The Truth-Teller's Lie (36 page)

33

Thursday, May 4

IT WILL GET better. I will get better. One day I will stand here and be able to breathe easily. One day I will feel brave enough to come here without Yvon. I will say the words ‘room eleven’ in another context—perhaps about another hotel, a luxurious one on a beautiful island—and not think of this square room with its scratched double-glazed windows and chipped skirting boards. Or the pushed-together twin beds with their horrible orange gym-mat mattresses, or this building that looks like a shabby university hall of residence or a cheap conference centre.

Yvon sits on the sofa, picking at the small bobbles on the cushions, while I stare out at the car park the Traveltel shares with Rawndesley East Services.

‘Don’t be cross with me,’ I say.

‘I’m not.’

‘I know you think it’s bad for me, being here, but you’re wrong. I need this place to lose its significance. If I never came again, it’d always haunt me.’

‘The haunting would fade over time,’ Yvon obligingly contributes her lines to this by-now-familiar argument. ‘This Thursday-night pilgrimage of ours is keeping your memories alive.’

‘I have to do it, Yvon. Until I get bored, until coming here’s a chore. It’s like what people say about falling off a horse and being scared: you have to get straight back on.’

She puts her head in her hands. ‘It’s so
un
like that, I don’t know where to begin trying to explain it to you.’

‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’ I pick up the kettle with the peeling label and take it into the bathroom to fill it with water. At a safe distance from Yvon, I say, ‘Maybe I’ll stay here tonight. You don’t have to.’

‘No way.’ She appears in the doorway. ‘I’m not letting you do that. And I don’t believe this is what you say it is.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what Robert is, what he did, but you’re still pining for him, aren’t you? That’s why you want to be here. Where were you this afternoon? When I rang? You were out and you didn’t answer your mobile.’

I look away, out of the window. There is a blue lorry pulling into the car park, black letters painted on its side. ‘I told you: I was sawing in my workshop. I didn’t hear my phone.’

‘I don’t believe you. I think you were in the hospital, sitting by Robert’s bedside. And it’s not the first time. There’ve been other times I’ve not been able to get hold of you recently . . .’

‘Intensive care’s a locked unit,’ I tell her. ‘You can’t just walk in. Yvon, I hate Robert. I hate him in the way you can only hate someone if you once loved them.’

‘I hated Ben that way once, and now look at us,’ she says, her voice full of scorn for us both.

‘It was your choice to give him another chance.’

‘And it’ll be yours to stay with Robert, if and when he wakes up. Despite everything. You’ll forgive him, the two of you’ll get married, you’ll go and visit him every week in prison . . .’

‘Yvon, I can’t believe you’re saying this.’

‘Don’t do it, Naomi.’

A ringing sound comes from my jacket, which I slung down on the bed when Yvon and I first arrived. I pull my phone out of the pocket, thinking about love, about hurting distance. Thanks to my conversation with your brother in Charlie Zailer’s kitchen, I understand you better than I did before. I worked out for myself that you wanted to hurt women, and that you needed them to worship you first in order to magnify the hurt so that it was unbearable, but it wasn’t only about that, was it? Your psychosis is like a—what are those things called? That’s right: a palindrome. It works in reverse as well. Love and pain are inextricably linked in your mind—Graham made me see that. You believed that only if you injured and abused women would they ever truly love you.
Dear Mama’s legacy,
Graham said. However much you might have loved your mother before she turned on you, you loved her more afterwards, didn’t you? When your father left and she made you suffer, it was your anguish that forced you to acknowledge the strength of that love.

‘Naomi?’

For a moment I mistake this man’s voice for yours. Only because of where I am.

‘It’s Simon Waterhouse. I thought you’d want to know. Robert Haworth died this afternoon.’

‘Good,’ I say, without hesitation, and not only for Yvon’s benefit. I mean it. ‘What happened?’

‘Nobody’s sure yet. There’ll be a post-mortem, but . . . well, to put it simply, it looks like he just stopped breathing. It sometimes happens, after bad brain bleeds. The swollen brain can’t send messages to the respiratory system in the way that it needs to. I’m sorry.’

‘I’m not,’ I tell him. ‘I’m only sorry that the hospital staff think he died a natural, peaceful death. He didn’t deserve that.’ It would be easy to tell myself you were a damaged person, sick, as much a victim as your victims. I refuse to do that. Instead, I will think of you as evil. I have to draw a line, Robert.

You are dead. I’m talking—directing my thoughts—to nobody. Your memories and justifications, they’re all gone. I don’t feel elated. It’s more the sensation of crossing something off a list and feeling lighter. Now there’s only one more thing to cross off, and when that’s done, this will be over. Maybe then I’ll be able to stop coming here. Maybe room eleven has become the headquarters of my operation, until close of business.

That’s assuming Charlie Zailer cares enough about closing our business to start thinking about that sundial I gave her.

As if he is reading my mind, Simon Waterhouse asks, ‘Have you—I’m sorry to ask you this, but have you spoken to Sergeant Zailer recently? There’s no reason why you should have, it’s just . . .’ His voice tails off.

I am tempted to ask him if he’s seen the sundial. Perhaps Charlie’s sister took it in and gave it to the inspector who wanted it. I would like, one day, to walk past Spilling Police Station and see it there, on the wall. I wonder if I should mention anything about the dial to Simon Waterhouse. I decide not to. ‘I’ve tried,’ I tell him, ‘but I don’t think Charlie wants to speak to anyone at the moment. Apart from Olivia.’

‘It’s okay,’ he says. His descending voice tells me very clearly that it isn’t.

34

5/19/06

CHARLIE SAT AT a window table in Mario’s—a small, loud, Italian café in Spilling’s market square—so that she could watch the street. She’d see Proust before he came in, which would give her time to arrange her features. Into what? She didn’t really know.

This wasn’t the first time she’d left the house since coming back from Scotland—Olivia had made her walk round the block and to the corner shop every few days, claiming it would be good for her—but it was the first time she’d been out alone, to a proper place, to meet someone. Even if that someone was only the Snowman.

Naomi Jenkins’ sundial was leaning against the wall of the café, attracting bemused glances, and some admiring ones, from waitresses and other customers. Charlie wished she’d wrapped it, but it was too late now. Still, at least it was the dial everyone was looking at and not her. She dreaded the day when someone in the road would point at her and yell, ‘Hey’s it’s that woman copper, the one who screwed that rapist.’ Charlie had decided to grow her hair, to avoid being recognised. When it was longer, she might dye it blond.

Proust was in front of her; she’d forgotten to look out for him. Most of the time, she thought, the real world might as well not exist. She barely heard the CD of famous opera arias that was deafening everybody else in Mario’s, or the flamboyant owner’s loud, tuneless vocal accompaniment from behind the counter. Charlie’s universe had been reduced to a few agonising thoughts that repeated endlessly in her mind: why did I have to meet Graham Angilley? Why was I stupid enough to fall for him? Why has my name been all over the papers and the news while he’s protected by anonymity? Why is life so fucking unfair?

‘Morning, Charlie,’ said the inspector awkwardly. He was carrying a large paperback book, the one about sundials that Simon had bought for him. He’d never called Charlie by her first name before. ‘What’s that?’

‘A sundial, sir.’

‘You don’t need to call me sir,’ said Proust. ‘We’re in a café,’ he added, as if it were an explanation.

‘It’s yours for free. Even Superintendent Barrow can’t object to that.’

Proust looked disgruntled. ‘Free? Did Naomi Jenkins make it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t like the motto.
Docet umbra:
the shadow informs. It’s too pedestrian.’

‘Is that what it means?’ Of course. Charlie should have guessed the words were significant.

‘When are you coming back?’ Proust asked.

‘I don’t know if I am.’

‘You have to ride it out. The quicker you put it behind you, the sooner everyone’ll forget.’

‘Really? If one of my colleagues slept with a famous serial rapist, I don’t think I’d forget about it.’

‘All right, perhaps people won’t forget,’ said Proust impatiently, as if this were a mere detail. ‘But you’re a good officer and you did nothing wrong.’ Giles Proust, determined to remain upbeat? This was a first.

‘So why the official inquiry?’ said Charlie.

‘That wasn’t my decision. Look, it’ll be over before you know it. Between you and me, it’s just a formality, and . . . you have my full support.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘And . . . everyone else . . . also wants to . . .’ Evidently the Snowman didn’t know how to broach the subject of Simon. He fiddled with the cuffs of his shirt, then picked up the laminated menu and examined it studiously.

‘What’s Simon Waterhouse told you to say?’ asked Charlie.

‘Why won’t you see him? The man’s beside himself.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You could speak to him on the telephone.’

‘No.’ Every time Simon’s name was mentioned, Charlie felt her composure start to unravel.

‘Email?’ Proust sighed. ‘Come back to work, Sergeant. The first few days might be awkward, but after that . . .’

‘Not awkward. A nightmare. And after that, the next few days’ll be a nightmare. Every day will be a nightmare, until I retire. And even then—’ Charlie stopped, realising her voice had started to shake.

Proust said, ‘I can’t do without you, you know.’

‘You might have to.’

‘Well, I can’t!’ She’d made him angry.

A young blonde waitress with a tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder approached their table. ‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked. ‘Tea, coffee, sandwich?’

‘Do you have green tea?’ asked Proust. When the answer was no, he produced a paper-wrapped tea bag from his jacket pocket.

Charlie couldn’t help smiling as the waitress walked away, carrying the little packet at a distance from her body as if it were a tiny, ticking bomb. ‘You brought one with you?’

‘You insisted on meeting here and I feared the worst. She’ll put milk and sugar in it, no doubt.’ Proust turned his attention back to Charlie. ‘Why did you ask me to bring this?’ He patted the book on the table.

‘I want you to look up a date for me: The ninth of August. When we were talking about Gibbs’ wedding present, you said something about the date line on a sundial: that it represents two days of every year, not just one. That’s right, isn’t it?’

Proust’s eyes shot towards the large slab of stone and metal that was propped against the wall. He looked at it for a few seconds, then looked back at Charlie. ‘Yes. Each date has a twin, as it were, at some other time of the year. On those two days, the declination of the sun is exactly the same.’

‘If one of those dates is the ninth of August, what’s the other? What’s the twin?’

Proust picked up his book and consulted the index. He turned to the relevant page. Stared at it for a long time. ‘The fourth of May.’

Charlie’s heart flipped over in her chest. She’d been right. Her crazy idea hadn’t been crazy at all.

‘The day Robert Haworth died,’ said Proust, his tone matter-of-fact. ‘What’s the significance of the ninth of August?’

‘Robert Haworth’s birthday,’ Charlie told him. What had Naomi said?
Because that’s when it began.

It’s not over yet.
She’d said that as well. But now it was. Robert Haworth was dead. His birthday was twinned with the date of his death, joined forever, on the date line of this sundial in front of Charlie.

Docet umbra:
the shadow informs.

‘Naomi made this before Robert died,’ said Charlie.

‘Naturally, of respiratory failure,’ Proust reminded her. ‘That was the verdict at the inquest.’

His green tea arrived. Without milk or sugar.

‘I think it’ll look very handsome on the wall of our nick.’ The Snowman sniffed his drink cautiously, then took a sip. ‘And, given my colossal workload, I might well be too busy to notice, on the fourth of May next year, if the shadow of the nodus is on the date line. And even if I’m not too busy and I do remember to look, the day might be overcast. If there’s no sun, there are no shadows.’

Does that mean, Charlie wondered, that if there are plenty of shadows, there must be a source of light somewhere?

‘There’s precious little man-made justice in this world,’ said Proust. ‘I like to think of Robert Haworth’s death as a piece of natural justice. His body gave up the struggle, Sergeant. Mother Nature corrected one of her mistakes, that’s all.’

Charlie bit her lip. ‘With a little help,’ she mumbled.

‘True enough. Juliet Haworth almost certainly contributed to the outcome.’

‘And she’s going to go down because of that. Is that fair, sir?’

‘She attacked Haworth in the heat of the moment. She’ll be treated sympathetically.’ Proust sighed. ‘Come back to your team, Charlie. You won’t change my mind about anything to do with work in a crowded, noisy café. I can’t think properly with
La Traviata
screeching in the background.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

The inspector nodded. ‘That’ll do for now.’ He leaned over and ran his fingers across the sundial’s smooth stone surface. ‘I’d chosen my motto, you know, for the sundial I wanted. Before Superintendent Barrow put his foot down.
Depresso resurgo.
’

‘Sounds a bit depressing,’ said Charlie.

‘It isn’t. You don’t know what it means.’

How could she not ask, with him sitting there like a schoolboy who’d done his homework, so evidently eager to tell her? ‘Well?’

Proust gulped down the remains of his tea. ‘I set, then rise again, Sergeant,’ he said, keeping his eyes on Charlie as he lifted the wet bag out of the cup with his spoon. He held it up, a gesture of triumph. ‘I set, then rise again.’