The Truth-Teller's Lie (15 page)

Juliet’s smile expanded. Was she determined to prove to Simon that nothing he said could worry her? He wondered why her mood had improved since yesterday. Because Robert was back?

She turned and shouted, ‘Robert! Make yourself decent. A policeman’s here who wants to see you.’

‘Your husband was never at twenty-two Dunnisher Road in Sissinghurst. They don’t know him at that address.’

‘I grew up in that house. It was my childhood home.’ Juliet Haworth looked pleased with herself.

‘Why did you lie?’ Simon asked again.

‘If I tell you, you won’t believe me.’

‘Try it and we’ll see.’

Juliet nodded. ‘I had a sudden urge to lie. No reason—I just fancied it. See, I told you you wouldn’t believe me and you don’t. But it’s the truth.’ She undid the belt round her waist, pulled her dressing gown tighter around her, and retied it. ‘When I first saw you, I thought I’d probably lie again today. I needn’t have told you that Robert’s upstairs. But then I changed my mind and thought, Why not?’

‘You’re aware that obstructing the police is an offence?’

Juliet giggled. ‘Absolutely. It wouldn’t be any fun otherwise, would it?’

Simon felt wooden and self-conscious. Something about this woman interfered with his ability to think straight. She made him feel as if she knew more than he did about his own thoughts and actions. Did she expect him to push past her and go upstairs in search of her husband, or to challenge her further about her flagrant lies? Naomi Jenkins had also calmly admitted to lying, when Simon had spoken to her yesterday. Did Robert Haworth have a thing for dishonest women?

Simon didn’t believe Haworth was upstairs. He hadn’t called out in response to his wife’s instruction to make himself decent. Juliet was still lying. Simon was reluctant to enter the house and allow her to close the door behind him. Something told him he might not emerge unscathed. He didn’t think Juliet Haworth would attack him physically, but he was having trouble, nevertheless, making himself enter her home as he knew he had to. As she undoubtedly wanted him to, for whatever reason. Yesterday she had been equally determined to keep him outside.

Simon wished Charlie were with him. Seeing through other women was her speciality. He’d have given a lot to be able to talk to her about Naomi Jenkins too, the way she’d changed her story. But Charlie was on holiday. And she was pissed off with him, however carefully she was trying to hide it. Simon remembered this suddenly with a sort of perplexed irritation. All he’d said was that he might get in touch with Alice Fancourt, just to see how she was. Surely Charlie wouldn’t mind, after all this time? Anyway, she had no right to mind. She wasn’t his girlfriend, never had been. The same was true of Alice, Simon realised with a vague pang of regret.

‘You might think this is funny now,’ he told Juliet Haworth, ‘but you won’t when we get to the custody unit and I show you your cell.’

‘You know what? I might. I think I really might.’ She lolled in the doorway.

Simon put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her to one side. She didn’t resist. He began to climb the stairs. The carpet beneath his feet was speckled with tiny white dots and patches that Simon couldn’t identify. He bent to touch one; its texture was chalky.

‘Stain-remover,’ said Juliet. ‘I can never be bothered to hoover it up, once it’s dried. Still, white powder’s better than a stain, isn’t it?’

Simon didn’t ask her to elaborate. He continued to climb the stairs, wanting to get away from her. Halfway up, he became aware of an unpleasant smell. By the time he’d reached the top landing, it was a stench. A familiar one: the meaty stew of blood, excrement and vomit. Simon felt a coldness in the pit of his stomach. The hairs on his arms prickled his skin. There was a closed door in front of him, and two other doors, half open, further along a narrow corridor.

‘Did you find Robert?’ Juliet called out in a sing-song voice. Simon shivered. He pictured her words as tentacles, wrapping around him, pulling him into the strange, depraved world she inhabited. He shut his eyes for a second. Then he tried the closed door. It was unlocked and opened easily. The awful smell hit Simon full in the face and he fought hard not to be sick. He saw a mess of colours and horror, grey skin, features twisted in pain. Proust had predicted this.
This’ll be a murder investigation by the end of the week, you watch.

The man was unmistakably Robert Haworth. He was nude, lying on his back on one side of a double bed. The blood from his head wound had soaked into the bedding beneath him and dried. One of his arms trailed on the floor. By his hand, Simon saw his glasses; one lens was missing, the other cracked.

Simon noticed a large stone doorstop, about the size of a rugby ball, in one corner of the room. Its top edge was dark and sticky with blood and matted hair; before he could stop himself, Simon thought of an evil child’s hard, faceless doll, and shuddered. He placed his fingertips on Haworth’s wrist because it was what you did, not because he held out any hope. At first he thought he’d imagined it, that small, insistent beating. He must have. The grey skin, the blood and the crusty filth around Haworth’s body presented a clear image of death. A few more seconds convinced Simon he had imagined nothing. There was a pulse. Robert Haworth was still alive.

 

‘Give us a snog, then, Sarge,’ Graham whispered, kissing Charlie’s neck. They were in her bed in the chalet, semi-clothed, the duvet pulled up over their heads. ‘Do your underlings call you Sarge? Or ma’am? That’s what they say on
Prime Suspect.
’

‘Sh!’ Charlie hissed at him. ‘What if Olivia wakes up? Can’t we go to your place?’ She hadn’t been groped in the same room as her sister since the two of them were fifteen and thirteen respectively. How weird those teenage parties were, in retrospect: dozens of couples dotted around somebody’s dimly lit living room, necking and putting their hands inside one another’s clothes while Ultravox or Curiosity Killed the Cat played in the background.

‘My place? No chance,’ Graham breathed in Charlie’s ear. ‘You’re not setting foot over the threshold until the next time Steph gives the place a good spring clean. You’d be shocked by my slovenliness.’

‘Steph cleans your house as well as the chalets?’

‘Yep. She’s my own personal waste-disposal system. She’s my out-tray, at home and at work. Anyway, forget about the dogsbody. It’s your body I’m interested in . . .’

It was strange, Charlie thought, to feel Graham and hear him but be hardly able to see him. The chalet was full of a deep, black darkness, reminding her that she really was in the countryside here. Even in Spilling, a rural market town, the night sky was a dark mushroom-skin colour, never pure black. She’d told Graham this as they’d stumbled tipsily back from the old barn building that housed the spa facilities and a small, cosy bar. ‘We get proper nights here,’ he’d said proudly. ‘No light pollution at all.’ Charlie had thought this was an interesting way to put it. She’d never thought of light as a pollutant before, but she could see what Graham meant.

She felt his bare chest against her skin, the thick hair on it. She wasn’t sure she liked furry chests, but she could put up with it. Everything else about him was attractive. If they were a couple, people might say Graham was out of her league. She ordered herself to start thinking of him as a whole person, rather than as a composite of certain body parts: her imaginary boyfriend come to life. He had long muscly legs and a nice bum, though; Charlie couldn’t help noticing that. Colin Sellers had once accused her of thinking like a man when it came to sex. That was a good thing, surely. Why shouldn’t it be uncomplicated? It made more sense to have a purely physical relationship with someone who looked like Graham than to cry into your pillow every night over a non-relationship with someone like Simon Waterhouse, who put red wine in the fridge and couldn’t even get himself a proper haircut.

Graham was tugging gently at Charlie’s camisole, murmuring, ‘No idea how to get this off at all . . .’

She giggled, aware that he had taken off more clothes than she had, that she was stalling. Graham had no doubts about what they were embarking upon, Charlie could tell. Which was nice. He reminded her—in attitude rather than appearance—of Folly, her parents’ black Labrador, who leaped on top of Charlie and licked her enthusiastically whenever he could. She decided to keep the comparison to herself. Graham seemed fairly thick-skinned, but you could never be sure.

She helped him to remove her underwear. ‘I don’t think you’re fully aware of how sexy you really are, ma’am,’ Graham whispered, running his fingers lightly over her body. ‘Or is it guv?’

‘No comment.’

‘Your red lipstick and your jeans . . .’

‘They’re old, ordinary jeans.’

‘Exactly.’

Charlie tried to kiss him, but he pulled away, saying, ‘You’re miles sexier than Helen Mirren . . .’

‘Any particular reason why you’re comparing me with her?’

‘. . . and that wrinkly blonde bird from
The Bill,
and her from
Silent Witness.
’

‘And Trevor Eve from
Waking the Dead?
’ Charlie suggested.

‘No, he’s sexier than you,’ said Graham with certainty. Charlie laughed and he put his hand over her mouth. ‘Careful not to wake big sis.’

‘Little sis, actually.’

‘So why do you let her boss you around?’

Charlie’s mobile phone began to ring. She’d chosen the opening bars of ‘The Real Slim Shady’ by Eminem as her ringtone. A mistake. The longer it went unanswered, the louder it got. ‘Shit!’ she hissed, fumbling in the darkness, pulling random objects out of her bag. She put her hand on the phone just as it stopped ringing.

Light filled the room. Charlie blinked, turned to look at Graham. She’d assumed he’d switched on a lamp to help her find her phone, but he was still lying down, almost completely covered by the duvet. He groaned, pulling it over his head. Great, thought Charlie. Just when I need a hero to rush to my rescue. Bracing herself, she turned and looked up.

Olivia had pulled the curtain aside and was squinting down through the mezzanine’s wooden railings. She was wearing her Bonsoir floral kimono pyjamas and looked tense and alert, not at all as if she had just been woken up. ‘Yes, I’ve heard everything,’ she said. ‘Not that you two care.’

‘Why didn’t you say something?’ said Charlie, pulling on first her knickers and then her shirt. Not again, she thought, as the painful memory of herself and Simon at Sellers’ fortieth birthday party filled her head. She was furious with Olivia for making this like that, though Olivia knew nothing about the incident at the party. It was the one significant thing Charlie had never told her. ‘Why were you pretending to be asleep?’

‘Why didn’t you check whether I was asleep or not before having sex in my bedroom?’

‘It’s not your bedroom! Your bedroom’s up there. This is
my
bedroom. ’ Charlie felt anger rise and explode inside her like a firework display, blocking out everything else. For a moment she forgot Graham was there, until his head emerged from the bedding.

‘Looks like I’ve overstayed my unwelcome,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you ladies in peace.’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Charlie told him quietly.

‘You stay.’ Olivia was standing now, throwing clothes into her suitcase. ‘You’re the one Charlie wants to be with, not me. I’ll go. One night of this shit’s enough for me. I’m buggered if I’m spending a whole week being the odd one out, listening to you two shag each other senseless every night.’ She pulled her long beige coat on over her pyjamas, looked as if she was on her way to a fancy-dress party.

‘It’s nearly midnight,’ said Graham. ‘Where are you going to go?’

‘I’ll get a taxi to Edinburgh. I don’t care how much it costs. I’ve got a number. I asked the barmaid, while you two were drooling all over each other this evening, ignoring me. I was planning my escape.’

‘This is bound to be my fault,’ said Graham. ‘I’m an incorrigible leader-astray of people . . .’

‘Let her go if she wants to,’ said Charlie.

‘No one’s going to
let
me and no one’s going to stop me,’ said Olivia wearily. ‘I’m going, that’s all.’

‘Hang on a sec,’ said Graham. He reached for his jeans and pulled a mobile phone out of the back pocket. Charlie and Olivia watched him press buttons. ‘Steph, one of the ladies in number three needs driving to Edinburgh. She’ll be over at the lodge in a sec, okay?’ His face darkened as he listened to the response. ‘Well, get dressed. We’ve got a situation here.’ Charlie had seen Steph briefly earlier in the evening. The dogsbody. Graham had called her that to her face and winked at her. She’d attempted a smile in response. Charlie had recognised it as a smile with a complicated history. Graham and Steph had slept together, she guessed.

She’d been surprised by Steph’s appearance. This morning Graham had described her as peasant-like. Charlie had imagined someone with sun-beaten skin and thick calves and ankles. In fact, Steph was slim and pale-skinned, with layered brown hair that was highlighted gold, orange and red. ‘Do you think she’s working undercover for Dulux?’ Olivia had whispered.

Charlie wasn’t sure she wanted Steph to take her sister away. ‘Liv, don’t rush off into the night,’ she said. ‘It’s late. Why don’t we talk about this tomorrow?’

‘Because you’re too busy ingratiating yourself with anything that has a penis to talk to me, that’s why.’ Olivia clomped down the stairs in her high-heeled Manolo Blahnik sandals, carrying her suitcase.

‘Olivia, the last thing I want to do is ruin your holiday,’ said Graham.

She ignored him, looked at Charlie. ‘How long are you going to carry on doing this? Fucking anything that moves, just to prove something to bloody Simon Waterhouse?’

Charlie felt the heat of shame spread across her face and down her neck.

‘You’ve got a problem, Char. It’s about time you dealt with it. Why don’t you . . . stop trying to fill the wrong hole and go and see a shrink or something?’