The Other Half Lives

4

‘Have you been bullying DS Kombothekra, Waterhouse?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Filling his petrol tank with porridge, putting laxatives in his coffee?’ Proust pressed his hands together church-and-steeple style, index fingers protruding.

‘No.’

‘Then why is he afraid to give you a simple instruction? You might as well spit it out, Sergeant, while you’ve got me here to protect you.’

Beside Simon, Sam Kombothekra shuffled from one foot to the other, looking as if he would prefer to be in an abattoir, a skip full of rubble-anywhere but the Snowman’s office. ‘I’m assigning you the statements in the Beddoes case,’ he muttered.

‘What?’ For a second, Simon forgot Proust was in the room with them. ‘You told me you’d given that to Sellers and Gibbs.’

‘Sergeant Kombothekra changed his mind,’ said Proust. ‘He decided it was a task best suited to a pedant with a keen eye for detail. That’s you, Waterhouse. As it happens, I agree with him.’

Simon knew what that meant. There was no way this was Kombothekra’s initiative. ‘I don’t mind doing my share if we’re all chipping in,’ he said, doing the calculation in his head as he spoke. Kombothekra would have to do his bit too if he was making Simon do it; he wouldn’t dare not to.

‘Good.’ Proust smiled. ‘Tell him what his share is, Sergeant.’

Kombothekra looked as if someone had inserted a hot poker into a tender part of his body as he said, ‘I’m giving you all the statements.’

‘All of them? But there are two hundred-odd.’

‘Two hundred and seventy-six,’ said Proust. ‘In this instance, no one will be chipping in apart from you, Waterhouse. This is something you can make your own. I know that’s important to you. You’ll have no one interfering, no one to cajole or negotiate with. From here on in, Nancy Beddoes is your exclusive territory. You can plant your flag unchallenged.’

‘Sir, tell me you’re joking. Two hundred and seventy-six people, all living in different parts of the country? It’d take me weeks!’

The Snowman nodded. ‘You know I’m not one to gloat, Waterhouse, or push home my advantage, should I be so lucky as to find myself in possession of one, but it would be remiss of me not to point out that if you were a sergeant, as you certainly should be by now and could be in a matter of months if you put in for your exams-’

‘Is that what this is about?’

‘Don’t interrupt me. If you were a DS, you’d be the team leader. You’d be the one assigning the actions.’

‘To a different team, maybe hundreds of miles away!’ Simon struggled to compose himself. Charlie was in Spilling, his parents were here, everything he knew was here. Proust couldn’t make him move, couldn’t force a promotion on him that he didn’t want.

‘You need to broaden your horizons, Waterhouse. Another good reason to give you Nancy Beddoes. As you say, taking all those statements will involve a fair amount of travel. Aren’t you even a bit curious about your native land? Have you ever left the Culver Valley for any significant period of time?’

Simon wanted to kill him, mainly for staging this production in front of Kombothekra, who knew Simon had been to university in Rawndesley but not that he’d lived with his parents for all of his three years as a student. Proust, unfortunately, knew everything-all the sad details of Simon’s life so far. Which of them was he about to mention now? The age at which Simon left home? The Sunday mornings he’d spent at church with his mother rather than upset her while his university mates had been in bed sleeping off hangovers?

‘I can’t believe you’re serious, sir,’ he said eventually.

Proust grinned. Unlike most of his good moods, this one didn’t have a provisional, threatened-with-imminent-extinction feel about it. It seemed to have taken root, possibly for the whole day. ‘Waterhouse, explain something to me. Why do you respond with such… bamboozlement, if that’s a word, when all I’m asking you to do is your job?’ Giving Simon no opportunity to respond, he went on, ‘I’m not ordering you to dress up in a gorilla costume and distribute free bananas on public transport. I’m asking you to take statements from the people to whom Nancy Beddoes fraudulently sold items of clothing on eBay, clothing she’d stolen from high-street shops. Is it my fault there are so many of them? Did I ask Mrs Beddoes to put in the hours of a hedge-fund manager in pursuit of her criminal activities? The woman’s an exceptionally motivated and diligent lawbreaker-you don’t see her complaining about having two hundred and seventy-six people to deal with. Think of it this way, Waterhouse-she did it for the money, and so will you be, because it’s your job.’ Proust beamed, pleased with the neatness of his conclusion. ‘I trust that, by the time you’ve finished, you’ll have had your fill of taking statements. You certainly won’t want to bother taking one from an irresponsible timewaster about a murder that never happened.’

‘So this is about Aidan Seed,’ said Simon angrily. He should have known. He looked at Kombothekra, who’d agreed with him no more than an hour ago: they ought to take Seed’s statement, make sure all bases were covered. Had Kombothekra broached the subject with the Snowman? He must have. It made perfect sense: Simon’s punishment was Nancy Beddoes, Kombothekra’s was having to participate in this excruciating scene.

‘It’s a shame, in a way,’ said Proust. ‘Mr Seed’s statement is one I’d have enjoyed reading. Pity we can’t get it just to entertain ourselves. “I do not intend to explain why I killed one Mary Trelease. I do not intend to inform the police of the date on which I killed Ms Trelease. I do not intend to offer details as to the nature of my relationship with Ms Trelease prior to my killing her…’

‘Sir, Simon and I both think…’

‘“I do NOT”’-Proust’s voice rose to a crescendo as he drowned out Kombothekra’s words-‘“have any comment to make regarding the claims made by DCs Christopher Gibbs and Simon Waterhouse that they, on the twenty-ninth of February 2008 and the first of March 2008 respectively, found Ms Trelease alive and well at her home, 15 Megson Crescent, Spilling, RY27 3BH, and were shown by Ms Trelease several items of identification that confirmed her identity as Mary Bernadette Trelease, aged forty…”’

‘If a situation being at all unusual prevents us from taking a statement, sir, we might as well all give up now,’ said Simon. Cunning bastard. Proust had to prove he’d memorised the relevant facts before dismissing them.

‘Tell me why we aren’t charging Mr Seed with wasting our time,’ the inspector snapped. So the good mood was finite after all. Even so, Simon was sure Proust had broken his record; usually the ice storm was much quicker in coming.

‘Trelease told Gibbs she didn’t know Seed, but he thought she was lying,’ said Kombothekra. ‘What if Seed beat her up, left her for dead, and now she’s too scared to tell us in case he does it again?’ It came out sounding awkward because they weren’t his words. He was quoting Simon, trying to make amends for Nancy Beddoes.

‘Did Ms Trelease look as if she’d recently been attacked? Any scars, bruises, cuts? Any sign of limited mobility, hospital notes lying around the house, wheelchairs parked on the front lawn?’

‘No, sir,’ said Simon.

‘We’ve been able to find no evidence-substantial or circumstantial-that Aidan Seed’s committed any crime,’ Kombothekra told Proust. ‘That’s if we leave aside the verbal evidence…’

‘Verbal evidence?’ the Snowman intoned flatly. ‘You mean lies?’

‘I spent most of last night going through our unsolveds, just in case anything from any of them chimed in with what Seed and Bussey had told us.’

‘Chimed in? Are you a bell-ringer, Sergeant?’

Kombothekra smiled in deference to Proust’s witticism. ‘I found nothing that might fit the bill, however wide a margin I allowed myself: no suspicious deaths where the victim’s name or appearance or address was in any way similar to Mary Trelease’s. Nothing. We’ve put all three names-Seed, Bussey and Trelease-into Visor, Sleuth, the PNC, NFLMS. None of them have got form.’

‘Yes, yes, Sergeant.’ Proust waved his hand dismissively. ‘And you failed to find mention of them in the cast list of Rawndesley Opera House’s production of West Side Story.’

‘Simon and I think that, all this notwithstanding, we ought to take a statement from Aidan Seed,’ said Kombothekra. Nervousness about the brave stand he imagined he was taking made his voice louder than it normally was.

‘Not only Seed,’ said Simon. ‘Bussey and Trelease too.’

‘If only we could amuse ourselves by doing as you suggest,’ said Proust with feigned wistfulness. ‘Had we but world enough and time. Imagine Mary Trelease’s statement: “On a date that a man I don’t know called Aidan Seed refuses to divulge, he did not murder me.”’ Proust banged his fist down on his desk. ‘What’s wrong with the pair of you? Did you share a beefburger of questionable origin in the mid-nineteen-eighties?’

‘No, sir.’ Kombothekra took a step back. The brave stand was over, then.

‘I’ve heard as much as I want to about Aidan Seed, and seen more than I want to of your pathetically expectant faces. I’m sorry Santa didn’t bring you both what you wanted, but there’s only so much tat you can force down one reasonable chimney. Are we clear?’ Proust stopped, red in the face.

Reasonable chimney? Was he talking about himself? The Snowman had trouble recognising his opinions as opinions, had for as long as Simon had known him. He regarded himself as the embodiment of universal truth. It wouldn’t for a moment have occurred to him, in constructing his metaphor, that he was closer to being a chimney than he was to being reasonable.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Kombothekra, who would probably have been bowing by now if Simon hadn’t been there.

‘Good. Now get out there and do your perishing jobs.’

Kombothekra made a run for it, no doubt assuming Simon was close behind. Once the sergeant had gone, Simon pushed the door shut.

‘You’re still here, Waterhouse.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Since you’ve gone to the trouble of securing this private moment for us, might I beg a favour? Would you mind asking Sergeant Kombothekra to address you as DC Waterhouse instead of Simon? I’ve asked him several times, but he persists in his use of first names. The other day he told me he’d prefer it if I called him Sam.’ Proust compressed his thin lips. ‘I said, “When two people are as close as you and I are, Sam, they invariably have pet names for one another. My pet name for you is Sergeant Kombothekra.” ’

‘You’re wrong about Aidan Seed,’ Simon told him. ‘I know no crime’s been committed yet, but Sergeant Zailer and I both think something’s going to happen. That’s why we need to take statements now. There are protection issues here-we can’t ignore our concerns. You read Gibbs’ notes: he said Mary Trelease looked scared when he first mentioned Seed. Sergeant Zailer was left in no doubt that Ruth Bussey was terrified of something, she wouldn’t say what.’

‘Yet she didn’t follow it up,’ said Proust impatiently.

‘Bussey left her coat behind. Sergeant Zailer found an article about herself in the pocket. It was from the local rag, dated 2006. It was about her… when she…’

‘Say it in plain English: Sergeant Zailer’s catastrophic error of yesteryear. Not to be confused with her more recent catastrophic error: agreeing to marry you, Waterhouse. Go on.’

‘Bussey had an article about it in her pocket. Once Sergeant Zailer saw that, and put it together with Bussey’s unlikely story that was full of gaps… well, she thought the whole thing was some sort of ploy.’ Simon knew this aspect of things would do nothing for his cause.

‘What?’ Proust frowned so hard, his forehead looked like an accordion.

‘She’s embarrassed about it now, sir, but she still gets really upset and paranoid at any mention of all that. She thought Ruth Bussey was some kind of investigative journalist, undercover-you know those programmes where they target someone they think ought to be sacked, and set traps for them? She thought she might end up on Panorama…’

‘No crime has been committed yet,’ Proust repeated slowly. ‘What’s that film?’

‘Pardon, sir?’

‘You know-it’s got that man in it. The scientologist with all the wives. What’s his name?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’ Simon didn’t watch films, couldn’t sit still long enough.

‘Age, Waterhouse-it’s a terrible thing. The man’s job, as I recall, was to foresee and prevent crimes that hadn’t yet taken place. The film was set in the future. Why do you think they didn’t opt for a contemporary setting?’

Simon swallowed a groan. Can’t we skip this?

‘Could it be because there’s no technology, at present, for investigating crimes that have not yet been committed? Whereas if you set your film in the future, you can pretend all the necessary gubbins is in place. Your hero can watch handy trailers of forthcoming slayings…’

‘I take your point, sir.’

‘Good.’

‘Why wouldn’t Mary Trelease let Gibbs inside her house?’ Simon was getting desperate. ‘Why did she keep him on the doorstep and bring her ID outside? And even with me-she let me in, but she wasn’t happy about it. When I asked to see the front bedroom, the one where Seed said he’d killed her and left her body, she made it obvious she didn’t want me in there. What’s she got to hide?’

‘She let you in, didn’t she, however reluctantly? You found a large number of paintings in the front bedroom and not much else.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Most people would rather not have the big boots of plod trampling all over their houses, especially over their irreplaceable works of art. No mystery there.’

One last stand, thought Simon. He took a deep breath. ‘Why did it take Ruth Bussey more than two months to come to us with her story, when Seed first told her he’d killed Mary Trelease on the thirteenth of December last year? Why did she have that article with her about Charl… about Sergeant Zailer? Why did she and Seed come forward entirely of their own accord, separately but on the same day, offering information while at the same time blatantly withholding information? And why don’t their accounts match? Bussey reckons Seed told her this killing happened years ago, but Seed gave Gibbs the impression that if he went to 15 Megson Crescent, he’d find a fresh body.’

‘Recently deceased, not fresh,’ Proust amended. ‘Don’t apply the same terminology to a corpse as you would to a fruit salad.’

‘You know what I mean, sir. You read what Trelease said to Gibbs: “Why do you keep asking me if I’m sure nobody’s hurt me? Who? Aidan Seed, this man you keep asking about? If you’re looking for a victim, you’re looking in the wrong place.” That suggests there’s a right place to look for Seed’s victims.’

‘Think about it, Waterhouse.’ Proust sounded almost kindly. ‘For Ms Trelease to assume Seed has hurt somebody somewhere is only natural. There’s a detective on her doorstep showing a keen interest in him, asking if she knows him and wanting to check she’s in one piece.’

‘Maybe she knows of another victim of Seed’s, somebody else he’s attacked or killed, even if he hasn’t touched her.’ Simon wiped the back of his neck with his hand. He was sweating. ‘What about the question Seed asked me: “The woman you met at 15 Megson Crescent-did you tell her what I’m saying I did?” Did you read that bit?’

‘I read all the bits. Top left to bottom right. I know how to read.’

‘According to Seed, Mary Trelease is dead-he killed her. What does he care what I told or didn’t tell a supposedly dead woman? Sir, if you met him… He’s like a man possessed. He was super-rational, as if by using logic he could persuade me. Kept saying, “If I start with the one thing I know beyond all doubt, which is that I killed Mary Trelease, then I infer that what you’re telling me about her being alive and unharmed can’t be true.” Read it!’ Simon picked up papers from Proust’s desk and dropped them again, looking for the notes he’d brought in with him. He couldn’t find them. He knew Seed’s words by heart, anyway.

‘ “The only other explanation is that I killed someone who later came back to life, and who’s the woman you met. Since I don’t believe in the supernatural, I can’t believe in that as a possibility.” Does any of that sound normal or natural to you?’ Simon demanded. ‘Someone’s going to get hurt, sir, if they haven’t already. I’ve got a really bad feeling about it.’

The Snowman sighed. ‘All right, Waterhouse. You set out to wear me down and you’ve succeeded. Take statements from the whole motley bunch if it makes you happy.’

Was Simon dreaming? Could it be that easy? Proust made a series of huffing noises and straightened the piles of paper on his desk. Watching him reconsider his position on an issue, however small, was like watching a super-tanker gearing up to change course.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Nancy Beddoes comes first, though.’ There was always going to be a catch. ‘Dull though it is, we have to give priority to the crimes we know exist.’ The inspector looked up. ‘Which means Aidan Seed et al. will have to wait until you’ve completed your grand tour of the UK and all two hundred and seventy-six statements are in.’

‘But, sir…’

‘But sir nothing. Do you own a road atlas?’ Proust reached into the pocket of the jacket that was draped over his chair and pulled out a ten-pound note. ‘Buy one.’ He threw the money at Simon. ‘It’s about time you learned that some maps go over the page.’

Ruth Bussey’s front door stood wide open. The black VW Passat-the one she’d made her escape in on Friday-wasn’t there, but there was a green Daewoo parked on a grass verge outside the lodge house, so someone was in. Aidan Seed?

Charlie moved out of the way as two jogging women appeared, chatting as they ran between the bollards at the park gates and up the path, past the lodge. With Ruth’s coat draped over her arm, Charlie walked towards the house. She’d been hoping to have another chat with Ruth, but perhaps it was better this way, since Charlie was also curious to meet Aidan, see what sort of man confesses to a murder that neither he nor anyone else has committed.

She’d got as far as the small porch when a tall, thin man wearing a yellow fluorescent jacket over a grey suit darted out of the house, nearly banging into her. He had a wispy beard, glasses with large lenses. Charlie thought he looked exactly as a goat would, if animals were people. There was a flare of recognition in his eyes when he saw her. ‘Oh,’ he said.

‘You know who I am?’ Stupid question. Who in Spilling didn’t know? It was a small town and Charlie was its most famous fuck-up.

‘I know that coat,’ he said, looking down at it to avoid meeting Charlie’s eye. ‘Ruth picked a bad time to lose it with the boiler packing in. It breaks down every three months on average, and Muggins here has to spend a day twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the engineers. Never be a landlord, that’d be my advice to you.’

‘You’re not Aidan, then,’ said Charlie.

The goat extended his hand. ‘Malcolm Fenton, Area Manager for Parks and Landscapes. I’ll take that off you if you like.’

Charlie hesitated. If she gave the coat to Fenton, she’d lose her opportunity to talk to Ruth again. Mainly she wanted to ask about the newspaper article. What was Ruth’s interest in her? She was about to tell Fenton she’d catch Ruth at work when she saw that she’d lost his attention. ‘On time for once,’ he said, looking over her shoulder. ‘Excuse me.’ Charlie turned and watched him trot down the porch steps. Beyond the park gates, prevented from entering by the two black bollards, was a white van with the words ‘Winchelsea Combi Boilers’ painted in blue on its side.

Fenton pulled a large bunch of keys out of his pocket, unlocked something at the top of one of the bollards and lowered it into the ground. Behind the van’s greasy windscreen, one of the men from Winchelsea Combi Boilers chewed gum with a ferocity that made Charlie wonder if it wasn’t gum at all but an organ torn from its rightful owner’s body.

She glanced at the lodge’s open door, started to edge towards it. ‘Sorry,’ Fenton shouted after her. ‘I’d rather you didn’t go in. I know you’re a policewoman, but all the same.’ He looked apologetic. Policewoman-did people still say that? ‘If you leave the coat with me, I’ll see Ruth gets it.’

‘The door’s wide open,’ Charlie pointed out. ‘The boiler repairmen are going in, presumably.’

‘They practically live here,’ said Fenton irritably. ‘I don’t mean to be ungracious, but Ruth’s a private person. I know for a fact she wouldn’t want me to let a stranger into her home.’ He sighed. ‘This is a little awkward. I mean, clearly Ruth’s made herself known to you if you’ve got her coat, but…’ He looked away quickly, annoyed with himself for saying too much. ‘She didn’t tell me she was going to make contact with you, or to expect you, so I’m afraid I can’t let you in.’

Fenton’s choice of words made Charlie feel uneasy. Had Ruth confided in him about Aidan’s bizarre confession? No, it didn’t fit. Made herself known to you. That implied Ruth was someone the police might either want or need to know about, that there was a pre-existing connection of some sort between them. Charlie couldn’t understand it.

‘Do you know a Mary Trelease?’ she asked.

No adverse reaction to the name. Fenton considered it, then shook his head.

‘Is that CCTV?’ Charlie was looking at the lodge’s roof. She’d spotted another camera on the other side of the porch, above a ground-floor window. Was that why there were leaves clinging to the house’s every surface, for camouflage? ‘When were the cameras put in?’

‘Why do you want to know that?’ asked Fenton.

Charlie substituted a smile for an answer.

‘The park had an infestation of teenage thugs a while back. Ruth suggested installing CCTV. The council thought it was a good idea.’ His tone was defensive.

‘When you say Ruth’s a private person…?’ Charlie began.

‘I don’t like the slant of your questions. Ruth’s a perfectly ordinary woman and an excellent tenant. She takes her responsibilities seriously, that’s all. Hers is a service tenancy.’ Fenton sighed, as if he’d been tricked into saying more than he wanted to. ‘The lodge tenant, in exchange for a much-reduced rent, is supposed to be of assistance in the park when necessary, particularly in emergencies and out of hours. If someone falls down and breaks their leg on the path, Ruth would be expected to get involved-she’s got a list of emergency numbers, but she’d be the first point of contact.’

‘Most of the private people I know wouldn’t live in a public park,’ said Charlie, guessing that Fenton had been surprised by Ruth’s suggestion of installing surveillance cameras, or else why the guarded reaction? Had it been a suggestion or a request, a plea? What was it about his model tenant that Fenton was withholding out of loyalty?

His resistance was like bellows to a fire. Charlie was tempted to run up the steps and into Blantyre Lodge after the men from Winchelsea Combi Boilers. How much of Ruth Bussey’s home would she be able to see before Fenton dragged her out? Mad people’s houses had a distinctive look about them; you knew instantly. She sighed. That way lay an official complaint, which was all she needed. She slipped the article from the Rawndesley and Spilling Telegraph out of the coat’s pocket and put it in her bag.

‘Put that back,’ Fenton snapped. Oh, he knew Charlie’s history all right, and she knew his type. He wouldn’t have dared take that tone with the police under normal circumstances. Only with an officer he knew had been disgraced and nearly fired.

She’d changed her mind about giving him the coat. ‘I don’t feel comfortable about leaving this with a stranger,’ she said. ‘Ask Ruth to make contact with me again if she wants it back.’

After Blantyre Park, Charlie told herself she was going straight to work to get on with the chore that had been hanging over her for the past fortnight: drafting Counsellor Vesey’s survey and accompanying letter. She told herself again and again, but no matter how many times she repeated the instruction, her brain defied her, and she found herself driving out to the Winstanley estate. She’d had enough of hearing second-hand reports; she wanted to meet the still-alive Mary Trelease, see if she was frightened, as Gibbs had claimed, or if there was anything about her that might frighten someone else.

Like Aidan Seed. Charlie frowned at the idea. It would be a strange reaction to fear, pretending you’d killed somebody. Unless you can’t bear the thought that they exist. So you pretend they don’t any more, and you cast yourself in the role of killer because it makes you feel brave instead of like their victim… Charlie smirked at her silly theory. It was impossible to speculate, that was what made this different from every other situation she’d dealt with since joining the police. Different, and harder to stop thinking about. Usually she could come up with some sort of hypothesis to use as a starting point, however wrong it turned out to be. Not now. She could think of literally nothing that would explain the behaviour of Ruth Bussey and Aidan Seed-even a rampant shared insanity didn’t seem to fit the bill. It made her feel stupid, which she hated.

At the cul-de-sac end of Megson Crescent, three young boys with shaved heads were doing wheelies on their bikes. When Charlie got out of her car and they saw her uniform, they disappeared so fast that she couldn’t help thinking of the scene in the film E.T., where the kids pedal so hard they take off into the sky.

She locked her car. Loud, aggressive music was coming from one of the houses at the far end of the road, near where the boys had been. She supposed she’d better try and track them down to whichever house they’d holed up in, encourage them to make their way to school. Not that their teachers would thank her for it.

As she walked along the cul-de-sac, she counted off the odd numbers. Five and seven each had a boarded-up window. In a first-floor window at number nine, she saw parts of small faces before the curtains were yanked shut. She knew that if she rang the doorbell, she’d get no answer.

Higher priority than the boys was getting that music turned down. As she got closer to the house it was coming from, she felt the pavement shake under her feet. She couldn’t believe it when she saw the number on the door: fifteen. The thumping noise was coming from Mary Trelease’s house. Ruth Bussey had said Mary Trelease was around forty, so what was she doing listening to…? Charlie dismissed the ridiculous thought, embarrassed by it. What were forty-year-olds supposed to listen to? James Galway, with the volume turned down extra-low so as not to wake the cat?

She’ll never hear the doorbell, thought Charlie, pressing it anyway. She stood back and stared at the house. Like the others on the street, it was an ugly red-brick semi with an entirely flat faμade, no bay windows to give it character. Weeds grew between the broken flagstones that led to the front door. By the side of the house, next to a drain, was a scalloped lead pot with a small dead tree in it. Charlie touched one of the branches. It crumbled between her finger and thumb.

She stepped back out on to the road and looked up at the top windows. None of the curtains were open. All were as thin as handkerchiefs, she noticed, and they’d been hung badly, so they didn’t fall straight. Some had holes in them where the fabric had decayed, been torn or burned. This was far from being the sort of house Charlie would have expected an artist to live in. She struggled to bring to mind the few facts she knew about art or artists. Vincent Van Gogh had been dirt poor. Olivia had made Charlie watch a docu-drama about him once. Admittedly, he probably wouldn’t have given a toss about the state of his curtains.

‘They can’t have called you already. I’ve only been gone five minutes.’ An angry, skinny woman with deeply ingrained wrinkles around her eyes, nose and mouth appeared beside Charlie. It looked almost as if someone had scored down the middle of her face with a Stanley knife, so pronounced were the lines. She had a caramel-coloured birthmark, the one Aidan Seed had described to Simon, and was wearing a black duffle-coat, black trousers, white trainers and a purple woolly hat that looked as if it had a lot of hair stuffed into it. Her ears, Charlie noticed, were tiny, the lobes almost non-existent-again, as Aidan had described. In her gloved hands the woman-Mary Trelease-held a packet of Marlboro reds, a red plastic lighter and what looked like a small green box.

‘They?’ Charlie asked. On first appearance, there was nothing sinister about Trelease. She dressed like someone who didn’t give a damn what she looked like. Charlie had been through similar phases.

‘The neighbours. I’ll turn it down, all right? Give me a chance.’ She sprinted off round the side of the house. Charlie followed her. It was hard to avoid hearing the song that was blasting out, the word ‘survivor’ being repeated again and again. It was a more stringent and hysterical than usual variation on the theme of he-done-me-wrong-but-I’m-still-strong. It was the sort of song Charlie would write if she could write songs, full of posturing and bravado.

After a few seconds the music stopped, though its imprint still pulsed in Charlie’s brain. She took the open kitchen door as an invitation, and was about to go inside when Mary startled her by jumping down from the doorstep on to the narrow path that adjoined the house. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Satisfied?’ She eyed Charlie contemptuously, shifting her negligible weight from one trainered foot to the other, still holding the cigarettes, lighter and green container, which Charlie now saw was a box of Twinings Peppermint tea.

‘Are you Mary Trelease?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was the song?’

‘Pardon?’

‘The song you’ve just turned off. What’s it called?’ Some people were willing to answer harmless questions; others weren’t. Charlie wanted to know which category Mary Trelease belonged to before she asked her about Aidan Seed and Ruth Bussey.

‘Is this some kind of joke? Look, if the petty arseholes at number twelve have-’

‘I’m not here about the music,’ said Charlie. ‘Though while we’re on the subject, that volume’s unacceptable at any time of day. Why leave it on so loud if you’re going out?’

Mary opened her packet of cigarettes, put one in her mouth and lit it. She didn’t offer one to Charlie. ‘If you’re not here about the music, I can guess what you are here about.’

Her voice was at odds with her surroundings. Charlie hadn’t been able to hear it properly for as long as the music had been playing. What was someone who spoke like a member of the royal family doing on the Winstanley estate? Why hadn’t Simon mentioned her accent? ‘My name’s Sergeant Zailer, Charlie Zailer. I’m part of the community policing team for this area.’

‘Zailer? The same Sergeant Zailer who was all over the news a couple of years back?’ Mary’s brown eyes were wide, avid.

Charlie nodded, struggling to contain her discomfort. Most people weren’t quite so open about it. Most people shuffled and looked away, as Malcolm Fenton had, and their awkwardness made her forget, for a second, her own pain and humiliation. I should have resigned two years ago, she thought. All her allies, the people who had told her she’d done nothing wrong and advised her to brazen it out, had done her a disservice. For two years, Charlie had felt as if she’d been in hiding in public; if there was a trickier professional situation to be in, she couldn’t imagine what it might be.

‘Community policing,’ said Mary, smiling vaguely. ‘Does that mean they demoted you?’

‘I transferred. By choice.’

‘It was just after I moved to Spilling when it was in the papers, ’ said Mary. ‘Made me wonder what sort of area I’d moved to, but I don’t think there have been any policing scandals since, have there?’ She smiled. ‘You’re a one-off.’ Seeing Charlie flustered and at a loss, she added, ‘Don’t worry, it makes no odds to me. You’ll have had your reasons, no doubt.’

‘No doubt,’ said Charlie brusquely, ‘and obviously I’m not here to talk about that.’

‘Well, you’ve picked the wrong house if your visit’s community-related. You won’t find much of a community round here. And, such as it is, I’m not part of it. I’m an outsider who drinks funny tea.’ Mary waved the green Twinings box at Charlie. ‘You should have seen their faces in the corner shop when I asked them to stock it. Anyone would have thought I was proposing to drink babies’ blood.’ She raised her cigarette to her thin lips. Her index and middle fingers were stained a dark yellow, almost brown.

‘No, it’s you I want,’ Charlie told her.

‘Then I know why.’ The response was smooth and instantaneous. ‘You’re here to ask me about a man I don’t know. A man called Aidan Seed. DC Christopher Gibbs came on Friday for the same reason, and DC Simon Waterhouse on Saturday. Unlike you, they didn’t pull bits off my tree.’

‘I didn’t… The tree’s dead,’ said Charlie.

‘Taking its pulse, were you? If dried flowers can be beautiful, why can’t dried trees? I like my garden. I like my dead tree, and its pot. Look at this.’ She led Charlie over to the wall that separated her house from the one next to it. There was something protruding from one of the cracks that looked like a green rose, but with petals that were oddly rubbery, almost cactus-like, pink-edged. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ said Mary. ‘It’s called a sempervivum. It’s not there by accident or neglect. Someone planted it so that it would grow out of the wall, but you could easily mistake it for a weed. I’m sure you did.’

‘Can I come in for a few minutes?’ Charlie asked, feeling as if she’d lost any potential advantage she might have had. She wished she was in her office, ‘helping’ Counsellor Geoff Vesey to draft his letter and questionnaire-writing them for him, in other words. Vesey was Chair of the Culver Valley Police Authority, an organisation that monitored, among other things, public confidence in the police. Charlie’s confidence in him was zero; the man couldn’t even come up with a list of questions on his own.

‘You can come in, but only because I’m not working,’ said Mary. ‘If I were busy, I’d ask you to leave. I’m a painter.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘But you know that already. I’m sure you know all about me.’ In spite of what she’d said, she was still blocking the entrance to the house with her narrow body.

‘You didn’t let Chris Gibbs in,’ said Charlie. ‘You nearly didn’t let Simon Waterhouse in.’

‘Because I was working on a painting, one I stayed up all night to finish. As soon as I’ve got rid of you, I’ll be going to bed. Anyway, that’s why the song was on so loud, if you care: I was celebrating. Do you have a favourite song?’

It was ridiculous not to want to answer. ‘ “Trespass” by Limited Sympathy.’

‘The song that was on before-that’s mine.’

Charlie wasn’t going to ask again what it was. If you care. She didn’t.

‘ “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child,’ said Mary in a brittle voice, like a pupil forced to hand over a treasured forbidden item to her teacher. As she spoke, the lines on her face rearranged themselves, criss-crossing around her mouth. Charlie had heard that excessively thin people aged more severely than plumper ones, but even so… ‘I could tell you what I love about it, but I don’t suppose you’re interested. I suppose you’re one of those people who only puts on a CD if you’ve got guests for dinner, with the volume down so low that nobody can hear it.’

‘I don’t do that, actually,’ said Charlie. ‘I don’t rupture my neighbours’ eardrums, either.’

‘I told you: I was celebrating. Finishing a piece of work you’re happy with-it’s such a buzz. Like being able to fly. I wanted to reward myself, so I put on my favourite song and went round the corner to buy some smokes and peppermint tea. I put the volume up high so that I’d hear the song while I was in the shop.’ Mary smiled vaguely, a faraway look in her eyes, as if she was thinking back to something that had happened years ago.

Charlie’s skin prickled with apprehension. She thought of Ruth Bussey saying, ‘I’m frightened something’s going to happen. ’ ‘Could I see the painting?’ she asked. ‘The one you’ve just finished?’

‘No.’ A reflex response. Anger. ‘Why? You’re not interested in my work. The other two weren’t. You just want to check I’m who I say I am.’ Mary dropped her cigarette on the path, didn’t bother to extinguish it. It lay there, burning. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and dig out my passport and driver’s licence again. This time I won’t bother putting them back in the drawer, since one of you’s certain to turn up tomorrow.’

Charlie followed her into a tiny brown kitchen that contained a free-standing electric cooker with a grime-encrusted top, a stained metal sink and a row of cabinets with uncloseable doors that hung askew. Mottled brown linoleum covered the floor, studded with cigarette burns. No one has touched this place for at least thirty years, thought Charlie, and then: it looks even worse than my house, and that’s saying something. ‘I don’t want to see any ID,’ she said. ‘My colleagues are satisfied that you’re who you say you are, and that’s good enough for me.’

Mary undid the buttons of her duffle-coat and let it slide off her arms. When it hit the floor, she kicked it to one side. It lay in a heap by the kitchen door. ‘It doubles as a draught excluder,’ she told Charlie. Her refined voice sounded so out of place in the drab, cramped room that Charlie wondered if she was a Trustafarian-playing at slumming it, rubbing shoulders with bona fide poor people in an attempt to make her art more authentic, knowing she could escape to Daddy’s mansion in Berkshire whenever it suited her.

Mary pulled off her hat, releasing a huge silver-black frizz that tumbled down her back. ‘Aidan Seed’s a picture-framer,’ said Charlie matter-of-factly. ‘Did Chris Gibbs or Simon Waterhouse tell you that?’

‘Yes. I see the connection: I’m a painter, he’s a framer. Doesn’t mean I know him.’

‘You haven’t heard the name? Perhaps from other artists, even if you don’t know him personally? I’d have thought, with Spilling being the size it is…’

‘I don’t know any artists,’ said Mary. ‘Don’t think that because I’m a painter I’m in any way part of the art world. I hate all that nonsense. You join some group and next thing you know you’re on a committee, organising quizzes and raffles. That’s what the local art scene would be like in a town like this, and as for the London scene-all that Charles Saatchi garbage has got nothing to do with art. It’s marketing-it markets its own brand of marketing and nothing else. It’s about creating appetites, artificially-there’s no real hunger in it. There’s nothing real about it.’

‘Do you know Ruth Bussey?’ Charlie asked.

Mary’s surprise was unmistakeable. ‘Yes. Well…’ She frowned. ‘I don’t exactly know her. I’ve met her twice. I’m hoping to persuade her to sit for me. Why?’

‘How did you meet her?’

‘Why’s Ruth of interest to the police?’

‘If you could answer my-’

‘This is someone who’s been inside my home.’ Mary’s voice was shrill. Frightened, thought Charlie. ‘Why are you asking about her? Has she got some connection to this Aidan Seed person?’

‘How about we do a swap?’ Charlie suggested. ‘You show me some of your work, I answer your question. I am interested, although I know sod-all about art, except that all the best stuff seems to be by dead people.’

Mary’s face went rigid. She stared at Charlie. ‘Are you playing games with me?’

‘No.’ Of all the pissing stupid things to say. All over her body, Charlie’s skin felt cold. ‘I meant, you know, Picasso, Rembrandt… I meant that nowadays art seems to mean slices of dead cow and balls of elephant dung.’

‘I’m not dead,’ said Mary very carefully, as if she wanted Charlie to pay attention.

Charlie thought that people who believed in ghosts deserved to have their brains confiscated indefinitely. She couldn’t understand why it should freak her out so much to be standing in the kitchen of a shabby ex-council house listening to a straight-faced woman insist that she wasn’t dead.

‘I’m alive and my work is excellent,’ said Mary less vociferously. ‘Sorry to jump down your throat, but it’s depressing to hear what Joe Public thinks: that anyone with talent is famous already, basically. And dead, of course-all geniuses are dead. If they died young and tragically and in poverty, then all the better. ’

Charlie exhaled slowly. Simon hadn’t told Mary what Aidan Seed had said about her. Neither, he’d told Charlie, had Gibbs. What did it mean? What did any of it mean?

‘Do you think you need to suffer-I mean suffer deeply-in order to be a true artist?’ Mary asked, screwing up her eyes, pushing her wild hair behind her ears with both hands. Was it scorn in her voice, or something else?

‘I wouldn’t say the one follows from the other,’ said Charlie. ‘You could suffer the torments of the damned and still not be able to draw or paint for toffee.’

Mary seemed to like that answer. ‘True,’ she said. ‘Nothing great is so easily reducible. I asked DC Waterhouse the same question. He said he didn’t know.’

Another thing Simon hadn’t mentioned. He’d certainly have had an opinion, thought Charlie. Clearly he hadn’t wanted to share it with this peculiar woman.

‘I’ve changed my my mind,’ said Mary. ‘I will show you my work. I want you to see it. There’s one condition, though. We agree now that nothing I’m going to show you is for sale. Even if you see a picture you think would be perfect for-’

‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ Charlie told her. ‘I haven’t got the money to buy original art. How much do you normally sell your paintings for? Does it vary depending on size, or…?’

‘I don’t.’ Mary’s face turned blank. As if she’d been expecting trouble and now it had arrived. ‘I never sell my work. Ever.’

‘But… so…?’

‘You mean why. That’s what you want to ask me: why? If that’s what you want to ask, ask.’

‘I was actually thinking more… are all your pictures here, then? In this house?’

There was a long pause before Mary said, ‘Pretty much.’

‘Wow. How long have you been painting?’

‘I started in 2000.’

‘Professionally, you mean? What about as a child?’

‘No,’ said Mary. ‘I never painted or drew as a child. Apart from when I had to, at school.’

Of course not professionally; painters who sold none of their work couldn’t be called professional. I should be asking different questions, thought Charlie. I should be asking about Aidan Seed and Ruth Bussey, and then I should be going to work. Why aren’t I?

She knew the answer, but it was a few seconds before she was willing to admit it to herself: because now she too was… scared would have been putting it too strongly, but something about 15 Megson Crescent and its occupant unsettled her. Perhaps it was nothing more than a bad atmosphere in the house, the result of years of neglect. Whatever it was, Charlie couldn’t allow herself to give in to the urge to get the hell out as quickly as possible.

‘I said you could see my paintings, not grill me about them,’ said Mary. ‘If you’re not careful I’ll change my mind. I don’t normally show my work to anybody.’

‘Why me, then?’

Mary nodded. ‘It’s a good question.’ She smiled, as if she knew the answer but wasn’t about to divulge it. ‘Come on. Most of the pictures are upstairs.’

Charlie followed her into a narrow hall which was as unattractive as the kitchen. The carpet had rotted away from the walls on both sides, and was patterned with red and brown swirls, apart from near the front door where it was black. The wallpaper had half peeled off the walls. It was dark beige with a few lighter streaks and patches; it might have been magnolia at one time. A small, low radiator had lost most of its dirty-grey chipped paint. Charlie stopped to look at the painting above it of a fat man, a woman and a boy of about fourteen or fifteen sitting round a small table. Only the boy was fully dressed; the other two were in dressing-gowns. The woman was small and slender with sharp, close-set features. She was shielding her eyes with her hands and looking down. Her posture suggested a headache. No, a hangover-there were empty bottles all over the table. A morning-after-a-heavy-night scene, Charlie guessed.

At the foot of the stairs was another picture of the same man and woman, this time without the boy. The woman was combing her hair in front of a mirror, wearing a strappy white nightie. Behind her, the fat man lay on a bed reading a tabloid newspaper.

Charlie was impressed. The paintings were too seedy to be conventionally appealing, but they had life in them, and seemed to create more energy in the hall than the shadeless bulb Mary had turned on as she passed. The colours were extraordinary-vivid without being in any way buoyant or heartening. The effect was one of grim cheerlessness exposed in the glare of a searchlight. ‘Are these yours?’ Charlie asked, guessing they must be.

Mary was halfway up the stairs. She made a noise that was hard to interpret. ‘I didn’t steal them, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘No, I meant…’

‘No. They’re not mine.’

So she hadn’t misunderstood. She’d been playing for time.

At the top of the stairs there was another picture, and a further two on the landing: the woman and the boy sitting at opposite ends of a lumpy yellow sofa with a torn cover, not looking at each other; the man standing next to a closed door, his hand raised to knock, his mouth open. The third painting featured two different people: a young man and woman, both dark with heavy eyebrows and square foreheads, both overweight, playing cards at the same table that was in the picture downstairs.

Mary pushed open one of the three doors on the landing, stood back and gestured for Charlie to go in ahead of her. The front bedroom. Aidan Seed had told Simon he’d killed Mary in here, left her body in the centre of the bed. Charlie’s throat felt tight as she walked in. I’m being ridiculous, she told herself. Would Mary be opening the door if there were a corpse behind it?

The room was full of pictures, so full that after a few steps Charlie had to stop. Many of them were obscured from view, either by other paintings, or because they were turned the wrong way. Charlie tried to take in as much as she could. There was a picture of a large stone building with a square tower, a lot of head-and-shoulders portraits, mainly of women, all of whom looked weary, defeated by life. Leaning against one wall were four or five big pinky-brown abstracts that looked like close-ups of scarred human flesh, with lots of intersecting lines and funny ridges. Like the paintings downstairs and on the landing, none of these was conventionally beautiful, but their power was undeniable. Charlie found herself needing to stare at them.

Like the paintings downstairs… Something else was undeniable, and yet Mary had denied it. ‘If you painted all these, then you painted the others as well,’ said Charlie, gesturing towards the door. ‘Even I can tell they’re all by the same artist.’

Mary looked put out. After a few seconds she said, ‘I painted them, yes. All of them.’

Charlie would have felt pedantic asking her why, in that case, she’d pretended she hadn’t. Was she embarrassed to have her own pictures up on the walls? She didn’t seem the sort of person who would give a toss about seeming vain. In this room, all the paintings were framed; the ones Charlie had seen on the walls had been hung unframed. Somehow, it seemed the wrong way round.

‘Who are they all?’ Charlie asked.

‘The people in the pictures? Neighbours, mostly, or people who used to live round here. The Winstanley estate collection.’ Mary’s smile was like a sneer, directed at herself. She nodded at the portraits stacked against the opposite wall. ‘I couldn’t tell you most of those people’s names now-I paid them, they sat for me, that was it.’

Charlie looked again at the faces, to see if she recognised anyone she’d ever arrested.

‘You’re wondering why I’d choose to paint strangers who mean nothing to me,’ said Mary, though Charlie hadn’t been. ‘Painting people you care about is like offering yourself an emotional breakdown. I avoid it if I can, though it’s not always possible. Sometimes a compulsion takes hold and you have to suffer the consequences.’

Charlie saw the tension in her posture as she spoke, the way she hunched herself together so that her body became more compact.

‘If you had to paint a portrait, who would you choose? Your fiancé?’ Mary was looking at Charlie’s hand. ‘I saw the ring.’

‘I really don’t know.’ Charlie felt her skin heat up. No way could she paint Simon; it would be too intimate, too close. He’d never let her. He’d ended up staying the night on Saturday, after the party; he and Charlie had slept side by side, but they hadn’t kissed or touched. The hug he’d given her downstairs-that had been it in terms of physical contact. Still, Charlie was pleased. She’d never been able to persuade him to stay the night before. It was progress.

‘Definitely not your fiancé,’ said Mary. ‘So either you don’t care enough about him to bother, in which case I’d call off the engagement, or you know what I’m talking about: like offering yourself a breakdown.’

‘You said pretty much all your pictures were here,’ Charlie changed the subject. ‘Where are the rest, if you never sell your work?’

‘Ruth Bussey’s got one. I gave it to her as a present.’ A smile played around Mary’s lips. ‘Remember the sempervivum I showed you outside?’

Charlie didn’t. Then she realised Mary was talking about the rubbery green rose sticking out of the wall.

‘Ruth told me it was called that. I didn’t know. I don’t know any plant names. My experience of gardening is limited. I completely ruined a garden once and decided to leave it at that. After I gave Ruth the painting-I hadn’t given anybody a present in a long time and it felt strange-but I thought to myself, she’s given me a present too. That name: sempervivum. Live for ever, live always-that’s what it means.’

‘You aren’t in the habit of giving presents?’ Charlie asked gently. There was a story here, and she found herself wanting to know what it was. Where was the garden Mary had mentioned? Where did she live before Megson Crescent?

‘No presents,’ said Mary. ‘I’m not giving you a picture for free, and I won’t sell you one. I only gave Ruth one as a form of apology.’

‘For what?’

‘I lost her her job. It’s a long story, one I’m not going to tell you. It doesn’t show either of us in a good light.’

‘You mean her job at the Spilling Gallery?’

‘What does it matter?’ Mary asked warily.

A woman with a lot of boundaries, thought Charlie. Too many for life to be easy for her. ‘I just wondered. That’s where Ruth worked before she worked for Aidan Seed.’

Charlie had never seen a person’s face shake before, but Mary’s did. It was as if she’d suffered an internal electric shock. ‘Ruth… Ruth works for Aidan Seed?’ She tucked her hair behind her ear, repeating the action, three, four times.

‘They also live together,’ said Charlie. ‘As a couple.’

All the colour drained from Mary’s face. ‘That’s not true. Ruth lives alone. In the lodge house at Blantyre Park. Why are you lying?’

‘I’m not. I don’t understand. Why does it matter? You say you don’t know Aidan.’

‘My picture. I gave Ruth my picture.’ She bit her lip. ‘Where are my cigarettes? I need a cigarette.’ She made no attempt to look for them. Her eyes were blank, moving to and fro, not settling on anything for long. ‘What’s Aidan Seed done? I need to know. Why are the police after him?’

Not knowing if it would prove to be the key that unlocked everything or a disastrous error, Charlie said, ‘As far as we know, Aidan’s harmed nobody. But he’s telling us different. He’s saying he hurt someone, badly, and he says that person was you.’

Mary’s chin jutted out. Charlie guessed she had resolved to show no more emotion after her brief lapse. Another shock, then.

Charlie took a step towards her. ‘Mary, believe me, I know how odd this sounds. Aidan Seed came to us voluntarily, wanting to confess to a crime. He described you-your appearance, where you live, your work…’

Mary wrapped her arms around herself, hugged herself tightly.

In for a penny, thought Charlie. ‘He seems to have got hold of the idea that he killed you,’ she said.

‘Not me.’ Mary let her head fall back, then straightened up, her eyes locking on Charlie’s. ‘Not me.’