The Carrier

by Sophie Hannah

  I want to keep that smile forever. I fell in love with him, among other reasons, because he has always known how to make me laugh. “I don’t think I did, but how do I know? It’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Sean doesn’t offer me so much as a tenner and I fall out of love with him; you solve all my problems and I fall for you head over heels.”

  “This one’s easily sorted out,” Tim says. “Do you still love me? I haven’t been an accountant for years. I’ve lost all my contacts. You’re unlikely to get any more money out of me.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Then you must want me for me.”

  “I want you out of prison,” I tell him. “I don’t care what you’ve done, Tim. I care that you don’t trust me enough to tell me.”

  He looks up at me. “Other people are involved, Gaby. It’s not only me.”

  “Aren’t I one of those other people? The one you want to marry?”

  “Yes, of course. I just meant—”

  “Then tell me the truth,” I talk over his doubts. “And don’t propose to me again until you have.”

  24

  14/3/2011

  Don’t take one. Don’t.

  Sam stared at the neatly stacked leaflets in the display rack while he waited for the librarian to return. Leaflet, rather, since the rack was stuffed with multiple copies of only one: stiff and expensive-looking, glossy white with black print and a black-and-white photograph on the front. “Join the Proscenium Library today,” it urged. Sam thought about taking a break between leaving the police and finding a new job. A year spent whiling away the weekdays, doing nothing but reading—it was an appealing prospect, but he doubted Kate would share his enthusiasm.

  Sam hadn’t read poetry since school. It wasn’t the book collection that attracted him so much as the beauty and coolness of the building. The Proscenium was like a church that belonged to the religion of literature. A church with a top-notch restaurant. And totally silent. How was that possible, when Rawndesley city center was outside? Sam wondered how Gaby Struthers and Tim Breary had managed to start a relationship in a place where raising your voice above half a decibel was forbidden. Did whispering make it more romantic? Did people join the Proscenium in order to hide from the world? Block out reality?

  Sam pushed these thoughts from his mind as he saw the librarian approaching. May Geraghty was a tall, thin woman of around sixty with straight, heavy-fringed gray hair. She was mouthing words as she crossed the room, but Sam couldn’t make them out. She must have known he wouldn’t be able to. Sam recognized the type: awkward, easily flustered, incapable of walking toward somebody face-to-face without starting a conversation in transit. Feeling her unease, Sam crossed the room to meet her halfway.

  “This is a little awkward,” she whispered. The very word that had been in Sam’s mind. “The sonnet you’re looking for is by a poet called Lachlan Mackinnon. It’s in his 2003 collection The Jupiter Collisions.”

  Sam wondered if she was having him on. Or if it was some kind of strange test. “Yes, I know,” he said. Lowering his voice further in response to May Geraghty’s pained expression, he whispered. “You told me that already.” I thought you were going to find the book. He’d been impressed when she’d taken one look at his photocopied sheet of paper and immediately recognized the poem.

  “Yes.” May nodded, as if the decision to give him the same information twice had been a deliberate and sensible one. “The thing is, I’m afraid I can’t bring the book to you at the moment.” She nodded again. A fan of repetition, evidently.

  “Right,” said Sam. “That’s okay.” It was the longest of long shots, in any case. “Perhaps I could—”

  “I can’t bring it out to the desk, because it’s rather popular today. Our newest proprietor is sitting in the drawing room reading it. If only all our books were as much in demand!” she whispered emphatically.

  Newest member. Sam felt a prickle along the back of his neck.

  “However,” May Geraghty beamed at him, “I’ve just spoken to the gentleman, and he’s assured me that he’d be delighted if you’d join him briefly. He’ll be more than happy to let you have a quick look. Shall I show you through? And while you’re talking to him, I’ll get you the film from the CCTV for Friday night.”

  “Yes, please,” said Sam.

  He followed May Geraghty across the room and along a roped-off corridor, trying not to think about the man he would find at the end of it.

  Only one person it can be . . .

  Behind the mustard-colored rope on one side there was a large antique wooden writing desk. Newspapers and magazines covered its surface, laid out in four neat columns, collapsed-domino style. As he and May moved farther away from the Proscenium’s restaurant, the foody smell gave way to the more library-appropriate odors of chalk, dust, old paper. It was a pleasant combination, Sam thought. Comforting.

  “Sergeant Kombothekra.” Dan Jose appeared in the doorway ahead. There was a book in his hand. “I’m not sure if this can accurately be called a coincidence, but it feels like one.”

  “Sssh!” May Geraghty hissed, startling the elderly man and woman who were sitting at a table by one of the drawing room’s large sash windows.

  In a corner to the left of the unlit fire, a red-and-gray canvas rucksack that Sam had seen at the Dower House leaned against a high-backed green leather armchair—part of a cluster of three arranged around a small circular occasional table.

  “Have a seat,” Dan said. “I can order us some coffee if you’d like? Or tea?”

  “No, thanks,” said Sam, who had never understood why he often refused drinks he would have liked to accept. He noticed a trainer protruding from the rucksack, a lace spilling over the side. “I walked here,” Dan said, looking down at the polished brown leather shoes he was wearing. “Took me exactly an hour and a half. Another good reason for becoming a member. Or a ‘proprietor,’ as May prefers to call us. Good for the body, good for the mind.”

  “Is that why you joined?” Sam asked.

  “No. Not really. Pretty obvious why I joined, isn’t it?”

  “Because Tim’s a member?”

  “Well, not so much that he’s a member as . . .” Dan looked down at his lap. “I don’t know. I know how much this place means to him. For as long as he can’t make use of it . . . And, if it’s all right . . . ?”

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “I didn’t tell Kerry I was coming here. I wasn’t planning to tell her I’d joined. Not that it’s a secret or anything. I’d just rather she didn’t know.”

  Sam wondered about Dan Jose’s definition of the word “secret.” It was obviously different from his own.

  “She’d disapprove?” Sam asked.

  “No. She’d say it was the best idea, and wonder why she hadn’t had it herself.” Dan chewed the inside of his lip. “She’d want us to come here together. Which wouldn’t be so bad. It wouldn’t be bad at all.” He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.

  “But?” Sam prompted.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t planning to join. Like you, I came in to ask about this.” Dan held up the poetry book. “Spur-of-the-moment, I thought, why not? When Tim’s back at home, we can come here together, for lunch.”

  “Without Kerry?”

  “No, all of us. Of course.”

  “But until then, you’d rather come here alone?” Sam persisted.

  “I needed some space,” Dan’s voice dropped from quiet to a whisper, barely audible. His face colored. Did he imagine that the elderly couple by the window were listening avidly? They were doing a convincing impression of two people who had no interest in other human beings, least of all each other.

  “I suppose I was trying to test out what it might feel like to be Tim,” Dan said. “To sit here reading. Thinking the kind of crazy thoughts only Tim would think. Wondering if any of th
em make sense, when you really examine them.”

  Sam wanted to know more, but his instincts told him he’d do better if he changed the subject. “Can I see the book?” he asked.

  Dan handed it to him. “It’s the last poem you’re after. ‘Sonnet,’ it’s called.”

  “How do you know what I’m looking for?”

  “How do I know Tim gave you a copy of that poem and asked you to pass it on to Gaby Struthers?” Dan answered with a question.

  “That too,” Sam said. He flicked through The Jupiter Collisions. The sonnet was where Dan had said it would be: at the end. There was no message for Gaby Struthers tucked between the pages, though of course Dan would have got to it first and might have removed it.

  Highly unlikely. Sam had always thought so. And having the idea in front of Simon, as Charlie had suggested, had achieved nothing as far as Sam could tell. Simon had grunted noncommittally and walked away.

  “I know because I let Tim down,” Dan said. “That’s why he had to ask you to give Gaby the poem—because I hadn’t done it. He asked me the first time I visited him in prison. He’d written the poem out by hand. For Gaby. I promised I’d give it to her, but when I told Kerry about it she said no, I mustn’t, it would be the worst thing I could possibly do.”

  “Why?”

  Dan sighed. “It’s complicated. The last time Tim sort of sent Gaby a love poem, everything spiraled out of control. Tim ended up trying to take his own life. I think Kerry didn’t want to risk that happening again. I’m sure she was right, even if I couldn’t follow the logic myself.”

  Sam couldn’t either. “So you came here . . . what, to see if you could find the poem?”

  Dan nodded. “I thought there was a reasonable chance, since I knew the poet’s name.”

  “I didn’t,” Sam told him. “Luckily, May Geraghty seems to have committed to memory every poem that’s ever been written.”

  “I thought I might copy it out, since there’s no photocopier here,” Dan said. “Make sure Gaby gets it this time. Or at least try to work out my own opinion, instead of obeying Tim or obeying Kerry. Use my judgment for once.”

  “Only about the poem?” Sam asked.

  The answering silence lasted nearly ten seconds. Then Dan said, “No. About everything.”

  Sam waited. The words he heard next sent a jolt of adrenaline straight to his heart.

  “We’ve been lying to you. All of us.” Dan flinched as if at bad news. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, am I?”

  “No.” Not yet.

  “We all knew what Jason had done to Gaby on Friday night. Sick bastard. We always wondered about him and Lauren, what went on between them, but . . . Look, you have to believe that Kerry and I would never have given Jason an alibi if we’d thought there was even a fractional chance he’d get away with hurting Gaby. Since he was dead—”

  “How did you know that?” Sam interrupted.

  “We knew.” The shut-down expression on Dan’s face told Sam not to push it. “I don’t want to lie to you anymore. That means I’m not going to be able to answer every question you ask me.”

  Then you’re still lying. How’s it any different?

  “Who killed Francine?” Sam asked, struggling to contain his disappointment.

  Silence.

  “Was it Tim?”

  “I didn’t witness Francine’s murder,” Dan said, after giving it some thought. “So all I know is what I’ve been told. One of the things I’ve been told is that we all have to lie, and keep lying. I’ve been told that by more than one person. At first I thought it must be true. Now I’m not so sure. I doubt very much that Gaby Struthers would agree, and she’s certainly the cleverest of everyone involved, if we’re talking intellect. Or is that too elitist a way to look at it?”

  Sam’s phone had started to vibrate. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. Sellers. “Dan, I’m grateful for any honesty I can get, but if the only truth you’re willing to tell me is that you’ve been lying, that doesn’t really help me. Excuse me, I have to take this call.” Sam hurried out into the corridor with the mustard-colored rope, wondering how long it would take Dan Jose to progress beyond the stage of suspecting that Gaby Struthers would want the truth told to the crucial next stage (without which all the others were sodding pointless, frankly) of actually telling it.

  “Sorry,” Sam said to Sellers, instead of “Hello.”

  “I forgive you, Sarge. You still at the library?”

  “I am. I can’t really talk.”

  May Geraghty had appeared at the far end of the corridor and was peering at Sam disapprovingly. Oh, get a life, you old bat, he thought, knowing that if he said it out loud he’d be plagued by remorse for months.

  “You can listen, though, right?” said Sellers.

  “Go on.”

  “I’ve been to Wayne Cuffley’s work. They can account for his whereabouts for the whole of the sixteenth of February, so he’s ruled out for Francine Breary. I thought it wouldn’t do any harm to check on his wife’s alibi too, since she helped him dump Jason Cookson’s body.”

  Good thinking. Never hurts to be thorough. Sam would have said so if he hadn’t been subject to May Geraghty’s Trappist restrictions.

  “Lisa Cuffley’s a nail technician, works at a place called Intuitions in Combingham. It’s a right dive. I’ve just been there.”

  And?

  “Lisa was at work on the sixteenth of February too—all day. Sarge, I don’t know what made me think of it, but I asked about Friday and Saturday nights just gone, not really expecting anything, and guess what? On Saturday night, Lisa Cuffley had a private booking she’d taken via the salon—a hen party in Spilling, all the girls wanting their nails done and a lesson on how to do it themselves. Obviously she could have been mistaken, but Lisa’s boss reckons Lisa was at this party on Saturday from nine till after midnight.”

  And therefore not available to give Jason Cookson’s dead body a lift to the police station.

  “Did you talk to Lisa about it?” Sam asked Sellers. “Was she there?”

  “Not yet. Yeah, she’s there now, but I wanted to tell you first, see what you thought.”

  “Get back on to Wayne Cuffley’s work, ask them about Friday and Saturday nights too,” Sam told him. He turned his back on May Geraghty’s glare of profound and enduring disappointment, pleased to be able to demonstrate that he could withstand a stranger’s disapproval in a public setting for up to ten seconds.

  “Cookson’s blood’s all over Cuffley’s house and car,” said Sellers.

  “So he was probably killed in one, and transported to the nick in the other, but let’s not take anything on trust,” Sam said. Ever again, he added silently. “If Cuffley’s lying about Lisa being with him when he dropped the body, what’s to say that anything he’s told us has been the truth?”

  25

  MONDAY, 14 MARCH 2011

  Knocking. Loud. Tim would never knock like this. Which means this can’t be him, so I might as well stay where I am: lying on the bed in my hotel room with the curtains shut and the TV screen flickering mutely from its wood veneer cabinet. At least I can’t hear the drivel I’m watching.

  If I loved Tim less, I’d be working now. Doing something important. I can’t imagine ever again being able to concentrate on anything apart from him. It scares me.

  More knocking.

  I haul myself off the bed, gearing up to yell at another member of hotel staff. Most of them seem to think my “Do Not Disturb” request applies only for a limited period, that it’s impossible for anyone to want to be left alone for as long as that sign’s been hanging from my door. I haven’t moved from the bed for nearly eight hours.

  The maid would only be disappointed if I let her in. There would be nothing for her to do. I haven’t had a bath or a shower, no room service, no
cups of tea or coffee. I’ve barely disturbed the bedclothes; the outer cover is still in place, uncreased. I’ve hardly slept, apart from when I’ve lost consciousness, fully dressed, for the odd half hour here and there. Each time, I’ve woken with my heart pounding and Jason Cookson’s sickening voice in my head.

  Tim’s fault.

  No. That’s not fair. I mustn’t let myself think that.

  The knocking has developed a threatening tone. Best Western housekeeping wouldn’t be so confrontational. I open the door half an inch and see a thin tear-streaked face.

  Lauren.

  Fear surges up inside me, all the way to my throat.

  He can’t be with her. He’s dead.

  She starts in on me from the corridor. “What the fuck are you playing at? Is this some kind of joke? You tell me to come here and then you won’t let me in?”

  “I’ll let you in.” Just not yet. I’m not ready. I stand in front of the door so that she’d have to knock me over to force it open any farther. I’m heavier than she is, even after three days of near-starvation. She’d never manage it.

  I’m having difficulty believing she’s here. I did as Simon Waterhouse asked and delivered my letter to her first thing this morning, but I never thought she’d respond. I added my new contact details thinking I was safe: hotel name, address, room number.

  She ran away from me. And now she’s back.

  Ready or not, I need to talk to her. I have to let her in.

  I open the door fully and stand to one side. “Come in. Sorry. It’s . . . I didn’t think it’d be you.”

  “Well, it is.” The door swings closed behind her, taking with it the light from the corridor. “Fuckin’ hell, Gaby, are you going to open the curtains or what? I can’t see a fucking thing.”

  Should I give her a hug? The idea embarrasses me. She’d probably punch me in the face.

  “I’ll open them,” I say. It’s true: I would, if I could move. I’m trying to understand why having Lauren here is making me feel so churned up. Nearly as bad as when I first saw Tim in prison. It doesn’t make sense: she’s nothing to me. She should mean nothing.