Die of Shame (20 page)

Interesting group response to Diana’s desire to talk about ex-husband, daughter etc. General unwillingness to collude in avoidance of group work which is very positive. Diana still struggling with here and now concept as are others. Will focus next session on H&N exercises.
 

Robin extremely angry about situation that has developed outside group. No surprise that Chris seems to be the focus, but I refused to allow this conflict to be brought into the circle. Sure it will surface next week during exercises, but will try to harness it.
 

Diana’s story about bullying at school extremely illuminating. Shame is still triggering angry responses to her current situation. Disclosure will be positive for her at this stage. Caroline and Heather both supportive. Group seems to be learning that I am not the only agent of help within the circle.
 

Chris clearly thrown by Robin’s anger but continues to maintain façade. Jokes, cutting remarks, non-verbal responses etc. Still unwilling to face rejection for who he really is. Perhaps his own story will help him come to terms with it. Will speak to him during the week to encourage this.
 

Despite degree of external conflict, I feel that enough trust and cohesion has been established to allow more provocative positions to be taken during sessions. Group feels not just ready for confrontation but actively seeking it.
 

When Tony steps out of his office, the stench of weed from his daughter’s bedroom is almost overpowering. Nina is cooking dinner downstairs, but he knows she will probably be able to smell it, even above the onions and the garlic. She will want to talk about it when he goes down, to hector him. It’s his job, after all. His area of expertise.

He’s tired, and he can’t face another argument, at least not one with Nina.

It seems like as good a time as any.

He climbs the short flight of stairs to the top floor, where his daughter’s room sits next to a spare room filled with Nina’s gym equipment and a second bathroom which Emma is supposed to use, but never does.

The music is almost as overpowering as the smell, so Tony knocks hard. He waits, knocks again, then opens the door.

Emma is lying on her bed. Her eyes are closed, but Tony doesn’t know if that means she’s unaware of his presence. He quickly clocks the remnants of the joint in the ashtray, the tobacco tin, the hash pipe on her bedside table.

He says his daughter’s name, then shouts it. She opens her eyes and he shouts again. ‘Turn it down, please.’

She fumbles for a remote and lazily points it at the music system that he and Nina bought her at Christmas; the system that cost way more than his own. Tony can’t remember the last time he sat and listened to anything properly: Bowie or Dylan or one of the old Nick Drake albums he loves so much. He listens to music in the car sometimes, but it’s not the same. Even thinking it, wishing there was more time to relax and enjoy something that means so much to him, he realises that he associates all the music he really loves with being high.

Is that how his daughter will be in years to come? When she looks back and thinks about whatever the hell it is she’s listening to right now?

She turns her head and looks at him. Her pupils are dilated, the whites splintered red all around them. She says, ‘What?’ and the smile makes it clear that she finds his very presence amusing, as though a mysterious figure of fun has walked into her room. Not for the first time, Tony asks himself how his daughter sees him, high or otherwise. How old does he seem to her? How stupid? How ludicrously out of touch with… everything?

‘I’m wondering why you feel the need to smoke quite so much weed,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Look, generally we don’t have a problem with it, in moderation. You know that. I’m well aware that all your mates do it.’ He stops. His daughter is shaking her head and the smile has gone. ‘What?’

‘Why the hell are you always talking to me like I’m one of your patients?’

‘I don’t have patients. I have clients.’

‘Whatever they are.’

‘I’m not.’

She lowers her voice and it drips with mock sincerity. ‘“I’m wondering why you feel the need”… you should listen to yourself.’

Tony steps over a pile of discarded clothes. He picks up a tangle of headphones, an empty water bottle, a magazine, and puts them on Emma’s desk. ‘And you should see yourself.’ He takes care to sound nice and calm, reasonable. ‘Really, Em, I mean it. It’s got out of hand now and if you’re not careful you’re going to screw everything up. School and uni, everything.’

‘Here comes the lecture,’ she says. ‘It’s so boring.’

‘Do you not think I know what I’m talking about?’

‘That’s the whole point,’ she says. ‘Why should I listen to you when you’ve done so much worse than this… and please don’t give me any of that gateway drug stuff, because you know it’s not true.’ She raises her head from the pillow, but she is speaking slowly, as though the words are an effort. ‘I’ve read all the stuff on the internet, so I know that’s rubbish and I also know that weed is way less harmful than booze, so maybe it’s Mum you should be talking to and not me.’

‘Look, I know it sounds stupid, coming from me, but the stuff you’re smoking is so much stronger than it was in my day.’

Again she mimics him. ‘In my day…’

‘Seriously, there’s a lot of research out there linking it with latent psychosis, all right? The worst that could happen back then was the munchies.’

Emma laughs; a moment of connection. ‘Oh yeah, I get them as well.’

‘I’m not joking,’ Tony says. ‘And why the hell should we be paying for this, anyway? Giving you money just so you can get off your tits and treat us like shit?’

She looks at him, then blinks, as though she’s only just remembered that he’s there; that they are in the middle of an argument.

‘You’re so sad,’ she says.

‘Am I?’

‘And you’re only taking it out on me because you’re scared of Mum.’

‘Taking what out?’

‘The fact that you can’t have any of the fun you used to and your life is completely boring.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ There’s a beanbag a few feet away and Tony fights the urge to kick it across the room. ‘And anyway, I stopped listening to people who were stoned a long time ago.’

‘Exactly,’ Emma says. ‘You’ve got nothing in your whole life that’s exciting. That gets you off. You sit there and listen to people who are struggling and fucked up and maybe it makes you feel a bit better about yourself, but all the time you’re thinking about how great it was to get off your face back then.’

‘You really don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘So the closest thing you can have to any excitement is to suck up a bit of theirs… to listen to their stories and flirt with that skinny junkie, the one with the short hair.’

‘
What
?
’

‘But you can’t have her either, can you? Because you’re stuck with us. Poor old Dad.’

‘Where the hell do you get this from?’

‘You know exactly who I mean.’

‘Really, I don’t.’

‘The one Mum’s got such a thing about.’

‘
Heather
?
You mean Heather? Oh, for Christ’s sake…’

‘Thank you
so
much for coming to my party.’ The cod northern accent is laid on thick. ‘It meant
so
much, and that birthday cake you bought was
gorgeous
.’

Tony stares. Has she been reading his texts? Or perhaps she overheard a phone conversation. Something that was said at the session.

Emma nods, knowingly. She moans and says it nice and slowly, like the name itself is enough to turn him on. ‘Heather…’

Tony struggles to find the right words, to comprehend the level of hatred he feels for his own daughter at that moment. He watches her smile, sees her dark eyes narrow and focus on something behind him, before slowly closing. She lays her head back down, and when Tony turns round to leave, he sees Nina standing in the doorway.

‘It’s a different world down here, isn’t it?’ Chall said.

It was hard to disagree as Tanner drove them slowly towards the centre of leafy Barnes, passing the hundred acre wetland centre in the loop of the Thames, then crossing the common. Though Tanner’s place in Hammersmith was no more than ten minutes away, directly opposite them on the north side of the river, they might as well have been in a different city.

Chall stared out of the passenger window as they passed a deli, an organic butcher’s, an estate agent that looked as though it could have been Grade Two listed.

‘Fancy a game of “Spot the Asian”?’

‘I don’t think we’ve got enough time,’ Tanner said.

Chall laughed and Tanner became acutely aware of the fact that, despite having worked with him for almost eight months, she had no idea where her sergeant lived. Or if he had kids. Not for the first time, she told herself that she should make the effort to get to know those she worked alongside better, to socialise more. The last thing she wanted was to let on that she didn’t know, so she made a mental note to ask one of the team what Dipak Chall’s domestic set-up was.

‘So how did it go with the boss then?’ Chall asked.

‘Just the usual,’ Tanner said. Within five minutes of arriving at work, she had been standing in DCI Martin Ditchburn’s office, updating him on progress with the Heather Finlay case.

It had not taken long.

She told him that they had managed to track down a woman the victim had been at college with ten years before. Joanne Simmit had seen Heather’s name in the papers, she said, and had been wondering if it was the same one. After telling Tanner how awful it was, how full of life Heather had been back then, she went on to tell more or less the same story as Heather’s father had. Heather had been seeing a boy for six months or so, Simmit said, though she did not know if he was a student, or someone she had met outside. She thought he might have been called John, but it was a long time ago. Then a bit later there had been another man about whom she knew next to nothing. She had seen him and Heather in a restaurant once, which is the only reason she knew he was older, but she had never spoken to Heather about it.

In truth, they had not been particularly close friends.

‘I’m not sure there’s much down that road anyway,’ Tanner had said. She’d told her boss that she did not believe someone from Heather Finlay’s past had suddenly resurfaced and was responsible for her death. That she was sure her killer had been someone rather more familiar to her. ‘I still think this group is our best bet.’

Ditchburn had faith in her, Tanner knew, but she also knew how many plates he was juggling.

‘Don’t bet on it too long,’ he’d said.

They turned off Upper Richmond Road into a wide street lined with perfectly trimmed trees and imposing semi-detached houses. When they pulled up outside the address they were looking for, Chall said, ‘What d’you reckon? Three million?’

‘Probably.’

‘Landed on his feet then, our friend.’

‘Let’s see,’ Tanner said.

Christopher Clemence answered the door in tracksuit bottoms and a white vest. He was barefoot. He looked shocked, then angry, though above all he seemed mystified as to how anyone had managed to find him.

‘We’re police officers,’ Tanner said, answering the unspoken question.

Clemence turned and walked back into the house, and Tanner and Chall followed him into a large sitting room. He flopped down on to a deep three-seater sofa, put his feet up and pointed to the matching chairs. ‘Make yourselves at home,’ he said. ‘I’d love to offer you a drink, but I don’t think I should abuse my host’s hospitality.’

‘I reckon we’ll survive,’ Chall said.

Tanner looked around and it was evident that Clemence had not fought shy of abusing the hospitality himself. There were empty glasses and dirty plates on the floor in front of the sofa. Socks and training shoes were dotted about. A pair of game controllers lay on the polished floorboards in front of the wall-mounted flat-screen and Tanner saw the boxes of several hardcore gay porn films scattered among those containing computer games.

She said, ‘Just so you know, we got the name of your… host from his friends at the arcade and then we went to see him at school. That’s how we got this address.’

‘Very enterprising,’ Clemence said.

‘He’s seventeen.’ Now Chall was staring at some of the DVDs on the floor, the photos on the front of the boxes.

‘Yes, which explains why he’s at school.’ Clemence sighed and stretched out. ‘Now, last time I checked, which I do on a daily basis, the age of consent was sixteen.’ He smiled at Chall. ‘So you know what you can do with your moral outrage.’

‘I’m not outraged in the slightest,’ Tanner said. ‘But I might take rather a dim view if I look into your arrangements a bit more and find out you’re taking advantage of this boy financially.’

‘Look all you want,’ Clemence said. ‘It’s not my fault if he wants to spend all his pocket money on games, is it? If he wants to buy takeaways and enjoys the pleasure of my company.’ He held up a hand, as if on oath. ‘Nothing underhand going on, Inspector, on my life.’

‘His parents know he’s got a house guest, do they?’

‘No idea, but I’ll be gone by the time they get back in a couple of days and I can promise you they won’t even know I’ve been here.’ Clemence grinned. ‘Well, they might want to change the sheets.’

Tanner smiled back. ‘Why did you lie to us, Chris? About what you did after you left the pub on the night Heather was killed.’

‘You’ve been talking to the Michelin woman, then.’

‘We’ve talked to everyone. Caroline tells us you were with her.’

‘Yeah, I was. She was worried about me, bless her.’

‘You didn’t mention that.’

‘Not the same as lying, is it?’

‘And living off a seventeen-year-old boy with wealthy parents isn’t quite the same as stealing from him,’ Chall said. ‘But there’s not much in it.’

Clemence smiled, but it looked forced. ‘I’ve never exactly seen eye to eye with the police, put it that way. Nothing against you two, but a few of your mates in the Drugs Squad haven’t exactly played fair with me in the past, when really I shouldn’t have been done for anything. So, you learn that you can get in trouble if you’re being naughty and you can get in trouble if you’re squeaky clean. In the end, it doesn’t matter who you’re dealing with, whether it’s a copper or a junkie. Someone like me, you learn to lie, and you keep a few things to yourself. It’s kind of your default position.’

‘You’re saying you’re never honest with the police.’

‘Especially with the police,’ Clemence said.

‘This isn’t about drugs,’ Tanner said.

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘I think it does. Someone close to you was murdered, and you chose to withhold information rather than give yourself an alibi.’

‘Why would I need an alibi?’ Clemence swung his legs to the floor, flexed his bare feet. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘So why not just tell the truth?’

‘Is it just me?’ Clemence asked. ‘Or are we going round in circles?’

Tanner was feeling every bit as dizzy as Clemence clearly was. She opened her notebook and said, ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell us, Chris? I’d advise you that now’s the time.’

‘Such as?’

‘Anything you think we should know about anyone else in the group?’

‘Not especially.’

‘What happened between you and Heather in the pub?’ Chall asked.

Clemence shrugged. ‘She pissed me off. We pissed each other off a lot.’

‘Something she made you do, wasn’t it?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘What might that have been?’

For the first time, Clemence looked really uncomfortable. He sat back and folded his arms. ‘No.’

‘No, it wasn’t something she made you do?’ Tanner looked at him. ‘Or no, you’re not going to tell us?’

Clemence said nothing.

‘What about Robin Joffe?’ Tanner asked. ‘Some kind of altercation between you, wasn’t there?’

‘Robin’s a tedious arsehole.’ Clemence seemed in more relaxing territory suddenly. He pointed towards Tanner’s notebook. ‘You might want to write that down.’

Tanner closed her notebook and dropped it into her handbag. She stood up. ‘Your face is looking better, by the way,’ she said. ‘That was a nasty bruise. How did you say you got it?’

Clemence made no attempt to get up. ‘I didn’t.’

‘He told us he was clumsy,’ Chall said.

Walking towards the door, Tanner stopped by the sofa and looked down at Clemence. ‘Clumsy’s right,’ she said.

She looked for a moment as if she felt rather sorry for him.

‘However this pans out, can we find something to do him for?’ Chall keyed the remote and the car’s indicators blinked. ‘Cocky sod.’

‘He’s still lying.’

‘Maybe he can’t help himself.’

‘Maybe,’ Tanner said.