The Next to Die, page 14
Charlie knew better than to ask Simon if he was thinking along the same lines. He always took longer to tell her when she seemed desperate to know.
She steered the car to the left to miss a dark lump on the road: brown with patches of red. She looked away quickly to avoid seeing spikes if there were any there to see, and she told herself it probably wasn’t a hedgehog. The thought of hedgehogs or elephants being killed bothered her in a way that animal deaths in general didn’t.
Simon didn’t know this about her. She wanted to tell him, but now wasn’t the time. If he wasn’t paying attention to her description of Beloved, which he’d asked about, then the topic of disproportionate sympathy for hedgehogs was unlikely to engage him.
“I was into Sue Grafton’s A Is for Alibi series at the time,” Charlie reminisced aloud. “I really resented having to read anything I hadn’t chosen myself—bit inconvenient when you’re studying English Lit!—and I raced through Beloved without paying too much attention because I couldn’t wait to start D Is for Deadbeat or whichever one was next. I remember that the heroine was a woman called Sethe. She killed her baby daughter to save her from a life of being a slave. She loved her so much, she couldn’t bear the thought of her going through the suffering and horrors that she—the mother—had been through. Oh—the dedication was memorably chilling. It wasn’t ‘To’ or ‘For’ anyone, like normal dedications, it just said, ‘Sixty million and more,’ meaning all the black Americans murdered by slavery.”
“It has to mean something that Billy—or someone—sent that book to Halliday, that particular novel. Why Beloved?”
“The answer to that question’s only relevant if Billy sent it.”
“Which we’re officially eighty percent certain he did, and probably more like ninety-nine percent certain unofficially,” Simon reminded her. He dug his thumbnail into the pad of his index finger, turning it from pink to white. “It makes no sense. He’s already killed four times. If he wants to kill Sondra Halliday, why not do it? Why’s that morally wrong when killing the others isn’t?”
“If I had to guess? Sondra Halliday hasn’t got a best friend, so in his eyes she doesn’t deserve it.”
“Having a best friend isn’t a capital offense.”
“Simon, he’s a serial killer, not the Archbishop of Canterbury. Maybe he’s morally confused, to put it politely.”
“Letter doesn’t sound confused,” Simon muttered.
“I followed Liv yesterday.” Charlie half hoped he wouldn’t be listening.
“Followed her where?”
Damn. “To Cambridge.”
“You mean . . . followed her without her knowing?”
“Yup. A proper undercover surveillance operation.” Charlie was tempted to take her voice to a falsely upbeat pitch: a defense against the frown lines she knew were etching themselves more deeply into Simon’s brow with each word she uttered. She resisted the temptation and spoke normally. “We met for coffee in London. Liv suggested the venue: a place called Drink, Shop & Do—about fourteen footsteps from King’s Cross station. That’s not her neck of the woods and the café was everything she’d normally hate, so I had a feeling she’d be catching a train from King’s Cross after she’d said good-bye to me. I asked her if she was, and she denied it—said she’d chosen somewhere near King’s Cross because she knew that was where I’d be coming in to. Seemingly she’d forgotten she’d never done that ever before, even though I’ve been catching trains from Spilling to King’s Cross for many years—”
“This isn’t doing you any good, Char,” Simon cut in. “It’s become an obsession.”
“Says the man who’s never been obsessed with uncovering the truth.”
“That’s different. When it’s work—”
“Liv’s my sister, Simon. I have to know, whatever it is. You used to feel the same way, remember? Last time I followed Liv to Cambridge, you were with me.”
“Yeah. I also want to know, but . . . there’s a limit to how much prying you can and should do when it’s someone else’s private business. Let yourself be driven to extremes, and the result can be catastrophic.”
“Wow.” Charlie giggled. “You’re a really . . . abstract, non-specific harbinger of doom, aren’t you? ‘Do a thing, and a thing might happen—scary scary!’ Why the change of tune? This wasn’t your attitude at first. You know what I think? I reckon you assumed it’d be easier than it has been to find out the truth. We stalked Liv and Gibbs all the way to Cambridge—I thought that’d be enough; we’d definitely come back with the answer. But it wasn’t enough, and rather than risk more failure, you decided to pretend to respect their privacy.”
“I felt like a prurient creep.” Simon’s voice sounded thinned out. “Whatever they’re up to, it’s not our business.”
“Right. So I shouldn’t tell you what happened when I followed Liv yesterday?”
Simon swore under his breath. “Tell me. Following her’s wrong, though. You can’t do that to someone you know. It’s not about her—I know she’s not being straight with us, but . . . it’s about how you want to behave, or it should be. The kind of person you want to be.”
“Well, that’s easy.” Charlie smiled to herself. “I want to be the kind of person who uses her cunning and ingenuity to find out the truth about her lying toe-rag of a sister. And—would you believe it?—that’s who I am!”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I like your extra-strict voice. Very sexy.”
Simon no longer flinched when Charlie said “sexy” or “sex.” He didn’t seem to be afraid of the act itself these days either. He was mellowing in many ways—all ways, really, that didn’t relate to his work. He now ate food in pubs and occasionally restaurants in front of other people, not just Charlie, without being in a bad mood about it and trying to find a way to avoid it happening. For the first time in years, Charlie had a sex life that made her happy. The only downside was that the unmistakable change for the better could never be mentioned or, God forbid, discussed. Simon was still Simon; an attempt to drag it into the light might drive him away again. Charlie wasn’t prepared to risk it. Unable to talk about the improvement and the possible reasons behind it, she felt as if she couldn’t rely on it lasting.
“Well?” Simon was still waiting for her amateur sleuthing report.
“I pretended to get the tube—went down into the underground so that I was out of sight, counted to ten, then went back up again to street level. There was no sign of Liv. I thought, ‘Well, I’ve lost her, haven’t I?’ As you do if you say good-bye to someone in central London and then walk away. Chances of finding them again are close to zero, but I headed toward the main station, feeling stupid about my hunch that was probably going to amount to nothing, and there she was. I followed her into the station. She went to stand in front of the high-up screens with the train times on. I hovered at a safe distance, closer to Kiosk than to her—”
“To where?”
“Kiosk. You know,” Charlie said impatiently. “The place sort of under the arch that does the amazing hot sandwiches—pork and applesauce, salt beef . . . I usually get the pork one. It’s so good. They always give you a free bit of crackling with it too, which is the best bit.”
“Never heard of it,” said Simon.
“It doesn’t matter. Point is, I kept out of the way, and Liv didn’t see me. She was in a world of her own anyway, not looking out for me.”
“She’d said good-bye to you. Most people don’t expect to be tailed.”
“Especially not by their sisters!” Charlie tried to sound as proud as she could of her achievement, to counter Simon’s disapproving tone. “I assumed she was heading to Spilling to meet Gibbs after work, though it was a bit early still. Why would she go so early? I hovered in the doorway of WHSmith and made sure to stay well behind her. Every time she looked as if she might be turning in my direction, I ducked into the shop and hid. I could still see her clearly—I had a good vantage point, peering out from behind a big square ‘Deal of the Week’ board.”
“She could easily have seen you.”
“Yeah, I know. Luckily, she didn’t. If she had, I’d have said, “Just suddenly had a craving for a can of Dr Pepper, so I came back up from the tube”—a barefaced lie I’d have been quite happy telling. I find it hard to persuade myself I owe her any honesty at all these days.”
“So what happened?” Simon asked. “She caught a train?”
“Yes, about ten minutes later, to Cambridge.”
“Hardly surprising. We know Liv’s got friends in Cambridge—we’ve followed her and Gibbs there before.”
“Oh, come on, for God’s sake!” Charlie’s forehead felt hot. So did her palms on the steering wheel. “Suddenly you’re all ‘Yawn, yawn, nothing to see here.’ This isn’t personal for you like it is for me, Simon. Imagine if it was your mother behaving like Liv. You’d have to know, wouldn’t you? That’s how I feel. I have to find out.”
“Yeah,” Simon breathed. To Charlie it sounded like someone giving up.
She was too embarrassed to describe her elation that was as strong now as the day before: she’d followed Liv, and she’d completed her mission successfully. As a result, she had new information. Ever since, she’d felt as if there were a helium balloon inside her, giving her a floating-above-everything sensation. Why was it so frowned upon to be noticeably excited once you were a grown-up?
The strange thing about it was her being police. Before she’d transferred out of CID, Charlie had worked on many serious crime investigations, closed plenty of cases, found out useful information that had helped to identify and put away criminals, so why did illicitly following her sister to Cambridge feel like the most exciting thing she’d ever done?
Illicit. It was all there, in that word. As a detective, it had been her job, and therefore less fun, to poke around in other people’s business. There was also the novelty factor. Charlie could barely believe it, but it was true: in all her years as a DC and then a DS, she’d never straightforwardly tailed somebody one-to-one. Doing so—even better, to her own sister—had given her a rush of joyful adrenaline that was hard to describe. She’d found herself hoping it would take many more months to get to the bottom of Liv’s deception.
“Has Gibbs ever mentioned a Nikhil Gulati to you?” she asked Simon. “Liv hasn’t to me.”
He didn’t take the bait.
“That’s his name—the male half of the couple we saw Liv and Gibbs with in Cambridge that time. Shall I tell you how I know? When Liv got on the Cambridge train, I did too. I watched her make a beeline for the first coach—first class; only the best for Liv!—and made sure to get on a few coaches along, in standard. It was a train for King’s Lynn, but it stopped at Cambridge, and I had a strong suspicion that was Liv’s destination, so that’s where I got off, concealing myself in a swarm of business suits. Liv was just ahead of me, at the ticket barrier. Again, I was lucky. She didn’t see me.”
“Very lucky,” said Simon.
They’d arrived at the police station parking lot. Charlie drove past two narrow spaces and pulled into one with no car on either side of it. She turned off the engine.
“I followed her out of the station. There’s a turning circle immediately in front of it, and a taxi queue to the right. I expected Liv to go for a cab, but instead she headed left and went to stand at the edge of the circle. I thought, ‘She’s waiting for someone to come and pick her up,’ and sure enough, a few minutes later, a Skoda pulls up, the window comes down and there he is—Nikhil Gulati. I didn’t know that was his name then, obviously. I’m jumping ahead.”
“Can the rest wait?” asked Simon, opening the passenger door. “I’ve got work to do.”
“You know what I think? You’re secretly pissed off that I’m the one who’s found all this out and not you. No, it can’t wait! The rest won’t take long. I’d have told you sooner if you hadn’t been obsessing about that old woman and her Asda van.”
“I want to interview her myself,” Simon murmured, his eyes glazing over.
Charlie raised her voice. “I bribed my way to the front of the taxi queue—literally, I shoved a twenty-quid note in the hand of the first woman in the queue, leapt in a cab and yelled, ‘Quick, follow that Skoda!’”
“Wouldn’t have been any consolation for all the others waiting,” said Simon.
“God, you’re right! Let’s worry about them forever.” Charlie opened her door, pulled her cigarettes out of her bag and lit one with the lighter inside the packet. “I was sure the car-chase ruse wouldn’t work, but, amazingly, it did. My cabbie was able to stay close enough to the Skoda to see each turn it took. Around the ring road we went, past the Backs, and we ended up on a side street next to the Punter pub. Nikhil parked, he and Liv got out; into the pub they went . . . Once the coast was clear, I got out of my taxi, gave the driver a large tip—”
“Expensive day,” Simon observed.
“. . . and set about peering discreetly in through the windows. The woman was there: Nikhil’s girlfriend, partner, whatever—she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. I still don’t know her name. For the next two hours, she, Nikhil and Liv had lunch. I’m guessing you don’t want to know what each of them ate? Because I could tell you.” Charlie grinned to herself. “My surveillance detail was that successful.”
“Skip it.”
“Eventually they finished lunch and asked for the bill. Liv paid. They all got back into the Skoda and headed off. I’d had time to hide, meanwhile, behind a parked van. When I was certain they’d driven off, I went in and threw a bit of my police weight around, in the nicest way possible. I found out the table had been booked by a Nikhil Gulati. I’ve Googled him—he works for a wine company.”
“How is it helpful to know that?”
Charlie held her breath for a few seconds. Then she said, “You’d have thought three people having lunch together might chat, wouldn’t you? They didn’t.”
This snagged Simon’s interest. Finally. “They sat in silence?”
“Oh, no, they talked. Nonstop, but it was . . . I don’t know, a business meeting or a planning session for a bank heist or something. There was nothing casual or relaxed about the conversation—and believe me, you didn’t have to be an expert on facial expressions and body language to work that out. I tried to lip-read and failed.”
“It’s easy to misinterpret something you see through a window,” said Simon.
“You’re thinking about Muriel Pearson and the Asda van again, aren’t you?”
“I’m thinking I need to go and speak to her. But James Wing’d find out, and it’s his patch. He’d want in.”
“As you would if Wing wanted to ask questions unilaterally on your patch,” said Charlie.
“True. But I don’t want him around for this.”
“For a particular reason, or just your usual megalomania?” Charlie took a long, deep drag of her cigarette. Knowing there would be no reply, she didn’t wait. “Why are you so fixated on this old lady?” She always vowed not to ask, and she always ended up begging.
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Simon.
“No. Like everything else you think is obvious—no, it isn’t.”
“I’ve told you what was said at the London briefing yesterday. Word for word.”
“And still I fail to intuit your conclusions, spoilsport that I am. So what’s the real reason you’re not tearing down to Poole to grill this old biddy? Don’t pretend you give a toss about offending James Wing.”
“I’m not ready yet.”
“What would have to happen for you to be ready?” Charlie threw her cigarette end out of the car, squashed it with her shoe, then climbed out and stretched her legs.
Simon followed her lead. He slammed the passenger door shut. “I want to be surer of the answer I’ll get before I ask the question,” he said.
“Follow that logic and—”
“Yes. That’s what I’d like. To know, without asking. Just listen in silence to all the shit everyone spouts all day long, and work it out in my head, and know. Only speak when I’m certain. I’m sick as fuck of asking this, that, the other. It’s demeaning.”
And a crucial part of your job.
No point in saying it.
“I like the sound of this new regime,” Charlie said instead. She pulled a red lipstick out of her bag and ran it over her lips as they walked up the steps to the front door of the station. “When you’ve given up asking questions, can you start answering them instead? That would be amazing! Let’s practice now. I’ll ask, you answer. What is it about an old woman stupidly thinking a picture on a van is a real person that’s obsessing you so much?”
“Her son.” Simon’s eyes were cloudy and distant. “He was the one who rang up James Wing and said his mother had made an embarrassing mistake—and we weren’t even told his name! Wing didn’t think it worth mentioning.”
“You think the son could be Billy?”
“What? No.” Simon looked confused, then annoyed, like someone who’d had his concentration broken by the blare of a car alarm. “I mean, he might be, but I doubt it. I’d better go.”
He pushed through the double doors into the building. Charlie did the same a few seconds later. He hadn’t bothered to hold them open for her. He never did.
* * *
“Books are important!” Sam Kombothekra raised his voice to be heard over the lunchtime din in the Brown Cow.
“As part of a healthy lifestyle, Sergeant?” asked Proust. Simon stopped himself from smiling just in time. He’d never laughed at one of the Snowman’s witticisms and wanted to keep it that way.
“I’m waiting till the food arrives,” said Gibbs. “I’m fucking starving.”
“Waiting to do what, Detective? Burst into song?”
“Talk,” Gibbs clarified.
Sellers was pushing his way through the crowd toward their table. He had a pint in one hand and was unbuttoning his coat with the other. “Congratulate me,” he said.
