The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  “Can we take a break?” Kerry asked, her voice cracking on the last word.

  “Anytime you like. This isn’t an official interview. What about Lauren Cookson?”

  Kerry looked up. “What about her?”

  “She lives here, was here the day Francine died. She presumably has been briefed, yet she seems to have blurted out the truth in Germany yesterday: that Tim didn’t do it.” The longer she spent in this house, the more convinced Charlie was of Tim’s innocence. Hard as she’d tried to come down on Sam’s side and prove that she wasn’t unduly influenced by Simon, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d walked onto a carefully arranged stage set.

  “How bad was Tim and Francine’s relationship? I know Francine had been out of action for a couple of years,” Charlie qualified. “I’m talking about before that.”

  Kerry chewed the inside of her lip. “I’m not sure Francine thought it was bad at all. She arranged it exactly as she wanted it.”

  “Didn’t she confide in you? Sam said she and Tim were your best friends, yours and Dan’s.”

  “Tim was our best friend. Is. Francine was his wife, so we pretended.”

  “To like her?”

  Kerry nodded.

  “Like me with my sister’s fiancé, the smug tosser,” Charlie said. “I’ve hated him from the first time we met, but when they got engaged I pretended to change my mind to make life easier for everyone.”

  “Did your sister believe you?” Kerry asked.

  Charlie nodded. “It’s her greatest talent: an ability to believe whatever will make her happy, however ridiculous.” Seeing that Kerry looked interested, she added, “It’s infuriating. You try to force her to confront something and she frowns and looks solemn for a bit, as if she’s taking it seriously, and then it’s like she just forgets and reverts to her impenetrable jolly self. Hah! ‘Impenetrable’ is so the wrong word. She’s currently involved with two men, her fiancé and . . .” Charlie stopped herself in time. Gibbs’ and Kerry’s paths were bound to cross soon if they hadn’t already. “Sorry. Oversharing.” And now I’d be grateful if you could do the same.

  “Pretending to like Francine wasn’t enough,” Kerry said slowly. She might have been practicing talking about this for the first time. “Dan and I had to pretend to be as close to her as we were to Tim. She demanded equal status, superior status. Not directly, but Tim made it clear what was expected: could we talk more to her than to him when they came round, ask her more questions, put her name before his on Christmas cards? Could I invite her for girls’ nights out, just the two of us, tell her things about my relationship with Dan—made-up things if necessary—and ask her not to tell Tim?”

  “Don’t tell me you agreed,” said Charlie. “That’s crazy. No one would expect to be instantly as important to their boyfriend’s best mates as he was. That kind of thing takes time. Sometimes it never happens. Normally the original friend stays the closest, and if you break up, both parties get to keep the friends they brought to the table, pretty much, and lose the rest.”

  “Normally, yes,” Kerry agreed. “Francine wasn’t normal.”

  “This might be a stupid question, but why didn’t you tell her to eff off?”

  “It would have seemed unprovoked. She hardly ever said anything to us directly. It was usually Tim who asked us to pander to her in all these ludicrous ways. It was clear from the first time we saw them together that his plan was to placate her rather than stand up to her. He didn’t want to lose me and Dan, we couldn’t bear the thought of losing him . . .” Kerry shrugged. “It was obvious to all three of us that our lives would be easier if we toed Francine’s line. So we did.”

  “Did it start to feel natural after a while?” Charlie asked.

  Kerry laughed. “Nothing about Francine felt natural, nothing within a hundred-mile radius of her. Ever. What made it easier was that we didn’t have to pretend with Tim. He knew how we felt about her. He felt it too. Our connection with him was strengthened, if anything, by the need for secrecy. Believe me, Dan’s and my pretense was nothing compared with what Tim put himself through every day of his married life, trying to please someone who’d find fault if you plonked her down in the middle of paradise. All Dan and I had to do was make sure not to do or say the wrong thing. Things, plural—there were so many of them.”

  “Such as?”

  “Disagreeing with her. Mentioning any incident from the time before she came on the scene, when it was just the three of us. Oh—choosing the wrong restaurant, if Francine’s meal turned out to be in any way disappointing. Seriously,” Kerry said in response to Charlie’s raised eyebrows. “We kept thinking we had a full list of all the faux pas to avoid and then we’d find ourselves in a new situation, and make her angry in a way we hadn’t foreseen—like when we went to the movies together for the first time, all four of us. We only did it once. Francine wouldn’t go again after what happened, not even on her own with Tim.” Kerry frowned. “I think she thought it was a waste of money when you could stay in and watch films on telly for free, but Tim was led to believe that he’d spoiled the cinema for her forever with his thoughtlessness.”

  “What did he do?” Charlie asked.

  Kerry appeared to have forgotten about her wish to protect Tim’s privacy. “None of us realized anything was wrong until we left the cinema,” she said. “Francine wouldn’t say a single word to any of us. She gave us a chance, she told Tim later. The length of the film, some clichéd bank heist nonsense, I can’t even remember its name—that was the window of opportunity she so generously allowed us to see the error of our ways, and we’d missed it. Another black mark against us. We had to beg to be told, as always: “Please, Francine, enlighten us. Let us know what our sin was so that we can atone for it.” She’d tell you eventually, in her tight-lipped, grudging way, or a message would come secondhand from Tim. Then you had to grovel until she felt like forgiving you.”

  “What was the cinema sin?” Charlie asked.

  “Prepare to be disappointed,” said Kerry. “The four of us sat side by side in a row: Dan and Tim in the middle, me and Francine on the two ends. None of us cared that Francine was at the end of the row. That’s it.”

  Charlie didn’t understand.

  “We should have made sure she sat in one of the two middle seats. According to her, that’s what we’d have done if we gave a damn about her. We should have realized she might feel left out and made sure she got a seat that didn’t reinforce her sense of isolation.”

  “That is fucking insane,” said Charlie. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry, but . . .”

  “No need to apologize. That was Francine. Not insane—fully functional, held down a high-pressure job as a partner in a law firm until she had the stroke—just congenitally insecure and dissatisfied. Emotionally, she was like a two-year-old, required everyone to tie themselves in knots to make her feel better. Which she never did, and it was always our fault, mainly Tim’s. If he didn’t cancel his plans when she had a headache to prove he cared, if he didn’t spend an outrageous amount of money on her birthday present when she’d specifically told him not to spend too much money . . .” Kerry sighed. “The cinema debacle wasn’t even a standout incident. I wish it were. I could tell you hundreds of stories like that one.”

  “Why didn’t Tim leave her?”

  Kerry smiled sadly. “I could keep you here all day answering that question. He did leave eventually, after . . . later.” She rubbed her mouth with her index and middle fingers. She’d been at ease, and now suddenly she wasn’t.

  Charlie’s inner antennae were twitching. “After” and “later” were not interchangeable. And now Kerry was looking at the door again and quickly looking away, as if she’d been ordered to look anywhere but there. That could mean nothing, or it could mean many things. Charlie thought about Gaby Struthers’ sudden need to see Tim Breary’s bedroom, and decided to
risk jumping to the obvious conclusion. “Tim had an affair with Gaby, didn’t he?” she said.

  —

  Gibbs had nearly finished his first pint by the time Simon arrived at the Brown Cow. “I’ll have another,” he said, without making eye contact.

  “You will if you go to the bar and give them some money.”

  Gibbs grinned but didn’t look up. He was busy with his new favorite hobby: adding more bands to the red-elastic-band ball he was making. He’d started shortly after his twins were born. Asked why—which he was a lot, at first—he said, “Why not? The postman drops them all over the pavement. It’s something to do.” So was helping your wife look after two babies, Simon had heard many people point out. Gibbs was disciplined about refusing to be drawn. “It’s something relaxing to do,” he clarified occasionally, though more often he shrugged and said nothing. There had been speculation at work about how long Debbie was likely to put up with him, mutterings about the red-elastic-band ball being the least of her worries.

  Simon doubted there was anyone working for Spilling Police who didn’t know about Gibbs’ long-running affair with Charlie’s sister Olivia. Last year, Simon had told Proust, Sam and Sellers. He’d had to; Charlie’s diary, in which she’d written angrily about Liv’s enduring fling, had found its way into a murder investigation. Simon felt guilty about the secret having spread further than CID, though Gibbs didn’t seem to mind or to hold him responsible—him or anyone else. Recently, Simon had wondered if the leak could have been Gibbs himself.

  “Another pint, yeah?” He pulled out his wallet. “When I get back from the bar, I’ll need the attention you’re giving that ball.”

  The room was too full; it always was at the Brown Cow. Simon hated packed pubs—packed anything. Silent, empty environments suited him better, whether they were pubs, restaurants, parks, friends’ homes. There was a place on the other side of town, the Pocket and Pound: an end terrace adjoining the Culver Valley Museum, and possibly the thinnest pub in England. For a narrow strip of ale-soaked dinginess, it didn’t have too bad an atmosphere. Or rather, it was one Simon liked and could relate to: understated failure accepted but never remarked upon, the suspicion that success, never sought, would have disappointed—worlds away from the Brown Cow’s aura of manic hedonism.

  Simon only ever went to the Pocket and Pound with Charlie. She thought it was possibly the worst pub in the world, and enjoyed going there for precisely that reason. “It’s hilarious—much more fun than going to a good pub,” she’d said once. “In good pubs, I spend all evening watching you sulk. Here you feel at home, so you’re in a good mood, and I get to sit and laugh at you and think, This is my husband. This is his favorite pub. This is where we’re spending our Saturday night.” They’d both laughed at that.

  “Know what I’ve learned since I started this?” Gibbs held his red-elastic-band ball in the air. “How insecure people are. No one’ll talk to me if I’ve got it in my hand—as if I can’t listen and stretch rubber bands round a ball at the same time. It helps me to concentrate.”

  “Not when you’re walking down the road, it doesn’t,” said Simon. “Looking behind you in case you’ve missed any, banging into bins.”

  “That happened once.” Gibbs made a dismissive noise. “Not you too with the snippy comments. Looks like it’s me and my little red friend against the world.”

  “Big red friend.” The ball was approaching obesity. Simon wondered how Liv felt about it. Did Gibbs put it to one side for her, but for no one else? Would he need it, and call it a friend, if Liv were marrying him and not Dom?

  Very psychological, Waterhouse, Proust would have said.

  Simon pulled the poem Tim Breary had given him out of his pocket. “Read this while I get the drinks in,” he said. “Read it more than once.”

  Instead of holding the poem in front of his eyes as he once would have, Gibbs put down his ball and draped the paper over it so that he had to hunch over the table to read it. It looked like the preamble to a magician’s trick.

  Simon turned to go to the bar. Gibbs called him back. He held out the sheet of paper. “Forget it,” he said. When Simon didn’t immediately respond, Gibbs threw the poem at him. Simon tried to catch it but it float-fell out of reach, landed on the floor. He bent to pick it up.

  “Forget what?” he said.

  “Poem means fuck all to me. There’s no way. What’s it even saying?”

  An extreme response to a neutral stimulus: interesting. Simon pocketed his wallet, sat down. “No way what? What do you think I’m asking you?”

  “I know what you’re asking. It’s not happening.”

  “I went to see Tim Breary this morning,” Simon said. “He gave me the poem at the end of our interview—asked me to pass it on to a woman called Gaby Struthers.”

  Gibbs’ face changed. “Gaby Struthers? She came to see me today.”

  “Today? When?”

  “This morning.”

  “Why didn’t you fucking tell me?” Simon snapped.

  “I just did. Are you serious? I said on the phone I had something to tell you, when I said meet me here.”

  “Fair point,” Simon muttered. More than fair: fucking obvious. His self-righteous fury, so strong only seconds ago, had evaporated. It was Sam he was angry with, not Gibbs.

  “Tell me about this poem, then.” Gibbs addressed the request to his rubber-band ball. Embarrassed about his outburst, Simon suspected. Which was nothing to do with Tim Breary, nothing to do with work. Had Gibbs thought the poem had come from Liv, via Charlie?

  It was none of Simon’s business. If Gibbs wanted him to know, he’d tell him. Simon was itching to ask about Gaby Struthers, but he owed Gibbs an answer first. “Breary asked me—kind of begged me, really—to give the poem to Gaby Struthers. When the bloke she lives with isn’t around.”

  “Reasonable enough,” said Gibbs. “I would say that, wouldn’t I? Sympathy for the underdog in any love triangle.”

  It was a throwaway comment, but telling nonetheless. Assuming Gaby Struthers and Tim Breary were having or had had some kind of illicit relationship, surely the man Gaby lived with was the love triangle underdog? “Breary asked me not to tell Struthers the poem came from him,” he said. “He wanted me to say it was from The Carrier.”

  Gibbs rolled his ball back and forth across the table’s surface using only his index finger.

  “The Carrier? What does that mean?”

  “No idea.”

  “An illness, a baby,” Gibbs speculated. “What else is carried?”

  “I was wondering about an illness,” said Simon. “Carriers often don’t have the disease themselves—they just pass it on to others.”

  “Breary can’t seriously think you’d keep his secret and get involved in whatever game he’s playing with Struthers. You’re not going to, are you?”

  “I don’t know. What do you make of it—the sonnet?”

  “Don’t understand what it’s trying to say.” Gibbs finished off his beer. “I could probably work it out, but I can’t be arsed.”

  “It’s a love poem, though,” said Simon. It was half a statement and half a question. He had read it more than ten times and still wasn’t sure.

  “Isn’t it some kind of puzzle?”

  “Puzzle?”

  “Yeah—isn’t the word ‘paradox’ in there somewhere? I suppose love is a paradox, since it makes no sense. Maybe that’s what it’s saying.”

  “What brought Gaby Struthers to the nick this morning?” Simon asked. There was a limit to how long he could spend discussing love with Chris Gibbs. Or anyone.

  “It looks as if Lauren Cookson followed Gaby Struthers to Germany yesterday,” said Gibbs. “The ‘followed,’ I mean—that’s the part I’m not sure about. Lauren definitely went to Germany on the same day Gaby did. She booked the same outgoing and return flights, though she
didn’t end up flying back with Gaby. I haven’t had time yet to track down the flight she got instead, assuming she’s not still wandering the streets of Cologne.”

  “Wait, rewind.” Simon held up his hand. “Lauren Cookson—Francine Breary’s care assistant? Does she know Gaby Struthers?”

  “She does now,” said Gibbs. “They got talking at the airport, not in the most friendly of circumstances. Lauren kicked off when the flight was delayed, Gaby told her to stop whining. Then Lauren said something about an innocent man going down for murder.”

  “I need to talk to Gaby Struthers,” said Simon, tapping his foot on the floor. “Tell me everything she told you.”

  Gibbs passed his red ball from one hand to the other as he spoke. He was good at detail, better than Sellers or Sam. Forty minutes later, when Simon was confident he knew as much as Gibbs did, he finally went to the bar. He tried not to mind the buffeting back and forth while he waited, the bodies pressing against him, like on the tube in London. Why weren’t they all at work? Simon distracted himself with thoughts of intelligent string. Wondered how it might work.

  He arrived back at the table in a worse mood. A full pint in front of him didn’t lift his mood in the way it did Gibbs’. “Have you got Gaby Struthers’ number on you?” he asked.

  “Not on me, no.”

  “Find it, ring her, tell her I need to see her. Who else knows she came in and what she said?”

  “No one but you,” said Gibbs. “I haven’t seen Stepford and Sellers since I saw her.”

  “Listen, I found something out last night,” Simon told him. “Something you’re not going to like any more than I did.” He relayed the story about the doctored interview transcript, leaving out only one detail: Regan Murray. Predictably, Gibbs’ first question was, “Who told you?”