Kind of Cruel (8 page)

There had been none in the Katharine Allen investigation for nearly a month. Now, thanks to Simon, there would be. Impatience hummed in his veins, a force field of restlessness that wasn’t too far removed from extreme boredom, the kind that starts to fizz and explode around the edges, that would do anything rather than remain within its confines. Simon had no idea if his transformation into somebody more reckless than himself was permanent; Charlie had called it insanity, trying to talk him out of it. Running along the corridor to the CID room, Simon pictured himself strolling back in the opposite direction with a satisfied smile on his face once this was all over and done with. Normally when he ran, the speed of his body was balanced by a mind that hung back, tried to predict reactions and consequences.

Where had that mind gone? Had thinking too much worn it out?

He knew what he’d find in the CID room, and he found it: a dark, dank, mouldering atmosphere, devoid of hope, that made the well-lit second-floor office, with its contemporary furnishings, feel more like an airless stone-walled dungeon several miles underground. DI Giles Proust, who stood by the window with his back to the room, unwilling to look as if he might be waiting for anybody, could bring the subterranean dungeon vibe to any space that contained him simply by being in a bad mood.

Every dungeon needs chains, and Simon could see the invisible ones wrapped around DS Sam Kombothekra and DC Colin Sellers as they sat tensely at the conference table on one side of the room. Both of them gave Simon a look as he walked in – the same look, though Sam and Sellers were as different as it was possible for two men to be, a look that said,
What the fuck are you playing at, making him incandescent in advance?
Everyone knew the score: if you had something to tell the Snowman, something he didn’t already know and might not like – and, since he didn’t like anything, this was the broadest of categories – you approached him tentatively, stammering your willingness to reveal all immediately and take his inevitable abuse as your deserved punishment for not having told him the crucial information sooner, before you knew it yourself. What you didn’t do was ring him as he was leaving work and already half an hour late for his supper, order him to stay put for an urgent meeting and refuse to say any more than that over the phone, as if you were the boss and he the underling.

That was the score. Simon knew it as well as Sam and Sellers did. He wanted to laugh at the stupidity of anyone who had imagined he’d put up with it indefinitely. He stood in the doorway, staring at Proust’s rigid back. Real snowmen melted; not Proust. He generated his own ice from within.

No one said anything. Sam sighed. Eventually Sellers said, ‘Waterhouse is here, sir.’

‘He knows I’m here.’ A challenge. Proust would ignore it.

‘Shall I try Gibbs on his mobile, see where he’s got to?’ Sellers asked.

‘DC Gibbs won’t be joining us,’ said Proust, still facing the window. For a second, Simon wondered if the inspector was about to hijack his meeting. Could Proust know already? How?

‘Who would like to guess what Waterhouse has done with Gibbs? Has he promoted him to Chief Constable, do we think? Fired him?’

Simon relaxed. The Snowman wasn’t one step ahead; he was flexing his sarcasm, the strongest muscle in his body.

‘Dressed him as a black and white minstrel and sent him to wait in the wings?’

A grin passed across Sellers’ face, but he couldn’t hold it. The room’s humour-neutralising atmosphere of clenched fury was too strong.

‘There must be a reason why Gibbs is the only one of us not here, so let’s have your most imaginative suggestions.’ Proust turned to face his audience, taking care to look only at Sam and Sellers. ‘Sergeant? Detective? For once, I’m inviting wild speculation. Thanks to Waterhouse, we have been forced to unlock our cramped consciousnesses and enter a dimension in which anything is possible.’ Every word pulsed with controlled outrage, as if the Snowman alone comprehended the doom that awaited them all. ‘In our exhilaration, we have forgotten that – naming no names, and sparing finer feelings – some things ought not to be possible.’ Finally, Proust looked at Simon – a look that made no bones about assigning him to that special category.

‘Gibbs is interviewing a woman called Amber Hewerdine,’ Simon said. ‘I need to join him, soon as I can. I want the chance to question her myself. You’re not going to like how this happened,’ Simon looked at Proust as he spoke, ‘but you’d be crazy if you didn’t like the result, which is the first lead we’ve had so far on Katharine Allen.’

‘Are we sitting comfortably?’ Proust muttered, turning back to the window. ‘Then let him begin.’

‘Amber Hewerdine, thirty-four, lives on Clavering Road in Rawndesley, works for Rawndesley City Council in the licensing department. She made an appointment for three o’clock today to see a hypnotherapist called Ginny Saxon in Great Holling. I don’t know what Hewerdine went to see her about – Saxon’s refusing to tell me – but while she was there, waiting outside, she met Charlie. Charlie also had an appointment with Saxon, for two o’clock. She wants to quit smoking, a couple of people have told her hypnotherapy worked for them . . .’ Simon wanted to say more – that it was a practical, rational solution to a common problem – but he stopped himself. Having done his best to assure Charlie that there was no need for her to be embarrassed, no reason for secrecy, Simon was determined not to feel embarrassed himself.

‘Saxon was running an hour late, which seemed to be a problem for Hewerdine, so Charlie offered to switch appointments. She was happy to delay hers. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go through with it anyway. She and Hewerdine had a brief conversation outside Saxon’s house. While they were talking, Charlie was sitting in her car with an open notebook on her lap. Hewerdine might or might not have seen what was in the notebook.’ Simon produced it from the inside jacket pocket he’d forced it into, and slapped it down on the table, so that the Snowman would hear what he was missing by turning his back on the room.

The gesture had no effect. As if he were conducting a recorded interview with a suspect, Simon said loudly and clearly, ‘DC Waterhouse is taking a blue leather soft-backed notebook out of his pocket and putting it on the table. He’s opening the notebook at the relevant page, the page Amber Hewerdine could have seen. Written on it are the words we all know: “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel”. In black ink, laid out like a list.’ The notebook wouldn’t stay open at first. Simon had to bend the covers right back. ‘You all know Charlie’s handwriting,’ he said. ‘Those of you who can be bothered to look can see it’s her writing.’

Sam Kombothekra’s eyes widened. There was an urgent question in them for Simon, one he couldn’t answer.
I don’t know why
. He thought he’d heard some people – he didn’t know who, where, when – describe the way he felt as ‘demob happy’. Except that in his case it was inappropriate; he wasn’t leaving, not by choice at any rate, and was well aware that the fall-out from his new uninhibited, unedited approach might start to rain down on him any time now. On all of them. He tried to communicate this to Sam with a tiny shrug:
I’m not handing in my notice. I haven’t been told I’ve got less than a month to live, or that Proust has. I’m doing it this way because it’s the best way to do it.

‘Charlie took some work to the nearest pub, to kill an hour,’ he went on. ‘At four o’clock, when she went back to Ginny Saxon’s, she met Hewerdine coming out. She said Hewerdine seemed a bit spaced out – in her own little world, as if stuff was preying on her mind. She told Charlie she’d seen what was in her notebook and asked her to confirm that the words “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel” were there. Charlie told her they weren’t, which was both true and untrue.’

‘A factual impossibility,’ Proust contributed sourly.

‘Hewerdine couldn’t have seen what she thought she’d seen,’ Simon told him. ‘Here’s the crucial point: at three o’clock, when Charlie had the notebook open in the car – the only chance Hewerdine had to see it – the words
weren’t
there, not all of them.’

Sellers opened his mouth, but Simon didn’t need to hear his question in order to answer it. ‘Charlie couldn’t be more certain: when she and Hewerdine had their first conversation, at three o’clock, she’d written “Kind” and “Cruel”, nothing else. About half an hour later, in the pub, with Hewerdine nowhere in sight, she went back to that page in her notebook and wrote “Kind of Cruel”. Why? What was she thinking she’d achieve? Same as we’ve all thought: that staring at the words might help, might bring something to mind. It didn’t work for her any more than it did for us. The words meant nothing to her beyond their obvious meanings, and she had the impression that it was the same for Hewerdine, who said to her, “I’m not asking you to tell me what it means, only to confirm that I could have seen those words in your notebook.”’

Every time he stopped for breath, he risked interruption; he wasn’t finished yet, not by a long way. ‘Tell me if you think I’m leaping to conclusions, but it seems likely to me that seeing “Kind” and “Cruel” in Charlie’s notebook sparked off an association that already existed in Hewerdine’s mind between those words and “Kind of Cruel”. She also mentioned to Charlie that she thought she’d seen the words written like a list on lined paper. Charlie wondered what I’m hoping you’re all wondering now: did Hewerdine see the sheet of paper that was torn from the pad we found at Katharine Allen’s flat, before or after it was torn off?’

Irritated by his colleagues’ non-reaction, Simon allowed his impatience to erupt; it didn’t count as losing your cool if you let it happen. ‘Can you see how lucky we are to have this fall into our lap? I’ll make a bet with each and every one of you – for as much as you want, name your price – that Amber Hewerdine didn’t kill Katharine Allen and that she’s going to lead us to the person who did.’

Slowly, Proust started to turn.
On the turn, like rancid milk
. ‘By sheer chance . . .’ the inspector began, his words as light as the footsteps of a ballet dancer. Simon saw Sam Kombothekra flinch at the grotesque disparity between the gently tripping voice and the scorn-contorted face. ‘By sheer chance, the unfavourably married Mrs Simon Waterhouse, outside the premises of a hypno-quack in Great Holling, happens to run into a woman connected to the Katharine Allen murder.’ Proust raised an index finger in the air. ‘A woman who is thoughtful enough to reveal this connection, unprompted.’ He shook his head, smiled. His cheeks were mottled with mauve patches; it was odd to think that his blood was red and warm like everyone else’s. ‘That’s not luck. That’s a coincidence so staggeringly improbable that I’m going to stick my neck out and say it didn’t happen. Sergeant Kombothekra and DC Sellers would do well to extend their respective necks in a similar direction, if they care about their careers.’

Proust walked towards Simon slowly enough to make clear his disgust at the prospect of arriving at his destination. ‘You don’t, evidently,’ he said. ‘You let it be known – with no explanation or apology, as if it might have nothing to do with you – that Sergeant Zailer is familiar with a sequence of words that she has no right to be familiar with. An apathetic confession-by-omission: we infer from your story that you’ve breached the Data Protection Act – the Official Secrets Act, too, if we want to be pedantic about it . . .’

‘Charlie’s not just my wife,’ said Simon. ‘She’s a police officer.’

‘Barely, these days, from what I hear.’ Proust snapped. ‘Isn’t she part of the team that’s been leased out to some crackpot feelgood think-tank and charged with discouraging the inhabitants of the Culver Valley from committing suicide? That’s work for unpaid shoulders-to-cry-on, not for the police, even if idiots in police uniforms are doing it.’ Turning to Sam and Sellers, Proust said, ‘Does anyone but me think it’s noteworthy that Sergeant Zailer’s professional interest in suicide followed hot on the heels of her marrying Waterhouse?’

It was like having the whole of Hell in the office with you, Simon thought. ‘Charlie used to work with us, and she’s a better detective than most of the people in this room,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what the Data Protection Act says. We all know there’s no good reason why I shouldn’t discuss Katharine Allen with Charlie, and it’s lucky I did. If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have got this lead. What are you talking about, it didn’t happen? Are you saying Charlie’s lying?’

The room filled with the sound of everyone breathing too loudly. If Simon had been asked to guess with his eyes closed, he’d have said twenty people hiding from a predator.
Or leaping off the top of a mountain
. There was something enlivening about refusing to be intimidated by an objectively intimidating person. Simon was surfing the crest of an adrenaline wave; he hoped it wasn’t affecting his judgement.

‘Let’s not malign poor Sergeant Zailer, in her absence,’ said Proust. ‘Why would she lie? Mistakes have always been her speciality, even when she was on the right side of her sell-by date, and she must have made one in this case. The Hewerdine person saw the words in the notebook –
all
the words, together, at the same time. There’s no connection between the Hewerdine woman and Katharine Allen’s murder.’

Simon had foreseen that the Snowman’s response would be grudging and unhelpful, but he hadn’t predicted outright denial. He stood his ground. ‘Charlie’s sure. When Hewerdine saw the notebook, there was no “Kind of Cruel” on the page, only “Kind” and “Cruel”. If you want to talk about staggering improbability, how about the likelihood of improbable things happening every second of every day? How likely was it that you’d be born – you, Giles Proust, exactly as you are? Or any of us. How
likely
was it that the four of us would end up working together?’ Simon had to shout louder than he wanted to because he was shouting for everyone: all the people who had ever wanted to scream in the Snowman’s face but hadn’t dared do it. He was their representative.