Hurting Distance aka The Truth-Teller's Lie

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘No. I don’t think so,’ she said flatly. ‘Go to Robert’s house. You’ll find something. I know you will. If I’m wrong, I’ll apologise for wasting your time. But I’m not wrong.’

  ‘What happened after the panic attack?’ asked Charlie. ‘You say you tried to run away . . .’

  ‘Juliet came after me. She called me by my name. She knew my surname as well. How did she know?’ Naomi looked utterly bewildered for a moment, like a lost child. ‘Robert made sure to keep his two lives absolutely separate.’

  Women are such idiots, Charlie thought, including herself in the insult. ‘Perhaps she found out. Wives often do.’

  ‘She said to me “You’re better off without him. I’ve done you a favour.” Or words to that effect. That’s as good as admitting that she’s done something to him, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Simon. ‘She could have meant that she’s persuaded him to end his relationship with you.’

  Naomi flattened her lips into a line. ‘You didn’t hear her tone. She wanted me to think she’d done something much worse than that. She wanted me to fear the worst.’

  ‘Maybe she did,’ Charlie reasoned aloud, ‘but that doesn’t mean the worst has happened. She’s bound to be angry with you, isn’t she?’

  Naomi looked offended. Or perhaps disgusted. ‘Doesn’t either of you know anybody who always turns up half an hour early for everything because they think the world will end if they’re a second late?’ she demanded. ‘Someone who phones if they’re only going to be five minutes early to apologise for being “almost late”?’

  Simon’s mother, thought Charlie. She could tell from the way he hunched over his notes that he was thinking the same thing.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ said Naomi. ‘Imagine one day you go to meet them and they don’t turn up. And they don’t phone. You’d know, wouldn’t you, as soon as they were five minutes late, even one minute late, that something bad had happened? Well? Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Leave it with us,’ said Charlie, standing up. Robert Haworth was probably sleeping on a mate’s floor, moaning over a pint at this very moment about how he couldn’t believe he’d been rumbled, the latest in a long line of men to leave his credit-card bill lying around for his wife to find.

  ‘Is that it?’ Naomi snapped. ‘Is that all you can say?’

  ‘Leave it with us,’ Charlie repeated firmly. ‘You’ve been very informative, and we’ll certainly follow it up. As soon as there’s some news, we’ll be in touch. How can we contact you?’

  Naomi tutted, fumbling with her handbag. Her hair fell in front of her eyes and she yanked it behind one ear, hissing an obscenity under her breath. Charlie was impressed: most middle-class people tried not to swear in front of the police, and if they slipped up, they quickly said sorry. Ironic, since most cops swore all the time. Detective Inspector Giles Proust was the only one Charlie knew who didn’t.

  Naomi threw down a business card on the table, as well as a photograph of herself and a man with dark-brown hair and frameless glasses. The lenses were thin rectangles that barely covered his eyes. He was handsome, in a chunky sort of way, and looked as if he was trying to outstare the camera. ‘There! And if you’re not in touch very soon, I will be. What am I supposed to do, sit and twiddle my thumbs, not knowing if Robert’s dead or alive?’

  ‘Assume he’s alive until you’ve good reason to think he isn’t,’ said Charlie dryly. God, this woman was a drama queen. She picked up the business card and frowned. ‘“Silver Brae Luxury Chalets? Proprietor: G. Angilley”?’

  Naomi winced and drew back slightly, shaking her head.

  ‘I thought you made sundials.’

  ‘I gave you the wrong card. Just . . . just . . .’ Naomi rummaged in her bag again, red in the face.

  ‘Did you go to one of these chalets with Mr Haworth?’ Charlie was curious. Nosey, really.

  ‘I told you where I went with Robert, to the Traveltel. Here!’ The card she thrust at Charlie this time was the correct one. There was a colour picture on it of a sundial—a tilted half-sphere of greenish stone with gold Roman numerals and a large gold butterfly wing protruding from the middle. There was a Latin phrase too, in gold letters, but only part of it was visible: ‘Horas non’.

  Charlie was impressed. ‘This one of yours?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I wanted my business card to advertise my competitors’ merchandise. ’ Naomi glared at her.

  Okay, so it had been a daft question. Competitors? How many sundial-makers could there be? ‘What’s “Horas non”?’

  Naomi sighed, put out by the question. ‘Horas non numero nisi aestivas. I only count the sunny hours.’ She spoke quickly, as if she wanted to get it over with. Sunny hours made Charlie think of her holiday, and Olivia. She nodded at Simon to wind things up and left the interview room, letting the door bang shut behind her.

  In the corridor, she switched on her phone and pressed the redial button. Thankfully, her sister answered after the second ring.

  ‘Well?’ Olivia said, her mouth full of food. Smoked-salmon and cream-cheese parcels, Charlie guessed. Or a chocolate-filled brioche —something that could be taken out of the packet and eaten without any preparation. Charlie heard no suspense in her sister’s voice as she asked, ‘What new and unsurprising feat of idiocy do you have to report?’

  Charlie laughed convincingly, filing away the unflattering implications of Olivia’s question for inspection at some later date, and launched into her confession.

  ‘Gnomons,’ said Simon. ‘Interesting word.’ He had the home page of Naomi Jenkins’ website up on the screen in front of him. The CID room had an abandoned air: papers scattered over unpopulated desks, broken Styrofoam cups on the floor, quiet apart from the faint hum of computers and striplights. There was no sign of Sellers, or Gibbs, the arsehole. DI Proust’s glass cubicle in the corner was empty.

  Charlie read over Simon’s shoulder. ‘“A gnomon is a shadow-caster.” Isn’t that how sundials work? The way the shadow falls tells you what time it is? Oh, look, it says she does miniature ones too. I could get one for my windowsill.’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask her if I were you,’ said Simon. ‘You’d probably get your teeth kicked in. Look, she does all sorts: wall-mounted, plinth-mounted, vertical, horizontal, brass, stone, fibreglass. Impressive, aren’t they?’

  ‘I love them. Except that one.’ Charlie pointed to a picture of a plain stone cube with triangular iron gnomons attached to two of its sides. ‘I’d prefer a Latin motto. Does she carve the letters herself, do you think? It says they’re hand-carved . . .’

  ‘“Time is a shadow,”’ Simon read aloud. ‘Why would anyone commission a sundial with that on it? Imagine: sunbathing, gardening, next to a reminder of your own rapidly approaching death.’

  ‘Charmingly put,’ said Charlie, wondering if Simon knew she was pissed off with him. Pissed off, upset, whatever. She was trying as hard as she could to hide it. ‘What did you make of Miss Jenkins?’

  Simon abandoned the keyboard and turned to face her. ‘She’s overreacting. A bit unstable. She implied she’s had panic attacks before.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Why do you think she was so angry and resentful? I thought we gave her a fair hearing, didn’t you? And why did she say, “I’m not scared of the police”? That was out of the blue, wasn’t it?’ She nodded at the computer screen. ‘Is there a page about her on the website, personal information, anything like that?’

  ‘If this Haworth guy’s avoiding her, I don’t blame him,’ said Simon. ‘It might be the coward’s way out and all that, but would you fancy trying to end a relationship with her?’

  ‘He’d promised her marriage as well, so it would have been quite a let-down. Why are men such dicks?’

  A photograph of Naomi Jenkins filled the screen. She was smiling, sitting on a large black semicircular sundial, leaning against its silver cone-shaped shadow-caster, its gnomon. That word would take some getting used to, thought Charlie. Naomi’s
auburn hair was tied back and she was wearing red cords and a faded blue sweatshirt.

  ‘She looks normal enough there,’ said Simon. ‘A happy, successful woman.’

  ‘It’s her website,’ said Charlie. ‘She’ll have designed it herself.’

  ‘No, look, it says “Summerhouse Web Design” at the bottom.’

  Charlie tutted impatiently. ‘I don’t mean literally. I mean she’ll have supplied all the information and the photographs herself. Any free-lancer having a website designed to promote their business is going to think very carefully about what sort of image they want to project.’

  ‘Do you think she’s lying to us?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Not sure.’ Charlie chewed her thumbnail. ‘Not necessarily, but . . . I don’t know. I’m only guessing, but I doubt that mislaying her lover was the beginning of her problems. Anyway, find Haworth, check he’s okay, and that’ll be the end of that. Meanwhile, I’ll . . . go and lie on the beach in Andalucia.’ She grinned. It was over a year since she’d been able to have five consecutive days off. And now she was about to take a proper week’s holiday, like a normal person. Could it be true?

  ‘Here’s the Shadow-caster’s business card,’ she said. ‘I certainly won’t need to contact her on my holi-jollies. Do you want one for Silver Brae Luxury Chalets as well, by any chance? Ms Jenkins lied to me about that. When I said, “Silver Brae Luxury Chalets,” she looked like I’d hit her. I bet she and Haworth did go there.’ Charlie turned the card over. ‘I forgot to give it back to her. Hm. They do transfers from Edinburgh Airport. Home-cooked meals provided if you want them, spa facilities, all the beds super-king size . . . Maybe you and Alice could go.’ Damn. Why had she said that?

  Simon ignored the comment. ‘What did you make of that window business?’ he asked. ‘Think she saw something?’

  ‘Oh, please! That was a load of utter shite. She was stressed and she lost it—simple as that.’

  Simon nodded. ‘She said Haworth likes to be in control of everything, but she seemed like the control freak to me. Insisting on telling the story chronologically, ordering us to go to Haworth’s house.’ He picked up the photograph of Naomi with Robert Haworth and studied it. There was a Burger King sign in the background, above a row of cars. ‘Looks like it was taken outside the Traveltel,’ he said.

  ‘Scenic.’

  ‘It’s a bit sad, isn’t it? He’s never been to her house and they’ve been together a year.’

  ‘Their relationship’s the real mystery in all of this,’ said Charlie. ‘What’s wrong with him that she doesn’t want her best friend to meet him?’

  ‘Maybe the friend’s the one she’s ashamed of,’ Simon suggested.

  ‘What could an arty sundial-maker with a designer handbag and a skint lorry driver possibly have in common?’

  ‘Physical attraction?’ Simon looked as if he didn’t want to dwell on this for too long.

  Charlie nearly said, ‘You mean sex?’ but she stopped herself in time. ‘He doesn’t look like a lorry driver, does he?’ She frowned. ‘How many lorry drivers do you know who wear collarless shirts and trendy square glasses?’

  ‘I don’t know any lorry drivers,’ said Simon rather glumly, as if it had just occurred to him that he might like to.

  ‘Well . . .’ Charlie slapped him on the back. ‘All that’s about to change. Send us a text once you’ve found him, won’t you? It’ll brighten up my holiday no end to find out he’s emigrated to Australia to avoid the Shadow-caster. On second thoughts, don’t. Last time I went on holiday Proust rang me at least once a day, the bastard. It can wait till I get back.’

  Charlie slung her bag over her shoulder and started to gather her things together. Everything to do with work could wait for a week. What couldn’t wait was the explanation Olivia had demanded. Charlie was going straight from the police station to meet her sister at the airport, and she’d have to do better than she had on the phone. Why did she feel the irresistible urge to reveal all to Olivia the moment she fucked up? Until she’d confessed, she felt panicky and out of control; it had been that way ever since they were teenagers. At least she’d succeeded in shocking Olivia into silence for three or four seconds; that hadn’t happened before. ‘I’ve no idea why I did it,’ she’d said, which was true.

  ‘Well, you’ve got three hours to think about it and reach a plausible conclusion,’ Olivia had retorted once she’d rediscovered her voice. ‘I’ll ask you again at Heathrow.’

  And whatever I say then to shut you up, I’ll still have no idea, thought Charlie.

  3

  Tuesday, April 4

  THERE IS ONLY one person behind the bar at the Star Inn: a short, skinny man with a long face and a large nose. He whistles, polishing beer glasses with a frayed green towel. It is just after midday. Yvon and I are his first customers. He looks up and smiles at us. I notice that his teeth are long, like horses’ teeth, and there is a slight dip on either side of his head, above each ear, as if his face has been squeezed by a large pair of tweezers.

  Do you think that’s a fair description? You never describe things. I don’t think you want to inflict the way you see the world on other people, so you stick to simple nouns: lorry, house, pub. No, that’s wrong. I have never heard you use the word ‘pub’. You say ‘local’, which I suppose is a sort of description.

  I don’t know why I am so disappointed to find the Star empty apart from this peculiar-looking barman. It’s not as if I expected you to be here. If I had even the tiniest hope then I must have been deluding myself. If you were able to go out drinking, you’d be able to contact me. Yvon squeezes my arm, noticing my desolate expression.

  At least I know I’m in the right place. As soon as I walked across the threshold, all my doubts vanished. This is where you mean when you talk about the Star. It doesn’t surprise me that you chose an out-of-the-way place, tucked into the valley, right on the river. It is in the centre of town, but you can’t see it from Spilling Main Street. You have to take the road between the picture-framer’s and the Centre for Alternative Medicine, and follow it all the way down past Blantyre Park.

  The pub is one long room, with the bar at one end. There is a damp, yeasty smell and a haze of smoke in the air, trapped since last night.

  The barman is still grinning. ‘Morning, ladies. Afternoon, rather. What can I get you?’ From this I guess that he is the sort of young man who is in the habit of speaking as an old man might. In a way, I am glad not to have a choice about who to talk to. Now I can concentrate on what I ought to say.

  The walls are covered with framed pages of old newspapers: the Rawndesley Telegraph, the Rawndesley Evening Post. I glance at the one nearest to me. In one column is the story of an execution that took place in Spilling in 1903. There is a picture of a noose and, beside it, another of the unfortunate criminal. The second column has the headline ‘Silsford farmer wins prize for best pig’, and a sketch of the animal and its owner, both looking proud. The pig is called Snorter.

  I blink away tears. Finally, I am seeing all the things you have seen, your world. Yesterday it was your house, today this pub. I feel as if I’m taking a guided tour of your life. I hoped it might bring me closer to you, but it has the opposite effect. It’s horrible. I feel as if I’m looking at your past, not your present, and certainly not anything I could ever share. It’s as if I’m trapped behind a glass screen or a cordon of red rope and I can’t reach you. I want to scream out your name.

  ‘I’ll have a double gin and tonic,’ says Yvon loudly. She is trying to sound jolly for my sake, as if we’re here for a fun day out. ‘Naomi?’

  ‘Half a lager shandy,’ I hear myself say. I haven’t had this drink for years. When I’m with you, I only ever drink the Pinot Grigio you bring, or the tea that’s in our Traveltel room.

  The barman nods. ‘Coming right up,’ he says. He has a broad Rawndesley accent.

  ‘Do you know Robert Haworth?’ I blurt out, too frantic to waste time thinking about the best way to a
pproach the subject. Yvon looks worried: I told her I’d be subtle.

  ‘Nope. Should I?’

  ‘He’s a regular. He comes here all the time.’

  ‘Well, we think he does,’ Yvon corrects me. She is my more moderate shadow, here to dilute whatever effect I might have. With me, in private, she’s sarcastic and opinionated, but in public she is keen to obey social norms. Perhaps you’d understand this better than I do. I often think, when you look troubled and remote, that there’s a struggle going on inside you, forces pulling in opposite directions. I’ve never been like that, not even before I met you. I’ve always been an all-one-way sort of person. And ever since the first time I saw you, I’ve been pulled entirely towards you. Nothing else stands a chance.

  ‘He does,’ I say firmly. When Yvon looked in the Yellow Pages this morning, she found what she called ‘three contenders’: the Star Inn in Spilling, the Star and Garter in Combingham and Star Bar in Silsford. I ruled out the last two immediately. Combingham is miles away and grim, and I know Star Bar. I sometimes pop in, if I’m visiting a customer nearby, and have a pot of organic mint tea. The idea of you sitting on those low leather banquettes reading the infusions menu nearly made me laugh out loud.

  ‘I’ve got a photo of him on my phone,’ I tell the barman. ‘You’ll know him when you see him.’

  He nods amiably. ‘Could be,’ he says, putting our drinks on the bar. ‘That’ll be seven pounds twenty-five, please. There are lots of faces I can’t put names to.’

  I pull my phone out of my bag, trying to prepare myself for the worst, as I do every time. It doesn’t get easier. If anything it gets harder. I want to howl when I see that there is no small envelope icon on the screen. Still no message from you. A fresh burst of pain and fear mixed with sheer disbelief makes my chest contract. I think about DS Zailer and DC Waterhouse, and want to smash their dense, unresponsive heads together. They as good as admitted that they planned to do nothing.