The Warning

by Sophie Hannah

  “On . . . on the stairs?” I hear myself say. I didn’t mention that to Simon—­where we were when she said those horrible things. Someone else must have told him. He’s clearly been thorough in his research.

  “That’s right. You were overheard, Nadine. On the other side of a thin wall was another flight of stairs leading up to the next floor. Someone coming down those stairs, another CamEgo employee, heard every slanderous word you said. He heard you describe Tom Rigbey as a plague in human form and, knowing this was as far from the truth as it’s possible to be, he went to his line manager. Coincidentally, that person had been told only the day before about your campaign to badmouth Tom.”

  Nadine has started to look impatient. “I’ve done nothing worse than advise ­people to be careful, DC . . . I can’t remember your surname.”

  “Waterhouse. Is that your best defense?”

  “It’s short and to the point.”

  “Yes, in keeping with your overall strategy,” Simon agrees. “Say as little as possible. You don’t need to kill, bomb, mutilate to have an effect. That would be too easy. Any fool armed with a weapon can wreak havoc—­where’s the challenge there? You do nothing but warn. If lives are destroyed as a result, it’s so much more satisfying for you, because you’ve barely put yourself out at all. What’s strange is that you can’t see it’s your life you’re trashing. How many more times are you prepared to be fired? Why don’t you just stop?”

  Nadine leans forward and taps the glass coffee table with her fingernail. “Cite me one thing I’ve said that’s factually untrue. All I did was express my own personal opinion to Chloe. I’m entitled to my opinion.”

  “It’s not your true opinion,” says Simon. “I think you go out of your way to pick blameless, good, decent ­people. That makes it more fun, does it? Luckily for the world, and unluckily for you, there are plenty of ­people who hear warnings like the kind you dish out and don’t just think, ‘No smoke without fire’ and ostracize whoever you suggest. Luckily, Chloe chose to ignore you, and is now engaged to Tom Rigbey. She could see he was a decent guy, even if she couldn’t immediately see what a toxic person you are.”

  “Toxic?” Nadine laughs. “Toxic because I warned her, as a friend would? Isn’t that what we do when we care deeply about someone? Spot the dangers that might lie in store for them and warn them to take a different path? Warn them until they don’t trust their own judgment anymore, and will take our word for anything? I’m sure you’ve done it, DC Simon—­oh, yes, you have! You’re doing it now: warning Chloe not to trust me. How’s that any different to what I said to Chloe about Tom? You can’t possibly know what kind of satisfying, meaningful friendship Chloe and I might have had if your ‘toxic’ slurs hadn’t got in the way. Isn’t that right, Chloe? Is there any point in my warning you now—­don’t trust DC Simon? No?”

  Simon blinks at her a few times. Then he says, “It happened to you, didn’t it? That’s what’s behind this. You were warned away from somebody. At work? In your love life? You listened, you heeded the warning, and you came to regret it bitterly. The person who gave you the advice might have done so because they cared—­maybe too much—­but they were wrong. You suffered as a result. You lost something.”

  Nadine’s mouth flattens into a line. Is she even listening? She mutters, “Of course, you could argue that anyone who heeds a warning from a stranger deserves everything they get. If your theory about me is right—­I’m not saying it is, but if it were—­well, I’d be living proof of an important principle: trust your own judgment when it comes to those you care about. Don’t trust strangers pushing slander. If your theory were true, DC Simon, which it isn’t . . . then I set Chloe a test. And she passed.”

  “But you failed when it happened to you,” Simon says. “You didn’t trust your own judgment. And you’ve never forgiven yourself. Never got over it.”

  “Interesting story.” Nadine looks away, toward the door to the balcony. “Also interesting that you feel free to make up stories about me while condemning me for doing the same thing—­allegedly.”

  I clear my throat. “Nadine, if Simon’s got you all wrong, tell me what it is about Tom that makes you think he’s a plague and not to be trusted. It’s your opinion—­fine—­but what are you basing it on?” I want something conclusive from her. Did she set me a test, which I passed, or offer me a chance to protect myself that I blindly ignored? What is her genuine opinion of Tom?

  Why do you care? You trust Simon Waterhouse, don’t you?

  “I was just trying to warn you, Chloe,” she snaps. “For your own sake. I wish I hadn’t bothered.”

  The aggression in her voice throws me. She kept her tone civil, if chilly, for her dialogue with Simon, so why is she lashing out at me?

  Because, if Simon’s right, she can’t forgive you—­for being in the situation she was once in and choosing differently. She lost something. She suffered. You’re engaged to Tom Rigbey, on your way to happy ever after. She sees you as her counterpart—­in love, adoring, impressed by a brilliant man—­and can’t forgive you for being wiser than she was. Easier for her to forgive Simon, who has accused and exposed her.

  “But why did you feel the need to warn me?” I persist. For some reason, in spite of everything, I want to give her one last chance. I don’t want to condemn anybody on weak evidence. Not Tom, certainly, but no one else either.

  “How can I talk to you now, Chloe?” Nadine demands, as if I’ve let her down. “How? You’re engaged to him? You’ve made it very clear whose side you’re on. Anything I said now would fall on deaf ears.”

  Simon stands up. “Let’s go, Chloe. She won’t tell you anything because there’s nothing to tell.”

  “Chloe’s not so sure about that, DC Simon. Are you, Chloe?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I am. Get some help. I’m sorry if you’ve had a bad experience, but it’s not my fault, or Tom’s. Stop trying to ruin other ­people’s happiness.”

  “That’s right,” says Nadine bitterly as Simon and I turn to leave. “You tell yourself I’m the one doing that. You believe exactly what suits you, like everyone else does.”

  Chapter 17

  “WHERE DO YOU want me to drop you?” Simon asks. We’re in his car, driving away from St. Matthew’s Gardens. Thank God.

  “I don’t,” I say. “Just . . . drive around for a bit. I’m not ready to . . . I mean, I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Ask away,” he says wearily. I ignore the tone and choose to notice only that I’ve been given official permission.

  “You honestly believe Nadine Caspian is . . . what? A serial warner? That’s it, all she does? She warns ­people about other ­people? Is that a thing? Have you ever known anyone else do that?”

  Simon sighs. “No. It’s a new one for me. But I’ve known lots of dysfunctional ­people who have taken something that wasn’t a thing and never should have become one, and turned it into their own personal form of inflicting harm.”

  “All those questions you asked me about Tom—­had he told me he’d been fired . . .”

  “I wanted you to focus on what you knew for sure. You had no reason to think Tom had been fired. You knew that Nadine had—­that other receptionist told you. I was hoping you’d figure out that, in the absence of any other certainties, that fact alone ought to make you more suspicious of Nadine than of Tom.”

  “And . . . when you said it was good that I’d had dinner with Tom and accepted his marriage proposal . . . when you told me to reply to his text as if nothing at all was wrong . . .”

  “Yeah. I didn’t want Tom to get wind of your suspicions—­planted in your head by Nadine. Most ­people don’t take kindly to be suspected of every heinous sin under the sun when they’ve never harmed anyone. I didn’t want you to start acting cold and withdrawn and aloof with Tom in case it ruined a promising new relationship.”

  “I wish
you’d told me as soon as you knew,” I say, as we drive past the Vue cinema on East Road. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Once I knew the truth, I knew I needed to tell you, and I wanted to say it in front of Nadine, see how she’d react. Why would I go through the same spiel twice?”

  “For the sake of my peace of mind,” I say pointedly.

  “I suppose,” he concedes. I wait for an apology, but none arrives. I wonder if anyone has ever warned anyone to have nothing to do with DC Simon Waterhouse.

  “Nadine’s right about one thing,” he says. “It’s something ­people often do when they care about others, or imagine they do. They warn them. Maybe they shouldn’t.”

  “Maybe not. Unless an enormous boulder is about to land on someone’s head.”

  “You can’t tell ­people how they ought to feel about other ­people,” says Simon. “It doesn’t work. Have you and Lorna been best friends for a long time?”

  The mention of Lorna’s name surprises me. For once, she wasn’t in my thoughts at all.

  “Yes. It feels like forever. Why?”

  “No reason.” Simon smiles. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to warn you about her.” He gives me an impenetrable look, then shakes his head.

  “Because you don’t think she’s bad for me, or because Nadine Caspian’s put you off warning anyone about anything ever?” I ask.

  “I like your suspicious mind,” he says. “I warn you: carry on like that and you might end up working for the police. She asked me to drop you off at her house—­after our visit to Nadine.”

  “Who did? Lorna?”

  He nods.

  “No. Drop me off at my . . .” I change my mind mid-­sentence. “Actually, can you drop me off at CamEgo? I want to see Tom, as soon as possible.”

  “No problem.”

  As I climb out of the car, my phone buzzes twice in my pocket. A text. I wait until I’ve waved Simon off, then pull out my phone, praying it’s from Tom.

  It is. Four words – “A mouthful of fish! T xx”—­attached to a photo so unflattering that I’m amazed he dared send it. His mouth is wide open and there’s half of what looks like a tuna sandwich stuffed inside it, hanging out because it won’t all fit in.

  It’s not the salmon fillet from earlier, but I suppose tuna will suffice as evidence. Eating fish did happen and here’s the picture to prove it: a gross one that would put many women off, perhaps, but not me.

  I love Tom Rigbey, and I’m going to marry him. He could push a charity worker under a bus tomorrow, or have the flag of some unpronounceable country ruled by a dictator tattooed on his face and I would still love him every bit as much as I do now.

  Did you love THE WARNING?

  Sophie Hannah is back this summer with another dose of thrilling domestic suspense, full of psychological intrigue and s­urprise twists.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at

  WOMAN WITH A SECRET

  On sale August 4, 2015

  From William Morrow

  MEN SEEKING WOMEN

  IntimateLinks > uk > all personals

  Reply: 22547652@indiv.intimatelinksUK.org

  Posted: 2013-07-04, 16:17PM GMT

  Looking for a Woman with a Secret

  LOCATION: WHEREVER YOU ARE

  Hello, females!

  Are you looking on here because you’re hoping to find something that stands out from all the dull one-line I-want-a-blow-job-in-my-hotel-room-type adverts? Well, look no further. I’m different and this is different.

  I’m not seeking casual sex or a long-term relationship. I’ve had plenty of the first in my time, and I’ve got one of the second that I’m happy with. Actually, I’m not looking for anything sexual or romantic. So what am I doing on Intimate Links? Well, as I’m sure you’re aware if you’re clever (and I suspect that the woman I am looking for is very bright), there are different kinds of intimacy. There’s taking off your clothes and getting dirty with an illicit stranger, there’s deep and meaningful love-making with a soulmate . . . and then there’s the sort of intimacy that involves two people sharing nothing more than a secret. An important secret that matters to both of them.

  Perhaps these two people have never met, or perhaps they know each other but not very well. Either way, they can only establish a bond of common knowledge once the one who has the information has given it to the one who needs it. Think of the rush of relief you’d experience if you shared your burden, after the agony of prolonged silence with the secret eating away at you . . . If you’re the person I’m looking for, you’ll be desperate to confide in someone.

  That’s where I come in. I’m your confidant, ready and eager to listen. Are you the keeper of the secret I’m waiting to be told?

  Let’s find out by asking a question that only the person I’m looking for would be able to answer. It will make no sense to anyone else. You’ll have to bear with me. Before I get to the question part, I’ll need to lay out the scenario.

  Picture a room in a large Victorian house: a spacious, high-ceilinged first-floor bedroom that’s used as a study. There are overstuffed built-in bookshelves in this room, a pale blue and brown jukebox with curved edges that has a vintage look about it and is much more beautiful than the kind you sometimes see in pubs, an armchair, a filing cabinet, a long desk with square wooden legs and a green glass top that has a laptop computer at its centre. The computer is neither open nor closed. Its lid is at a forty-five-degree angle, as if someone has tried half-heartedly to push it shut but it hasn’t gone all the way. The laptop is surrounded on all sides by cheap-looking biros, empty and half-empty coffee mugs, and scattered papers: handwritten notes, ideas jotted down.

  Pushed back from the desk is a standard black office-style swivel chair, and lolling in the chair, his head leaning to the left, is a dead man. While alive, he was well known and—though this might well have nothing to do with anything—strikingly attractive in a stubbly, cowboy-without-a-hat kind of way. If I were to include his name in this account, I think most people would have heard of him. Some of you might shudder and say, ‘Oh, not that vile bigot!’ or, more light-heartedly, ‘Not that ridiculous attention-seeker!’ Others would think, ‘Oh, I love him – he says all the things I’m too scared to say.’ Our dead body is (was) somebody who inspired strong feelings, you see. So strong that he got himself murdered.

  How was he killed? Well, this is the interesting part. The murder process comprised several stages. First, he was immobilised. His arms were pulled behind the back of his chair and taped together at the wrists. The same was done to his ankles, which were taped together round the pole of the chair’s base, beneath the seat. Then his murderer stood behind him and brought a heavy object down on his head, rendering him unconscious. The police found this object on the floor beside the dead man’s desk: it was a metal kitchen-knife sharpener. It didn’t kill our well-known man (the pathologist told the police after examining the body), though it would have made an excellent murder-by-bludgeoning weapon, being more than heavy enough to do the job. However, it seems that although the killer was happy to use the knife sharpener to knock his victim out, he did not wish to use it to murder him.

  There was a knife in the room too, but it had not been used to stab the dead man. Instead, it was stuck to his face with parcel tape. Specifically, it was stuck to his closed mouth, completely covering it. The tape—of which there was plenty—also completely covered the lower part of the murder victim’s face, including his nose, causing him to suffocate to death. The knife’s blade, flat against the dead man’s mouth, was sharp. Forensics found evidence that it had been sharpened in the room, and detectives suspect that this happened after the victim was bound to the chair and unconscious.

  Above the fireplace, on the wall between two bookshelf-filled alcoves, someone had written in big red capital letters, ‘HE IS NO LESS DEAD.’ I imagine that the first police to arri
ve at the scene took one look at that and leaped to a mistaken conclusion: that the red words had been written in the victim’s blood. Then, seconds later, they might have noticed a tin of paint and a red-tipped brush on the floor and made a more informed guess that turned out to be correct: the words on the wall were written in paint. Dulux’s Ruby Fountain 2, for anyone who is interested in the details and doesn’t already know them.

  Detectives examined the dead man’s laptop, I assume. They would have found this surprisingly easy because the killer had red-painted, ‘Riddy111111,’ on a blank sheet of white A4 paper that was lying on the desk. This was the well-known man’s password and would have led police straight to his hushmail inbox. There they’d have found a new, unopened message from a correspondent by the name of No Less Dead, with an email address to match. There were no words in the message, only a photograph of someone standing in the room beside the unconscious, not-yet-deceased victim, wearing what looked like a protective suit from a Hollywood film about biological outbreaks—the sort that covers the head and body of the person wearing it. The killer’s eyes would presumably have been visible if he or she hadn’t taken care to turn away from the camera; as it was, the picture showed a completely unidentifiable person with one outstretched arm (for the taking of the photo), holding aloft a knife in his or her other hand, above the unconscious man’s chest, in a way designed to suggest that a stabbing was imminent. The knife in the photograph was the same one (or identical to the one) that ended up taped to the murder victim’s face, suffocating him rather than spilling his blood.

  And now the question is coming up, so pay attention, ladies! (Actually, it’s questions, plural.)

  The murderer planned the crime in advance. It was about as premeditated as a killing can be. It involved bringing to the crime scene a knife, a knife sharpener, parcel tape, red paint, a paintbrush and a bio-hazard suit. The killer obviously knew the deceased’s computer password. How? There was no evidence of a break-in. Did her victim let her in? (I’m saying ‘her’ because that’s my hunch: that it was a woman. Maybe it was you?) Did the well-known man say to her, ‘Go on, then: bind me to my chair, knock me out and kill me’? That seems unlikely. Maybe the killer pretended it was some sort of erotic game, or maybe I’m only speculating along these lines because Intimate Links is the perfect place to do so – the online home of sexual game-players of all kinds.