The Carrier (36 page)

‘You’re tone deaf, and I’m not
singing
anything,’ said Simon self-consciously. Theirs was the only occupied table, and the room was small enough for the waiters to overhear them.

In her message this morning, Liv had described the restaurant as casual and intimate – two words that, for Simon, didn’t belong together at all, though he could see that they might if you were the sort of person who slept with other women’s husbands. ‘Like dining in your own home, almost!’ Liv’s text had promised. Simon strongly disagreed. His home wasn’t a cellar, didn’t have a low dome-shaped ceiling of roughly spiked white plaster, and didn’t contain men in suits who asked him if everything was all right every twenty seconds.

‘We don’t want it sung, we want it tastefully read aloud,’ said Liv. ‘By your delightful husband.’ She beamed at Simon.

‘“We”?’ said Charlie. ‘You mean you and Dom?’

‘No. Me and Chris. Chris and I.’ Liv reached for Gibbs’ hand. Charlie kicked Simon under the table. He kicked back, knowing she’d misinterpret it. Her kick, at a rough guess, had meant, ‘Look at them squeezing hands in public as if they’re a proper couple’. His meant, ‘Stop staring, for fuck’s sake.’

He wondered about Gibbs’ elastic-band ball. It hadn’t made an appearance so far this evening. Was it at home with Debbie?

A waiter moved towards them, holding aloft the widest tray Simon had ever seen. More food he had no appetite for. What had Charlie ordered for his main course? He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t enjoyed the starter she’d chosen for him: slices of mozzarella with very thin, dark, strong-tasting ham, all covered in yellow-green oil and flecks of something.

‘Dom’s happy for me to sort out the finer points of the ceremony,’ said Liv. ‘He’s up to his eyes in work as usual. I’ve chosen all the other readings with him in mind, and I’ve chosen this one for me and Chris.
We’ve
chosen it.’

‘But you’re not even going to be there,’ Charlie said to Gibbs.

‘Aren’t I?’

The waiter set down their plates in front of them. Simon was relieved to see a steak on his. He’d have liked chips with it. Instead, he had what looked like a varnished clump of potatoes in a small cylindrical ornament.

‘You and Debbie are coming to Liv’s wedding?’ Charlie’s voice radiated disbelief. She kicked Simon’s leg again.

‘Kick Gibbs,’ he told her. ‘He’s the one you’re talking to.’

‘Not Debbie,’ said Gibbs. ‘Just me.’

‘I know what you’re thinking, Char,’ Liv said. ‘Obviously it’s not going to be easy for Chris, but at the same time, how can he not be there? That’d be worse, for both of us. It’d be like . . . look, this is a bit of a horrid analogy, I know, but if I were in hospital, dying, I’d want Chris there.’

‘A
bit
of a horrible analogy? Liv, it’s a double helping of horrible with a side dish of grim as fuck.’

‘You can say no,’ Gibbs told Simon.

‘It isn’t
grim, any more than “One Hand, One Heart”
is tragic,’ Liv said indignantly. ‘How can a death-defying love song be tragic? We don’t all choose to look at the world through Charlie-Zailer-tinted glasses.’

‘You said you wouldn’t lose it, whatever happened,’ Gibbs reminded her.

Simon wondered what they’d expected to happen.

‘I haven’t lost anything,’ said Liv. ‘I’ve
found
a useful metaphor: glasses with lenses that enable the wearer to see only . . . dead bodies and misery!’

‘Not everyone’s willing to blind themselves in order to be happy,’ Charlie said.

‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ said Gibbs. ‘Look, Charlie, nobody here’s blind. We all know the score. We see things differently, that’s all.’

‘I can’t see me reading this.’ Simon handed the printed lyrics back to Liv. ‘Sorry. I’m willing to read something else, if it matters that much to you. Something that makes the same point, give or take.’

‘Really?’ Liv bounced up and down in her seat. ‘Heaven on a stick! You’ll really do it?’

‘It can’t just be anything,’ said Gibbs. ‘It has to mean something.’

Charlie laughed. ‘Has my sister taught you nothing, Gibbs? You pretend it means whatever you need it to mean. The exact words might be “Call me Ishmael”, but we can all tell ourselves that means, “This is secretly the wedding of Liv and Gibbs, even though it looks like the wedding of Liv and Dom.”’

‘“Call me Ishmael”?’ Liv looked worried.

‘Simon’s only going to agree if he can read a passage from
Moby-Dick
.’

‘I can speak for myself, Charlie.’

‘I’m just trying to save us some time.’

‘You can get someone else to read “One Hand, One Heart” – anyone,’ Simon said. ‘If you want me . . . Look, I’ve never read at a wedding before. I’d feel more comfortable reading something I’m used to.’

‘Such as?’ said Gibbs.

‘“Rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapour,”’ Simon quoted. ‘“And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.”’

‘That’s beautiful.’ Liv sniffed and blinked. She looked at Gibbs. ‘What do you think?’

He shrugged. ‘Up to you.’

‘Don’t
say
that! I hate it when you say that, as if your opinion doesn’t matter.’

‘In no way does that passage make the same point as “One Hand, One Heart”,’ said Charlie, annoyed that they were considering it. Did it matter that much to them to have Simon read at their fake-wedding-within-a-real-wedding? ‘What about me?’ she heard herself say. ‘Seriously: I’ll read “One Hand, One Heart”.’

‘You will?’ Liv cupped her hands over her nose and mouth and pressed the tips of her index fingers into the corners of her wet eyes. Simon looked away. Nothing made him feel more uncomfortable than people crying near him.

‘You’re not just pretending to make me happy, so that I’ll be even sadder when I realise it’s a big lie?’ Liv asked through her hands.

Charlie sighed. ‘Yes, that’s what I’m doing, because I’m the dictionary definition of evil. Are you sure you want me on the guest list at all?’

‘Not evil, just against me and Chris.’

‘Once, maybe. Now the only thing I’m against is both of you staying with people you don’t love any more.’

‘I think we should have both,’ said Gibbs.

‘Evidently,’ Charlie quipped. ‘You’ve got Debbie and Liv, Liv’s got you and Dom.’

‘I meant both readings: “One Hand, One Heart”
and
Moby-Dick.
’

‘Yes!’ Liv yelped. ‘I actually love
that quote from
Moby-Dick
: earthly doubts and heavenly intuitions. Perfect!’

A waiter was approaching. Simon looked down at his plate. None of them had eaten anything. ‘Is everything all right? There is a problem with the food?’

‘We’re wonderful, thank you.’ Liv’s smile faded as he walked away. ‘I’ve never tried to explain to you before, Char, but we do have our reasons. I didn’t think you’d be interested.’

‘They don’t need to know our reasons,’ Gibbs muttered.

‘They don’t
need
to, but I think they deserve to.’

A statement that could be taken in two ways, Simon thought. He wondered if Charlie was thinking the same thing, or if he was spotting things that weren’t there to be spotted. Like whatever had been removed from Tim Breary’s bedroom at the Dower House before Simon and Charlie had searched it late this afternoon. Simon had felt its absence. Had Dan Jose worked out on Friday that Gaby Struthers would have been suspicious of his eagerness to evict her from Breary’s bedroom? Had he disposed of something incriminating as soon as she’d left? If it was that incriminating, wouldn’t he have got rid of it on or shortly after 16 February, the day Francine was killed?

Simon had nearly said to Charlie on the way to the restaurant that this was the most puzzling and frustrating case he’d ever worked on, but he’d held back, knowing she’d have laughed and called him a drama queen. This was his boy-who-cried-wolf moment, Simon acknowledged to himself. He’d complained before to Charlie, countless times, about cases that were so unfathomable they made his brain hurt. He should have kept quiet, saved his hyperbole for Tim and Francine Breary, the couple that made no sense at any point in their story.

He hates her, so he stays. He leaves her, then, finally free, attempts suicide. He tells Dan and Kerry Jose he can’t ever go back to the Culver Valley because Francine’s there, then goes back to look after her when he hears she’s had a stroke. He smothers her, admits it, and expects everyone to believe he had no reason for doing so.

Beside him, Liv was saying, ‘Dom’s happy at the moment, because he has no idea. In a way I do still love him, Char – in the way that I love you, or Mum, or Dad. Gibbs loves Debbie in the same way, probably.’

‘I don’t love your parents at all, or Charlie, so . . . yeah,’ Gibbs agreed. ‘In the same way.’

‘What, not even in a close-friendy ex-skipper kind of way?’ Charlie pretended to be hurt. ‘Thanks a lot!’

‘I’m not allowed to walk out on my kids.’ Gibbs stared down at his sea bass fillet.

‘Not allowed by who?’ Simon asked.

‘Olivia.’

‘I just don’t want to hurt anyone,’ said Liv. ‘This way, we fulfil our obligations to the people who depend on us, and pain is kept to a minimum.’

‘Unless Debbie or Dom finds out,’ Charlie said. ‘In which case, there might be a bit of a max-out on the pain front, mightn’t there?’

‘Yes,’ Liv said defiantly. ‘But I can’t make important life decisions based on fear and worst-case scenarios.’

I could give you lessons, thought Simon.

‘No one ever finds out the complete
truth, in a nice convenient package, Char. Not even you, Simon, with your luminescent brain. Even if someone walked in now and saw me and Chris together, that’s all they’d see: one instance of us being together. Would it really devastate Debbie or Dom to hear we’d been together in a restaurant
once
? It’s impossible for them to find out the emotional truth, or any more than whatever one thing they happen to witness, unless we tell them. Which we never will.’

‘I recognise that!’ Charlie announced triumphantly. ‘The recycled wisdom of Colin Sellers. His influential treatise: How To Get Away With Screwing Around. Gibbs? Anything to declare?’

‘Sellers is right,’ said Gibbs. ‘Unless you let someone film you in bed, you’re not going to get caught in a way you can’t talk your way out of. Most cheaters crack at the first challenge from a suspicious partner.’

‘It’s the feelings that hurt in these situations, not the catching in bed,’ said Liv. ‘And you can’t prove feelings. No one can film another person’s emotional landscape.’

Simon pushed away his plate and stood up. The beginning of an idea was gathering in the lower reaches of his mind, so provisional that it was trying not to be noticed. ‘Every cheater’s different, right?’ he said. ‘Some crack, some don’t. Some hope for the best, some fear the worst.’

‘I could stop cheating on Dom, quite easily,’ Liv said. ‘But then I’d feel as if I was cheating myself, and Chris, and . . . life’s generosity towards me.’

‘I sense we’re leaving,’ said Charlie, stuffing a forkful of lasagne into her mouth. ‘Simon’s not thinking about you any more, Liv. Sorry. Good line, though.’

A new waiter came over. ‘Sir, is everything all right?’

‘It’s not random. They were chosen for a reason.’

‘Sir?’

‘What reason?’

‘I’m not sure what you’re asking me, sir,’ said the waiter.

Simon wasn’t asking him and wasn’t interested in discussing. He needed to get out of the restaurant so that he could think. As he unlocked his car, he heard Charlie call out to Liv, something about practising her Puerto Rican accent. He had no idea what she was talking about.

‘You’re still here,’ Sam said to Proust, who was sitting in his dark office with the door ajar. Sam hadn’t seen him; he’d sensed the presence.

‘I’m like a small boy with a gap in his teeth.’ The Snowman’s voice emerged from the shadows. ‘Hoping to catch a glimpse of the tooth fairy bringing a shiny new pound coin.’

‘Prepare to be disappointed,’ said Sam. ‘I’ve got nothing new and shiny for you. I’ve got the same Dower House liars I’ve had from the start, all still lying, sticking to the new story: Jason Cookson was outside cleaning the lounge windows when Francine Breary was killed, and they all somehow forgot to tell us originally. Oh, and they all got confused in exactly the same way, too – all mistakenly telling us he was
in
the lounge the first time we interviewed them. And they’re all echoing what Kerry told Charlie yesterday, about Tim Breary picking up the pillow he used to smother Francine and holding it at chest level – suddenly, that detail’s part of each of their stories and they all express it in exactly the same way: “chest level”. Before you say separate them and twirl them, we’ve tried. No luck so far.’

‘Luck?’

‘Sir, we’ve talked and threatened and sweetened and done everything. If you think you could do better, go ahead and try.’