The Other Half Lives

12

‘DC Dunning’s already heard everything I can tell you,’ Simon said to DS Coral Milward. Dunning sat beside her, clutching his own arms as if miming a strait-jacket. He reeked of the same acid-seaweed aftershave he’d had on yesterday-his version of a chemical weapon, thought Simon; all the better for being legal.

Dunning had interviewed Simon and Charlie last night, together and separately. Each time, the room they were in was dingier. This one wasn’t much bigger than a toilet cubicle, and had some kind of hard, woven substance on the floor that looked like the plaited bristles of a brush. It was decayed to a rusty colour around the edges, coarse hairs sprouting round one or two dark-rimmed holes in the middle. The room was too hot as well as ugly. They were all sweating, Simon most of all. He didn’t care. Stench-wise, as in every other respect, he was proud to give as good as he got.

‘You don’t need us to go over it again,’ he said. ‘We’ve both told you everything we know.’ He was acutely aware of the details Charlie hadn’t volunteered: Mary Trelease’s post-mortem portrait of a dead woman called Martha Wyers, Ruth Bussey’s bedroom wall. Simon knew her silence was down to embarrassment. There was probably no connection between Martha Wyers and the murder Dunning and Milward were investigating; Charlie didn’t want to look stupid, and she wanted even less to tell a pair of hostile strangers about Bussey’s collection of Charlie Zailer memorabilia.

Simon felt uneasy about his role in the lie. Even an arsehole like Neil Dunning had the right to do his job unimpeded. On the other hand, if Dunning ever got round to taking the interest in Bussey and Trelease that Simon had told him countless times he ought to, he could find out for himself about Martha Wyers and Bussey’s collection of cuttings, decide for himself if they were important.

Last night, all Dunning had seemed to want to talk about was Simon’s ‘irregular’ behaviour on Monday. He persisted in using this description, even after Simon had explained that taking things too far was something he did habitually. Funny, the situations you find yourself in. He’d never thought he would end up in someone else’s nick telling stories of his own recklessness to another DC, to prove that irregularity was something that had been with him for a long time and had never led to a violent death.

Simon knew Dunning didn’t really fancy him for Gemma Crowther’s murder, but Dunning wanted him to think he did. Coral Milward was an unknown quantity, a fat middle-aged woman with short blonde hair, three thin gold chains round her neck and gold rings with pink cameos of women’s faces at their centres on three of her stubby-nailed fingers. Probably coral, Simon thought, in honour of her name. This was the first he had seen or heard of DS Milward. Unlike Dunning, she smiled a lot. She was smiling now. ‘You don’t ever ask witnesses to repeat their stories?’ she asked in a soft west-country accent.

‘I’m glad you said “witness”, not “suspect”.’

Another smile. ‘I was being tactful. I want to show you a photograph.’

‘Of Len Smith?’ asked Simon.

‘No.’

‘Show me a photograph of Len Smith, so I can tell you that the man you know as Len Smith is Aidan Seed.’

Milward hesitated before saying, ‘We have no photograph of Len Smith.’

‘There is no Len Smith. Have you found Seed yet? Have you looked for him?’ Simon only ever felt this alert and on form when he was under attack; might as well make the most of it. It was what his life was about: triumphing over persecution. Not hard to find low-level persecution being beamed your way if you looked hard enough.

Milward consulted her notes. ‘Aidan Seed. The picture-framer. ’

‘The Aidan Seed who killed Gemma Crowther. The only Aidan Seed I know, the one I’ve been talking about until I’m hoarse.’ Simon couldn’t resist adding, ‘If I knew of more than one Aidan Seed, I’d have mentioned it. To avoid confusion. Show me your photograph.’

‘I will,’ said Milward. ‘You were right about Seed’s car, incidentally. It’s parked outside Gemma Crowther’s house.’

‘It’ll stay there,’ Simon told her. ‘Seed won’t be back for it.’ He heard Charlie sigh. She hated it when he played prophet. ‘If I had to guess, I’d say he’s still in London: easiest place in the world to melt into a crowd and disappear. Plus, he’ll think it more likely you’ll look for him on his home turf or, at the other extreme, ports and airports, St Pancras-’

‘Enough,’ Milward cut him off. ‘Assuming you’re right and Seed’s our killer, why would he have left his car at the scene? One, he’d have needed it to get away, and two, why leave evidence of his presence when he could have taken the car and we might never have known he was there?’

Simon counted them off on his fingers. ‘One, he didn’t need the car if he was heading into town-no one drives into central London. We know Seed doesn’t-I saw proof of that on Monday night. Check CCTV footage between Ruskington Road and Highgate underground-he’ll have gone for the tube within half an hour of killing Gemma Crowther, or jumped on a bus on Muswell Hill Road.’

‘Simon,’ Charlie muttered, ‘you don’t know that.’

‘Two, I agree the car’s evidence of his presence at the scene, which could mean one of two things. Either he’s hoping you’ll have him down as missing, possibly also dead, as likely to be another of the killer’s victims as to be the killer himself…’

‘Bit of a stretch, isn’t it?’ Milward frowned.

‘I’m keener on the second possibility: he knew that as soon as Gemma Crowther turned up murdered, he’d be high up on the list of suspects whether you found his car or not.’

Dunning rubbed his nose. Milward looked perky again-a contented piglet.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ said Simon. ‘There’s a link between Aidan Seed and Gemma Crowther. Which you wouldn’t have found as quickly as you did if I hadn’t given you Seed’s name.’

Silence from the other side of the table.

‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘You’re welcome. How long are you going to wait before searching Seed’s car? Or have you impounded it already?’

‘Let’s not waste words,’ said Milward. ‘You know I can’t tell you anything. I’m interested to hear your thoughts, though.’

Simon had plenty. ‘If there’s a link between Seed and Crowther, is it one that supplies Seed with a motive for murder?’

Milward ran her tongue over her lower lip before saying carefully, ‘Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that it were.’

‘Crowther can’t have known,’ said Simon. ‘She knew him as Len Smith, she invited him back to her house. She didn’t know about whatever it was that linked them and gave him a reason to want her dead. Her boyfriend didn’t know either-only Seed knew.’

‘Cloud-cuckoo-land,’ said Dunning impatiently, turning the Vegas croupier eyes on Simon, eyes that had seen it all before: the worst humanity had to offer. ‘Either Gemma knew Aidan Seed or she didn’t. If she knew him, not much point in him changing his name to fool her. If she didn’t know him, why bother?’

‘You can do better than that,’ said Simon. ‘Or maybe you can’t. It’s possible to know a name but not the face that goes with it.’

‘We’ve no reason to think Gemma knew Aidan Seed’s name, and therefore no reason to suppose he would change it,’ said Dunning. ‘That’s my point one.’ He tapped his thumb in a parody of counting. ‘Point two: even if Aidan Seed and Len Smith are one and the same, and that’s a big if, how do you know Gemma Crowther and Stephen Elton, her boyfriend, weren’t in on the secret?’ The look he threw at Milward suggested he’d happily take an answer from her if Simon couldn’t provide one. ‘Point three: you saw Aidan Seed at Friends House on Monday night-that doesn’t mean he’s Len Smith. They could be two separate people-they might both have been there.’

‘You’ve found a link between Seed and your victim,’ Simon directed his reply to Milward. ‘Seed’s car was parked outside her house. Not Len Smith’s. Seed was pretending to be a Quaker to get close to Crowther in order to kill her.’

‘Unless you were the one he lied to,’ said Dunning. ‘You said when he told you he only believed in the material world, Ruth Bussey was listening.’

‘Yeah. So?’

‘Did you know Ruth Bussey’s parents are devout evangelical Christians?’

‘No.’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie.

‘And that she doesn’t speak to them or see them, hasn’t for several years?’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ Simon said again. Making Dunning’s day, no doubt.

Why the fuck hadn’t Charlie told him? Probably she’d figured Ruth Bussey’s family background had nothing to do with anything. There had been too much to talk about last night and this morning, not least whether the two of them had fucked up their careers beyond all repair. It wasn’t much comfort that they hadn’t been officially suspended. Neither of them was wanted back at work for as long as they were ‘helping’ DC Dunning with his inquiries; anything more official would wait until the results of those inquiries were in.

‘If you had a girlfriend who’d turned her back on her religious background, mightn’t you lie to her if you wanted to hang out with Quakers?’ Dunning asked. ‘Even more so if you were one of them, or thinking of signing up?’

‘Signing up?’ said Milward. ‘It’s not the army, Neil.’

‘So you’re taking an interest in Ruth Bussey,’ said Simon. ‘I didn’t think you’d even registered the name. Do you know where she is? Far away from Seed: that’s where you want her to be. He’s dangerous, and he’s no Quaker. He was playing a part. Phoney name, phoney faith. And why Len Smith? Is there a Len Smith in Seed’s past? Have you looked?’

‘No, we haven’t,’ said Dunning tonelessly. When he spoke, Milward looked ill at ease, and vice versa. Was it a competitive thing?

‘Did anyone apart from Seed have a reason to want Crowther dead?’ Simon asked.

‘I can’t answer that,’ said Milward, tipping Simon an easily deniable nod. Had he imagined it?

‘The boyfriend, Stephen Elton-why didn’t he go home with Crowther after the Quaker Quest meeting? They lived together. If he stayed behind to clear up, wouldn’t Crowther and Len Smith have waited for him, so that they could all go back together? Were Seed and Crowther having an affair? Did Elton find out?’

Milward folded her arms, waiting for the questions to stop.

‘What was Stephen Elton doing between the end of Quaker Quest and midnight? It wouldn’t take him two hours to clear away some chairs and get back to Muswell Hill at that time of night.’

‘Wouldn’t it?’

‘You don’t know where he was all that time,’ said Simon. ‘You like him as a suspect-it’s usually domestic if it’s not drug- or gang-related. So he also had a motive to kill Crowther, did he?’

‘Excuse him,’ Charlie said to Dunning. ‘He gets carried away.’

‘I’m interested in hearing all you can tell me about Seed.’ Milward had started to behave as if she and Simon were alone in the room. ‘You’ve met him. We haven’t. Forget about his car being outside Gemma’s house, forget about his being at Quaker Quest and using a false name-what can you tell me about him as a person? Is he a killer?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Charlie. ‘Simon doesn’t know.’ Was there a note of satisfaction in her voice? ‘He told us both he’d killed a woman who’s still alive. His girlfriend seems intermittently scared of him, though she’s insisted several times that he wouldn’t hurt her or anyone else. We’ve told you all this…’

‘I believe Seed’s a killer,’ said Simon. ‘All right, I don’t know. But he described a murder to me in vivid detail-too vivid to be invention, I thought when I heard it. Mary Trelease is alive, though, which means Seed’s also a liar, unless he’s crazy. If he is a liar, he’s the best kind.’

‘What kind is that?’ asked Milward.

‘One who blends lies seamlessly with the truth and counts on you spotting the truth but not the join. He killed another woman, maybe more than one, before he killed Gemma Crowther. He might still kill Ruth Bussey and Mary Trelease, which is why you need to find them.’

‘Aidan Seed the picture-framer. The two of you visited his picture-framing workshop on Monday afternoon.’

‘Why do you keep saying that?’ Simon asked. ‘Are you suggesting he isn’t a picture-framer?’

‘What about this photo you wanted to show us?’

‘We’ll come to it,’ said Milward. She turned her attention to Charlie, who’d asked the question. ‘I don’t understand your role in all this. You were worried about Ruth Bussey when she first came to see you, yet you didn’t take a statement from her. Then you found out Aidan Seed had been in and spoken to a CID officer, DC…’

‘Chris Gibbs,’ said Simon wearily.

‘That’s right. Gibbs and DC Waterhouse both checked out Seed’s claim, and DC Waterhouse relayed the result of those checks to Seed. End of story, and even if it wasn’t, your CID were dealing with it. Why did you go to Mary Trelease’s house on Monday morning when you should have gone to work?’

‘I went on my way to work,’ Charlie corrected her. ‘I knew Ruth Bussey was frightened…’

‘But you didn’t take a statement from her,’ said Milward.

‘She ran away before I had a chance. I had a bad feeling about what she’d told me, and, after talking to Simon, I had a bad feeling about the whole business. I wanted to see Mary Trelease for myself and hear what she had to say.’

Milward looked down at her notes again. ‘A conversation that left you with the impression that Aidan Seed had killed somebody, though obviously not Ms Trelease.’

‘That’s right. She said, “Not me”. She clearly implied that he’d killed somebody. Look, can you at least tell us what’s being done to find Ruth and Mary? Sam Kombothekra went to both their houses and Ruth Bussey’s place of work this morning and there’s no sign of either of them.’

‘Does DI Proust know DS Kombothekra’s been doing favours for you instead of the job he’s supposed to be doing?’ asked Milward. ‘Maybe I ought to ask him.’

That shut Charlie up.

‘Perhaps it’s different in the provinces, but in London police officers work on the cases they’ve been allocated, not on whatever takes their fancy. My understanding, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that your CID is neither investigating Bussey, Seed and Trelease nor keeping them under surveillance. Mary Trelease in particular… Even you, DC Waterhouse, will have a hard job persuading me she’s pertinent to my case.’

‘You can’t be that stupid, surely,’ said Simon. ‘Ruth Bussey and Aidan Seed share an obsession with Mary Trelease. If they’re involved, she is. You can’t shunt her to one side. Look for a connection between Trelease and Gemma Crowther, if you haven’t already.’

‘So now Mary Trelease killed Gemma Crowther?’ said Dunning. ‘Make your mind up.’

‘You know I’m not saying that.’ Simon looked at Milward. ‘Does he know, or is he too dense to keep up? If a man pretends he’s killed one woman, then goes and kills another, the first question I’d ask is: what’s the connection between the two women?’

Nobody had ever asked Olivia Zailer to list her least favourite words, but if they had, ‘logic’ and ‘research’ might well have been among them, suggestive as they were of excessive amounts of time and effort. Yet here she was, immersed in both and even quite enjoying it. The dearth of decent telly programmes helped, as did the raspberry liqueur cocktails she’d been drinking. Olivia didn’t think they were scrambling her brain too much.

There was no Wikipedia entry on Martha Wyers; the online world seemed largely unaware she’d ever lived and died. Olivia could find nothing about Wyers’ suicide or murder, whichever it was. She’d phoned a few of her literary journalist friends but none of them knew anything. A couple said the name ‘rang a vague bell’, so noncommittally that Olivia wasn’t sure she believed them; more likely they didn’t want to admit to never having heard of an author who, for all they knew, had just won a prestigious award or secured the highest advance since the dawn of time for her latest book.

The Amazon website, at least, knew who Martha Wyers was. She’d published only one novel, Ice on the Sun, in 1998. It was unavailable, even from Amazon marketplace; out of print, and not a single used copy advertised. Must have failed quite spectacularly to make any impact at all, thought Liv. There was a short synopsis of the novel which was interesting, but not as interesting as the only customer review, dated 2 January 2000, contributed by one Senga McAllister: a four-paragraph five-star rave about the book’s bleak, searing beauty.

Liv knew Senga. They’d worked together briefly before Liv went freelance. Senga was still at The Times, and remembered both Liv and Martha Wyers. She’d known nothing about Wyers’ death but declared herself unsurprised. Her first question was, ‘Did she kill herself?’

Suicide, then, thought Liv, re-reading Ice on the Sun’s blurb. Definitely. Bleak, searing suicide. Not murder.

Now she was waiting for Senga to email her the text of a Times feature she’d written years ago that included an interview with Martha Wyers. Before reading her novel, Senga had met Wyers and interviewed her. Decided she was the sort of person who might one day take her own life. Olivia smiled to herself, feeling quite the detective.

The new message icon flashed on her screen and she clicked on it. She started to read what Senga had sent her and saw that it was incomplete: a headline, an introductory paragraph, then space, then a chunk of text about Martha Wyers.

What if…? She tried to cast the idea from her mind but it wouldn’t shift. Punching the air in triumph, she imagined herself proved right already. God, she was clever! Time for a celebratory cocktail while she waited for Dom to arrive. No, not yet. First the important stuff. Let no one accuse Olivia Zailer of putting an urgent need for a pink drink before a selfless crusade for the truth. She emailed Senga asking to see the whole of the feature. It was worth a try. If she turned out to be wrong, Charlie didn’t need to know anything about it.

‘You’ve had your turn in the limelight,’ Milward told Simon coolly, from which he inferred that she hadn’t thought to look for anything that tied Gemma Crowther to Mary Trelease. Stupid. She hadn’t liked it when he’d called her that. Tough. ‘Sergeant Zailer, did you ask DS Kombothekra to check up on Ruth Bussey and Mary Trelease?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Charlie. ‘If you tell DI Proust, make sure you blame me and not Sam. I didn’t give him much choice. I led him to believe he’d find each of them with Aidan Seed holding a knife to her throat.’

‘Your maverick methods are legendary,’ Milward told her. ‘I’ve heard they include having sex with murder suspects.’

‘Then you heard wrong,’ said Charlie. ‘I believe you’re referring to a serial rapist I dated for a while. No one ever thought he was a murderer. Anyway, we weren’t serious. Just a bit of fun, you know.’

Simon tensed. Why couldn’t she ever stop?

‘I see,’ said Milward, smiling. ‘My mistake.’

‘You mentioned a photograph,’ said Charlie. ‘Where is it? I want to see it.’

‘You will.’

‘What are you waiting for? Has it occurred to you that if you were straight with us instead of playing games, we might actually get somewhere?’

‘What time did you leave Ruth Bussey’s house on Monday evening?’

‘Here we go again. Half past ten.’

‘After which you drove home.’ Milward was reading from notes. ‘DC Waterhouse joined you at your house shortly after eleven, and the two of you spent the night there.’

‘Yes.’

Milward and Dunning were bound to be wondering how Simon felt about sharing a bed-sharing a life-with the ex-lover of one of the sickest psychos in the UK prison system. He wondered himself.

‘And then, on Tuesday morning, you phoned work and pretended to be ill. Why?’

‘I didn’t pretend. I felt ill, then I felt better.’

‘Better enough to fancy a day-trip to London,’ said Milward caustically.

‘Yes. I thought I’d go shopping. We don’t have real shops in Spilling, only mud huts selling painted masks.’

‘How did you travel?’

‘By train, as I said last night. My answers aren’t going to change.’

‘You caught the slow train-the 9.05 from Rawndesley to King’s Cross?’

‘And got in at 10.55. Yes.’

‘What did you do in London?’

‘For the third time, I looked round art galleries in the morning and went to see my sister in the afternoon. Then Simon rang me and told me about all this shit, and I came here.’

‘All this shit being Gemma Crowther’s murder?’ Milward leaned forward. ‘Are you always this flippant about the deaths of young women?’

‘No. Only on Wednesdays.’

‘The trouble I’m having, Sergeant Zailer, is that I haven’t spoken to Ruth Bussey. You might be lying about what time you left her house. How do I know you didn’t drive to London on Monday evening?’

‘And kill Gemma Crowther, you mean? Why would I want to kill a woman I hadn’t heard of until yesterday afternoon? Oh, and I don’t kill people. Though I endlessly long to.’

‘DC Waterhouse, your fiancé, was seen prowling round Gemma’s house, looking in her window, only hours before she died. Let’s say you did drive from Spilling to London on the Monday night…’

‘Say it if you want, but I didn’t.’

‘You’d be unable to provide an alibi for DC Waterhouse, wouldn’t you? If you weren’t at home, you don’t know he got back at eleven. If he didn’t get back at eleven, that means he didn’t set off from Muswell Hill at nine thirty. We’ve got a pathologist’s report telling us Gemma Crowther died no earlier than ten p.m. Do you see what I’m saying?’

‘Let me check: I’m lying to protect Simon, because I know he murdered Gemma Crowther. Is that it? Or I left Ruth’s before ten thirty, went to London and murdered Crowther myself?’

‘This is bullshit,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll collate the CCTV footage for you if you like, since I’m exiled from my job indefinitely. I’ll find you lots of black and white pictures to prove we were both where we say we were at all the right times.’

‘Don’t show them the one of me smoking next to the “No Smoking” sign outside Rawndesley station,’ Charlie chipped in. ‘They might tell.’

‘Which art galleries did you go to?’ Milward asked her.

‘I didn’t notice their names. I was just browsing. Oh-one of them might have been called TiqTaq. Apart from that, I don’t remember. Sorry.’

‘Tell them the truth, for God’s sake,’ said Simon, sick of her attitude and her games. ‘She had lunch with a lawyer called Dominic Lund.’

‘My sister’s boyfriend,’ said Charlie quickly, smiling. ‘He’s right. I had lunch with Dommie at Signor Grilli, an Italian on Goodge Street.’

‘And you lied about it why?’ said Milward.

‘It’s complicated. My sister’s boyfriend?’ Charlie gave her a meaningful look. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out.’

Simon stared at the sprouting carpet at his feet. What the fuck was she playing at? Dommie?

‘So you didn’t go to any art galleries?’ said Milward.

‘Yes, I did. After lunch.’

‘Mary Trelease is a painter. Aidan Seed is a picture-framer.’

‘I know.’

Milward licked her front teeth. Eventually she said, ‘I don’t believe you felt ill on Tuesday morning. I don’t believe you had lunch with Dominic Lund at Signor Grilli, though he might be seeing your sister and you might know that’s where he was yesterday lunchtime. I don’t believe, frankly, that you spent all of Monday obsessing about Aidan Seed, Ruth Bussey and Mary Trelease when you should have been working, only to decide the next day that you fancied a completely unconnected day-trip to London.’ Milward slapped her hands flat on the table. ‘I know when two people are lying, and you two are those people.’

‘Brilliant,’ Simon muttered. ‘Do we ever get to leave this room?’

‘We ought to take a break,’ Dunning said to Milward.

‘The photo.’ Charlie made a show of yawning.

‘Oh, that. I almost forgot.’ Milward pulled a large photograph out of her file and threw it down on the table.

At first Simon wasn’t sure what the livid mess was that he was looking at. Then he saw, and had to count in his head and make his eyes blur over. It had been a while since he’d had to do that. He’d got used to the ordinary unpleasant sights his job afforded him, but this went way beyond. He felt Charlie stiffen beside him.

The picture was of a mouth. Open. Gemma Crowther’s, Simon guessed. Post-mortem. Her top and bottom lips had been cut on both sides, pulled back and nailed to her face. Symmetrically: five nails along each lip. Most of her teeth were missing, and in their place were picture hooks, nailed in wonky lines into the gums of both her top and bottom jaw. They looked as if they had been arranged as neatly as possible, hanging down into her mouth like thin gold teeth.

Simon heard Charlie say, ‘You told us she was shot.’

‘She was,’ said Milward. ‘He did this after he killed her. Don’t ask me why. Could be he-or she, if the killer’s a woman-wanted to frame, if you’ll excuse the pun, a picture-framer.’

‘For God’s sake!’ said Charlie. ‘Have you made any progress? Whoever did this is a sick fuck-you need to catch him, not waste time fucking us around.’

‘Where did they come from?’ asked Simon slowly. ‘The picture hooks and the nails. Did he bring them with him, or…’

‘Or?’ Milward waited, eyebrows raised.

‘The pictures on the walls, in Crowther’s flat. Were they still up when you got to the scene?’

‘What pictures, detective? You’ve been asked to describe the room you saw several times. You’ve said you can’t be sure there were any pictures.’

‘Tell us,’ Simon snapped. ‘Were the pictures still on the walls?’

‘No,’ said Milward, after a short pause. ‘The only pictures in the flat were photographs of the happy couple in a range of sizes. In every room, they’d been taken down and leaned against walls and furniture. Leaving only holes. No nails, no hooks.’

‘So, what-he shot her, then knocked her teeth out with… what? A hammer?’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Milward.

‘I’d use a hammer to hang a painting. That’s what he used.’ Simon nodded to himself. ‘How did he cut her lips back like that? A Stanley knife? I saw one at Seed’s workshop.’ He paused for breath. ‘He took down all the pictures, collected the hooks and nails, and hammered them into her lips and gums. Why? What was it about her mouth?’

‘That’s the wrong question,’ said Charlie, standing up. Simon saw that the back of her shirt was dark with sweat. ‘How many pictures were leaning against the walls? How many hooks and nails in Gemma Crowther’s mouth? Did the numbers correspond? ’

Milward looked at Dunning, whose face coloured. ‘It should be in the file,’ he said. She passed it to him and he started to leaf through the pages, his agitation growing more apparent as the silence dragged on.

‘You don’t know how many hooks she used for each picture,’ said Simon.

‘Have you ever hung a painting?’ Charlie asked him. ‘A photograph, anything framed?’

‘Yeah,’ he lied, feeling heat creep up his neck. He’d Blu-tacked a few posters to walls, that was it.

‘You have, I assume?’ Charlie said to Milward.

She nodded. ‘I’m a one-hook woman. I’ve never hung a picture heavy enough to need two.’

‘It’s nothing to do with heavy,’ said Dunning, shooting his skipper a look designed to obliterate. ‘If you use two hooks, the picture’s more likely to stay straight, especially if it’s a big one.’

‘I think there’s a picture missing,’ said Charlie. ‘I think this murder’s about that-that’s why the killer used picture hooks and nails to mutilate Crowther’s face.’

‘Why would anyone want to steal a cheesy photo of-?’ Milward began.

‘Not a photo,’ Charlie cut her off. ‘A painting. It’s called Abberton. It’s by Mary Trelease.’

‘So, this is the table you sat at with Dommie.’

‘Pure coincidence,’ said Charlie with a bland grin. Her heart wasn’t in it. ‘Either that, or this is my table of lust, and I bring all my rides here.’ They’d been dismissed by Milward three quarters of an hour ago. Charlie had hailed the first free cab that had come their way, told it to drop them on Goodge Street.

The man who had served Charlie and Lund yesterday-Signor Grilli himself? Charlie wondered-approached their table. Instead of asking if he could take their order, he said, ‘Is okay, I see you’re no ready.’ He might as well have said, ‘I can see you’re too busy rowing to think about food.’

‘Is it true?’ Simon asked. ‘Are you seeing Lund?’

‘I’m not going to dignify that with a-’

‘Then why say it? Is it your new hobby, making me look like a twat in front of as many people as possible?’

‘You? Oh, they loved you. I was the despicable one.’

‘You encouraged them to despise you! Boasting about something that ought to disgust you, as if you think being a rapist’s girlfriend is something to be proud of.’

‘Ex-girlfriend.’ Charlie pretended to look at the menu. The tables around theirs had fallen silent. Even the music playing in the background sounded as if it was deliberately leaving lots of spaces between the notes. Charlie spoke clearly, for the benefit of any eavesdroppers. ‘Funny-I seem to have gone from one extreme to the other. From a man who has sex with women against their will to one who won’t shag one woman, not even his own fiancée, even if she begs…’

‘If you carry on like this, I’m leaving.’ Simon pushed his chair back.

‘The restaurant, or our relationship?’ Charlie asked. ‘Just so as I understand the exact nature of the threat.’

‘Do you want a smack in the face?’

‘At least if you hit me, we’d be touching.’ She was only half joking.

‘When it suits you, you make me the enemy. Whenever you’re feeling shit about something, I get the brunt of it. You knew I’d never hung a picture.’

‘What? You haven’t?’ Charlie laughed. ‘Actually, I didn’t know. Bloody hell, Simon…’

‘You knew, and you wanted to show me up, because you’d been shown up: forced to boast about the fuck-up that nearly ruined your life, and still might. You seem to want it to!’

‘Stop.’ Charlie gripped her menu with both hands.

‘Except you weren’t forced at all-it was your choice. You could have said, “Yeah, okay, I made a mistake. But I didn’t know what he was when I got involved with him.” Why couldn’t you have said that?’

‘Why don’t you write me a script next time? The press office did it two years ago. They told me what to say.’

‘There’s no point in us talking.’ Simon picked up his menu, held it between his face and Charlie’s. ‘Let’s get something to eat while we can, before they call us back in.’

‘Do you think they will?’ It was almost a comfort to think about Milward and Dunning; against them, Charlie and Simon were allies.

‘I would. We’re better than they are.’

‘I’m not hungry.’ Charlie sighed.

‘Then why are we here? It was your idea.’

‘I thought Lund might be here. I was hoping to persuade him not to tell Milward that he and I aren’t screwing each other’s brains out, if she asks him. True, I’d have been wasting my time-Lund’d rather chew off his own scrotum than help me, but since I’ve sunk so low already today, I might as well go that bit further and beg a favour from a man who… looks like a buzzard.’ She covered her face with her hands. Her own voice was starting to grate on her tattered nerves. It was no fun, being on the wrong side of the table in an interview room. She felt as if she still was. The table and room had changed, but the vibes of condemnation were the same.

‘You should have told them the real reason you met Lund. Why didn’t you?’

‘What, tell them Ruth Bussey’s decided to make an exhibition of me and I ran to a lawyer for help only to hear that there’s fuck all I can do about it? I think I’ve had enough public humiliation for one lifetime, don’t you?’

Simon reached across the table, grabbed her wrist. ‘They’re investigating a murder, one of the sickest. Some things are more important than your pride.’

‘My what? You think I’m proud? Some detective you are.’ She didn’t pull her arm away. The angrier he got, the more remote from him she felt, as if his reactions had nothing to do with her.

He stood up. ‘I’m going to order a pizza. Are you sure you don’t want anything?’

‘I’ll have a taste of yours.’

‘Will you fuck. I’m starved.’

She listened as he ordered two pizza funghis. He should have said ‘pizzas funghi’. Simon was no linguist. She pointed out his mistake when he sat back down. ‘I got “two” right,’ he said. ‘That was the important part.’ He was feeling better, she could tell, though they’d resolved nothing. Because he’d ordered some food?

‘So. You’ve really never hung a picture? What else don’t I know about you?’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Simon, we’re engaged!’

‘I know that.’

‘Christ, this is ridiculous! All right, then: where would you live, if you could live anywhere in the world?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.’

‘Well, think.’

‘Are you serious? At the moment, all I can think about is a disfigured mouth with gold picture hooks for teeth. You think Mary Trelease killed Gemma Crowther, don’t you? Because Crowther had her picture, the one she gave Ruth Bussey. So, what: Bussey gave it to Seed who gave it to Crowther?’

Charlie didn’t want to talk about this, not now. She wanted to tell him that if she could choose anywhere in the world to live, she would choose Torquay. She’d always loved it. She’d had her first and only holiday romance there.

Their pizzas arrived suspiciously quickly, their temperature somewhere in the no man’s land between cold and warm. Charlie didn’t care, and Simon certainly wouldn’t, she thought. That was one thing they had in common, though Simon was more extreme. Food was something he put in his body in order not to die. He didn’t care what it tasted like as long as it filled him up. As recently as last week, he’d have taken pains to avoid eating in front of Charlie. Now he seemed fine about it, as if having a meal together was a natural thing to do. Like the four chaste nights they’d spent together so far, Charlie saw this as progress.

Once the waiter had gone, she said, ‘All I know is, Trelease is protective over her work. Whether she’s protective enough to kill to retrieve one of her paintings, I have no idea, but the picture-hook teeth? That’s a woman’s touch.’

‘I disagree,’ said Simon, ripping strips off his pizza like a savage and stuffing them into his mouth as if he didn’t have a knife and fork in front of him.

‘A man wouldn’t have had the idea. It’s too… intricate.’

‘So’s the way Seed’s mind works. He’s a craftsman. Whatever his motives, there’s nothing crude or obvious about them. How can there be? A man who confesses to a non-murder. An atheist who leads a secret life as a Quaker…’

‘Maybe he’s been infiltrating all the major religions,’ said Charlie. ‘Maybe Monday’s his Quaker day, Tuesday he’s a Hindu…’ She sighed, bored by her own joke. ‘I’m going back to Spilling after lunch to talk to Kerry Gatti. I need to do something under my own steam. Want to come?’

‘No.’

Charlie gave him a look. ‘Tell me you’re not crazy enough to try to get near Stephen Elton.’ She pulled her phone out of her bag and switched it on, now that she was as sure as she could be that she and Simon had stopped fighting. ‘Olivia,’ she told him, listening to her sister’s message. ‘She wants us to go round. I asked her to find out as much as she could about Martha Wyers.’

‘A name you didn’t mention to our metropolitan friends,’ said Simon.

‘Because there’s probably no link.’

‘So we’re not going to Olivia’s?’

‘We’re going. She said she’s got something I’ll want to see. Though admittedly, based on past experience, that might turn out to be a picture of Angelina Jolie’s new baby in Hello! In which case, I’ll beat her to death with a spade.’

‘After what we’ve just seen, I’m not in the mood for jokes like that.’ Simon had finished his pizza and moved on to Charlie’s.

Her phone vibrated, knocking against her plate. She picked it up. ‘Liv?’

‘It isn’t,’ said Sam Kombothekra, whose peculiar way of answering questions with ‘It is’ or ‘I did’ instead of a simple ‘Yes’ always made Charlie smile. ‘It’s Sam,’ he said.

‘I’d never have guessed.’

‘Is Simon with you?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Strange things are happening here, Charlie. I thought you’d both want to know. But listen, if the Snowman finds out I’ve discussed any of it with you…’

‘Relax, Sam. He’s not tapping your phone. What strange things?’

‘Have you met a DS Coral Milward?’

‘This morning.’

‘Seems she’s Proust’s new soulmate. He’s just told me my team’s at DC Dunning’s disposal for the foreseeable future. No explanation, no details as yet.’

‘So they’re not as stupid as they look,’ said Charlie. ‘They’ll want you to work the Spilling angle-Bussey, Seed and Trelease. It’s good.’ She looked at Simon. ‘Means they’re taking us seriously.’

‘I told Proust it was crazy not to have Simon with us on this. Do you know what he said? “The extent of Waterhouse’s involvement in Gemma Crowther’s murder has yet to be determined.” Can you believe that?’

Charlie repeated the quote to Simon, who shook his head in disgust. ‘Ask Kombothekra what he said in response.’

Charlie tried to pass him the phone but he backed away from it. Was he angry with Sam? ‘Wrap it up,’ he muttered, glaring at Charlie.

‘Sam, I’m going to have to-’

‘He only said it for effect. He knows exactly why Simon was outside Gemma Crowther’s place on Monday: he’d followed Aidan Seed, who, as we now know, was not only at the scene but had a motive the size of a… a…’ Sam stopped, unable to think of anything big enough.

‘Motive?’ Charlie prodded Simon to make sure he was paying attention.

‘No one’s told you?’ Sam sighed. ‘I don’t know why I’m surprised. Who’d want to break a case when they can score a point instead, right?’

‘Sam, for fuck’s sake! What’s the motive?’

‘Crowther and her partner Stephen Elton both served time for false imprisonment and GBH.’

‘What?’

‘Elton got parole in March 2005, Crowther in October 2006. Somebody’s idea of justice.’

Charlie frowned. This didn’t sound like Sam. Normally he was determined to find potential and promise in every scrote that crossed his path. ‘Devout Quakers and GBH don’t often go together.’

‘However devout they went on to become, in April 2000 they tied a defenceless woman to a pillar in their back garden so that Gemma Crowther could spend three days forcing stones down her throat and launching them at her face and body-stones from a garden she’d designed for them. They didn’t feed her or allow her to drink, didn’t let her use the toilet, nearly suffocated her with a bath sponge and parcel tape. She was in hospital for three weeks, left scarred for life and probably infertile.’

Stones from a garden she’d designed… ‘Sam… oh, my God.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, exhaling slowly. ‘Makes it a bit harder to mourn Crowther’s passing, doesn’t it?’

‘The defenceless woman was Ruth Bussey,’ said Charlie, looking at Simon. ‘She was their victim.’