The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  “Dan,” I whisper.

  “What?”

  “I need Tim not to be locked up. You have to help me.”

  “Gaby, I . . . Jesus!” Dan leans his forehead against the windowpane. He might be crying too. “I’ve done everything I can, trust me.”

  “Before, when Tim and I were apart, it was okay, I could live with it. . . .”

  “You live with someone else,” Dan says accusingly.

  “Sean. Yes. Is that supposed to be proof of my disloyalty to Tim? You know what happened. I’d have left Sean like a shot.”

  “I know.” Dan holds up his hands. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”

  “I always knew that if I wanted to find Tim, I could. He didn’t want me, he’d made that clear, and I could live with it, as long as I knew that he was there, out there, reachable when I was ready to try again. To persuade him he’d made a mistake. I hadn’t given up, Dan. I was . . . waiting.” Procrastinating. Treading water in my relationship with Sean until I felt the time was right to approach Tim again.

  If I’d been pregnant, I’d have done it. It would have been the perfect excuse to contact him: Look, I’ve got exciting news! I’m having Sean’s baby, I’m no threat to your marriage anymore, please can we be friends?

  I’d have lied through my teeth to trick my way back into Tim’s life. He’s not the kind of man who would tell a pregnant woman to fuck off and leave him alone.

  And you knew that when you came off the pill, didn’t you?

  “Dan, if Tim’s convicted of murder—”

  “What? It’ll ruin your happy-ending fantasy?”

  “Fuck you!” Did Lauren feel the way I feel now when she laid into Bodo Neudorf at Düsseldorf Airport? Desperate, out of control?

  “I’m sorry,” Dan murmurs. “I really am, Gaby. You’re not the only one, you know. We all . . .” He can’t finish his sentence.

  I aim a brittle smile in his direction. “Things seem to go wrong when we try to talk, so let’s not bother.”

  Dan shrugs: whatever you want. The easy way out. “You all done in here?” he asks.

  Panic starts to build inside me. All done. I’ve seen what there is to see. I want to linger, but how can I justify it? What else is there for me to do in here? Dan is plainly eager to get me out.

  If I asked Kerry to let me stay for a few days—here, in Tim’s room, in his bed—is there even the tiniest chance she’d say yes? Until I have time to sort myself out with a rented flat, maybe a week, two at the most?

  Yeah, right. Kerry cut off all contact with you so as not to bring Tim’s past into his present. She’s really going to assign you his bedroom without his permission.

  “I think you’ve seen enough, Gaby.” Dan’s mouth is a hard line.

  I nod.

  He gestures toward the landing. “You first.” He won’t leave me alone in the room, not even for a few seconds. His eyes are blank; the shutters have gone up.

  “Tim wouldn’t treat me like this if he were here,” I say. I am not someone who gives up. At work, I have a reputation for laying waste to every problem that crosses my path. “He’d welcome me in, show me his books, read me extracts from his favorite poems.”

  “I think you were right before,” says Dan, looking away. “We shouldn’t talk about this, and I’m not comfortable that we’re still in Tim’s room. Shall we—”

  “No! Wait.” I kneel down beside the two piles of books next to Tim’s bed. How could I have forgotten to look at his twin poetry towers? Poetry is all Tim’s ever been interested in reading. “The second-most-important thing in my world, after you,” he once said to me. I laughed and asked him if he’d really said it or if I’d imagined it. “You imagined it,” he told me with a smile. “But that’s okay. It’s what I would have said, if I were the sort to get carried away. And I’ve made nearly a whole personality out of your imaginings of me.” For the forty-three thousandth time since we’d met, I asked him what he meant. “You’re an inventor,” he said, as if it should be obvious. “You’ve invented me.”

  Wrong, Tim. It was the other way round. Why can you never take credit for anything?

  Unless it’s something you haven’t done, and something horrific, like murder. Then you can.

  I lift a book off the top of one of the piles. Selected Poems by James Fenton.

  “Gaby . . .” Dan tries to pull me away.

  I shake him off. My eyes make their way down the tower, spine by spine, title by title. Minus the e. e. cummings that I’ve taken, there are only four collections of poetry here. There’s a voice in my head that’s whispering in protest before I’ve worked out what’s wrong; it takes me a few seconds to catch up with it. “What are all these?” I ask Dan. “Where did they come from?”

  The rest of the books are about monsters: Myra Hindley, General Augusto Pinochet, a Nazi war criminal called Demjanjuk. There’s one about the Libyan Lockerbie bomber.

  This isn’t right. I’ve never felt as strange as I do at this moment: as if I pulled on my mind in a hurry this morning, and I’ve only just realized I’ve been wearing it inside out all this time.

  I look up at Dan. “Tim doesn’t read books like this. What are they doing in his room?”

  “Are you accusing me of planting them to make him look like a killer?”

  Dan’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. He knows the difference between an accusation and a simple question. Has he forgotten that I’m clever too?

  Time to remind him. “Instead of falling into your distraction trap and wasting my time denying a phony charge, I’ll ask again: why is Tim’s bedroom full of books about murderers?”

  Dan’s the one who looks trapped: desperate to turn his back on me and make his escape, but unwilling to relinquish any territory.

  Is there something else in here that I’m not supposed to see, something besides the books? Is that why I must be supervised for as long as I’m in here?

  The kernel of resolve inside me is growing bigger and harder, colonizing more and more of me, leaving hardly any space for breathing or rational thought. I’ll ask the questions I need to ask, all of them, whether I’m rewarded with answers or not. “Are these books part of Tim’s I’m-a-murderer act, for the benefit of the police?” Even as I’m suggesting it, I don’t believe it. If Tim wanted to make himself look guilty, all he’d have needed to do was type the words “Best way to kill wife” into Google. Why buy books about Chilean dictators and Nazi death-camp guards? What connection could they possibly have with something as domestic as putting a pillow over your wife’s face and smothering her?

  I pick up the book about the Lockerbie bomber. It’s called You Are My Jury.

  “Gaby, put that down, please.”

  “What’s going on, Dan? What does Tim having these books in his bedroom mean?”

  Dan shakes his head as if to say, “Sorry, no answer.”

  But there is an answer, here, now, in the room with us, though I have no idea what it is. I can feel its presence in Dan’s mind—silent, stationary, ready to go; wondering how long the wait will be. Like a passenger trapped at a boarding gate with no plane to board.

  I can’t bear it. Have to get away.

  I do my best to look as if I’m not running away as I leave the room, walk down the stairs and out of the house, into an external world of unexpected and implausible sunlight.

  12

  11/3/2011

  “That’s it.” Kerry Jose rested her elbows on the mess on the table, held her neck between the palms of her hands and rubbed the back of her bowed head with her fingertips. “That’s all I can tell you. The only person who can fill in the blanks is Tim, and I’m not sure even he can.”

  “Not knowing why he killed Francine, you mean?” said Charlie.

  Kerry nodded.

  “You believe that?”

/>   “How long will he have to stay in prison?”

  Charlie smiled. “You dodged my question. And I can’t answer yours, I’m afraid. I don’t know.”

  “What’s the average? For people who confess and help the police, like Tim?” Kerry stumbled over her words in her haste to get them out. “He’s never done anything wrong before, never been in any trouble of any kind until now.”

  Like many people Charlie had interviewed, Kerry didn’t seem to realize that loading the how-long-behind-bars question with bias and hope would make zero difference to the answer.

  “Murdering your wife’s a big thing to do wrong, even if you’ve never previously been nabbed for illegal parking. If you care about Tim’s freedom, you could always tell me the truth. I know it’s hard, Kerry, but—”

  “Would you like another cup of tea?”

  “No, thanks.” Two was more than enough. Charlie’s brain felt jumpy and swollen. “I’ll have a glass of water,” she said, sensing that Kerry would find it easier to talk if she had a practical task to occupy her at the same time. Easier, also, to avoid talking while fussing over a guest: the hospitality of desperation. Charlie waited until Kerry was at the sink with her back turned to say, “I wasn’t expecting you to tell me the story of Francine’s death in the way that you did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You told it from Tim’s point of view. You left yourself out.”

  “I thought you meant . . . I wasn’t directly involved in Francine’s death, so I—”

  “But you were in the house,” Charlie raised her voice to be heard over the sound of the running cold tap and juddering pipes. “You were here the whole time, weren’t you?”

  I wasn’t directly involved. Was that a peculiar thing to say, or was Charlie reading too much into it?

  The noise stopped abruptly as Kerry turned off the tap. She came back to the table with a large wet patch in the center of her shirt. So nervous that she can’t fill two glasses with water without spilling nearly as much again. “Kerry, can I give you some advice? Thanks.” Charlie rescued her drink from a shaking hand. “If you’re committed to lying about Francine’s death, you’re going to have to lie better. This is a murder case.”

  “I know that,” Kerry said quietly. She sat sideways on her chair with her arm round its back, clinging on. With her other hand, she grabbed the soaked part of her shirt and held it in her clenched fist.

  “Avoiding the questions you don’t want to answer by offering cups of tea . . . it’s not going to fool anyone. I’m sensing you want to help here, Kerry. You’re not the kind of person who obstructs a police investigation. Which is why you’re doing everything you can to avoid having to tell outright lies, sitting on the fence so that you can kid yourself you’re not doing anything wrong.”

  Charlie watched as the red blotches on Kerry’s cheeks grew and changed shape. If only guilty hot flushes could be translated into words. Still, Charlie was encouraged by all the body language she’d seen so far. This level of stress wasn’t sustainable. Lying required stamina. Kerry’s energy levels would at some point hit a dangerous low, worn down by the slow, insistent rattle of imaginary bars. Melodramatic, perhaps, but Charlie knew from countless witness interviews that this was how bad liars felt when they lied: as if they’d put the poor, victimized truth in a cage against its will. Good liars—like Charlie when she needed to be—were able to make their lies last because they didn’t believe truth always had right on its side.

  “You’ll get a sore bum if you stay on that fence for much longer,” she told Kerry. “If I were you, I’d jump off: one side or the other. Either tell me the real story, or work on your act. And make sure it’s airtight, because believe me, if it isn’t, someone cleverer and closer to this case than I am will soon be along to blast a big hole in it.”

  Kerry said nothing. She was busy scrunching and unscrunching her shirt. Was she wondering if she could make the coherent lie option work for her? Charlie’s best chance was to deprive her of thinking time by piling on the questions.

  “You were in better shape before Gaby turned up,” she said. “What was it about Gaby’s arrival that threw you? Actually, it wasn’t her arrival, was it? You gave her a savior’s welcome when she first walked in. ‘Thank God,’ you said.”

  “It was a figure of speech. I didn’t mean . . . I meant I was glad she was here, that’s all.”

  “No, it was more than that. You were relieved to see she was safe, was that it? Or you thought she’d be able to keep you safe? Or Tim?”

  “No.”

  “What can Gaby do to help Tim?”

  “You’re twisting my words!” Kerry blinked away tears.

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to.” Charlie was trying to pick out a middle path between going easy and applying too much pressure. “You know what it is? I forget that I’m ‘the police’ sometimes.” She mimed quotation marks, taking care to keep her voice matter-of-fact and friendly. “Especially when I’m not on duty, like today. But, generally, most of the time. In my head I’m just a regular person like you, not some scary authority figure. You’ve got all the power here, Kerry. You know and I don’t, whatever the secret is. In my position, you’d probably also feel frustrated and make wildly inaccurate guesses.”

  “You wouldn’t understand!”

  “Try me.”

  Kerry nodded. “Gaby loves Tim. As much as I do. She knows how special he is. That’s why I said, ‘Thank God.’ I’ve been having a rough time since Francine died. I’ve been desperate for someone to talk to, someone who’ll understand. I’ve got Dan, but he’s not coping well. I don’t want to add to his worries. Gaby’s stronger. Than any of us, than all of us put together.”

  Arse still firmly on fence. Charlie felt a flash of impatience. She had no trouble believing that Kerry was keen to talk to someone who would understand, but understand what? Why it was so crucial to pretend that Tim Breary had murdered his wife, and protect the real murderer? Kerry was still stonewalling, except now she was doing it while appearing to cooperate, by making ambiguous statements that could be interpreted in a range of ways instead of by clamming up and refusing to answer.

  And whose fault is that, if she’s brushed up on her presentation? Who told her to lie better?

  “Gaby made a few comments you didn’t seem comfortable with,” Charlie said. “Do you remember? I suppose you could hardly brief her, with me here. That’s why she mentioned what she wasn’t supposed to mention, why you went from thanking God to tense as a tightrope walker’s calf muscle in such a short space of time.”

  Kerry shook her head: more automatic self-defense than a specific denial.

  “She said that if Tim had wanted to kill Francine he’d have done it years ago. Also that he’d hated his and Francine’s house on . . . Heron Road, was it?”

  “Heron Close.”

  “Why didn’t you like Gaby mentioning those things?”

  “Tim’s a private person,” said Kerry. “There’s no reason for anyone to be discussing the details of his relationship with Francine.”

  “If I were desperate to preserve my privacy and keep all noses out of my marriage, the last thing I’d do is make headlines by smothering my spouse,” Charlie said. “Is that why Tim’s claiming he doesn’t know why he did it, to avoid sharing things he’d find too personal to talk about?”

  “No,” Kerry said flatly.

  Charlie grinned as if none of it mattered. “That’s not a clever answer. You almost, but not quite, admitted that he’s lying.”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing—trying to be clever?”

  Charlie leaned forward. “The opposite, actually. I think you’re trying not to be clever in order to feel less guilty. Bare-minimum deceit, that’s what you’re aiming for. Know how many Brownie points it’s going to earn you? None. Not enjoying lying doesn’t count as mitigation in a conspi
racy to pervert the course of justice charge.”

  Kerry pulled her long hair taut as if it were an alarm cord, and made a noise that was easy enough to interpret: raw fear. Was this the first she’d heard about how the law might be used against her if she kept up her pretense? Had Sam Kombothekra been too polite to mention it? Another reason why he ought to hand the job back to Charlie.

  “Gaby doesn’t share your concern for Tim’s privacy, clearly,” she said. “She’s more interested in getting him out of prison. I think you underestimated her.”

  “Gaby’s brilliant,” Kerry murmured. She stared at the door as if willing her friend to walk through it again.

  “She seems pretty keen on uncovering the truth. Are you confident you can talk her into keeping quiet about whatever she finds out? I wouldn’t be.”

  Kerry turned her stare on Charlie, making real eye contact for the first time. The intensity was alarming, invasive, as if her eyes were reaching inside for something that wasn’t hers to take. Charlie fought the urge to look away. “My brain’s a pea compared to Gaby’s!” Kerry said fiercely. “So’s yours, so are most people’s. Whatever Gaby does, whatever she wants, I trust her absolutely.”

  “Right. But you don’t trust yourself,” Charlie deduced aloud. “Or Dan, or Tim—not in the way you trust Gaby. You didn’t like her saying those things because—” She broke off. The idea was too complex to be easily put into words.

  “I told you,” said Kerry. “Tim’s a very private—”

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry, that wasn’t a question. My pea-brain was busy assembling the rest of what I was trying to say.” Charlie grinned and made a cross-eyed face. Kerry didn’t reciprocate the smile. “You want brilliant Gaby to take charge, tell you what to do for the best—is that it?”

  Kerry’s body went completely still, as if she’d switched herself off.

  “You weren’t comfortable with her mouthing off about Tim and Francine from a position of ignorance. Gaby wasn’t here when Francine was murdered. She’s not one of the Dower House gang. At the moment, all she knows is the official version of events, and you couldn’t tell her otherwise in front of me. Once she’s up to speed, you’ll happily stand back and leave the planning and decision-making to her. You’re guessing she’s going to feel differently about what she is and isn’t willing to say in front of the police once she’s heard the full story. Right? Or maybe you’re not going to tell her, because you’re too scared, but you’re hoping she’s brilliant enough to work it out on her own?”