Kind of Cruel (10 page)

‘The reason I mention Katharine’s bedroom, in the dome, is because that’s where she was killed. Multiple blows to the back of the head. With this.’ Gibbs pushed another photograph across the table.

Seeing that a response was expected, Amber said flatly, ‘It’s a metal pole.’

‘Katharine used it to open and close her bedroom window. It was too high to reach. The pole hung from a hook on the wall.’

Amber swallowed a yawn, allowed her eyes to close for a second.

‘Sorry if I’m boring you.’ Gibbs shoved another photograph at her, one he’d taken care to conceal until now. ‘Someone took the pole off its hook when Katharine had her back turned, came up behind Katharine, and attacked her with it. Savagely. This is what Katharine’s head looked like afterwards. She was hit more than twenty times.’

Amber recoiled. ‘Do I need to know all this? Or see
that
? Can you put it away?’ Her skin looked paler, blotchy. She covered her mouth with her hand.

‘I was starting to wonder if murder’s maybe no big deal to you,’ said Gibbs.

‘Why?’ she said angrily. ‘Because I’m tired? Because I’m not crying, like sensitive women are supposed to? I haven’t slept properly for eighteen months. I’m likely to fall asleep at any time, unless I’m in bed with hours of night stretching out in front of me, in which case I’m guaranteed to stay awake. And, yes, the murder of a woman I don’t know is less of a big deal to me than the murder of someone I know and care about would be. And, just so’s you know, you can say the name “Katharine” five hundred times if you want to, but it’s not going to make me feel any closer to her than I would if you called her “Ms Allen” or “the victim”.’

‘She was known as Kat,’ said Gibbs. ‘That’s what her mates called her, and her colleagues.’

Amber took a deep breath, closed her eyes again. ‘Obviously I care that a woman’s been murdered, in the abstract way that people care about the deaths of strangers. Obviously I think it’s not ideal that there’s someone out there who thinks it’s okay to . . . do
that
to somebody else’s head.’

‘I don’t expect you to cry,’ said Gibbs. ‘I expect you to be scared. Most people, guilty or innocent, would be scared to be threatened with arrest in connection with a murder.’

Amber looked at him as if he was an idiot. ‘Why would I be scared? I had nothing to do with it and I know nothing about it.’

‘Sometimes, if the police think a witness is lying, that person ends up facing charges.’

‘Usually only if they
are
lying. Or if it’s the seventies and they’re Irish.’

The fear had to be there, under the bravado. ‘I can tell you one thing for nothing,’ said Gibbs. ‘If the press find out we’re even talking to you, unless you make some adjustments to your manner and your attitude, the whole country’s going to decide you’re guilty before it gets as far as formal charges – even if it never does. You’re the sort of woman public opinion loves to hate.’

She laughed at this. ‘What – skinny, gobby and defensive? With a difference, though, you’ve got to admit.’ What was this? Was she flirting with him? Still smiling, she said, ‘I have an irresistible abrasive charm that wins people over pretty much whenever I want it to. The only reason you don’t like me is because I don’t care whether you like me or not. Ask me why I don’t care.’

Gibbs said nothing. Waited.

‘I don’t care because I think you’re an idiot,’ Amber told him, enunciating the words carefully. ‘You want to know who killed Katharine Allen. I’m trying to give you what little help I can. Listen, and I’ll try again. I don’t know, but I’m guessing that she was killed by someone who knew her and either disliked her, or stood to gain in some way from her death. In case you’re too dense to recognise it, that’s a description of someone who isn’t me. And yet, weirdly, you seem to think I can help you beyond pointing out those obvious facts, which has to mean you know something I don’t. I’ve worked out, because I have a higher than average IQ, that it must be something to do with that fucking woman and her notebook.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Can’t you see that the only way forward is for you to
tell
me whatever it is you’re not telling me?’

It was a funny thing Gibbs had noticed about women: they really wanted you to talk to them, yet did everything in their power to make you not want to.

‘Oh, what, end of conversation?’ Amber’s voice vibrated with scorn. ‘Good idea.
Great
idea. If you’re not going to say anything else, then neither am I – because there’s nothing else I
can
say until something changes, until I’m given some new information that I
don’t have
.’

‘You’re a witness, maybe a suspect,’ Gibbs told her. ‘We’re not two detectives working together.’

‘Right.’ She shook her head, stood up. ‘That’s right. You’re one detective, getting nowhere. And I’m a pissed off, knackered, under-used resource that wants to go home now, if that’s okay with you?’

‘Under-used resource?’

‘If you’d tell me what’s going on, I might actually be able to help you. Have you thought of that? Have you thought that maybe you want power more than you want help?’

The door opened. Waterhouse. And Proust. What the fuck was he doing in an interview room?

‘Thank God,’ Amber said, as if she’d radioed for back-up and it had arrived. Was she a nutter who got a kick out of pretending to be a detective? The more she said, the less Gibbs trusted her. He had no trouble imagining her taking a pole to someone else’s head and loving every second of it.

‘I’m DC Simon Waterhouse. This is DI Giles Proust.’

‘I’m Amber Hewerdine, and I’m on my way home unless I can talk to somebody who isn’t
him
.’ She pointed at Gibbs.

‘Why’s that?’ Waterhouse asked.

‘We’re getting nowhere. All he’s done is tell me he hates me and so do all his friends.’

‘He hasn’t said that,’ Waterhouse contradicted her.

‘He’s said the official police equivalent.’ Without waiting for anyone to ask her a question, Amber launched into a description of her interview with Gibbs so far. The level of detail was incredible. Did she have a photographic memory? Gibbs gave Waterhouse a nod to indicate that what she’d said was accurate: an almost exact verbal transcript.

‘I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding,’ Waterhouse said.

‘No, there hasn’t!’ Amber snapped at him. ‘I gave him every chance to understand . . .’

‘Give
me
a chance to explain what I mean.’ A polite order. ‘If you’re willing to stick around for a bit, I think we might get somewhere.’ He indicated that she should sit.

She remained standing, turned to Proust. ‘What the fuck’s your problem?’ she demanded.

‘Do you want to calm down?’ said Gibbs. ‘DI Proust didn’t say or do anything.’

‘Apart from stare at me with his radioactive eyes, as if he thinks I’m subhuman.’

‘He doesn’t think that,’ said Waterhouse. ‘He always looks like that. I could wheel Mother Teresa of Calcutta into the room, and he’d look at her in exactly the same way.’

Gibbs wondered if he and Waterhouse were going to lose their jobs over this. Waterhouse seemed keen to be shot of his. Either that or he’d turned psychotic. Gibbs was sure his wife Debbie would kick him out if he got himself sacked through his own stupidity; her mother wanted her to leave him anyway, and Debbie usually listened to her mother. Gibbs was nearly sure that Debbie leaving him was what he wanted.

Didn’t Mother Teresa die years ago?

‘Are you familiar with the concept of percentiles?’ Waterhouse asked Amber.

She nodded.

‘I talk to a lot of people – suspects, witnesses, victims and perpetrators of crimes. Civilians, other police officers. Without wanting to do them down, most of them haven’t got very good communication skills. You’d be surprised how poor even most intelligent people’s communication skills are.’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Amber told him. She went back to her chair, sat down.

‘One fact leaps out from what you’ve just told us about what you and DC Gibbs have said to one another so far: you’re an unusually good communicator. I’d put you in the top 0.1 per cent. Because you’re an excellent communicator, you believe in the power of communication to resolve things. If only everyone would rise to your high level, there’s nothing that can’t be sorted out. Right?’ Waterhouse sat on the edge of the table, blocking Amber’s view of Gibbs, and his of her.

‘Depends on the circumstances,’ she said. ‘In the case of two strangers trying to fill in factual gaps, yes. If it’s something emotionally complicated, sometimes it’s better not to communicate too effectively, in case people get hurt, but that doesn’t apply here. I’m happy to upset DC Gibbs in the good cause of finding out what the hell’s going on, and I’m sure he feels the same way about me.’

‘So let’s give it a try, your way,’ said Waterhouse.

Was he really going to . . . ? He was. He’d already launched in. Gibbs enjoyed watching Proust’s face as Waterhouse debriefed Amber Hewerdine as if she were a new addition to CID.
Crazy
. Even if he knew beyond the smallest flicker of a doubt that she’d had no involvement in Katharine Allen’s murder . . . He must have absolute confidence in her innocence, Gibbs realised, or he wouldn’t be doing this.
He must have inherited a fortune out of the blue or have a getaway car waiting outside, or he wouldn’t be doing it in front of Proust
.

‘Until today, we had no leads. Nothing,’ he was saying to Amber. ‘No one saw anything. The forensics led nowhere. We’ve dug around in every corner of her life and we’re none the wiser. All Katharine’s friends, colleagues and acquaintances have either been conclusively eliminated or we can find no reason to think they might have wanted to harm her. She was an ordinary, law-abiding young woman with nothing in her personal or professional life that would point to a reason to kill her. In a situation like that, detectives get desperate – they latch onto anything, anything at all, that seems unusual, rather than admit they’ve come away empty-handed. We latched onto the one detail that raised a question. In Katharine’s living room, we found an imprint of five words on a lined A4 notepad: Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel.’

‘An imprint? So not the actual words? Someone had written the words, then torn off the page?’ Quick off the mark, Gibbs conceded. Maybe she should join CID. She could have his job, once Proust had fired him.

Waterhouse stood up, turned to Gibbs. ‘Got the photos?’ he asked.

Gibbs found them and slid them across the table.

Amber stared at them for close to a minute, pushing her hair behind her ears on both sides. If her expression was anything to go by, she seemed to find these pictures more disturbing than the photograph of Katharine Allen’s battered head. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How did you know . . . did the woman whose notebook I looked at ring the police about me, and then you made the connection?’ Something flashed in her eyes, a mixture of impatience and superiority. ‘You need to talk to her.’

Gibbs heard the silent part even if no one else did:
you bunch of morons
. He was going to enjoy this. ‘She’s a police officer,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Charlotte Zailer.’

‘Writing those words on assorted pieces of paper and staring at them is our collective new hobby,’ Waterhouse took over. ‘We keep hoping something’ll occur to us. Nothing has. The reason you’re here, and here so quickly, isn’t because you saw those words in Sergeant Zailer’s notebook. It’s because you can’t possibly have seen them, even if you think you did.’

‘I saw them,’ Amber insisted. ‘When I broke into her car.’

‘Yeah, then you saw them. But you asked Sergeant Zailer if you could have seen the words earlier, at three o’clock. Right?’

Amber nodded.

‘You couldn’t have,’ Waterhouse told her. ‘You probably saw the words “Kind” and “Cruel”, but that was all she’d written at that point. You turning up interrupted her flow. She talked to you briefly, then you went in to see Ginny Saxon. Later, Sergeant Zailer went back to that page in her notebook and finished what she’d started. That’s when she wrote “Kind of Cruel”.’

Gibbs was expecting Amber to lose her temper – to call Waterhouse a liar, and, by extension, Charlie. He was surprised when she simply nodded.

‘I spoke to Ginny Saxon, Amber. She told me that you said those words to her – “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel” – and then accused her of having said them first.’

‘Which she didn’t,’ Amber said.

‘She
didn’t
?’

‘I don’t think so, no. I was convinced she had at the time, because the words meant nothing to me. I didn’t recognise them, so I couldn’t see why I’d have said them. Which won’t make sense to you, unless any of you have ever been hypnotised. Have you?’ She looked at each of them in turn. When her eyes landed on the Snowman, Gibbs thought he knew what she was thinking: that if he had been hypnotised, he ought to go back and demand that the hypnotist reverse the effect.

‘Look, why don’t I tell you what I think happened to me this afternoon?’ Amber suggested, closing her eyes again. She sounded weary. ‘See if you can make any more sense of it than I can. I went to Ginny Saxon for help with my insomnia. She went through this . . . I don’t know, she said all this stuff which was meant to hypnotise me. It wasn’t much different from a relaxation mantra, as far as I could tell. She asked me to tell her about a memory, any memory. I rejected the first one that came to mind because . . . well, it doesn’t matter why, I just rejected it. My mind was on that: not wanting to say the first thing that had occurred to me, but wondering if I ought to, and if not, what should I do instead? While all this was whirling around in my mind, I just . . . heard myself say it: “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel”. I thought, “Hey? Where the hell did that come from? What does it mean?” Ginny asked me to repeat it, so I did, and I must have . . . I suppose I convinced myself she
must
have said it first because . . . well, I’ve told you why. Because it meant nothing to me.’