Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

‘How, and why?’ Simon chewed the inside of his lip, thinking. ‘And even if she tried to, would Haworth really go along with it? I wondered about that, and decided it was impossible. Unlikely, at least.’

‘I can answer the why,’ said Gibbs. ‘She’s a pervert. She gets a sexual kick out of knowing her husband’s knobbing these women who have already been knobbed by the rapist. Whoever he is.’

‘But then Haworth’d have to contrive to meet them and strike up a relationship with them—it’s too much effort. What’s in it for him? Is he also a pervert? And who’s to say the women’d want to get involved with him?’

‘That’s the kick, for both of them,’ Gibbs persisted. ‘Her arranging the rapes, then him fucking the victims. Spices up their sex life. That ’s why Robert Haworth isn’t doing the rapes himself. The women’d hardly go out with him if they recognised him as the man who raped them, would they?’

Sellers couldn’t see it. ‘Kombothekra said Sandy Freeguard never had sex with Haworth. She wanted to, he didn’t. And he’s been seeing Naomi Jenkins for a year. Why so long, if it’s just so he and his wife can get their rocks off?’

‘Is it possible for a couple to suffer, jointly, from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy?’ Simon wondered aloud. He wasn’t hopeful, but it was a theory. Sometimes the bad ones led on to good ones. ‘If it is, perhaps the idea’s that Juliet arranges the ordeal, then Robert comes along afterwards and looks after the women, helps them recover, rebuilds their confidence. Kombothekra said Sandy Freeguard complained about Haworth trying to mollycoddle her. He didn’t want her to do too much too soon. Wouldn’t have sex with her, for that reason.’

He frowned, seeing the flaw in what he was putting forward. ‘But Naomi Jenkins didn’t even tell him she was raped, and from what she’s told us, it sounds as if he treated her completely differently, not like a victim at all. The two of them went to bed together within a couple of hours of meeting.’

‘It’s bollocks.’ Gibbs yawned. ‘I’ve never heard of couples having Munchausen’s by proxy. It’s an individual thing. You wouldn’t talk about it, would you? How would they find out they both had it?’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Simon. ‘I might check with an expert, though.’

‘Expert!’ Gibbs scoffed.

‘It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever come across,’ said Sellers, his forehead creased with concentration. ‘Robert Haworth’s got to be the link—Juliet knew the MO for the rapes, and two of the victims went on to be Haworth’s girlfriends . . . but that’s it, isn’t it? They went on to be his girlfriends. Does it make sense to say he’s the link when he only met Freeguard and Jenkins after they’d been kidnapped and raped?’

Simon ran his finger around the circumference of his pint glass. ‘“Human uncertainty is all that makes the human reason strong. We never know until we fall that every word we speak is wrong.”’

‘What the fuck’s that?’ Gibbs snapped.

‘Juliet Haworth wrote it down for us,’ said Sellers.

‘It’s by a C. H. Sisson,’ said Simon. ‘He died recently. The poem’s called “Uncertainty”.’

‘Great. Let’s set up a fucking reading group,’ said Gibbs.

‘Do you think it means anything?’ asked Sellers. ‘Was Juliet Haworth trying to give us some sort of message?’

‘Loud and clear.’ Gibbs looked disgusted. ‘She’s taking the piss. Give me ten minutes alone with her . . .’

‘She’s implying that we’re wrong about everything.’ Simon tried not to sound as depressed as he felt. ‘That we’ll only realise how wrong when it’s too late.’ Or perhaps that she herself had only realised, too late, that she was wrong about Robert, and that was why she tried to kill him? No, that was reading too much into it, surely.

Simon changed the subject. ‘How did you do with the backgrounds? Is there anything in Juliet Haworth’s that looks like it might lead us to her accomplice, assuming she’s got one?’

‘I’ve got a list of names of old friends, one or two business contacts, ’ said Sellers. ‘Her parents were helpful.’ And distraught to hear that their only child had been charged with attempted murder. Telling them that hadn’t been a pleasant task.

‘Business as in making and selling her pottery cottages?’

‘Yeah. She did pretty well with it. Remmicks stocked some of her stuff for a while.’

‘So she’s got a head for business.’ Gibbs looked pleased with himself. ‘Tell him the interesting bit.’

‘I was just about to.’ Sellers turned back to Simon. ‘She’s not seen them for years, the names on the list. She’s not seen anyone but her husband, basically, since she had a nervous breakdown in 2001 due to overwork.’

‘She doesn’t seem the nervous type,’ said Simon, remembering Juliet Haworth’s confident manner; regal, almost. ‘The opposite. Are you sure?’

Sellers gave him a withering look. ‘I’ve spoken to the woman who was her doctor at the time,’ he said. ‘Juliet Haworth didn’t get out of bed for six months. She’d worked like a maniac for years, apparently, without a break, no holidays. She just . . . burned out.’

‘Was she married to Robert then?’

‘No. She lived alone before the breakdown, then moved back in with her parents after. She married Robert in 2002. I spoke to both her parents this morning, at length. Norman and Joan Heslehurst. Both say there’s no way Juliet would harm Robert. But then they also insist she would want to speak to them and have them visit her, and we know she doesn’t.’

‘They won’t be lying,’ said Gibbs. ‘They want to feel needed. Parents, aren’t they?’

‘Juliet and Robert met in a video shop,’ Sellers continued to fill Simon in. ‘In Sissinghurst, Kent. Blockbuster, on Stammers Road, near where the Heslehursts live. It was one of Juliet’s first trips out, after the breakdown. She’d forgotten to take her purse and got upset when she got to the counter and realised. Robert Haworth was in the shop, in the queue behind her. He paid for her video and made sure she got home safely. Both parents seem to regard him as a bit of a saint. Joan Heslehurst’s as upset about Robert as she is about Juliet. She says they’ve got him to thank for getting Juliet back on her feet. He was brilliant with her, apparently.’

Simon didn’t like the sound of any of that, though he wasn’t sure why. It sounded a bit too neat. He’d have to think about it. ‘What was Haworth doing in a video shop in Kent? Where did he live at the time?’

‘He bought the Spilling house just before his and Juliet’s wedding,’ said Gibbs. ‘Before that, who knows. Fucking black hole’s all the background we’ve got on him so far.’

‘Was it something specific about Juliet Haworth’s work that caused the breakdown?’ asked Simon. ‘Some change in her situation or circumstances?’

Gibbs leaned over to growl at a passing waitress about the food and why it was taking so long.

‘She was becoming more and more successful,’ said Sellers. ‘Her mum said she was fine at the beginning, while the business was still struggling. It was when it started to do well that she fell apart.’

‘Makes no sense,’ said Gibbs.

‘Yeah, it does,’ said Simon. ‘When things start to go right, that’s when the pressure’s really on. You’ve got to keep it up, haven’t you?’

‘Juliet’s mum said she ran herself into the ground, worked day and night, stopped going out. She was completely driven. Always had been.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Simon.

‘She was a high-flier all her life, before the breakdown. She was head girl at both her primary school and her secondary. An athlete too—she competed at county level, won bucket-loads of prizes. She was in the choir, got a music scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, which she turned down, went to art college instead . . .’