Nicci French - What to do When Someone Dies

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ramsay. ‘I didn’t quite get that. What did you say?’

‘It’s probably easiest if I tell you everything and then you ask questions about what you don’t understand.’

Ramsay started to say something, then stopped and gestured to me to go on. As I meandered through the story, I felt as if I was talking about the misadventures of someone I didn’t really know – a distant cousin or a friend of a friend – whom I didn’t much care for and certainly didn’t understand. When I got on to the subject of Milena dying in the car accident with Greg and how I’d read her emails and how she had also had an affair with Frances’s husband, David, Ramsay’s head sank slowly into his hands. I then told him that Frances had confided in me that she, too, had had an affair.

‘I thought, or wondered, if the man she had had her affair with was Greg,’ I added.

‘What?’ He raised his head and stared at me; there was a glazed expression in his eyes.

‘You see, she said this man, I never got to know his name, had also had a fling with Milena, then turned to her. It doesn’t sound like the Greg I knew, but by that stage I was so confused I didn’t know what to think about anything.’

‘I know the feeling,’ he growled.

The one detail I deliberately withheld was my sexual relationship, such as it was, with Johnny. I don’t think it was out of any concern that it would make me look bad. It was far too late for that. I just felt it wasn’t an important detail and that at least I could spare Johnny the attention it might bring him.

Anyway, there was hardly a shortage of damaging revelations. When I talked about my attempts to find out about the relationship between Milena and Greg, DI Carter interrupted me. ‘She compiled charts,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Ramsay, in a weak tone.

‘Like they do with school timetables on big pieces of cardboard. It established the whereabouts of her late husband and of the woman.’

‘Charts,’ said Ramsay, looking at me.

‘I had to know,’ I said. ‘I needed to prove to myself, and to the world maybe, that they really did know each other, or that they really didn’t.’

‘You’ve been told it’s hard to prove a negative,’ said Ramsay. ‘Kind of a police motto.’

‘People keep telling me,’ I said. ‘Not that it’s a police motto, that it’s hard.’

There was a pause. I leaned over the tape-machine to see if the little spools were turning.

‘Is that all?’ asked Ramsay.

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure if I told it in the right order. I may have left things out.’

‘It’s difficult to know where to start,’ said Ramsay. ‘For example, as someone who was working for Frances Shaw under an assumed name, you are an obvious suspect in her murder. If you had stayed on the scene, forensic examination might have exonerated you.’

‘It might not have,’ I said. ‘I pulled her out from where she was lying to see if she was still alive. I examined her. I wasn’t sure if there was something I ought to do to help.’

‘So you moved the body!’ said Ramsay. ‘And then you didn’t tell anybody. Our investigation to date has been based on a complete misunderstanding of the crime scene.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That’s why I decided I had to get in touch with you.’

‘How kind,’ he said. ‘I still don’t understand. Why did you leave the scene?’

‘I was scared and confused. I thought the person who killed her might still be there. And maybe a part of me was wondering whether I was responsible for her death.’

‘How?’ asked Ramsay.

‘Perhaps I’d been stirring things up. I’m the one person who didn’t believe that Milena and Greg’s death was an accident.’

‘What on earth has that got to do with it?’ said Ramsay.

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe we’re not clever enough to understand,’ said Ramsay. ‘Could you explain why it’s so obvious?’

‘My husband and Milena died in a car crash in circumstances that haven’t been explained.’

‘That’s not true,’ said DI Carter.

‘And then Milena’s work partner is murdered. There must be a connection.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Ramsay. ‘I started off saying you ought to talk to a lawyer, but you really need a psychiatrist.’

‘I’m seeing one, as a sort of grief counselling.’

‘I’m surprised he lets you walk the streets.’

‘She.’

‘I don’t fucking care.’

‘I haven’t told her the details of all of this.’

Ramsay threw his hands up in exasperation. ‘What’s the point of a psychiatrist if you’re not telling her the truth? And, furthermore, if you’re lying to your own doctor, why the hell should I believe you’re not lying to us now?’

‘It wouldn’t be much of a lie, would it?’ I said. ‘I don’t come out of it very well.’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Ramsay. ‘Quite a few coppers would be happy enough to charge you immediately but you’d get off with an insanity plea – deranged widow runs amok.’

‘You forget,’ I said. ‘I don’t care.’

‘Your not caring is a big part of the problem.’

‘What I mean is that I don’t care what happens to me.’

Ramsay leaned forward and switched off the machine. ‘I can honestly tell you there’s a bit of me that would like to toss you into a cell right now for fucking us around the way you have. I can tell you that judges do not like people who get in the way of inquiries. If we charged you now, you’d be facing six months inside, a year if you pulled the wrong judge – and that’s just for not coming forward sooner. I don’t need to tell you there are more serious considerations at stake here. Murder, Ms Falkner. Murder.’

At that moment I thought suddenly that it would be an immense relief to be arrested and charged, convicted and sent to prison. It would halt my endless, hopeless, undirected need to do something. Clearly I had done the wrong thing. I had lied to so many people. Above all – below all – I had lied to Frances. I had betrayed her trust and now she was dead. If I had stayed at home and grieved, as everybody had told me to, and in the end gone back to my work, this probably wouldn’t have happened and maybe, just maybe, Frances would still be alive. I cared about the crimes I had committed. It was possible that my lies and cowardice had stopped Frances’s murder being solved quickly. Maybe I had destroyed an essential clue. But what seemed even more painful was that Frances had thought of me as her friend, as someone she could trust, and everything she had thought she knew about me was a lie.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I deserve to be punished. I’m not going to defend myself.’

‘You bet you fucking deserve it,’ said Ramsay. ‘And don’t pull that pathetic act with us because it won’t work. Maybe we will charge you, and not just for behaving like an idiot either. I’ll need to talk to some people about that. We’re going to think about it. In the meantime, you’re going to supply any physical evidence you have. The clothes you were wearing would be a help.’

‘I’ve probably washed them.’

‘Why was I expecting you to say that?’ said Ramsay.

‘Were you wearing a jacket or a coat?’ said DI Bosworth, speaking for the first time.

‘A jacket,’ I said. ‘I haven’t washed that.’

‘And shoes?’ she continued.

‘Yes, and I haven’t washed them.’

‘When you return home,’ said Ramsay, ‘an officer will accompany you in order to collect any items that may be relevant to the investigation.’

‘So I’m going home?’ I said.

‘Until we decide differently,’ said Ramsay. ‘But before that, you’re going to give us the mother of all statements.’