Where the Truth Lies

by Julie Corbin

  ‘We don’t know how to use a gun.’ I hand him his boxers from the drawer. ‘But the policewoman who’s coming to live with us does, so she’ll keep us safe.’

  When Jack’s organised, we go upstairs. I sit on Bea’s bed and watch her fill a portable toy box. I’ve told her we’re going off on holiday for a few weeks and she accepts this without question. Much time is taken up with deliberation. Bertie and the rest of her dogs are a must, and then we discuss the merits of taking her countryside scene, in which woollen sheep and lopsided shepherds are patrolling a green felt hillside, as opposed to her princess castle with the crenulated roof and drawbridge. She plumps for the shepherds because ‘They’ll get lonely.’

  Then it’s her turn to sit on the bed and I pack a suitcase of clothes for her. I hold up her tops and skirts and trousers and she mimics Jack by giving me a thumbs-up or -down. She has her shoes and socks off and is curling her toes under. Her feet are broad, her toes small and perfectly formed. At the moment her toenails are painted a vivid pink. Wendy did it for her. She rubs her heels on the cover and then touches her big toes together. Out of nowhere I get this sudden and overwhelming feeling that this woman will take her. No matter what precautions we come up with, this woman will get her. Dizziness creeps up from my feet and fills my head with flashing lights and sickness. I go into the landing and crouch down with my back against the wall.

  ‘Are you OK, Mum?’ Charlie sees me from his room and comes across.

  I grit my teeth. ‘I’m OK. I’m fine. Actually’ – I reach for his hands and he pulls me upright – ‘I’m going to go out for a bit. Dad’s downstairs and Lisa’s there and the police are outside.’ I look out of the window to check that’s true and see them walking backwards and forwards on the pavement. ‘I need some air.’

  ‘Mummy!’ Bea shouts.

  ‘Will you be OK?’ he says. ‘Do you want me to come?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ I stroke his cheek. ‘Would you put Bea to bed for me?’

  ‘Yeah. No probs.’

  We both go back into her room and I tell her I’m going out. ‘But what about my packing?’ She is standing on the bed and her head is almost level with ours.

  ‘Charlie will help you.’

  ‘He doesn’t know about girls’ clothes.’ She brings her arm across her chest. They’re not long enough to fold, but she makes a good job of trying.

  ‘I do,’ Charlie says. ‘Amy taught me.’

  She pulls her chin into her neck and frowns. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m good.’ He comes into her room and picks up her pink hooded sweatshirt. ‘This is a key piece in any girl’s wardrobe.’ He holds it up to himself. ‘Does it suit me?’

  She starts to giggle. I kiss her cheeks, give Charlie a grateful smile and head down the stairs. It’s after nine. Mac will be home by now. I stop in the hallway to put on my shoes.

  ‘You’re going out?’

  I jump. ‘Julian, you scared me.’ I look up from tying my laces. ‘Why are you standing in the shadows?’

  ‘Lisa and I are chatting.’

  He steps forward and I see Lisa’s there too. At once I feel guilty. I haven’t been looking after her the way I wanted to. She has dark shadows under her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Lisa.’ I reach for her hands. They are cold to the touch and I rub them in mine. ‘I want to look after you better and I will. I just need to pop out for a bit.’

  ‘It’s OK. I know how upsetting this is.’ She clears her throat. ‘Do you really think you should be going out? It’s late and it’s raining again.’

  ‘I know, but I just need some time.’

  ‘Julian and I both feel . . .’ She glances at Julian before she says, ‘You have a lot to cope with right now.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Claire, we all need to be on the same page here.’

  ‘Whoa! Hold on a minute.’ I look at Julian, then back to her. ‘What is this? Some sort of ambush?’

  ‘We’re both worried about you.’

  ‘Worried about me? Why? It’s Bea you should be worried about.’

  ‘You’re talking to yourself. You’re distracted. Your nails – look at them! You never normally chew your nails.’

  ‘Well, thanks a bunch, Lisa,’ I say. ‘My daughter’s in danger and you expect me to be looking good.’

  ‘No, no, sweetheart, that isn’t what I mean.’ She strokes my hair. It feels comforting and I lean into her hand. ‘It’s just that Julian and I care for you and we want to help.’

  I pull away. ‘Is that right?’ I look up at the ceiling and then straight at Julian. ‘You keep this a secret for more than a week, you resign, and you make a critical decision about the witness details without talking to me first. That’s caring, is it?’ He doesn’t speak. ‘And now you’ve roped in my sister.’

  ‘Claire!’ Lisa steps forward. ‘It’s not like that. At times like this we can’t risk not working as a team.’

  ‘Which makes it a great pity that my husband couldn’t be honest with me in the first place.’

  ‘Honesty?’ Julian says, temper simmering in his eyes. ‘We stopped being honest with each other a long time before this.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Lisa, would you excuse us for a minute?’ Julian says.

  She nods her head and goes off into her room.

  ‘Round about the time you decided to have sex with someone else,’ he says.

  ‘That was five years ago. Once.’ I hold up my right index finger. ‘One mistake. I know it was stupid and pathetic, and I know I hurt both of us, but I—’

  ‘You think I could just forget about that?’ He moves in close. ‘You think it’s easy to listen to your wife tell you she had sex with someone else? Good sex, I seem to recall.’

  ‘I never said that.’

  His look is scathing. ‘You didn’t have to.’

  ‘You’re bringing this up now?’ I can’t believe this. ‘You’re shutting me out because five years ago I had one misguided moment? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘The glue that keeps a relationship together is loyalty and trust. You broke that trust.’

  ‘This is not the time to have this conversation.’ I shake my head. ‘I know the last few years have brought more than our fair share of stresses, but it’s not as bad as you’re making out, and if you were still hurt, then why didn’t you say something?’

  ‘What was there to say?’ He looks up at the ceiling and ponders. ‘I wish you hadn’t done it? I wish I didn’t have images of my wife with another man? I wish I’d been enough for you?’

  ‘You are enough for me.’ I sigh. ‘You always have been.’ I shrug my shoulders and give him a sorry smile. ‘But this.’ I wave my arms around. ‘Our family’s disintegrating. Our safety is under threat and you can’t see it.’

  He leans back against the wall and folds his arms. ‘Where are you going, Claire?’

  I consider storming off or simply fudging my answer, but this is the problem with being married to a barrister – he doesn’t tolerate convenient misunderstandings. He gets to the nub of problems, terrier-like, and doesn’t let go until he’s satisfied with the answer. So just as I did last night in bed, I lie to him, barefaced and with conviction. ‘I’m going out for a drive to clear my head. I plan to park at the seafront, sit in the car and listen to music.’ I move in closer, still holding his eyes. ‘I’m sorry that neither you nor Lisa has faith in me, but I’m dealing with this in the only way I know how and at the moment I need a couple of hours alone before I’m cooped up in a safe house.’

  I take my car keys off the hook. ‘I’m setting the alarm. The code, should you need to go out, is 2949. Charlie’s putting Bea to bed.’

  On the way down the steps, I speed-dial Mac’s number. ‘I need to see you.’

  ‘I’m at home.’

  I climb in the car. ‘I can come to you.’

  ‘OK.’ He gives me his postcode. I key it into my sat nav.

  ‘I’m setting off now,’ I
say, and start the engine.

  18

  The drive to Mac’s house takes about fifty minutes. He lives halfway between London and Brighton, close to a small village on the edge of the Ashdown Forest. The road is a twisty, turny affair with hedgerows either side and farmed fields rolling off into the distance. Then all at once the scenery changes as I come up onto the forest and see signs for deer. I keep my speed within the limit. I know that deer roam freely and the last thing I need to do is have an accident.

  The sun is setting, and the moon is hidden behind dirty great clouds that threaten more rain. I keep my car headlights on full beam and mull over my latest argument with Julian. They say a crisis shows up all the holes in a relationship and that’s certainly happening to us. I thought I’d been forgiven. I knew he’d never forget what I’d done, but I thought we’d put it a long way behind us. We have a lot of miles on the clock, after all. Sex with Mac couldn’t have lasted more than ten minutes and yet the repercussions have rippled into the last five years. With Julian, it seems, operating a ‘one strike and you’re out’ policy. Never again to be trusted. Never again to be considered honest, and yet the reason he knows about it at all is because I was honest. I don’t keep secrets. I’ve only ever told him two lies and both of those were in the last twenty-four hours. A week ago I would never have believed myself capable of such a thing, and under normal circumstances I would be saddened by this, but at the moment I don’t have time to fix my marriage. It’s just another problem stacking up behind the critical one: the threat of Bea’s kidnap. I have no intention of leaving Mac’s house tonight without the witness details. I’ll break all my own rules and more to put an end to this.

  I leave the main road and drive for almost a mile down a bumpy track to his house. The outside lights are on, illuminating a character cottage sympathetically extended to twice its original size. It’s set in what looks to be over an acre of ground and my first thought is, You don’t get this on a policeman’s salary. My second is that the money must come from his wife and it looks like she’s there to greet me as there’s a woman standing at the front door. She’s wearing flat leather boots with jeans tucked in below her knees, a white T-shirt and a camel-coloured suede jacket. Her smile is wide, her teeth perfectly white and straight. She looks like an advert for healthy living.

  I climb out of my car and approach the front door just as Mac appears alongside her.

  ‘This is my wife, Donna,’ he says. ‘Donna, this is Claire.’

  ‘Hi! How are ya?’ She holds out her hand.

  She is American. Blonde and leggy, almost six feet tall, she oozes sunshine and blue skies even on a cold and cloudy night when the wind is whipping through the trees.

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’ I shake her hand and admire the cottage, with its slate roof and leaded windows, and then around at the clutch of silver birches to the side of the parking area. ‘This is a lovely spot.’

  ‘Even better in the daytime. You must come.’ She widens clear blue eyes. ‘Mac tells me you two were colleagues once.’

  ‘Yes.’ I smile. The skin on my face feels dry, tight and salty like it’s about to crack.

  ‘Well . . .’ She kisses him. She takes her time. It’s a hands-off-my man kiss. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ She strides towards her car and starts the engine.

  Mac ushers me into a hallway with exposed stone walls and wooden beams. The floor is highly polished oak with an expensive-looking rug leading to the large living room at the end. Just before we reach it, he heads off at an angle into the kitchen. Bespoke oak units, topped by marble work surfaces, hug the walls, which are tiled a deep blue, interspersed at intervals with friendly tiled depictions of the sun, moon and stars in a contrasting yellow shade. And there are small oil paintings dotted around, the images indistinct splashes of colour on canvas. It feels welcoming and homely.

  ‘Tea? Coffee? Or something stronger?’

  ‘Tea’s fine,’ I say. ‘This is beautiful workmanship.’ I run my hand along one of the cupboard doors.

  ‘The carpenter was in and out for almost three months building it. Weekends as well. Almost drove me nuts.’

  ‘Beats the bachelor flat in Islington.’

  He smiles.

  ‘It’s late for Donna to be going out, isn’t it?’

  ‘She’s doing an all-night yoga session. Breathing. Meditation.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s all going on around here.’

  ‘She’s not how I imagined.’

  ‘Isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s perky. She’s glamorous.’ I pause before adding, ‘She’s American.’

  ‘Now, now.’ He pretends to look offended. ‘Let’s not be prejudiced.’

  ‘I thought you’d have married someone . . .’ I stop to think.

  ‘Hard-bitten like myself?’

  ‘No, but . . . you’re all sardonic humour and irony, which Americans don’t get. Or is that just a rumour?’

  ‘Mm.’ His head goes from side to side as if he’s weighing it up. ‘I’m working on her.’ He hands me a mug of tea. ‘She lives in a world where people are good and do good things.’

  I narrow my eyes. ‘And does she know what you do for a living?’

  ‘She doesn’t think career choice defines a person.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t, but after a while you become the company you keep.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He’s staring at me as if figuring something out. The dishwasher hums quietly in the background. Seconds tick by. I find I can’t hold his gaze and look away.

  ‘Let’s go through.’ He sets off along the hallway, past the front door and into a blokeish den, decorated in cream, with a browny-grey speckled carpet, a battered leather couch against one wall and a huge antique pine table, close to ten feet long. There’s a flat-screen monitor and keyboard at one end of the table and the rest of the surface is covered in books and papers. But it’s the jazz memorabilia on the walls that makes it Mac’s space. It’s always been his passion, his escape from the dirt and grind of police work. With some cops, it’s fishing; with others, football; for Mac, it’s jazz: playing it, listening to it or travelling miles to see his favourites. My eyes are drawn to a poster of John Coltrane, signed with a flourish by the man himself.

  ‘He died the year I was born,’ Mac tells me. ‘He worked with Elvin Jones, a jazz drumming legend.’ He whistles through his teeth. ‘But before I slip on my anorak’ – he gestures towards the couch – ‘take a seat. Tell me why you’re here.’

  I sit down and try to relax into the leather couch, worn soft and accommodating by years of bodies. I’ve thought about this: what I’ll say first, what I’ll say only if it becomes absolutely necessary, but now that I’m here, I find I can’t remember my lines and so I say the first thing that comes into my head: ‘Are you and Donna thinking of having children?’

  ‘We’ve been trying.’

  ‘It’s fun trying, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think it’s better fun without the trying.’

  ‘The trying is trying.’

  ‘Very.’ He makes a face. ‘Thermometers and timing and eating the right food.’

  ‘But you want a baby. The miracle of your own child?’

  He nods. ‘I really do.’

  ‘Do you remember the first case we worked on together?’

  ‘Marcia Green, November 1995. You’d only just started at the CPS and I was cutting my teeth on my first murder.’

  ‘Five years old and murdered by her neighbour. We went to the funeral and . . .’ I pause and think about that day, sunshine and blue skies, everyone sweltering in black suits, a small white coffin covered in roses, her parents unable to stand, their backs bent as if they’d been whipped, and when they did look up, the expression in their eyes was of such stark desperation that no one could hold their gaze for long. ‘. . . and as we stood there under the blazing sun, I remember exactly what you said to me. You said, “There’s nothing worse than losing a child.”’

  I see from his eyes that he hasn’t forgotten
this.

  ‘Mac, I need you to give me the witness information because if something happens to Bea, I won’t have a life any more.’

  ‘Claire.’ He lengthens my name, sounding out the letters. He’s standing opposite me in front of the table. He folds his arms and looks up at the ceiling. When he looks back at me, it’s with regret. ‘You know that isn’t possible. It would ruin the chances of bringing Georgiev to justice.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to. Think about it. At the moment she’s coming after my daughter and you’re spending time and money protecting us. What if she does know where the witness is? Protect him instead. Double his security. Lock him up in a cell, if need be. Surely that’s fairer than what’s happening now, an innocent child caught up in it because of her father’s job.’

  ‘The law doesn’t look at it that way.’

  ‘But you can,’ I say quietly. ‘I know you. Your belief in the system only goes so far and in that we’re alike.’ I pause. ‘You know when to break it and when to keep it.’

  He looks down at his feet and gives a half-smile. ‘Have you tried to get the information out of Julian?’

  ‘Yes. Last night he told me the witness had been moved. Is that true?’

  He nods.

  ‘And Julian doesn’t know where he is.’

  ‘Also true.’

  ‘Was that your suggestion?’

  ‘It was his.’

  ‘Do you know where the witness is?’

  ‘Yes.’ He comes across and sits alongside me on the sofa, his body sideways, one leg pulled up. I mirror him, so that we’re facing each other, our knees almost touching.

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’ I say quietly.

  ‘This witness is key, Claire. Georgiev will walk free without him.’

  ‘I know. I’ve thought it through. I’ve turned it every which way in my head. But Bea is a little girl. She deserves protection.’

  ‘There are policemen front and back. They’re carrying firearms. They’re trained to react.’ He rubs his eyes. ‘And the safe house is ready. We can move you there tonight if you’d prefer.’

  I change tack. ‘Julian is an idealist. He believes in the system in a way that I never have. As a couple, we’ve never been tested like this before, but here we are in two separate camps – he’s on the side of the justice system, while I stand up for our family. Rationally, of course, I understand his position, but in my heart . . .’ I shake my head. ‘What he’s doing is wrong.’