The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  I look at the doors I walked in through ten minutes ago. I’m not brave enough to walk out onto the street again, not yet.

  “Let’s stay here,” I say to Charlie Zailer. “The private consultation room sounds all right. With the door closed.”

  “Good idea,” she says. “Shall we go via the tea and coffee machine? I wouldn’t recommend the coffee but there’s a decent range of teas—might help to keep you awake. You still haven’t slept, have you?”

  “I don’t feel tired,” I tell her. Sleep. How will that ever happen again? I’ll have to see my GP, get some strong pills to knock me out. Without sleep, I’ll be no help to Tim. I only just had the energy this morning to cancel the three meetings I’d scheduled for today because the working week no longer adequately accommodates everything I need to do. As lies go, mine were hardly inspired: “I’m ill. Can we rearrange? I’ll be in touch as soon as I’m better.” I knew no one would doubt me. I wouldn’t cancel a meeting unless I was half dead.

  I follow Charlie Zailer along a brick-walled corridor, the brick broken up by thin floor-to-ceiling opaque glass windows on one side. She keeps slowing down so that I can catch her up, but I don’t want to be level with her. I want to be able to see her and for her not to see me, especially knowing that soon I’ll be facing her across a table and there will be no escape. Trying to keep my facial expressions and breathing under control has been the hardest part of today. One man I passed on the way from the car park to the police station stopped me and asked if I was all right. I hadn’t said anything to him or looked at him; all I’d done was walk past him.

  At the drinks machine, I choose Earl Grey tea because it’s what I normally prefer, even though, for once, I would rather have ordinary. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to drink to help you through an ordeal: plain builders’ tea? Is an ordeal any excuse for allowing myself to become a cliché?

  The private consultation room is small and warm with two pictures on the walls, framed but not behind glass. They must be oils. You don’t need to put oils behind glass, only police receptionists. One of the paintings is of a small building at the entrance to a park—a lodge house, with red leaves on its roof. It looks familiar; Blantyre Park, maybe. The other is of a man playing a piano. No, tuning a piano. Same artist. I walk over to look at the signature: Aidan Seed.

  At the center of the room are two blue-fabric armchairs, each one next to a small wooden coffee table, two tall potted plants and a view from the only window of a lineup of ventilation units embedded in a damp wall. The sight of them makes me feel immediately claustrophobic. I want to go somewhere else now that I’ve seen this, but I’m too embarrassed to ask. There’s a blind, though—a plain white roller. I walk over to the window and lower it. It’ll be better if I can’t see the grilles of the ventilation units. I’ll be able to imagine the view from a different bit of the police station. At the back of the building there must be rooms that overlook the river and the red bridge. I’ll picture that instead.

  In the far corner, there’s a plastic-topped metal table with four metal-legged chairs. I would like it if Charlie Zailer would sit over there with her back to me and write down what I say, but she’ll want to discuss everything with me and look at me, and probably ask questions, even though there’s no need. All I need is for her to listen. I’ve been rehearsing my speech all the way here.

  “The furniture in here changes from day to day,” she says. “Shall we sit in the comfy chairs?”

  I sit down. The worst thing I can do is leave it to her to steer things. I have to run this show; I took the lead by coming in, and I can’t lose it. “Did you get the truth out of Kerry and Dan?” I ask her. “You know they’re lying, right?”

  She looks surprised. After a few seconds, she says, “Gaby, if it’s okay, I’d rather talk about you first. A lot of my colleagues have been very worried about you.”

  “Me?” I’m fine, or I will be soon. Tim’s the one in prison. “No. I don’t want to talk about me first. I want you to answer my questions.”

  “All right. Yes, we all think Kerry and Dan haven’t been straight with us. But I think and hope that we’re getting closer to where we need to be. You seem to care about the truth as much as we do, which is . . . great. We don’t often meet people like you. Most people either only care about keeping them and theirs out of trouble, or they don’t care at all.”

  “I only care about keeping Tim out of trouble,” I tell her. “I know he didn’t kill Francine, but if he had, I’d lie and say he hadn’t. I’m not a good person.”

  Charlie seems to find this acceptable. “Who is?” she asks.

  “Tim. Good and stupid. He’s covering for Jason Cookson for some reason. I don’t know why specifically, but I can give you a wider explanation: Tim believes his own suffering matters less than anyone and everyone else’s. Look at his marriage to Francine if you want proof that he’s capable of long-term self-sacrifice.”

  “You’re saying Jason Cookson killed Francine Breary?”

  “Yes.”

  Charlie nods. I was expecting a barrage of questions. Instead, she’s waiting for me to go on in my own time.

  “You heard me tell Kerry yesterday about meeting Lauren Cookson at Düsseldorf Airport.” This part is easy; I’ve been going over it in my mind for most of the night, the exact words I’ll use. “So you know that’s how I found out about Tim being charged with Francine’s murder—from Lauren. ‘An innocent man,’ she called him. I couldn’t persuade her to tell me any more. She was terrified: ran away, missed her flight home. That was how much she didn’t want to talk to me about it. From her many references to her husband Jason—other stuff she said, nothing to do with murder—I decided he had to be the one she was scared of. Yesterday morning when I got back from Germany, I came here and told DC Gibbs that Jason Cookson must have killed Francine. Why else would Lauren keep quiet if she knew Tim was innocent?”

  “Gaby . . .”

  “No, wait. I don’t know for sure that Jason bullies Lauren, but when I left here yesterday and went to the Dower House, guess who I met driving out of the gates? The bully himself. He was rude and threatening, warned me to leave Lauren alone and forget what she’d told me. He might as well have had ‘Thug’ tattooed on his forehead, to add to his collection. He knew who I was before I told him. Lauren must have phoned him from Germany in a panic. She’d compromised security, hadn’t she? She was probably scared I’d turn up at the Dower House asking questions, and wanted to warn Jason in advance.”

  Charlie’s expression hasn’t changed since I started talking.

  “Don’t you get it?” I ask her. Am I not making sense apart from in my own head?

  “Get what?”

  “Why would Jason threaten me and warn me to keep away if it wasn’t him that killed Francine?”

  “Let’s assume he did, then,” Charlie says. “How does that fit with Kerry and Dan lying? Are they protecting him too?”

  “Him or themselves. I’m not sure which. You need to find out if Jason’s got some kind of hold over them. Lauren’s his bullied wife, but I can’t think of any reason why the rest of them would rather Tim went down for Francine’s murder than Jason, unless they’re scared he’ll physically attack them. Which they might well be. Jason has henchmen: people to do the dirty work he’d rather not do himself.”

  “How do you know that, Gaby?”

  I’ve rehearsed this bit too: tell without telling. The bare minimum, then move on. “One of them paid me a visit at home last night. To warn me. Same warning as Jason’s: keep away from Lauren. Not surprising, since it was Jason who sent it.”

  “How do you know Jason sent this man to your house?” Charlie asks.

  “I can’t prove it. That’s your job. So is protecting vulnerable women. If I’ve been warned by Jason, and then again on Jason’s orders, what do you think’s happening to Lauren, who dragged me into it? Worse t
han warnings, for sure. You need to get her out of that house.”

  That last part had an effect. Good.

  “I take your point, Gaby, but I saw Lauren this morning. Sam Kombothekra and I spoke to her.”

  “Did she seem terrified?”

  “Everyone seemed . . . unsettled,” says Charlie. “Not only Lauren. If she’s part of a conspiracy to obstruct, as we’re both saying we think she is, that’d be enough to explain her nerves, wouldn’t it? And if it’s more than that, if she’s scared of her husband—”

  “It is. You need to get her away from him!”

  “I can’t, Gaby. We don’t have the power to separate women from their husbands against their will. What I can do is go to the house again, have another chat with her . . .”

  “If Jason’s anywhere in the vicinity, she won’t tell you a thing. Even if he isn’t, she probably won’t.” I close my eyes. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Actually, I do,” says Charlie. I hear defensiveness in her voice. “I’m trying to explain that my powers are limited, but I’ll do what I can. In the meantime, I’m more concerned about you.”

  “Don’t be. I can look after myself. Lauren can’t.”

  “This . . . warning, from Jason’s henchman—what happened? You say he came to your house? Did he warn you verbally?”

  I nod.

  “Was that all he did?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You seem very distressed. And we were alerted to a possible attack. Someone posted an urgent appeal for help on Twitter.”

  On Twitter. Where things can be retweeted dozens, hundreds of times.

  So it’s out there, in the world. People know. I dig my fingernails into my palms as the horror in my mind pulls the plastic covering off its head and swings round to face me. I couldn’t see while it was happening; now it’s everywhere I look.

  “Whoever it was, they used Tim Breary’s Twitter ID and urged anyone reading to contact the police. They said you were being attacked in your driveway. Behind your house.”

  Someone wanted to help me. I can’t dwell on that; it would involve seeing myself from the outside, as they saw me. Self-pity won’t achieve anything.

  Smoke. I smelled smoke.

  “Gaby? What is it?”

  “The tweets saying . . . were they . . . How badly written were they?”

  “What do you mean?” Charlie asks.

  “Grammar, spelling, punctuation.”

  “Lots of spelling mistakes. Grammar and punctuation pretty much nonexistent.”

  “Lauren,” I say. “She smokes. She was there. Watching.” My vision warps. I am looking at the room through a layer of oil, a wobbly film that coats my eyes. I can see things on its surface: lines, dark blots swimming diagonally downward. “Someone was smoking. I assumed it was the man who attacked me, but he didn’t smell of smoke. I smelled his breath: no smoke. It was Lauren smoking. Whoever he was, he brought her with him. She’d have wanted to stop him but been too scared and too weak. He needs her to stay scared. Look, please, can you check she’s all right? Now?”

  “She was all right two hours ago, but I’ll have someone check again,” Charlie says, pulling her mobile phone out of her pocket. She jabs at it with her thumb, swearing under her breath when she hits the wrong letter. “Did this man attack you physically?” she asks me, her eyes on the message she’s composing.

  “Is this off the record?”

  Charlie looks up. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think it can be. Anything you tell me that I think might be relevant to the Francine Breary case, I’ll have to pass on.”

  “In that case, let’s move on.”

  “Gaby, I understand that you might feel frightened or ashamed . . .”

  “It’s not that,” I tell her. How gutless does she think I am, exactly? Yes, I’m scared and ashamed, but I’m not letting those feelings make decisions for me. “I want to talk to Tim first. Until I know what’s going on in his mind, why he’s saying he killed Francine . . .” I know what I mean, but it’s hard to put into words on no sleep. “I’m not prepared to add any extra pressure to the situation until I understand all the permutations of what I’m adding to. Does that make sense?”

  Charlie nods slowly.

  “How soon can I see Tim? Today?”

  “That’s unlikely. Tomorrow, maybe, if the prison’s favorite detective, DC Waterhouse, waves his magic wand.”

  “Then make him wave it.” Tomorrow. The thought dissolves all others. Sitting opposite Tim, seeing him smile . . . What if he doesn’t smile? What will be the first thing he says to me? What will he secretly be thinking?

  I’ve never liked surprises. Tim is surprising enough for me in ordinary circumstances, everyday surroundings. Though when we were together it was never ordinary.

  He’ll try not to let you help him. As always.

  “I want to go into that prison knowing as much as I can,” I tell Charlie. “The more you can find out and tell me before I go, the better. I know you don’t have to tell me anything, but . . .”

  “Gaby, I can’t—” she starts to say.

  I cut her off. “Have you searched Kerry and Dan’s house? You need to search Tim’s room. I don’t know what you’ll find, but there’s something. There must be. Dan was on his guard the whole time we were in there yesterday, keen to usher me out as soon as possible. I don’t think it was just that he didn’t want me to notice the books.”

  “Books?”

  “True crime books, biographies of murderers, terrorists, dictators—Tim would never buy or read anything like that. Someone’s put them there to make it look more like a killer’s bedroom.”

  “Maybe Tim himself,” Charlie suggests.

  “I don’t think so. He might want to pretend to be a murderer, but he wouldn’t use props. He’s cleverer than that.” I lose patience with the sound of my own voice. Charlie and I could waste hours speculating when there are people who know for sure.

  I root in my bag, pull out the creased envelope and pass it to Charlie. “Please could you give this to Lauren? Make sure Jason’s not around when you do. It’s a letter I wrote her in Germany, after she ran away.”

  “Do you mind if I read it first?” Charlie asks.

  Can it do any harm if the police know Tim’s and my history, such as it is? It can’t be an invasion of my privacy if I’m the one handing her the envelope. She wouldn’t know anything about the letter if I hadn’t told her.

  Still, I can’t bring myself to give her permission. “You’ll read it anyway, whatever I say. Just don’t read it in front of me. And when you’ve read it, don’t ask me about it.” I don’t know how to warn her about its contents, or if I need to. Wouldn’t that be like warning a burglar that the sharp corners of your TV might damage his jacket? “It’s more of a love story than a letter,” I say in the end. “I just thought . . . if it doesn’t make Lauren want to tell the truth, nothing will, and something has to.”

  “Gaby, I need to ask you a question. You might find it distressing, but I have to ask. Have you been sexually assaulted?”

  “No.” It’s not a lie. He didn’t touch me, not in that way. Only my wrists and neck, and leaning against me, crushing me against my car. I realize I have no idea whether the removal of clothes counts as a sexual assault, and I can’t ask without revealing more than I’m willing to at this stage.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you sustained any physical injuries? Do you need me to take you to a hospital?”

  “No.” Two men have physically attacked me in the last twenty-four hours—Sean and the monster—and I have no marks to show for it. I choose to take this as proof of my resilience.

  Charlie sighs. “All right. If you ever decide you want to say more about what happened, you can. Whenever you’re ready.”

 
; “Thanks.” If I do, it’ll be a strategic decision. I wish she’d stop talking to me as if I’m a volatile bundle of emotion.

  “You need sleep,” she says. “Is it true you’ve left your partner, Sean?”

  I nod. Partner. That’s a joke; Sean was never that.

  “So we need to sort you out with somewhere to stay. Do you have a friend you can go to?”

  “I have plenty of friends that I don’t need to stay with. I’ve booked myself a room at the Best Western in Combingham. You need to sort yourself out with another visit to the Dower House,” I tell her. In case she has forgotten the to-do list I gave her or thinks it doesn’t matter, I decide to go through the action points again as I would at the end of a meeting. In my work, I’m known for being either very or too thorough, depending on your point of view. Some CEOs won’t work with me because of it. My companies consistently outperform theirs. “Go back to the Dower House,” I say to Charlie. “Give Lauren my letter. Get her out of there and away from Jason—that’s a priority. Whatever it takes, do it. And tell Kerry . . .” I hesitate. Am I certain? I could wait and ask Tim. Or talk to Kerry first. If she admits it, Tim won’t be able to deny it.

  Great idea: go back to two people who have lied to you and give them the opportunity to lie again.

  “Tell Kerry I know that Tim has a history of taking credit for things he had nothing to do with.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I know who The Carrier is—tell her that. It wasn’t Tim. It was her.”

  POLICE EXHIBIT 1442B/SK—

  TRANSCRIPT OF HANDWRITTEN LETTER FROM GABY STRUTHERS TO LAUREN COOKSON, UNDATED, WRITTEN FRIDAY 11 MARCH 2011

  Dear Lauren,

  Well, I can’t find you, and I can’t think where else to look. And I can’t sleep because I’m too shaken by what I’ve found out, so I thought I’d write to you. I hope you’ll calm down and get yourself to the airport in time for our flight in the morning. If not, I’ll track you down at home. Shouldn’t be too hard.