Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

‘How do you know that?’ Sergeant Zailer takes her eyes off the road, interrogating me with her sharp glare.

‘I’ve got nothing you’d regard as evidence,’ I tell her. ‘But I’m sure it’s true.’

‘Right.’ She sounds bitter. ‘So that pottery model of the chalet, the same chalet you saw through the window while you were being assaulted . . . Juliet just guessed what it looked like, did she? Divine inspiration. Nothing to do with her putting on rape shows with the help of Graham Angilley and her husband, and knowing exactly where they took place.’

‘I said she wasn’t responsible for the rapes. I never said she hadn’t seen that chalet.’

‘So . . . you mean Graham Angilley asked her to make a model of it? Because he knew its significance even if she didn’t?’ She smokes furiously as she demolishes what she thinks is my theory. ‘But Juliet told us what had happened to you, for fuck’s sake! She guessed you’d accused Robert of raping you—she knew all the details. If she wasn’t involved, how the hell would she know?’

I can’t believe she hasn’t got there yet. She’s supposed to be a detective. But she doesn’t know you, Robert—that’s why she’s lagging behind. It’s why I was lagging behind, the first time I spoke to Juliet in a police interview room. Your wife knew you better than I did at that point.

Not anymore.

‘Juliet knew what had happened to me because it happened to her too.’ Am I saying this aloud? Yes; it seems I am. ‘The man, Graham Angilley—he raped her too.’

‘ What? ’ Sergeant Zailer pulls over on to the hard shoulder. The screech of the tyres makes me wince.

‘Think about it. All the women Graham Angilley raped were successful professional women. Juliet was too, until she had a breakdown. That’s why she had one: because she was raped. She was tied to the same bed as I was, on the same stage—mezzanine, whatever. There will have been an audience, men eating and drinking. And while she was tied to that bed, she saw exactly what I saw through the window. She made a model of it. She put it in the display cabinet in her living room.’ I stop, fill my lungs with air.

‘Go on,’ says Sergeant Zailer.

‘She didn’t know Robert knew what had happened to her, so she had no reason to think the little pottery house with the blue arched door would be familiar to him . . . Like me, she hadn’t told anyone what had been done to her. She was too ashamed. It’s not easy, to go from being envied and successful to being pitied.’

‘But Robert did know, didn’t he? And when he met Juliet in the video shop that night, it wasn’t a chance meeting.’

‘No. Nor when he met me at the service station. He must have followed us both, for weeks, maybe months. And Sandy Freeguard. Didn’t you say she crashed her car into his? He was within crashing distance because he was following her too. That was the pattern: his brother raped us, then Robert followed us until he was able to arrange a so-called chance meeting.’

‘Why?’ Sergeant Zailer leans towards me, as if greater proximity will coax the answer from me. ‘Why did he want to meet and start relationships with his brother’s victims?’

I don’t answer.

‘Naomi, you’ve got to tell me. I could charge you with obstruction.’

‘Charge me with high treason if you want. What do I give a shit?’

Charlie Zailer sighs. ‘What about Prue Kelvey? She doesn’t fit the pattern. Robert raped her, and she saw him before he put the mask on her. He couldn’t follow her and contrive a meeting, couldn’t become her boyfriend.’

‘Juliet tried to kill Robert because she found out he knew about her rape all along. Probably the only reason she was able to marry him, or even to look him in the face, was because she was sure he didn’t know, sure he’d never know. In his eyes, her dignity was intact. She wasn’t . . . violated and disgusting; she was how she used to be. But Robert did know, and Juliet found out, and she realised he’d been lying to her for years, letting her think her secret was safe, and her privacy, but actually all the time . . .’ I swallow hard, trying to quell the lurching in my chest. ‘She thought he’d been laughing at her behind her back, that the whole relationship was a mockery, him taunting her. His secret knowledge was a way of having power over her, power he could wield at any time, or keep in reserve for as long as he wanted. He didn’t need to tell her he knew until he was ready, didn’t have to tell her at all if he didn’t want to.’

Charlie Zailer frowns. ‘Are you saying this is how it was, or how Juliet saw it?’

‘How she saw it. I’m explaining why she tried to kill him.’

She nods.

‘I won’t speak to her again. Juliet. Those interviews—I’m not doing it again.’

Your wife is out of control, Robert. Well, I don’t need to tell you that, do I? Talk about stating the obvious. So far she’s been content to goad me with her maddening ambiguities. If I talk to her again, she will become more explicit, step up her campaign of hate. She will start to tell me things, and I can’t allow that to happen. Next time I come to the hospital, I want to tell you what I know in my heart and soul, not what I’ve been told. There’s a big difference; it’s the difference between power and helplessness. I know you’d understand, even if Sergeant Zailer wouldn’t.

‘How did Juliet find out that Robert knew?’ she asks me. ‘Do you know that too?’ An uncomfortable silence fills the car, one I am determined not to break. ‘Naomi, this is no time to clam up! Jesus! How did she know? Why did Robert want to go out with women his brother had attacked? Why? ’ She taps the dashboard with her fingernails. ‘You know, everything you’ve just told me about Juliet could be true of you as well. You didn’t know Robert knew about what had happened to you, did you? But he did. Perhaps you’re the one who feels he was laughing at you behind your back, wielding some sort of sick power, manipulating you. Perhaps you want revenge, and that’s why you want to go to the hospital—to finish off what Juliet started.’

‘I want to see Robert because I need to talk to him,’ I say. ‘I need to explain something to him. Something private that’s between me and him.’ Just the two of us, Robert, and nobody else. It’s what I’ve always wanted.

25

4/8/06

THEY ARRIVED AS daylight began to fade. Charlie didn’t stop where she should have, in the circular gravelled area where chalet guests parked their cars. Instead, she drove up on to the grass, feeling the muffled bump beneath the car. She kept up a steady pressure on the accelerator. There was only one thing in her mind and that was the necessity to keep going, keep looking straight ahead, not allow herself to think too much. How many times had she wondered, about both the victims and the perpetrators of violent crimes, how they had done it, how they had made themselves carry on? Now she understood: the trick was to avoid, at all costs, seeing the full picture, the overview. To avoid seeing yourself.

Charlie slammed her foot down on the brake only when the blue door with the arched top was right in front of the windscreen. Her and Olivia’s chalet. Not long ago, she’d leaned against that door, smoking a cigarette and talking to Simon on her mobile phone while Graham waited in her bed. It would be easy to think, And now . . . , but Charlie wasn’t going to fall into that trap. Thinking about the past in relation to the present and the future would be enough to make her lose it, and she couldn’t risk that. She was here to get the information she needed from Graham and Steph; that was what she had to focus on.