Little Face

by Sophie Hannah

  I feel David’s breath on my neck. ‘You’re right to be scared,’ he whispers. I gasp and nearly lose my balance. I was so focused on Vivienne, I didn’t hear him come in. ‘She’ll see through your act straight away.’ How he must have hoped, right up until this moment, that I would back down, apologise unreservedly for my madness, enable him to greet Vivienne with a reassuring, ‘Don’t worry! It’s all blown over!’ He is trying to frighten me because he is frightened.

  He succeeds. I want to phone Simon Waterhouse, scream at him to come and save me. I want to hide in his embrace and hear him say that Florence and I are going to be safe thanks to him. I have turned into every therapist’s textbook patient. Needy, unable to cope with the expectation that I will behave like a responsible adult, I have created what is known in the trade as a drama triangle, casting myself in the role of victim. David is my persecutor and Simon my rescuer.

  The front door opens with a click, closes with a wooden thud. Vivienne is back.

  12

  3/10/03, 9 pm

  ‘I’m not saying definitely not. I don’t know yet. I’ll do my best.’ Simon bit back the urge to say, ‘Didn’t we speak earlier today? And has anything important happened since then?’ It had been easier when his mother had worked full-time. There hadn’t been so many phone calls.

  ‘But when will you know?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends on work. You know what my job’s like.’ Did she fuck. She didn’t have a clue. She thought Sunday dinner was more important.

  ‘So, what’s your news?’ asked Kathleen Waterhouse. Simon could see her even though he couldn’t, knew she was pressing the phone hard against her ear, as if trying to embed it in the side of her head. She feared the connection with her son might be lost if she didn’t exert maximum force. Her ear would be red and sore afterwards.

  ‘No news.’ He’d have said this even if he’d won the lottery that morning, or been invited to man the next space shuttle. In theory, he wanted his chats with his mother to be relaxed, enjoyable. He often imagined the things he would say to her, jokes or anecdotes he would tell her when they next spoke, but they all died on his tongue the instant he heard that timid ‘Hello, dear. It’s Mum.’ That was when he remembered there was a script he could never abandon, no matter how much he might wish to. That was when he said, ‘Hi, Mum. How are you?’ and resigned himself to another wrangle over his availability for Sunday lunch this week, next week, every fucking week.

  ‘Have you got any news?’ His next line, on cue. She would tell him one item; she always did.

  ‘I met Beryl Peach today, in the launderette.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Kevin’s staying at home for a while. You could see if he wanted to meet up.’

  ‘I’m probably going to be too busy.’ Kevin Peach had been Simon’s friend at school. Briefly. Until Simon had got fed up of being the mascot, the token ‘mad bastard’ of Peach’s little coterie. They enjoyed watching him start fights for no reason, egged him on to approach girls who were way out of his league. They copied out his carefully written notes and still blamed him when they didn’t get the As he got in exams. No thanks. He had a new social life now, The Brown Cow after work with Charlie, Sellers, Gibbs and a few others. Police friendships were easier to keep at a surface level, work-related banter. Except Charlie. She was always trying to go beyond that, to take more and go deeper. To know more.

  ‘So when will I see you, if not on Sunday?’ Kathleen Waterhouse asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Mum.’ Not until Alice had been found. Simon couldn’t stand seeing his parents when he was feeling at all shaky. Their company, the stifling atmosphere of the house he grew up in that hadn’t changed in over thirty years, could turn a mild bad mood into the most deadening misery. Poor sods; it wasn’t their fault. They were always so pleased to see him. ‘Why don’t we wait and see about Sunday?’

  The doorbell rang. Simon’s whole body stiffened. He prayed his mum hadn’t heard it. He’d get the full list of questions: who is it? Well, who might it be? Wasn’t it rude to call round unexpectedly at nine o’clock? Did Simon know anybody who would do that? Kathleen Waterhouse was afraid of spontaneity. Simon had spent most of his life trying hard not to be. He ignored the doorbell, hoping that whoever it was would give up and leave.

  ‘How’s the house?’ asked his mother. She asked after it every time she phoned, as if it were a pet or a child.

  ‘Mum, I’ve got to go. The house is fine. It’s great.’

  ‘Why have you got to go?’

  ‘I just have, okay? I’ll ring you tomorrow.’

  ‘All right, dear. Goodbye. God bless. Speak to you later.’

  Later? Simon gritted his teeth. He hoped it was a figure of speech, that she didn’t mean later tonight. He hated himself for being unwilling, unable, to ask her to phone less often. It was a reasonable request. Why couldn’t he do it?

  The bloody house was fine. It was a two-up, two-down terraced cottage in a quiet cul-de-sac next to the park, five minutes walk from his parents’ place. It had a lot of charm but not much space, and was probably the wrong choice for someone as tall as he was, but that hadn’t occurred to him at the time. Now he’d got attached to it, and it wasn’t too much of a hardship to duck as he moved from one room to another.

  Property prices had been on the verge of becoming ridiculous when he’d bought it three years ago, and he still struggled, every month, to pay the mortgage. His mother had neither wanted him to leave home nor understood why he felt the need to. She would have been unhappy if he’d moved much further away than he had. This way he’d been able to say, ‘I’m just round the corner, nothing will change’. Change: a thing to be dreaded.

  The bell rang again. As he made his way down the hall, he heard Charlie’s voice. ‘Let me in, you fucking hermit!’ she called out amiably. Simon looked at his watch, wondering how long she was planning to stay. He opened the door.

  ‘For God’s sake, relax.’ Charlie pushed past him, a brown packet in her hand. She made her way through to the lounge without being invited, took off her coat and sat down. ‘I just came to give you this.’ She thrust the padded envelope towards Simon.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Anthrax.’ She made a face at him. ‘Simon, it’s a fucking book, all right? Just a book. No need to panic. I’m sorry I didn’t ring, but I was just in the pub with Olivia and she gave me this. She had to go early so I thought I’d pop round and give it to you, for your mum.’

  Simon opened the envelope and saw a plain white paperback called ‘To Risk it All’ by Shelagh Montgomery, his mother’s favourite author. Under the author’s name, in black capital letters, were the words, ‘UNCORRECTED BOUND PROOF’. Charlie’s sister Olivia was a journalist and did a lot of book reviews. The few Simon had read had been unnecessarily savage. ‘Does this mean it’s not published yet?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Mum’ll be really pleased. Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. Read the first paragraph and you’ll see it’s one of the worst books ever written.’ Charlie looked embarrassed, as she always did when caught in the act of being considerate. She often gave him books she’d got from Olivia, either for him or for his mother to read, depending on whether they were serious or trashy. Every time, she mocked the book mercilessly, determined to hide her thoughtfulness under a veneer of sarcasm. It was almost as if she were ashamed of having virtues.

  ‘So, you’ve still not decorated.’ She looked around disapprovingly. ‘Anyone’d think a ninety-year-old widow lived here. Why don’t you paint over that hideous wall-paper? And those ornaments! Simon, you’re a young man. You aren’t supposed to have china dogs on the mantelpiece. It’s not natural.’

  The dogs had been a house-warming present from his parents. Simon was grateful for the book, so he tried to suppress his irritation. He and Charlie were so different, it was a wonder they managed to speak to one another at all. Simon would never have dreamed of passing comment on
somebody else’s home, yet Charlie seemed to inhabit a world in which rudeness was a sign of affection. Sometimes she brought Olivia to The Brown Cow, and Simon was amazed by the way they hurled insults back and forth. ‘Fucking mentalist’, ‘psycho bitch from hell’, ‘freak-show’, ‘gormless mong’ – the two of them regularly exchanged these and other slurs as if they were the warmest of compliments. They ridiculed each other’s clothes, behaviour, attitudes. Every time Simon saw them together, he felt relieved that he was an only child.

  In Charlie’s world it was acceptable to drop in on someone at nine in the evening, without warning, to give them a book that could easily have waited until the next day at work. ‘You asked why Laura Cryer left The Elms alone,’ she said, picking up Moby Dick from the arm of a chair and flicking through it as she spoke. ‘I checked the files. She was dropping off her son’s comfort blanket. She’d forgotten to pack it. Vivienne Fancourt was having him for the night, babysitting. Laura was supposed to be going out to a club.’

  ‘A club?’ Simon wasn’t in work mode, and found it difficult to switch so quickly. His mind was still on how to get rid of Charlie so that he could get on with his book. He noticed that she’d just closed it without bothering to replace his bookmark. Again, he stifled his irritation.

  ‘Yes, you know, one of those places young people go to have fun. Cryer was single, just waiting for her divorce to come through.’

  ‘Maybe she’d found someone new and Fancourt was jealous.’

  ‘She hadn’t. Friends said she was actively looking. She was lonely,’ said Charlie, somewhat aggressively.

  Simon felt thwarted, as if circumstances were deliberately conspiring to protect David Fancourt. He had to be guilty of something, if not murder. Probably murder, though. Alice’s disappearance and Laura’s death were connected somehow, Simon would have bet his life. ‘Would you mind if I paid Darryl Beer a visit in Brimley?’

  Charlie groaned. ‘Yes, I bloody well would. Why would you want to do that? Simon, you’ve got to try to resist these . . . strange tangents you like to go off on.’

  ‘Except for when they turn out to be bang on, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. Except for then. But now isn’t one of those times. Now is the time for you to admit you’re wrong and move on.’

  ‘Yeah? And when have you ever done that? You’re just as stubborn as I am, and you know it. Just because you say something doesn’t make it true. You always do this!’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Try to turn your personal opinion into some kind of universal moral law!’

  Charlie recoiled. A few seconds later she said, ‘Don’t you ever wonder why you’re so shitty to me when most of the time I’m actually quite nice to you?’

  Simon stared down at his hands. Yeah, he wondered.

  ‘It isn’t my personal opinion,’ she went on quietly. ‘It’s Beer’s confession. It’s the DNA evidence. The only person around here with a spurious, groundless opinion is you! Darryl Beer killed Laura Cryer, all right? Take my word for it. And that case has got nothing to do with this one, with Alice and Florence Fancourt.’

  Simon nodded. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ he said.

  ‘So, have you fallen for her? Alice?’ Charlie asked. She looked almost frightened. As soon as she’d said it, Simon knew that this was the true purpose of her visit. She had wanted – needed, perhaps – to ask him this question.

  He resented it. Who did she think she was, to ask him that? It was only his residual guilt that prevented him from asking her to leave, guilt because he couldn’t feel the way she wanted him to feel.

  Charlie was the only woman who had ever pursued Simon. The flirting had started on the day he was seconded to CID. At first he’d assumed she was taking the piss, until Sellers and Gibbs convinced him otherwise.

  If Simon could only develop a romantic interest in Charlie, it might make them both happy. It’d certainly make his life a damn sight easier. Unlike most men – certainly most policemen – Simon didn’t care all that much about looks. So what if Charlie had large breasts and long, skinny legs? Her trim figure, combined with her obvious keenness and availability, was part of what he found off-putting. She was way out of his league, like the girls he’d fixated on at school, before countless humiliations had taught him to know his place. And she had been successful in two careers. She was the sort of person who could do well at anything she set her mind to.

  She’d got a first in ASNAC – Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic – from Cambridge. Before joining the police, she’d been a promising young academic for four years. After she was denied a promotion she knew she deserved by a head of department who was resentful of Charlie’s superior intellect and publication record, she started from scratch in the police and became a detective sergeant in record time. Her achievements both impressed and intimidated Simon. Mostly, she made him feel inadequate.

  Looking back, Simon could see what a fool he’d been. Charlie had made it clear she wanted him, and there was an undeniable vacancy; convention dictated that he ought to have a girlfriend, and she was the only volunteer. A voice in his head had screamed its dissent from that first day, but he’d ignored it and kept telling himself, instead, how great Charlie was, how lucky he should feel.

  She had finally made her move at Sellers’ fortieth birthday party last year. Simon, stunned and zombie-like, needed to make no effort at all. She was all over him, taking the lead in everything. She’d even reserved Sellers’ spare room for them, she told him. ‘If anyone else gets in there before us, Sellers’ll be looking for a new job!’ she joked.

  This alarmed Simon, but still he said nothing. He feared she’d be the same in bed as she was out of it, that she’d spend the whole time issuing instructions about what she wanted done, when and where, in a tone that brooked no argument. Simon knew some men didn’t mind that sort of thing, but he personally found the prospect repellent. He knew he’d get it all wrong anyway, make a pig’s ear of everything.

  Still, he allowed himself to be drawn further in. As the kissing went on, Charlie seemed to be becoming more enthusiastic, so Simon behaved as if he was too. He imitated her fast breathing, said a few nice things that he hoped were romantic, things it would never have occurred to him to say if he hadn’t heard them in films.

  Charlie eventually led him into Sellers’ tiny spare room and pushed him down on to the single bed. I’m lucky, Simon repeated to himself again. Most men would give their World Cup final tickets to be in this position. He watched in horror and fascination as Charlie undressed in front of him. Logically, with the rational part of his brain, he admired her for being liberated, for refusing to go along with that sexist nonsense about men having to make the first move. Yet, ashamed though he was to admit it, all Simon’s instincts mutinied against the idea of a sexually aggressive woman.

  It’s too late, he told himself as Charlie climbed on top of him and started to unbutton his shirt. The best thing to do was get it over with. He ran his hands over her body, doing what he assumed was expected of him.

  At this point in the narrative, Simon’s memory always lurched violently away from the specific details, which were far too awful to dwell on. It was sufficient to recall that he had known at a certain point that he couldn’t go through with it. He’d pushed Charlie off his knees, mumbled an apology and run from the room without looking back. What a coward and a loser she must have thought he was. He expected news of his humiliating failure to be all over the police station the next day, but no-one said anything. When Simon tried to apologise to Charlie, she cut him off, saying, ‘I was pissed anyway. I don’t remember much.’ Trying to spare him further embarrassment, no doubt.

  ‘Well?’ she said now. ‘Answer came there none, as Proust would say. What is it with Alice Fancourt? Do you just fancy her because she’s got long, blonde hair?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Simon felt as if the Spanish inquisition had landed in his living room. He was offended to have such shallowness imputed to him. Long blonde h
air had nothing to do with it. It was the openness in Alice’s face, her vulnerability, the way he could see what she was feeling just by looking at her. She had a gravity about her that touched him. He wanted to help her, and she believed that he could. He wasn’t a joke to her. Alice had seemed to see Simon exactly as he wanted to be seen. And now that she had vanished, he saw her in his mind constantly, went over everything she’d ever said to him, buzzed with the need to tell her he believed her, finally, wholeheartedly, about everything. Now that it might be too late she consumed his thoughts; it was as if somehow by disappearing she had transcended reality, become legend.

  ‘You have fallen for her,’ said Charlie glumly. ‘Be careful, okay? Make sure you don’t explode. The Snowman’s got his beady eye on you. If you fuck up again . . .’

  ‘Proust said that to me this morning. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Okay, I’ve had a few Reg 9s, but no more than most people.’

  Charlie sighed heavily. ‘A few more than most, actually. I haven’t had any. Gibbs and Sellers haven’t either.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was perfect,’ Simon muttered, feeling instantly defensive. He was a better cop than Gibbs or Sellers would ever be, and Charlie knew it. Proust knew it. ‘I take risks. I know it sometimes gets out of hand, but . . .’

  ‘Simon, those Reg 9s were only Reg 9s because I begged Proust on bended knees to go easy on you. You can’t go round flattening everyone who questions your judgement!’

  ‘You know it wasn’t as simple as that!’

  ‘The Snowman was all for throwing you out. I had to lick his arse until my tongue nearly fell off, and he had to lick a fair few higher-up arses himself. Which didn’t go down at all well.’