The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  Charlie didn’t think it likely that any of that applied to Kerry Jose, especially not if she was married to the still-alive Dan Jose. She pulled gray wool trousers and a sage-green V-necked lamb’s-wool sweater out of a drawer—no abrasive fabrics, softness to signify empathy—and felt excited about doing what she still thought of as proper police work, though in the small compartment of her mind that she maintained as strictly rational, in which her permanently ailing sensible streak occasionally barricaded itself in order to survive, she knew there was more to policing than catching murderers. There were other kinds of killers to apprehend that CID wouldn’t look twice at. That was why Charlie had made a beeline for the regional suicide prevention forum when the chance arose. Suicide was the murder of the self; was there anything worse, anything more steeped in negativity and destructiveness, that a person could do?

  Charlie didn’t think so. She was as opposed to self-murder as she was to all the murders that were officially labeled as such. Yes, in any and all circumstances; yes, even in cases of pain and terminal illness—what’s wrong with shitloads of morphine? Enough to remove pain and even consciousness if necessary, but not enough to kill. Charlie defended herself in her head because she’d never had the opportunity in real life. She hadn’t told anyone her views apart from Simon, knowing they were unfashionable and would be unpopular.

  Ludicrously, most of the other members of the suicide prevention forum claimed to be supporters of the very thing they sought to prevent. In theory, they vigorously defended anyone’s right to choose to die and make that choice a reality, while simultaneously working hard to bring down the suicide rate. Charlie found this laughable. Simon had stuck up for the hypocrites briefly, until Charlie had converted him to her way of thinking, but it hadn’t felt like a true victory. Simon was a Catholic. He’d probably been persuaded by the ghost of childhood brainwashing as much as by Charlie. One of the few times she’d properly made him laugh, ever, was when she’d said, “I know this sounds silly, but suicide doesn’t do anybody any good.”

  “Let’s hear your excuses, then,” she said to Sam as they set off in his car. It was much brighter now. Even with the visors down, the glare of the sun made the road hard to see. Sam kept having to duck and lean to the side.

  “I can’t think who told you, but whoever it was . . . Proust didn’t bargain for that,” he said. “Do you know the Tim Breary story so far?”

  “The Don’t Know Why Killer.”

  “Perfect name for him,” said Sam. “Did Simon think of it?”

  “No, I did. I was standing near Simon when it happened, though. Maybe his brain’s like wireless Internet: if you’re near enough, you pick up the signal.”

  Sam laughed. He was at peace with the idea that Simon was the source of all brilliance, and assumed Charlie was too. “On Tuesday, Proust spent the morning digging about in the Tim Breary case, on his own, without telling any of us why. Late afternoon, he summoned Sellers and ordered him to alter the transcript of our first-ever interview with Breary—to take part of it out.”

  “You keep the recorded version too, though, right?”

  “We do. Exactly.”

  “Exactly, what?”

  “Proust knew the recording would be put into evidence, to be whipped out later by anyone wanting to prove that Sellers’ transcript wasn’t quite right. Sellers was worried, understandably, about being asked to produce an incorrect transcript, about how easy it’d be to prove that he’d altered it. So he came to me, and I felt the same way: it was crazy.” Sam shook his head. “And out of character for Proust to ask. Apart from the way he treats us, he doesn’t bend the rules, and this was more than a bend he was asking for. I couldn’t believe he’d risk his job and reputation—”

  “He risks nothing,” Charlie cut in. “Sellers is the one doing the deed, right? If it ever comes out, the Snowman denies all knowledge. You corroborate Sellers’ version, Proust calls you both liars . . .”

  “And it’s two against one,” Sam hijacked the point Charlie was trying to make. “He’s universally hated at work. Sellers isn’t, neither am I. Why would he take that risk, give Barrow and the chief constable an excuse to get rid of him early?”

  “Did you ask him that?”

  “I did. He said there was no risk: Simon wouldn’t find out, and even if he did, he wouldn’t do anything about it.”

  “Probably true.” Charlie sighed. “Is that it? Did he say anything else?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Sam’s face had reddened. He twisted his head to the right and said something under his breath about driving blind. The car swerved.

  Charlie shielded her eyes with her hand and waited for Sam to tell her the rest. She was pleased the sun was torturing him on her behalf.

  “He said Simon was a masochist.”

  “Oh, not that speech again!”

  “You’ve heard it?”

  “In full. Simon’s upbringing was so warped that he learned to misinterpret pain as pleasure because it was all he had. That’s why he wouldn’t be any happier working for someone who treated him well and why the Snowman’s the best possible boss for him, one who meets all his needs. Actually, I think there’s a lot of truth in it,” Charlie said.

  “It doesn’t explain why the rest of us tolerate Proust’s unacceptable behavior: me, Gibbs, Sellers.”

  They’d left Spilling behind and were heading out of town on the Silsford Road. Which meant that soon they’d see clouds, and visibility would no longer be an issue. Everyone in Spilling knew that the weather was worse in Silsford, always.

  “The default setting of human beings is to put up with infinite shit,” said Charlie. “Look at me, trundling along in the car of a turncoat. You conveniently missed off the end of the transcript story: you did it. Or you told Sellers to do it. And you agreed to keep it from Simon and Gibbs. Did Proust threaten you with the sack?”

  “Yes, he did, but no, we didn’t. I refused on behalf of us both, me and Sellers. Proust said nothing, just waved me out of his office. I assumed he knew he’d lost. I thought he’d sulk for a while and then forget about it—he never initiates the disciplinary proceedings he’s forever promising. But then yesterday I checked the transcript and found that he’d done it himself. The part of the interview he’d wanted gone was gone, and so was the recording. There was nothing to prove anything had been removed, apart from mine and Sellers’ memories of what Tim Breary had said that had disappeared from the record. The evidence log had been altered—no mention of the recording where previously there had been. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t say anything to Sellers, to Proust, to anyone. I needed time to think it through.”

  “You didn’t tell Simon.” Charlie thought the point worth stressing. She lowered her window, pressing the button with her elbow as she lit a cigarette. “You were at the Brown Cow with him after work last night for at least an hour, and you said nothing.”

  “I was still thinking it over,” said Sam. “Should I put in an official complaint, take it to Superintendent Barrow? Decisions that big can’t be made quickly.”

  “Yes. I can see how you’d need at least a week to decide whether to turn a blind eye to blatant corruption. It’s one of those tricky ambiguous areas.”

  “Charlie, I would never have gone along with it. It was a question of how not to, that’s all. And it wasn’t a week, it was less than twenty-four hours. I’m glad I didn’t rush into anything.”

  “When you next see Simon, ask him if he shares your gladness.”

  Less than twenty-four hours. Simon needed to be made aware of that detail. Would it make a difference? To anyone reasonable, yes, but to someone as obsessive as Simon, who never questioned his right to invade the minds of others and know everything straightaway?

  “When I turned up this morning, it was to make us all happy,” Sam said. “Me because I hate keeping anything about a case from Simon—”r />
  “Sounds as if you’ve tried it more than once,” Charlie interrupted.

  “I haven’t,” said Sam solemnly. “I hated it, Charlie. I wanted to spill the whole story last night in the Brown Cow, but I can’t do anything without thinking first, and I know Simon can when he’s in a rage. That’s why I waited. And then last night, tossing and turning in bed and keeping Kate awake, I realized that by keeping quiet, I was doing the opposite of what Proust wanted.”

  Charlie opened her mouth to argue, but found she couldn’t. It made sense. There was no way Proust would take that big a gamble if the risk were genuine. “He wanted you to tell Simon in a way that’d grab his full attention,” she said. “Wrapped in a fake attempt to keep it from him. He was banking on Simon not reporting him, and even if he did, Proust could produce the missing recording of the Tim Breary interview and Sellers’ original transcript, and claim the whole thing had been tactical. Temporary.” None of which he’d told his wife or daughter, assuming Regan Murray was a reliable witness. She’d been convinced his true aim was to keep Simon in the dark, so that he wouldn’t question Tim Breary’s guilt.

  “Precisely.” Sam sounded relieved to have got his point across. They turned onto a single-track road, lined with tall trees on both sides. So they were going either to Lower Heckencott or Upper Heckencott, Charlie deduced. Very nice. Each hamlet had no more than five houses in it, and each one looked from the outside as if it was sure to have a grand piano in its forty-foot entrance hall, whether it was an eighteenth-century mansion or an ostentatious new build with one of those fat-pillared outdoor porches, or “porte cocheres,” as Liv pretentiously called them.

  “So the deletion was . . . what?” she asked Sam. “Something that cast doubt on Tim Breary having done it?”

  “How did you work that out?” This time Sam didn’t suggest that her good idea must have originated with Simon.

  “Proust doesn’t think Tim Breary murdered his wife, but Breary’s confessed.” Charlie flicked ash out of her open window. “The Snowman needs Simon to challenge that confession, because he won’t risk being visibly wrong himself. He knows Simon’s likely to make more of something if he thinks he’s uncovered it against someone’s will, so he stages a cover-up, knowing you’ll run bleating to Simon about misconduct. No offense.”

  Sam was nodding. “I go to Simon, bleat, Simon asks me what’s missing, what was Proust so determined to strike from the record? I tell him, he latches on to it in a way that he might not have done if he’d just read it without knowing anyone had tried to hide it from him. He decides Breary can’t have killed his wife—”

  “Except that it wasn’t you who told Simon,” Charlie reminded him. “It was Proust’s daughter.”

  The car swerved to one side, then righted itself. “Proust’s daughter?”

  Charlie decided she didn’t owe Sam the full story. “What did Tim Breary say that might or might not be suspicious?” she asked. Simon knew, but wouldn’t tell her. Charlie had waited up for him until two-thirty last night. He hadn’t been with Regan Murray all that time; he’d been walking the streets, thinking about what she’d told him. He’d mumbled something to Charlie about not being ready to discuss it before getting into bed and falling asleep instantly, leaving her lying awake feeling as if she’d lost something important but couldn’t work out what.

  Sam opened his window: a silent rejection of the guilt-free nicotine hit Charlie was offering him. “When Breary told us he’d killed his wife, obviously we asked him why. He said he didn’t know. It wasn’t planned—he was sitting beside her bed talking to her and, without knowing why, he picked up a pillow, pressed it down over her face and smothered her to death.”

  “Did she fight back?” Charlie asked.

  “She couldn’t. Two years ago she had a stroke that left her hardly able to move and unable to speak.”

  “How old?”

  “Francine was forty when she died, thirty-eight when she had the stroke.”

  “That’s incredibly young.”

  “It is,” said Sam. “She was a clean liver too: exercised regularly, not overweight, didn’t drink much, non-smoker, dedicated healthy eater.”

  “There’s your motive, then,” Charlie said. “Dull as fuck to live with. Even more so post-stroke, presumably.”

  “You’re all heart,” Sam teased her. As a diplomatic way of concealing his shock, Charlie guessed. Sam never said any of the things that no one should ever say; he certainly didn’t strive to extend the canon in the way that Charlie did.

  “Seriously,” she said. “How about that for motive: he didn’t want to be saddled with a vegetable for a wife?”

  “Francine wasn’t . . .” Sam was stuck. Charlie made a silent vow: if the words “a vegetable” were the next thing out of his mouth, she would give up smoking forever; this would be her last cigarette. “Mentally, she was in possession of her faculties,” Sam said eventually.

  “So she couldn’t speak or move, but her mind was intact?” Charlie shuddered. “Horrendous. Also, another possible motive: he was putting her out of her misery.” That must have been what Simon meant last night: if Tim Breary had killed his wife to spare her further suffering, if perhaps they had agreed, as some married couples did, that each would mercy-kill the other if necessary, then Francine Breary’s death might not be murder. Her husband could plead guilty to aiding and abetting a suicide instead, and stay out of prison. And be given a bottle of wine by the Crown Prosecution Service and a box of chocolates too, probably; everyone was so perky about assisted suicide these days.

  “Both motives suggested and rejected,” Sam said. “Tim Breary denies the euthanasia angle vociferously, and almost as firmly—though not quite—denies wanting Francine out of the way because he was sick of being lumbered with her.”

  “So he knew why not,” Charlie said thoughtfully. “Two reasons why not. But he claims not to know why.”

  “Right,” said Sam. “No idea, he said in that first interview, and it’s what he’s been saying since. And here’s the part Proust thought interesting enough to magic out of the file: when Sellers and I annoyed Breary by refusing to move on from motive as quickly as he wanted us to, when we asked him to have a good hard think and see if he could come up with anything, he said something odd.”

  Here it comes, Charlie thought. Occam’s beard: the weirdest solution is always the correct one.

  “He said, ‘It’s normal for a person to commit a murder without knowing why. Happens all the time. It’s only in films and books that every killer has a cogent motive.’ He delivered that part with confidence, as if he knew what he was talking about, but then . . . it was as if he suddenly doubted it. He switched from telling us to asking us, said, ‘Isn’t it common for someone to kill another person and then tell you they don’t know why they did it? Something came over them, they acted on impulse—that sort of thing?’ Sellers asked him if he knew anyone who worked for the police. He said no. ‘So where have you got that from?’ Sellers asked. Breary snapped at him. ‘I don’t know—Radio 4, probably,’ he said. ‘I have no original thoughts in my head. Please understand that, and save us all a lot of time and trouble.’ This guy, I swear, I’ve never met anyone like him before. He says the weirdest things.”

  “He sounds like an intelligent, articulate murderer who doesn’t want his motive known,” Charlie said. “Who knows so little about the shit we see every day that he imagines he can successfully pass himself off as the kind of incoherent skunked-up scrote who knifes someone and says, ‘It just happened. The knife was in my hand and I stuck him, dunno why.’”

  “He knows why,” said Sam. “That’s assuming he did it. I think he did, personally, but I’m a minority of one: Simon, Sellers and Gibbs all disagree, and if our theory’s right, Proust does too.”

  “What makes you think he’s guilty?” Charlie asked.

  “Tim Breary identified the pil
low he used to smother his wife. She had four on her bed. They were all scattered on the floor when Lauren Cookson walked into the room and found Breary standing over Francine’s body. Lauren was the care assistant who looked after Francine.”

  “How anyone does that job is beyond me,” said Charlie.

  “Breary told us he used the pillow with a paisley-patterned cover. Our lab tests proved him right: it was covered in saliva, mucus, edema fluid—all Francine’s. The others were clean.”

  “So you’re right,” Charlie said. “He killed her, and doesn’t want to say why.”

  “I think so. Most of the time. If it was only Breary saying he used the paisley pillow as a murder weapon and everyone else was saying they had no idea what happened, maybe doubting his word, saying they couldn’t believe he’d do it, then maybe—”

  “What do you mean? Who’s the ‘everyone else’?” Were there witnesses to the murder? How could Tim Breary’s guilt be in doubt if there were?

  “Kerry Jose. Dan Jose. Lauren Cookson. Jason Cookson.” Sam reeled off the names expressionlessly. “All the inhabitants of the Dower House were home at the time of the murder. Apparently only Tim was in his wife’s bedroom when the murder actually occurred—that’s what they all say, Tim included—but they all seem to know what happened in that room as if they’d witnessed it firsthand. They’re a small, unanimous community of five.”