What did he mean by "everything that happened"? Tims and my bust-up? More than that? Were we going to have to do the "So, what have you been up to?" routine after all?
"Theres a lot you dont know, Gaby. Tim left Francine shortly after he last saw you, then went back to her after the stroke. Id . . . I know Kerry would love to talk to you, but nows not a good time. The police are here."
Tim left Francine. Tim left Francine. The words reel in my brain.
Dans right: theres a lot I dont know because he and Kerry didnt tell me. A year and two months after I saw Tim for the last time, Kerry wrote me a letter. Ive still got it; I know it by heart. Tim had moved to the Cotswolds, she wrote. There was no mention of Francine, and I a.s.sumed that since she was his wife, she had moved with him. Kerry and Dan had, Kerry told me, since they no longer needed to be in the Culver Valley for work reasons. The letter contained some vague, small-talk-ish mentions of future work plans: Kerry had made a contact at a local nature reserve and hoped to be able to get more involved, Dan was thinking of doing a Ph.D. on narratives of risk and how our att.i.tudes to financial gambles are determined more by the stories we tell ourselves than by our chances of ending up richer or poorer. That part would have made me smile if it werent for what followed immediately after it. Tim had asked Kerry to transmit a message to me: I was not to contact him again, ever.
Kerry also wanted me to know that she and I couldnt be friends anymore. I wasnt surprised. Id spoken to her only twice on the phone since Tims decision to boycott me, and both times shed sounded uncomfortable. In her letter, she explained how important it was for Tim to know that I was no longer part of her or Dans life either, since they were the only two people he could rely on. "Were his whole world now," she wrote. I didnt suspect that this meant Francine was no longer on the scene; I a.s.sumed she was in the background, as restrictive and toxic as ever, but that Kerry didnt want to dwell on the negatives. I thought she meant that she and Dan were the only good things in Tims life.
"Knowing I was meeting you for lunch or even just chatting to you on the phone would kill him," the letter went on. "Youre his past, were his present. If you appear in our present, youll spill over into his, and he couldnt bear that. I really hope you understand. Tim adores you and he always will (no, he hasnt said so, but I KNOW!) and he cant cope with the feelings."
Every night, as I lie beside Sean or on my own in a hotel bed somewhere in Europe or America trying to fall asleep, I write letters to Kerry in my mind, letters I never commit to paper or send. Ive been nothing if not obedient, Kerry. Look how successfully Ive disappeared: not only from Tims life but from my own. I bury myself in the dazzling brilliance of my work and vanish from my home life more and more every day.
"Which police?" I ask Dan. "DC Gibbs?" I could have given him a lift from the police station.
"Have you been talking to Chris Gibbs?"
I tell him Ive seen Gibbs once. I explain about Dsseldorf, my delayed flight, meeting Lauren. I quote her on the subject of letting an innocent man go to jail for murder.
Dans face drains of color as I speak. "Did you tell Gibbs that Lauren said that?" he asks.
Is he joking? "Why do you think I went to see him, Dan?"
"f.u.c.k." He closes his eyes.
"Whats going on?" Dan has the opposite of a poker face; always did.
"Nows not a good time, Gaby. Youll have to come back."
"Ill wait till Kerrys free," I say, forcing my way past him and into the house.
"Why was Lauren on your plane?" he calls after me.
Good question. Did Tim tell Lauren about me? Or maybe he tried not to mention me but couldnt help it, and Lauren guessed that I would always mean more to him than she ever could; maybe she caught him looking at my website or my blog once too often. Was she envious enough to want to see firsthand if she had anything to be jealous of?
No. They werent having an affair. Theres no reason to think that they were.
I picture Tim pa.s.sing Lauren in the hall Im standing in, avoiding her eye, pretending not to have noticed her presence. . . .
If Dans following me as I start to search his house, Im not aware of it. I run past closed doors, lots of them in a row. Dan and Kerry should apply for change of use and rebrand this place as a door museum. Wrong turn. I go back the way I came, turn right where I turned left.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . .
This looks more promising: a patch of light at the end of the hall that must mean an open door. I hear a voice that doesnt sound like Kerrys. A woman. As I get closer, she says, "Im interested in your and Dans money. Youre obviously not short. Sam says Tim hasnt worked for some time, so it cant have been him paying for all this, and a care a.s.sistant for Francine."
Whos Sam?
"Where did the money come from? And how come youre so generous with it?"
I know the answer to that one. I swallow hard and walk into the room.
10.
11/3/2011.
"Shall I explain about the money?" The woman standing in the doorway asked Kerry Jose. To Charlie she said, "Without me, there wouldnt be any-thats my excuse for b.u.t.ting in." She had thick brown shoulder-length hair, this intruder; pale skin, large brown eyes, a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Charlie was puzzled by her clothes. They had the unmistakable gleam of designer-expensive, but were heavily creased and dirty in places: muddy, food-stained. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot.
"Sorry, Ive come straight from an exhausting delayed-plane endurance test," she explained, looking down at herself. She didnt sound sorry. Her tone would have been better suited to the words "Tough s.h.i.t." "No time to change," she added, aiming a challenging stare in Charlies direction.
All right, so she was clever; shed known what Charlie was thinking. And confident: very few people walked into a murder investigation in progress and declared that money wouldnt exist if it werent for them.
Charlie was about to ask the woman for her name when she was distracted by a yelp from Kerry Jose. She turned. Kerry, who was leaning against the Aga rail, had covered her mouth with her hands and was crying. Shed been dry-eyed and calm only seconds ago. "Gaby! Oh, thank G.o.d!" Kerry flew across the room suddenly, making Charlie jump, and gripped the disheveled visitors body in a vise-like hug, pinning her arms to her sides.
Unambiguous, then: somehow, this woman with freckles and dirty expensive clothes was important. She belonged here, though Kerry evidently hadnt known she was coming.
She even looked as if she belonged. Her appearance, simultaneously affluent and mud-smeared, worked perfectly with the vibe of Kerry and Dan Joses sunflower-yellow-walled kitchen, which was a similarly bizarre mix of the aspirational and the shocking. It was a huge room that easily swallowed up two tables, six chairs around each one, and had amazing unframed oil paintings on the walls. It was also one of the messiest domestic s.p.a.ces Charlie had ever seen. Not a single surface or part of a surface was visible; Charlie had had to balance the cup of tea Kerry Jose had made her on a pile of old Christmas cards, prompting Kerry to say, "Yes, use those cards as a coaster, good idea!"
Every counter and tabletop was piled high with unstable towers of things that had nothing in common with each other and didnt belong together: a telephone directory on top of a board game on top of a box of cereal on top of a book of fabric samples balanced on a tennis racket. Next to that particular tower was a fruit bowl that contained a tape measure, a sheep brooch made mainly of pink wool, a packet of plasters, a rolled-up pair of socks, four old ice-lolly sticks with red and orange staining on their top halves, and a broken bra with the underwiring poking threateningly out of the black fabric. Between the two tables-one rustic, wooden and round, one with elegant dark wood legs and a veined white marble top-at least fifteen cardboard boxes were stacked in the middle of the floor. Charlie could only see the contents of the top layer: books, maps, a folded rug, a clock with cracked gla.s.s and a bent big hand.
How could anyone live like this? Someone at the Dower House, Kerry or Dan Jose, had to be on the h.o.a.rder spectrum. Perhaps they both were. Had they trained themselves to look only at the paintings when they came in here? Charlie had to admit they were stunning, though she couldnt work out if they were abstract or not. They seemed to depict womens bodies merging into mainly blue and green landscapes in a way that made their elbows and knees look like mountains. No faces. No heads, in fact. Sinister but beautiful.
If this were my kitchen, Charlie thought, Id keep the art and chuck everything else. She and Simon were the opposite of h.o.a.rders, she realized. They bought as little as possible, threw away as much of it as they could as soon as theyd eaten or drunk the contents. Charlie could easily see how Kerry Jose might think differently; she could imagine Kerry coming up with what she considered to be a good reason to keep an old ice-lolly stick. Kerry focused on the positive whenever she could; that had been obvious from the brief conversation Charlie had managed to have with her before this Gaby woman interrupted. Also obvious was the almost total absence of a desire to control or steer the conversation; Kerry had seemed happy to let Charlie take their dialogue wherever shed wanted to, and had answered every question willingly and almost . . . "gratefully" couldnt be the right word, could it? That was how Kerry had sounded: appreciative of Charlies prompts. The dynamic between Kerry and Dan, her husband, had seemed rather odd too, but Charlie knew it was too early to reach a verdict about that: the three of them had sat at the kitchen table together for less than a minute before the phone had rung and Dan had gone to answer it, and then the doorbell had rung several times-overbearingly, Charlie had thought. That must have been Gaby, that insistent ringing with its air of "Is any f.u.c.ker going to let me in?"
And yet Kerry was delighted to see her. Her arrival had elicited a "Thank G.o.d." The two of them were obviously friends of some description, though they looked as if they would have nothing in common: the ta.s.sel-skirted, fluffy-sweatered Bohemian and the glossy, a.s.sertive businesswoman. Not so glossy today, perhaps, but Charlie could imagine how intimidatingly stunning Gaby would look after a good nights sleep. She wasnt exactly pretty, but it was sort of hard to stop looking at her face.
Her expression was more agonized than delighted. She was trying to shake herself free of Kerrys embrace. "Kerry, dont. Stop crying, or youll start me off. I dont want to waste my limited time with the police crying." Kerry backed off, nodding, and started to wipe her eyes, visibly comfortable with being ordered around.
Thats whats odd: she and her husband both like to be told what to do. They glance at each other hesitantly, hoping for a cue of some kind, unsure whos in charge. Weird marriage.
Black kettle. Black pot.
"You are the police, right?" Gabys confident voice broke into Charlies thoughts.
"Sergeant Charlie Zailer." She stood up, held out her hand.
Gaby shook it. "Gabrielle Struthers, only ever known as Gaby. Im a friend of Kerry and Dans from years ago. Also a good friend of Tim Brearys."
"What you said about not wanting to waste your limited time with the police . . ." Charlie began, not really knowing where she was going with this, or, come to think of it, what she was doing here without Sam. Hed stuck his head in to say something had come up and he had to nip back into town, told Charlie to text him when she wanted picking up. An obvious ruse. He was hoping shed be able to connect with Kerry Jose more successfully than he had, get something out of her that hed failed to extract. She planned to tell him later, proudly, that shed bypa.s.sed the empathetic-emotional route altogether and asked about the household finances instead. As far as she could see, it was the most interesting aspect of the setup at the Dower House, as well as the most suspicious. Not with regard to Francines murder, perhaps, but strange nonetheless. And therefore worth investigating. Fair enough, Tim and Francine Breary were close friends of the Joses, but most close friends werent willing to support each other financially till death did them part. A lot of parents wouldnt even do that for their kids.
Charlie became aware that Gaby Struthers was staring at her, eyebrows raised expectantly. Waiting for her to finish the question shed started asking.
"Most people arent that keen to talk to us," she said. "Guilty or innocent, they avoid us if they possibly can."
"Guilty or innocent, most people are cowardly and superst.i.tious," Gaby said, pulling a chair out from beneath the table so that she could sit down. There was something round and silver on the seat. A napkin ring? No, too big, too-sharp edges. A pastry cutter. Charlie knew people owned them-people whose lifestyles were very different from hers. Shed have had more use for a fat giants wedding ring, which the silver thing also might have been.
Gaby picked it up, tossed it into a Pyrex oven dish on the table that was full of sh.e.l.ls, stones, elastic bands and packets of aspirin. She sat down. One of the elastic bands in the dish was red, Charlie couldnt help noticing; the sight of it made her angry. Liv had e-mailed her the other day asking her to pick up any red bands she saw on the pavement for Gibbs ball. Charlie had no intention of doing anything of the sort and told Liv so. Her sisters reply had arrived fast enough to make the speed of light look like the chubby asthmatic who always got picked last for team sports: "If it was Dom collecting red elastic bands and not Chris, would you do it?" For once Charlie had taken Simons advice: shed ignored the question and deleted the e-mail.
No, I f.u.c.king wouldnt. This isnt about me taking an ethical position on your love life. Ive got better things to do than collect red rubber bands, either for your bit-on-the-side or for your fiance.
"Whys your time limited?" Charlie asked Gaby Struthers. "Do you have to be somewhere?"
"No. I a.s.sumed you did. Look, what Ive got to say wont take long. Why dont I just say it and then you can get on with dismissing it, like DC Gibbs did, and talking to the people wholl tell you what you want to hear instead?"
"You should know . . . Im not actually directly involved in the Francine Breary investigation. I used to be CID but Im not anymore. So I dont know what Gibbs said or did to annoy you, but if theres a party line on this, Im not party to it."
"Youre not directly involved in Tims case?" Gaby looked at Kerry, who shrugged helplessly.
"I didnt have a chance to explain that to Kerry before you arrived," Charlie said. A good friend of Tim Brearys. Tims case. It was clear what Gaby Struthers cared and didnt care about here. Was she at all disturbed by Francine Brearys murder, or was Tims welfare her only concern?
"Then, if its not your case, if you dont even work for CID, what are you doing here?"
"Im not sure. Sam Kombothekra was coming and he asked me to come with him-hes the DS in charge." Charlie shrugged. "Maybe he thinks a womans touch is needed." She allowed Gaby and Kerry to hear her sarcasm.
"Needed for what?" Gaby asked. "Is the case still open? Does that mean DS Kombothekra doesnt believe Tim killed Francine?" Her p.r.o.nunciation of Sams surname was perfect after only one hearing.
Charlie had to be careful. One option was to answer honestly: "Sam thinks everyone in this house is lying about something. The word "conspiracy has been mentioned." A line like that, with its shock value, might have a productive effect on Gaby Struthers, but would obliterate the rapport Charlie had been building with Kerry Jose, out of whom the truth, a.s.suming she was withholding it, would have to be coaxed gently.
"Because he didnt kill her," Gaby said with certainty.
"Gaby," Kerry murmured, closing her eyes, "I wish he hadnt done it as much as y-"
"He didnt do it, Kerry. On Thursday, I flew to-"
"Dsseldorf. I know," Kerry said, as if it was causing her pain to utter each word. Her eyes were still half closed.
"You know Lauren was on my flight?" Gaby snapped.
"I booked her flights for her. She told me she was going to visit friends, that Jason mustnt know anything about it." Kerry sighed. "Well, he knows now. Hes on his way to the airport to collect her. Shes not in good shape, apparently. To be honest, I dont know whats going on with Lauren."
"Dan didnt know Lauren was on my flight," said Gaby pointedly, "when I told him a few minutes ago."
"I havent had a chance to tell him," Kerry said. "He was in London this morning, only got back about half an hour ago. Ive been busy talking to Sergeant Zailer."
"Please, call me Charlie."
"Do you know why Lauren decided to stalk me all the way to Germany?" Gaby asked. Her manner reminded Charlie of Simon in interview mode. Youll tell me what I want to know, or youll regret it. "How did she even know about me?"
Kerry shook her head. She was hiding behind her long ginger-blonde hair, holding it like a shield in front of her face. With her other hand, she picked at it, made a show of flicking something onto the floor. Charlie didnt believe there had been anything in her hair that had needed removing; it was an act, to avoid meeting Gabys eye.
Interesting. Kerry hadnt been afraid when shed been talking to Charlie alone. And yet shed been genuinely delighted when her friend had walked into the room; that wasnt an act.
"She didnt tell me anything, ask me for anything," Gaby spoke to Kerry as if shed forgotten Charlie was there. "Apart from what she let slip out by accident . . ."
"Could someone please fill me in?" Charlie asked, worried shed fall hopelessly behind if she allowed the two women any more private communion time.
"I told DC Chris Gibbs the full story this morning," Gaby said. "He can fill you in on the details. Short version? I went to Dsseldorf yesterday. Lauren Cookson, the care a.s.sistant who looked after Francine, followed me there. She blurted out something about letting an innocent man go to jail for a murder he didnt commit."
"What?" Kerry dropped her hair. Her arms hung at her sides, trembling as if in a mild breeze. Charlie recognized authentic shock when she saw it.
"She was talking about Tim," said Gaby. "Somehow she knows he didnt do it, and since she must have been around Francine every day, since she lives here, I believe her a hundred percent. I also know Tims not a killer and never could be. Whats going on, Kerry? Whys he saying he killed Francine when he didnt? You must know the truth."
"He killed her, Gaby." The muscles in Kerrys face were tight with anxiety. "Im so sorry, but we were all here. Dan and I-"
"And Lauren?" Gaby demanded.
Kerry nodded. "Lauren knows . . . what we all know," she said almost inaudibly, looking down at the floor. "I cant think why shed say otherwise."
"Gaby, is it okay if I ask you a couple of questions?" said Charlie.
"Ask away."
"Where were you on the sixteenth of February?"
"The day Francine was murdered?" Gaby reached into her bag, pulled out a dark brown leather diary with "Coutts 2011" embossed on its front cover.
"How do you know thats when Francine was killed?" Charlie asked.
"How does anyone know anything? Google. The sixteenth of February: I was in Harston, a village near Cambridge."
"All day?"
Gaby nodded. "Got up at five a.m., got there at seven, was in meetings all day."
"Meetings?" All day, in a village? First the church hall about the flower arrangements, then the post office to discuss the padded envelope window display?
As if she could read Charlies mind, Gaby said impatiently, "Sagentias UK head office is in Harston-theyre a product development company. Weve outsourced a small but crucial part of our work to them. Google my name if you want to know more about what that work is, and ring Luke Hares at Sagentia if you want confirmation that I was there all day on the sixteenth of February." After a pause, Gaby added, "I didnt kill Francine Breary any more than Tim did. Christ, if he was going to kill her hed have done it years ago."
Charlie saw Kerry Jose stiffen. She decided not to pursue it for the time being and mentally filed Gabys comment for future reference.
"You said you were going to tell me everything I needed to know about the money."
"Happy to," said Gaby. "In a nutsh.e.l.l, Kerry and Dan have got plenty and Tims got none." Kerry had put the kettle on and was putting a teabag into a mug. "Whats happened with the Heron Close house?" Gaby asked her.
"It was repossessed. Tim hasnt worked since he left Francine, which wasnt long after you last saw him. He didnt have hardly any money saved. Couldnt make the mortgage payments."
Gaby laughed. "Did he care? He hated that house."
Charlie watched Kerrys features jerk and reset themselves. It would be useful if this could continue to happen every time Gaby revealed a detail that Kerry had hoped to keep secret; for Charlie, it was like having a yellow brick road of significance to follow.
"After Francine had her stroke, she couldnt make the payments either. Im . . ." Kerry made a choking noise, gagging on her own words. She tried again. "Im sorry I didnt get in touch, Gaby. I wanted to tell you everything-about Tim leaving his job, leaving Francine, but . . ." She shrugged. "Well, I explained in the letter I wrote you. Did you get it?"