A Room Swept White (24 page)

‘He could return yours, though, couldn’t he?’ said Proust. ‘He must know you don’t want to speak to him about his intentions with regard to Miss Benson.’

‘He wouldn’t . . .’ Sellers stopped, shook his head.

‘Don’t keep us in suspense, Detective. What would you do if you’d recently ejected a clingy woman from your bed and wanted to make sure she didn’t find her way back into it?’

‘Well, I might . . . I might switch off my mobile, go to the pub or to stay at a mate’s house and kind of . . . forget to check my messages for a day or two. Just until things had died down. I mean, normally I wouldn’t, normally I’d be happy to have any woman back who wanted more, but . . . she’s tried to ring him several times since yesterday afternoon? That type’s enough to spark off a spell of hibernation, sir – so much hassle, the sex isn’t even worth it.’

‘I don’t think our inability to get hold of Nattrass has got anything to do with Fliss Benson, and I told her that,’ said Simon. ‘I thought we ought to consider it, that’s all. More for what it says about Benson than anything else. She seems convinced it’s all about her. I can imagine her being obsessive. She’s kind of odd.’

‘Takes one to know one, Waterhouse.’

‘I asked her to halt all work on the documentary until further notice and she agreed, but . . . she struck me as one of those who’ll agree to your face then do what she wants behind your back.’

‘Women, you mean?’ said Sellers. He was rewarded with a thin-lipped smile from the Snowman.

‘I don’t want to be told every time I turn up to interview someone that Benson and her camera crew have just left,’ said Simon. ‘I’ve looked into the possibility of getting an injunction, and been told there’s no chance. Binary Star’s
documentary is about old cases, not Helen Yardley’s murder, so there’s no contempt issue.’

‘We’re going to have to rely on goodwill,’ said Sam Kombothekra.

‘Goodwill?’ Proust eyed him coldly. ‘I’d sooner place my trust in the tooth fairy.’

‘What do you want us to do about Paul Yardley, sir?’ Sam asked.

‘Talk to him again, but go gently. Remember who he is and what he’s been through. It’s possible he forgot, which I suppose would be understandable in the circumstances, but we need him to tell us that he didn’t ring emergency services straight after he found Helen’s body. He first tried Laurie Nattrass’s direct line at Binary Star, then his home number, then his mobile. Then he rang the police.’

‘Would you forget phoning someone three times, however grieving and shocked you were, if the police were asking you to think back over your every movement?’ asked Simon. ‘Going gently’s all well and good, but what Yardley’s been through is irrelevant if he’s lying to us and getting in the way of us—’

‘Paul Yardley is not a suspect,’ Proust cut him off. ‘He was working when Helen died.’

‘His alibi is one colleague, that’s it – a mate he’s worked with for years,’ Simon stood his ground. Not only for the sake of disagreeing with Proust, though that was a fringe benefit. ‘Yardley made three attempts to contact Laurie Nattrass before alerting us to his dead wife on the living room floor, and he didn’t think to mention it to anyone? You can’t tell me that’s not a bad sign.’

‘Paul Yardley isn’t a liar!’ Proust smacked the flat of his
hand against the desk. ‘Don’t make me take you off this case, Waterhouse, because I need you on it!’

That’s right: you want to yell at me, not have me round for dinner
.

‘I want to interview Stella and Dillon White myself,’ said Simon. ‘I don’t think we can discount what Dillon said about the wet umbrella and the rain.’

‘You never stop, do you? Sergeant Kombothekra, explain to DC Waterhouse why, in our job, we’re sometimes obliged to discount things we know not to be the case, like rain on a sunny day, or the guilt of innocent people.’

‘Have you read the transcript of Gibbs’ interview with Dillon?’ Simon asked Proust. ‘What kind of four-year-old says, “I saw him beyond” about a man he saw across a narrow cul-de-sac?’

‘He sounded like . . .’ Gibbs screwed up his face. ‘What’s a soothsayer?’

‘This meeting is over,’ said the Snowman, with the sort of pronounced finality most people would hold in reserve in case they ever needed to announce the end of the world. ‘I for one shan’t mourn its passing.’

‘Sir, if I can—’

‘No, Waterhouse. No to all your suggestions and requests, now and for ever more.’

Simon wanted to punch the air in triumph. That had to be it now, surely: the end of Proust’s sick special-friend campaign. There would be no more confidences, no more invitations; no flattery or favours asked. Traditional unvarnished hostility had been reinstated, and Simon felt lighter as a result, able to move and breathe more freely.

It didn’t last long. ‘Got your diary with you, Waterhouse?’ the Snowman called after him as he was leaving the room.
‘We need to sort out an evening for you and Sergeant Zailer to come to us for a bite to eat, since you can’t do tomorrow night. Pity. Why don’t the two of you talk it over and get back to me with some dates that’d work for you?’

11

Friday 9 October 2009

Marchington House is a mansion. Its size shocks me to a standstill. I crane my neck and gawp at the pillared entrance, the carved stone arch around the door, the rows and rows of windows, so many that I don’t even try to count.

How can someone like me walk into a place like this? The house I grew up in is about half the size of the outbuilding I can see at the far end of the garden, beyond what looks like an enormous black eye-patch on the grass, a rectangular tarpaulin that I assume covers a swimming pool.

I nearly laugh, imagining how the owners of Marchington House would react if they were told they had to spend even one night in my flat in Kilburn.
I’d rather die, darling. Go to the east wing scullery and ask the maid for a vial of arsenic from the poison cabinet
. My hands tighten around the strap of my shoulder bag. I’ve brought with me everything I thought I would need, but I can see now that it’s not enough.
I’m the wrong sort of person for this
. I might have a top-of-the-range digital recorder with me, but that doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing here.

Why is Rachel Hines here? Does the house belong to her family? Friends?

Please can we make friends
? As a kid I used to say that to my dad when I’d been naughty and he was cross with me.
Pathetic as I know it is, I’d give anything to hear those words from Laurie. It would make a welcome change from hearing him say, ‘This is Laurie Nattrass. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’

I’ve resolved not to ring him or think about him at all today. I’ve got more important things to worry about.
Like the person who sent me a card with sixteen numbers on it, who might or might not want to kill me. Like the lies I told the police
.

I force my feet to move in the direction of Marchington House’s front door. I’m about to press the bell when I notice the rings of stone around it, like ripples in water that have set. How many stonemasons were involved? One? A dozen? I take a deep breath. It’s hard not to feel inferior when faced with a doorbell surround that looks as if it’s had more time and care devoted to it than all the places I’ve ever lived in put together.

This house is too good for a woman who
. . . The thought surges up before I can stop it. I force myself to follow it through: a woman who killed her two children. Isn’t that what I believe, or has reading Laurie’s article changed my mind?

I expect to be waiting a while, but Rachel Hines opens the door within seconds of my ringing the bell. ‘Fliss,’ she says. ‘Thanks for coming.’ She holds out her hand and I shake it. She’s wearing pale blue flared jeans and a white linen shirt with a strange, plum-coloured woollen thing over it, some kind of shawl, but with arms and a neck. Her feet are bare.
She feels at home here
.

‘Would you like me to put some shoes on?’ she asks.

I feel the heat rush to my face. How can she know what I was thinking? Was I staring?

‘I’ve learned to read body language over the years.’ She smiles. ‘Call it a finely tuned survival instinct.’

‘You must be less nervous than I am,’ I say quickly, because I’d rather tell her than try to keep it to myself and fail. ‘Bare feet means relaxed, or it does to me, anyway. But . . . I don’t mind. Not that I’d have any right to mind.’
Shut up, you fool
. I realise I’ve been manipulated; my confession was entirely unnecessary.

‘That’s your interpretation of my bare feet? Interesting. The first thing I’d think would be “under-floor heating”. And I’d be right. Take off your shoes and socks and you’ll see – it’s like having your feet caressed by warm sand.’ Her voice is deep and soft.

‘I’m fine,’ I say stiffly. If I were paranoid, I might start to think that all her dealings with me so far have been designed to throw me off balance. I don’t know why I’m using the conditional tense, come to think of it – that’s exactly what I
do
think. ‘Paranoid’ is such a pejorative word; sensibly cautious is what I am.

Apart from when you lied to the police
.

‘Do you see how our minds are incapable of thinking freely?’ she says. ‘It matters to me that this house has under-floor heating, more than it would to most people. Your nervousness matters to you – maybe it makes you feel ineffective. In the space of about ten seconds, we’ve both used my bare feet to reinforce the patterns our minds are determined to follow.’

Is this conversation going to get easier? She’s harder to talk to than Laurie.

You’re not supposed to be thinking about him, remember
?

She stands back to let me in. ‘I’m less nervous than you are because I know for sure that you’re not a murderer. You don’t know that about me.’

I don’t want to have to respond to that, so instead I look around. What I see takes my breath away: a large hall with a glossy pale stone floor and skirting boards made from the same polished stone, about three times the height of any I’ve seen before. Everywhere I look there’s something beautiful: the figure-of-eight newel-post, top and bottom circles hollowed out in the middle like something Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth might have made; the chandelier, a falling shower of blue and pink glass tears, nearly as wide as the ceiling; two large oil paintings side by side, taking up an entire wall, both of women seemingly falling through the air, with small pinched black mouths and their hair flying out behind them; two chairs that look like thrones, with ornate wooden backs and seats covered in shimmery material the colour of moonlight; the water-feature sculpture in the corner – a human figure, the body made of rough-edged pink stone, the head a perpetually rolling white marble ball with water sliding off it as it moves, like a sheet of clear hair. I’m most impressed by what can only be described as a sunken glass rug, a rectangle of clear glass unevenly flecked with silver and gold, set into the stone in the centre of the hall, with light glowing through from beneath.

For about two seconds, I try to kid myself that this trying-too-hard interior wouldn’t suit me at all, that I find it vulgar and over-the-top. Then I give up and face the fact that I’d chop off my right arm to live in a house like this, or to have a friend or relative who did that I could stay with. Tonight, on police advice, I’ve arranged to stay at Tamsin and Joe’s, on a hard futon in their cobwebby, rattly-windowed computer room. I hate myself for making the comparison. I am officially a horrible, shallow person.

‘You don’t know for sure that I’m not a murderer,’ I say, to prove that Rachel Hines isn’t the only one capable of unexpected pronouncements.

‘I know that I’m not,’ she says.

‘Wendy Whitehead.’ I hadn’t been planning to mention her name so soon. I’m not sure I’m ready to know. That’s how good a truth-hunter I am:
please don’t tell me anything – I’m too scared
. ‘Who is she?’

‘I thought you might want a drink before—’

‘Who is she?’

‘A nurse. Well, she was. She’s not any more.’

We stare at one another. Eventually I say, ‘I’ll have a drink, thanks.’ If I’m about to become the only person apart from Rachel Hines who knows the truth about her children’s deaths, I need to prepare myself.

This can’t be happening
.

I follow her into a kitchen that’s more haphazard than the hall but still beautiful: oak floor, curved white work surfaces that look like a sort of spongy stone, a double Belfast sink, a stripe of pale green glass with water pulsing through it running all the way along the floor on one side, breaking up the wood. Against one wall there’s a cream-coloured Aga, except it’s three times longer than any I’ve seen before. It’s only slightly shorter than a minibus, come to think of it. In the centre of the room there’s a large battered pine table with eight chairs around it, and, behind that, one of those freestanding island things, shaped like a teardrop, its curved sides painted pink and green.

Against the wall nearest to me, there’s a purple backless sofa with a matching footstool pushed up against it. Both have been designed to within an inch of their lives. Together,
they look like a wiggly exclamation mark. I notice a calendar on the wall: twelve months at a glance, with a tiny rectangle of space assigned to each day of the year. At the top it says ‘Dairy Diary’. A Christmas present from the milkman? There’s handwriting on it, but I’m not close enough to read it. Above the purple sofa are three paintings of stripes that warp when you look at them. I try to read the pencil signature at the bottom of the nearest one: Bridget something.

Above the minibus-Aga there’s a framed photograph of two young men punting down a river. They’re both good looking: one serious-faced and dark with a nice smile, the other blond and well aware of his sex appeal. A couple? Did they meet as students at Cambridge, hence the punt? If I was the sort of prejudiced person who leapt to conclusions about gay men and stunning interior design, I’d be concluding round about now that this might be their home.

‘No family resemblance whatsoever, is there? You wouldn’t believe three siblings could come out so different from one another.’ Rachel Hines nods at the photograph and hands me a glass of something dark pink. ‘Those two hogged all the good looks. And the charm.’