yet she stayed with Graham, joked about him affectionately on the telephone.
My husband’s not the most precise person when it comes to admin.
Why did she stay with him?

He’d told Charlie about Steph’s white line, the skin the sunbeds couldn’t reach.

What had he told Steph about Charlie’s anatomy?

He’d persisted in calling Olivia Fat Girl Slim, despite Charlie’s protests.

Fact after fact, truth after unpalatable truth, stood out from the haze of rage and confusion in Charlie’s brain. She knew the way it went, had been through something similar after Simon pushed her off his lap at Sellers’ party and disappeared into the night: first there was the explosion of the big shock, then the many smaller after-shocks, as associated, subsidiary grounds for pain and horror presented themselves. Hundreds of small incidents demanded to be reconsidered in the light of the new knowledge. Sometimes several occurred to you all in one go, and it was like being peppered with tiny, lethal bullets.

Only after you’d been thoroughly peppered and pierced, and once the tremors had subsided, could you see the whole picture. Eventually, the succession of blows, major and minor, came to an end and you were more stable; you settled into your misery as if it were an old jumper.

Charlie didn’t love Graham. She’d had to struggle to keep Simon out of her mind, for Christ’s sake, even when they were having sex. So it was hardly the romance of the century. If Graham had phoned her and suggested calling it a day, that would have been fine. It wasn’t losing him that stung; it was being made a fool of. She felt utterly humiliated, more so when she thought that, by now, Steph must have realised who the mysterious Scottish caller had been. She and Graham were probably having a hearty laugh at her expense at this very moment.

It was too similar to what Simon had done to her, that was what Charlie couldn’t take. Was everyone’s life full of such indignities, or was it just hers?

She wanted to make Graham pay in some way, but if she did or said anything at all, he would know she cared. To respond to his humiliation of her would be to acknowledge it, and Charlie was damned if she’d give him the satisfaction, him or Steph.

Still leaning against the wall outside the CID room, she dialled Olivia’s number. Please, please answer, she thought, trying to transmit the words telepathically to her sister.

Liv was out. Her answerphone message had changed. It still said, ‘This is Olivia Zailer. I can’t come to the phone at the moment, so you’ll have to leave a message after the beep,’ but a new bit had been added: ‘I’m particularly keen to receive messages from anyone who wants to apologise profusely to me. Any such calls will definitely be returned.’ The tone was acerbic, but it didn’t detract from the reassuring message. Two tears slid down Charlie’s cheeks and she wiped them away quickly.

‘Here’s that message you’ve been waiting for,’ she said to her sister’s answerphone. ‘I apologise profusely and more than profusely. I’m an enormous pillock and a dickhead, and I deserve to be keel-hauled. Although I don’t think people are keel-hauled anymore—’ She stopped abruptly, realising she sounded like Graham. It was the sort of joke he’d make: self-conscious, protracted. ‘Ring me tonight, please. Once again, my head and life are totally fucked up—sorry, I know it’s getting a bit tedious—and I might have to throw myself under a train if you don’t come to my rescue. If you’re free tonight and can be arsed slogging up to Spilling, please, please come round. I’ll leave the key in the usual place.’

‘Sarge, for fuck’s sake!’ Gibbs had materialised in the corridor.

Charlie whirled round to face him. ‘If I ever catch you eavesdropping on a call of mine again, I’ll cut your bollocks off with a steak knife, have you got that?’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘And don’t fucking swear at me, and don’t fucking order me around! Clear?’

Gibbs nodded, red in the face.

‘Right.’ Charlie took a deep breath. ‘Good. What have you got on Haworth, then?’

‘You’re going to love this.’ Gibbs looked, for the first time in weeks, as if he wouldn’t mind delivering some good news. Charlie would have put money on a deterioration in his attitude, not so swift an improvement. Maybe she ought to give him more regular tongue-lashings. ‘What Juliet Haworth told you and Waterhouse was true: shag-happy mum with a phone-sex business, dad heavily involved in far-right politics, one older brother, parents divorced, Giggleswick School—’

‘What about the surname?’ Charlie interrupted him.

Gibbs nodded. ‘That’s the reason we weren’t finding the background on him: he wasn’t born Robert Haworth. He changed his name.’

‘When?’

‘This is interesting too. Three weeks after he met Juliet in the video shop. But I’ve spoken to her parents, the Heslehursts, and they always knew him as Robert Haworth. That’s who he said he was.’

‘So he’d been planning the change for a while,’ Charlie deduced aloud. ‘And this was all long before he raped Prue Kelvey. Did he have a criminal record he wanted to lose?’

‘Nope. Not a sausage. Clean as they come.’

‘Why the name change, then?’ said Charlie thoughtfully. ‘Because he idolised Branwell Brontë?’

‘He grew up on Haworth Road. Number fifty-two. His new surname was his old road name. Anyway . . . criminal record or no criminal record, he must have had something to hide.’

‘Why won’t he fucking wake up so that we can interview him?’ Charlie snapped.

‘He might, Sarge.’

‘He won’t. He’s still having epileptic fits. Every time I speak to the ward sister, she tells me something new and bad: cerebellar tonsillar herniation, tonsillar haemorrhagic necrosis. Layman’s terms? He’s on his way out.’ She sighed. ‘So he was born Robert? You said “his new surname”.’

‘Yeah,’ said Gibbs. ‘Born on the ninth of August 1965. Robert Arthur Angilley. Unusual name, isn’t it? Sarge? What’s—’

Gibbs stared after her as she ran along the corridor and through the double doors that led to reception. Should he follow her? After a few seconds, he decided he ought to. He hadn’t liked the way she’d looked before she ran: white-faced. Scared, almost. What the fuck had he said? Perhaps it wasn’t anything to do with him. He’d overheard the tail end of her phone call, and she’d said something about her head being fucked up.

He felt a bit low for having vented his frustration as much on the sarge as on Waterhouse and Sellers. Sellers, especially. He was the one who really deserved it. The sarge was a woman; women’s minds worked differently. He ought to have let her off the hook.

Gibbs ran through reception and out on to the steps, but he was too late. Charlie was already in her car, pulling out of the car park on to the road.

Part III

22

Saturday, April 8

IN FILMS, FOLLOWING someone in a car is always made to look difficult. If the person ahead knows he or she is being pursued, there are sudden turns down hidden alleyways, sideways lurches on to fields, brief flights through air that end with metallic crashes and fires. If the prey is oblivious, there are other hurdles: traffic lights that change at the worst moment, large vans that overtake and block the follower’s view.

I’ve been lucky so far. None of these things has happened to me. I am in my car, following Sergeant Zailer in her silver Audi. I passed her as I was driving towards the police station, on my way to see her. She was zooming off in the opposite direction, apparently in a hurry. I did a three-point turn in the middle of the street, blocking the traffic on both sides, and set off after her.

I don’t think Charlie Zailer has seen me, and I’ve been right behind her all the way out of the town centre. Spilling isn’t the sort of place where other drivers cut in front of you. Most people are probably chugging along to some local antique or craft fair. The only person on the road with a sense of urgency is Sergeant Zailer. And me, as I can’t risk losing her. I am careful not to let a space open between my car and hers. If she overtakes somebody, I glide past in her wake.

At the second roundabout after the High Street ends, she takes the first left turn. This is the road that leads to Silsford. It goes on for miles, winding through countryside, dark like a tunnel because of the overhanging trees on both sides. I am fiddling with the radio, distracted, searching for loud music so that I won’t have to be alone with my thoughts, when she turns again. Right, this time. I do the same. We’re on a small street of red-brick terraced houses, all of which are set back from the road, with tiny square yards at the front. Most of the houses look smart from the outside. Some have brightly coloured external paintwork: jade green, lilac, yellow.

Cars line both sides of the street, and there are few spaces. Sergeant Zailer parks unevenly about halfway down and gets out of her Audi. I catch a glimpse of her face and see that she has been crying. A lot. Instantly, I know that she is not here for any reason to do with work. This is where she lives; something’s wrong and she’s come home.

She slams the car door and opens the red wooden gate, not bothering to lock the Audi. I am in my car, in the middle of her street, only a few metres away from her, but she hasn’t noticed me. She doesn’t look as if she is aware of her surroundings at all.

Shit. I have no idea what to do now. If something bad’s happened, if there’s been some sort of family tragedy, she won’t want to talk to me. But who else can I go to? DC Waterhouse? I would not be able to persuade him to take me to the hospital again to see you, no matter what information I could give him in exchange. I feel his antipathy towards me every time I’m in a room with him.

I am being ridiculous. Sergeant Zailer, however upset she might be, and for whatever reason, is the officer in charge of your case. I have new information that I know she’ll want, whatever state she’s in.

I park in one of the few available spaces by the side of the road and walk back to her house. It’s smaller than mine, which makes me feel guilty in a peculiar sort of way. I’d assumed she must live somewhere much bigger and grander than where I live, because she’s a figure of authority. Not that I’ve always accepted her authority. I won’t accept it now, if she says she won’t take me to see you. I don’t change, Robert. All that matters to me is you, now as always.

I ring the bell and get no response. She doesn’t know who I am, doesn’t know I’ve seen her go in. I ring again, pressing for longer this time. ‘Go away!’ she shouts. ‘Leave me the fuck alone, whoever you are.’ I ring again. A few seconds later, through the stained-glass panel in the front door, I see the blurred shape of her walking towards me. She opens it and recoils. I’m the last person she wants to see. I don’t care. From now on, I don’t think I will let small things get to me. I will enjoy not caring. Like your wife. She and I have got more than you in common, haven’t we, Robert?

‘Naomi. What are you doing here?’ Charlie Zailer’s eyes are watery and puffy, her nose red and raw.

‘I was on my way to see you. You were driving away, so I followed you.’ I say nothing about her obvious distress, guessing that this is what she would prefer.

‘I’m not at work now,’ she says.

‘I can see that.’

‘No, I mean . . . I’m not working. So this’ll have to wait.’ She tries to close the door, but I push it open with my arm.

‘It can’t wait. It’s important.’

‘Then find DC Waterhouse and tell him.’ She puts her full weight behind the door and tries again to push it shut. I take a step forward so that I’m inside her hall. ‘Get out of my house, you crazy bitch,’ she says.

‘There are things I need to tell you. I know what I saw through Robert’s lounge window, why I had the panic attack—’

‘Tell Simon Waterhouse.’

‘I also know why Juliet’s acting the way she is. Why she’s not cooperating, and why she doesn’t care that you think she tried to murder Robert.’

‘Naomi . . .’ Sergeant Zailer lets go of the door. ‘When I go back to work, whenever that is, I’m not going to be working on Robert Haworth’s case. I’m really sorry, and I don’t want you to take this personally, but I don’t want to speak to you anymore. I don’t want to see you or speak to you again. Okay? Now, will you go?’

Dread tugs at my heart. ‘What’s happened? Is it Robert? Is he still alive?’

‘Yes. He’s the same. Please go. Simon Waterhouse’ll—’

‘Simon Waterhouse’ll look at me as if I’m a Martian, like he always does! If you send me away, I won’t tell him or anyone else anything. None of you will ever know the truth.’

Sergeant Zailer pushes me out on to the street and is about to slam the door in my face. ‘Juliet isn’t involved in the rapes,’ I shout from her front yard. ‘If it’s a business, she’s nothing to do with it. She never has been.’

She looks at me. Waits.

‘The theatre—there was a window,’ I say breathlessly, tripping over my words. ‘I could see it, when I was tied to the bed. I saw what was right outside. It was so close, not more than a few metres away. I only remembered because of a nightmare I had last night, that I’d seen something through that window. I mean, I always knew I’d seen the window, but that was all. I wasn’t aware I’d seen anything else, but I must have, it must have been in my subconscious . . .’

‘What did you see?’ Sergeant Zailer asks.

I want to howl with relief. ‘A little house. A bungalow.’ I stop to catch my breath.

‘There are thousands of bungalows,’ she says. ‘The theatre could be anywhere.’

‘Not like this one. It’s very distinctive. But that’s not the point.’ I can’t get the words out fast enough. ‘I’ve seen that little house again since then, since the night I was attacked. I saw it through Robert’s lounge window. One of Juliet’s pottery houses, in the cabinet with the glass doors. It’s the same one, the one I saw through the window while I was being raped. It’s made of bricks that look like stone, if that makes sense. They’re the same colour as stone—they’re probably reconstituted stone. And they’re not smooth. They look as if they’d feel abrasive if you touched them. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t seen it. Royal-blue paintwork, a blue front door with an arched top—’

‘—and three windows above the door, also with arched tops?’

I nod. I don’t bother asking, knowing she wouldn’t answer.

Charlie Zailer pulls her jacket off a peg in the hall and takes her car keys out of her pocket. ‘Let’s go,’ she says.

For a while we drive in silence, no questions and no answers. There is too much to say; where would we start? We are back on the High Street, turn left at the Old Chapel Brasserie, on to Chapel Lane.

I promise I will never come to your house.

This is not where I want to be. It’s not where you are.

‘I want you to take me to see Robert again, in hospital,’ I say.

‘Forget it,’ says Sergeant Zailer.

‘Did you get into trouble for taking me to see him? Is that why you’re upset? Are you in trouble at work?’

She laughs.

Three Chapel Lane still has its back turned to the road. I allow myself to entertain a strange fantasy—that only a few moments ago your house was facing forward, welcoming and open; it swivelled round only when it saw me coming.
I know who you are. Leave me alone.

Sergeant Zailer parks badly, the tyres of her Audi scraping the kerb. ‘You need to show me this pottery house,’ she says. ‘We need to know if it’s really there or if you were imagining things. Are you likely to have another panic attack?’

‘No. I was afraid of realising what it was I’d seen—that was what my mind was resisting. I got the panic over with last night. You should have seen my bedsheets—you’d think they’d fallen in a swimming pool.’

‘Come on, then.’

We walk round the side of your house. Everything is the same as it was on Monday—the neglected rubbish dump of a garden, the impressive panoramic view. How often did you stand here, in the dead and dying grass, surrounded by the detritus of your life with Juliet, and wish you could escape to the beauty that was clearly visible but just out of reach?

I lead the way to the window. When Sergeant Zailer joins me, I point to the cabinet against the wall. The model of the bungalow with the blue arched door is there, on the second shelf down. ‘It’s the one next to the candle,’ I say, feeling as shocked as I would have felt if it had been absent. But I suppose it’s easy to mistake a sudden awareness that something significant has happened for surprise.

Charlie Zailer nods. She leans against your back wall, takes a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and lights one. Her cheeks and lips have turned pale. The pottery bungalow means something to her, but I’m not sure what, and am afraid to ask.

I am about to mention again the possibility of going to see you in hospital when she says, ‘Naomi.’ From her expression, I know that there’s another shock coming. I prepare myself for the impact. ‘I know where that house is,’ she says. ‘I’m going to get into my car and drive there now. The man who raped you will be there when I arrive. I’m going to get a confession out of him, even if it means tearing his fingernails out with pliers, one by one.’

I say nothing, fearing she may have gone mad.

‘I’ll drop you at the taxi rank,’ she says.

‘But how . . . what . . . ?’

She is walking towards your gate, towards the road. She will not stop to answer my questions.

‘Wait,’ I call after her, running to catch up. ‘I’m coming with you.’ I am standing where Juliet stood on Monday. Sergeant Zailer stands where I stood. The choreography is identical; the cast has changed.

‘That’d be unwise, from both our points of view,’ she says. ‘Your well-being and safety, my career.’

If I do this, if I go with her to the place, wherever it is, and see the man, then whatever happens, I will never have to think of myself as a coward again. ‘I don’t care,’ I tell her.

Charlie Zailer shrugs. ‘Neither do I,’ she says.