The Carrier (29 page)

Proust groaned, leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. ‘You’ve lost me, Waterhouse. This happens every time we speak: you beat a path to your special private land at the top of the lunacy tree, and I don’t understand a word you say from that point on.’

‘You don’t believe Breary’s a murderer.’

‘In fact, I do.’

‘No, you don’t. I don’t either. But if he’s confessed, if everyone else in the house that day backs him up, if all the forensic evidence falls into line and supports his story, what have I got to work with? You know I’m stubborn, but maybe this time that’s not going to be enough to break through the wall of lies. So you decided to give me an extra incentive.’

‘Wall of lies?’ Proust muttered. ‘Is that the one that borders the orchard of obsession that contains the tree of lunacy?’

‘Breary’s been charged. That worries you. Never happened before, has it – that I’ve failed to get to the truth in time to stop the CPS charging an innocent man? You must have worried I was losing my touch.’

‘Do you want to start race riots in the Culver Valley, Waterhouse? Is that what you’re trying to do?’

What did race have to do with it? Simon said nothing. He’d fallen into enough of Proust’s traps in the past to know the warning signs. An obtrusive non sequitur was the verbal equivalent of flashing neon.

‘Because if you carry on in this vein, I’m going to pitch myself out of the window. People will film me on their mobile phones, and the local news will get hold of the story, and then the national news, and everyone will think Spilling police station has been attacked by a jihadi-hijacked plane, which will fuel both Islamophobia and Islamic extremism. All that will be your fault, Waterhouse.’

‘Did you think I’d work better if I felt everyone was against me?’ Simon asked. ‘Maybe you’re right: set me against Sam and Sellers and I’ll need to prove myself all over again, like I used to have to when no one gave a fuck what I said about anything.’

‘“Not leaping flames, not a falling ceiling, not colleagues screaming in agony,”’ Proust spoke into his empty World’s Greatest Grandad mug as if it were a microphone. ‘“Our information suggests that poor DI Giles Proust leaped to his death in order to put an end to his conversation with DC Waterhouse, because it was the only way.”’

Simon ignored the show. ‘You decided I needed a new enemy to bring out the best in me. That I’d work better against Sam than with him.’

‘Perhaps you’re right. I can’t say for certain. I remember none of my thoughts beyond “Please make this stop, oh Lord.”’

‘You knew Sam would tell me. You also knew he wouldn’t tell me straight away, and you knew how I’d react when I found out he hadn’t. And you were right. You wanted this reaction from me and you’ve got it. I’m not working with Sam any more, not on this case. I’m not telling him fuck all: not where I am, not what I’m doing, nothing. He won’t know what I’m thinking, what my plans are . . .’

‘You’re not going to tell him what you’re thinking?’ Proust snapped. ‘My white-hot envy of the man is indistinguishable from hatred. If the invertebrate sergeant were here now, I’d end up doing something to him that I wouldn’t regret.’

‘Everything I’ve said applies to Gibbs too,’ Simon told him. ‘He’s working with me.’

‘I wondered when the ventriloquist would mention his dummy. That red ball your dummy’s so fond of – gift from you, was it?’

‘I should be thanking you,’ Simon said. ‘Without Sam and Sellers’ mediocrity dragging us down, we’ll get there faster. You’re right to be in a good mood. Your plan’s going to pay dividends. If I’ve lost a friend because of it . . .’ Simon shrugged. ‘You don’t care about that, and neither do I. Sam can’t have been as good a friend as I thought he was.’

The harder he was on Sam now, the easier it would be for Simon to make peace with him at some point in the future. It was important that the worse behaviour should be his, Simon’s. It was the only way he’d ever managed to forgive anyone. He didn’t expect Proust to understand. Or Charlie, for that matter.

‘There’s no denying that Sergeant Kombothekra is sub-prime on almost every level,’ the Snowman agreed. ‘Though you might hold him in higher esteem when you reach the purge stage of your cycle. In case you haven’t worked it out, Waterhouse, you have a bulimic ego. It binges on self-regard until it becomes so bloated it can’t take any more. At which point it spews up all the self-esteem it’s spent the last however long gobbling up, leaving you feeling like the lowest of the low.’ Proust stood up, stretched, and walked over to the window. ‘Tell me I’m wrong,’ he said.

Simon would have loved to. The words weren’t there.

‘It won’t be long before you decide that you and Sergeant Kombothekra are about as worthless and immoral as each other. You’ll soon be propping him up again, helping him to pretend he’s a fully fledged person, and he’ll be doing the same for you. One setback – that’s all it’ll take to set your next ego purge in motion.’

‘I’ll be able to tell you who killed Francine Breary in one week’s time, maximum, and I’ll be able to prove it,’ Simon heard himself say. He didn’t care that he’d backed himself into a corner; he was about to do it again. ‘You asked me who told me about the interview transcript – your little conspiracy. I had a visitor last night. She told me.’

‘
She?
’

Had Proust still not worked it out? Had he really not heard Simon say ‘Amanda’ before?

‘Does the name Regan Murray mean anything to you?’

The inspector frowned. ‘Murray’s my daughter’s surname. I don’t know any Regans.’

‘Regan Murray’s your daughter. She’s changed her name. Legally. She couldn’t stand to keep the name you chose for her.’

Simon watched the Snowman’s Adam’s apple do a jerky under-skin dance. ‘She’s too scared to tell you she’s not Amanda any more. Regan’s a character from
King Lear
, by the way: Lear’s daughter who doesn’t give a shit about him but pretends she does. Sound familiar? She’s also too scared to tell you about the psychotherapist she’s seeing.’

‘No member of my family would waste money on psychotherapy,’ said Proust. ‘Your need to invent such a story says more about you than it does about my daughter.’

‘She came to see me to compare notes. I’m her hero, for standing up to you. I said she should tell you how she really feels. She looked terrified. When I said I’d tell you the truth if she didn’t, do you know what she did? Burst into tears, begged me not to say anything. Know what her worst fear is? That you’ll stop Lizzie seeing her. She’s furious with Lizzie for not protecting her from you when she was a kid. Same time, she sees her as a fellow victim, too scared to acknowledge what was going on.’

The Snowman didn’t look like a person listening to another person – more like a stake with a vein-ringed head that had been driven into the floor of his office. Simon couldn’t shake off the sensation of having drifted into a horror film against his will. His heart was pounding; sweat dripped down his sides from under his arms.

‘I know lies when I hear them,’ said Proust.

‘You think I’m making it up?’

‘My daughter wouldn’t discuss family business with a stranger.’

‘Wouldn’t she? So how do I know about her friend Nirmal’s eighteenth? Amanda’s taxi broke down. She had to get out and flag down another one, and got home ten minutes late. Ten minutes, that’s all. Lizzie was relieved she was safe, but that wasn’t enough for you. How many hours did you make her stand outside in the rain, with Lizzie cringing in the background, too scared to tell you you were being unreasonable?’

No response.

‘I know the answer,’ Simon said, in case Proust had thought the question was rhetorical. ‘I know how many hours it was, because Regan remembers. Do you?’

The Snowman walked indirectly back to his desk, stopping in front of his filing cabinet on the way for no reason that Simon could work out. He pulled his jacket off the back of his chair, took his keys from the pocket and, jangling them in one hand, headed out of his office. He was going to lock the door behind him. Simon saw what was about to happen, and did nothing to prevent it.

Had Proust locked him in deliberately? More likely he’d done it automatically. Was he in shock? He wasn’t the only one, if so.

The conversation Simon knew he needed to have with reception in order to be set free was the kind he most dreaded: awkward, absurd, humiliating. Charlie could take care of it for him; she’d make it feel manageable and harmless. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and rang her. When she answered, he said, ‘It’s me. The Snowman’s locked me in his office. I need you to come in and get me out.’

‘So you’re talking to me, are you? Now that you need something.’ She sounded upbeat.

‘Is that a yes?’

‘It’s my day off.’

‘That why you’ve been at the Dower House all day, doing Sam’s job for him?’

‘You don’t know the half of it. I don’t want to boast, but there’s been an interesting development, thanks to my efforts.’

‘I suppose Buzz Lightweight’s already heard all about this development.’

‘Oh,
God
!
Swear
to me that you’ll stop blathering on about traitors and treachery like some fucking neurotic medieval monarch, or I’m going to leave you locked in there!’

Simon listened to Charlie lighting a cigarette. It was one of his favourite sounds, especially over the phone. He found it comforting: the crackle of cellophane, the metal scratch-crunch of the lighter’s wheel, the deep inhalation.

He walked over to the desk and sat on it, resting his feet on Proust’s chair. ‘I told the Snowman about Regan,’ he said.

‘Uh-huh. I knew you would.’

Simon listened for clues. That was either a smoke-ring or a sigh of desolation.

‘You told me not to.’

‘That’s how I knew you would. Is that why Proust locked you in?’

‘Telling him was the right thing to . . .’ The words evaporated in Simon’s mouth as he noticed Proust’s notepad, the one he’d scribbled on while on the phone. The handwriting looked more like germs under a microscope than letters of the alphabet, but Simon could make out a few words. ‘Attack’ was one of them. And the name Gaby Struthers.

‘Get me the fuck out of the Snowman’s office,’ he said to Charlie. ‘Now!’ By the time he remembered to add a ‘Please’, she’d already gone.

Can’t see.
Wrong, achingly wrong
,
don’t understand
. This can’t be me, can’t be about me, must stop soon. There’s something covering my face and head
.
Plastic.
When I breathe in, it touches my mouth, smells like a cheap cagoule I had as a child. I try to breathe it away, but the wind blows it back, pressing it against my face.
Wind.
I’m still outside, then. Outside my house. My arms are behind my back, held together. By him?

Heavy-set, short hair. I saw him. His neck . . .

I want to be unconscious again. That’s where I’m going.

My mind scatters its pieces. Flooding panic as I come to, washed in terror. I’m upright. I must be standing, though my legs feel shaky and hollow, not solid enough to hold me up.

Don’t overreact. Don’t react at all.

I struggle to pull my hands apart. Something peels away, leaves a small patch of skin on my wrist stinging, but the movement is minimal.
Try again.
No difference at all the second time.
Tape. He’s taped my wrists together.
Something’s putting pressure on my windpipe. Not crushing it – it’s uncomfortable, but there’s no pain. Neck-brace tight, but not getting tighter.

This must mean I’m calm: I’m able to distinguish between inconvenient and life-threatening.

I can control this fear if I focus. It’s an opportunity to be good at something. I mustn’t fail.

A ripping sound: tape tearing off a roll.
Tighter. Pain.
He’s winding tape round my neck to keep whatever he’s got over my head in place.

My brain caves in on itself. I’m going to suffocate and I don’t know why. I can’t die without knowing why and who.

A man with short hair and things on his neck. I saw him.

‘Gaby, Gaby, Gaby. You’ve well and truly overstepped the mark, haven’t you?’

The sound of his voice sends my body into spasm. This is real. This is happening. I try to run, blind, and hit a barrier – his body? – which throws me back against a harder, more even surface. My car. I was standing by my car. Leaving Sean.

He’s going to kill me. Because I overstepped the mark. What mark?

I can’t give up. No reward, ever, for those who give up. There must be a way out that involves thinking; I just have to find it. I’m good at thinking, better than most.

‘I wish I didn’t have to do this to you,’ he says, sending another wave of revulsion rolling through me. ‘I’m not going to enjoy it.’ His talking is the worst thing, worse than the bag over my head: hearing that he thinks he is justified, being too weak with fear to argue.

He sounds so ordinary. I try to fit his face to a peripheral man in my life: the heating engineer who came to service the boiler last week and made it worse, the parcel man, the takeaway delivery driver. No, he is none of those. I’ve never seen him before. He’s nobody from my world. How can I be the person he means to harm? I’ve never done anything to hurt him. I know life isn’t fair, but it’s fairer than this, fairer to me.

‘All this is for me, it’s a job that needs doing,’ he says. ‘Get things sorted. It gives me no pleasure whatsoever, but you have to learn.’

I need to be telling him to let me go, but I can’t mould my fear into words he’d recognise.

Learn what?

He is going to enjoy it. That’s why he keeps saying he won’t.

Dread has siphoned all the strength out of my muscles. A few seconds ago, I ran. I couldn’t now. My oxygen’s running out, and I can’t have any more once it’s used up.
Not fair.
The harder I try not to breathe too fast, the faster I breathe: wasteful and helpless, buried alive above ground. He’s made a plastic coffin for my head and wrapped me in it.

I suck in, feel fingers in my mouth. Then something bumps against my nose and there’s a ripping sound, a gust of wind in my face. I can see my car window and smell a cigarette. It takes me a few seconds to realise he’s torn a hole in the plastic.