Sophie Hannah - The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

‘He said that?’

Simon nodded.

‘But he hasn’t strangled her. Nobody has.’ Charlie shuddered. ‘This is starting to do my head in. I’ve heard plenty of people confess to crimes they haven’t committed, but they’re always crimes someone’s committed. Why would anyone confess to the murder of a woman who isn’t dead? According to Ruth Bussey, Seed didn’t tell her any of that stuff about the bedroom, or strangling Mary-why not?’

‘You wouldn’t want to put that sort of image in your girlfriend’s head,’ Simon suggested.

‘What did Seed say his relationship with Mary Trelease was? How did he know her?’ Seeing Simon’s expression, Charlie guessed the answer. ‘He wouldn’t say.’ She cast around for something else to ask, as if the right formulation of words might shed sudden light. Nothing came to mind. ‘We should be doing the pair of them for wasting police time,’ she said.

‘Not my decision. For once, I’m glad. Seed’s not like any bullshit artist I’ve ever seen. Something was bothering him, something real.’

Charlie had felt the same about Ruth Bussey until she’d found the article.

‘Kombothekra’s got to decide where to go next with it,’ said Simon. ‘If it was my call, I don’t think I’d want to risk not taking statements from everyone involved. From Seed at the very least. Though I’ve no idea what I’d do with his statement once I had it.’ He frowned as a new thought occurred to him. ‘What did you decide to do? After you spoke to Ruth Bussey?’

Charlie felt her face heat up. ‘Err on the side of negligence, that’s my motto,’ she said bitterly. ‘I wasn’t planning to follow it up, even though she told me she was afraid something really bad was going to happen, and even though a fool could have seen she was seriously fucked up. I hadn’t even checked, like you and Gibbs did, that Mary Trelease was alive.’ Charlie put the cigarette she was holding in her mouth: comfort food.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Simon.

She left the room, started to go downstairs.

‘What?’ He followed her. ‘What did I say?’

‘Nothing. I’m getting a lighter.’

There were a few to choose from on the mantelpiece in the lounge, all plastic and disposable. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’ Simon asked.

‘That’s a question from the wrong list. Sorry.’ Charlie tried to laugh, lighting her cigarette. The wonderful tranquillising power of nicotine started to do its work.

‘You said before that Ruth Bussey was waiting for you when you went into work yesterday.’

‘Did I?’ Too clever for his own good. And everyone else’s.

‘Why you?’

Charlie walked over to her handbag, which she’d left dangling from the door handle, and pulled out the newspaper article. ‘She left her coat behind. This was in the pocket.’ Did he have any idea how hard it was for her to show it to him? Chances were he hadn’t seen it at the time; Simon didn’t read local papers.

She left him alone in the lounge, took her cigarette through the kitchen and out to the backyard, even though it was cold and she had no coat or shoes on. She stared at what Olivia called her ‘installation’: a pile of broken furniture, things Charlie had dismantled and thrown out two years ago. ‘How hard is it to hire a skip?’ Liv said plaintively whenever she visited. Charlie didn’t know, and didn’t have the time or the inclination to find out. My neighbours must pray every night that I’ll move, she thought. Especially the ones who’d replaced their neat, paved yard with a little lawn and flower-beds as soon as they moved in. Now they had colour-coordinated borders: red, white and blue flowers in a pattern that was overbearingly regular. What a waste of time, when your garden’s the size of a fingernail.

Charlie felt something touch her and cried out in alarm before realising it was Simon. He put his arms round her waist.

‘Well? Did you read it?’

‘Slander,’ he said. ‘Like the way you described yourself tonight. ’

‘It wasn’t negligent, to take no action over Ruth Bussey?’ She knew he was talking about the party, but chose to misunderstand.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Simon. ‘As we both keep saying, no crime’s been committed. Bussey told you Trelease was alive and well-turns out she is.’

‘So Sam Kombothekra will tell you to leave it. It’s not a police matter. Just three oddballs behaving oddly, none of our business.’

Simon sighed. ‘Are you happy with that explanation? Seed and Bussey come in on the same day, separately, and tell two versions of almost the same story? You want to let it lie?’

‘Ruth Bussey said she was frightened something was going to happen.’ That was the part Charlie kept coming back to in her mind, now that she knew the whole thing hadn’t been about her.

‘One thing’s going to have to happen if we want to take it any further,’ said Simon.

‘What?’

He’s still touching me. He didn’t have to, but he did, he is.

He started to hum a tune, Aled Jones’ ‘Walking in the Air’.

‘You, not we,’ said Charlie. One of the advantages of leaving CID-the only one-was that she no longer had to negotiate with the Snowman. She tried not to sound as if she was crowing when she said, ‘I don’t work for him any more.’

A noise startles me: my house, breaking its long silence with a sharp ringing. The woolly feeling in my head clears. Adrenalin gets me moving. I crawl into the lounge on my hands and knees to avoid putting weight on my injured foot, and manage to grab the phone on the third ring, still holding the blanket I’ve been using as a shawl around my shoulders. I can’t say hello. I can’t allow myself to hope.

‘It’s me.’

Aidan. Relief pours through me. I clutch the phone, needing something solid to hold on to. ‘Are you coming back?’ I say. I have so many questions, but this is the one that matters.

‘Yeah,’ he says. I wait for the part that comes next: I’ll always come back, Ruth. You know that, don’t you? For once, he doesn’t say it. The thudding of my heart fills the silence.

‘Where have you been?’ I ask. He has been gone longer than usual. Two nights.

‘Working.’

‘You weren’t at the workshop.’ There’s a pause. Does he regret giving me a key? I wait for him to ask for it back. He gave it to me when I first started to work for him, the same key for Seed Art Services as for his home. It was a sign that he trusted me.

I spent parts of both Friday and Saturday nights in his messy room behind the framing studio, crying, waiting for him to come back. Several times, drained and exhausted, I fell asleep, then came to suddenly, convinced that, if Aidan returned at all, he would go to my house. I’m not sure how many times I drove from one end of town to the other, feeling as if wherever I went I would be too late, I would miss him by a fraction of a second.

‘We need to talk, Ruth.’

I begin to cry at the obviousness of it. ‘Come back, then.’

‘I’m on my way. Stay put.’ He’s gone before I can reply. Of course I’ll stay. I’ve got nowhere else to go.

I crawl back to the hall, where I was before Aidan phoned, where I’ve been sitting cross-legged since six o’clock this morning, staring up at the small monitor on the shelf above the front door. My body is stiff and sore from being in one position too long. The underside of my damaged foot looks like decayed puff pastry. I don’t feel strong enough to clear up two days’ worth of mess, but I must.

The remote control: if Aidan sees it on the floor he’ll know I’ve been watching the tapes. He’ll be angry. I glance up at the screen, scared that if I take my eyes off it, I’ll miss something. The image changes a second later: a grainy black and white picture of the path outside my house, with English yew hedges sculpted into rounded abstract forms bordering the grass along one side, is replaced by the cluster of poplars on the other side of the house and a clear view of the park gates. Nobody coming in or out. Nobody.