‘He told me he’d killed you. Why did he say that?’
She rubs her thumb along her lips and back again. ‘He wants me dead. He’s going to kill me, or try to. It’s a threat.’
‘No! Aidan’s not a killer.’
She laughs. ‘Don’t kid yourself.’
‘It makes no sense. If he wanted to threaten you, why not do it to your face?’
‘He’s clever. I’d have called the police, wouldn’t I? I assume it’s an offence to threaten someone’s life.’
‘I don’t know.’ I can’t think straight, can’t process any of this.
‘Of course it is. It must be. There’d have been reprisals for him, and he doesn’t want that. He thinks he’s suffered enough.’
‘Why? Why has he suffered?’
‘His childhood,’ says Mary, assuming I know what she’s referring to.
I feel ashamed of my ignorance. Aidan never wanted to talk about his family. I didn’t push it; I was equally reluctant to talk about my parents.
‘He tried to save her later,’ Mary mutters.
‘Aidan tried to save Martha?’
‘Once he’d rung the ambulance. He’s no weakling-well, you know that. It was easy for him to get her down. The emergency services operator must have told him to do it: lift her up, or cut her down or whatever. Stop the rope from strangling her.’
I don’t want to have to visualise it.
‘I’ve thought about this a lot,’ says Mary. ‘A man rings up saying a woman’s just hanged herself in front of him. If you were the person on the switchboard, what would you think? You’d assume he’d rushed to save her first, wouldn’t you, and only rung you afterwards? Soon as you found out she was still hanging there, dying while he wastes time on the phone, you’d tell him to get back in there and save her.’
I wince.
‘How do you feel about your boyfriend now? A man who only tries to save a dying woman once a disembodied official voice has told him to, who dreams up a sick, devious way to threaten my life. You know he described me in great detail, right down to my birthmark?’ She points to the patch of brown skin beneath her bottom lip. ‘That was him letting me know I’m his target. If he tells the police he’s strangled me, murdered me, what are they going to do when they find me alive and well?’
She lights another cigarette, coughing. ‘Alive, anyway. I’ve probably got lung cancer, the amount I smoke. The police aren’t very bright. Aidan knew they’d rush back to reassure him once they’d found out his story wasn’t true. Poor, deluded man, they’d think-what a shame. His determination to make them believe him sent them back here twice, three times. What if he’s right? they thought. Even though we’ve all met this woman he claims to have murdered, we’d better check again. And then you turn up, and I hear from you as well that he says he’s killed me…’
She stands up, wrapping her wild hair round her hand, yanking it straight. ‘Evil bastard! He knew it would scare me more than a straightforward threat. How do you think it feels to have your death discussed as if it’s already happened?
‘Why?’ I ask.
She looks at me oddly.
It’s a simple question, an obvious one. ‘Why would Aidan want to frighten you? Why would he want to kill you?’
‘Will you let me take you somewhere?’ she asks.
‘No. Where?’ I think of Charlie Zailer’s advice:
‘Villiers.’ The name on the tea towel in Mary’s kitchen. I saw it last time I was here. ‘My old school. There’s a house in the grounds, Garstead Cottage. I use it for painting, when I’m not here. Martha used to write there. Her parents rent it from the school. We’ll be safe there. Martha was a writer-did I tell you that?’
‘No.’
Mary sighs, starts to rub her temples with her fingertips. ‘Then you don’t know how Aidan and Martha met.’
‘No.’ How could I? ‘Why did Martha kill herself?’
‘Come with me to Villiers,’ she says. ‘If you want the truth about me, Martha and Aidan, there’s something you need to see.’
12
‘DC Dunning’s already heard everything I can tell you,’ Simon said to DS Coral Milward. Dunning sat beside her, clutching his own arms as if miming a strait-jacket. He reeked of the same acid-seaweed aftershave he’d had on yesterday-his version of a chemical weapon, thought Simon; all the better for being legal.
Dunning had interviewed Simon and Charlie last night, together and separately. Each time, the room they were in was dingier. This one wasn’t much bigger than a toilet cubicle, and had some kind of hard, woven substance on the floor that looked like the plaited bristles of a brush. It was decayed to a rusty colour around the edges, coarse hairs sprouting round one or two dark-rimmed holes in the middle. The room was too hot as well as ugly. They were all sweating, Simon most of all. He didn’t care. Stench-wise, as in every other respect, he was proud to give as good as he got.
‘You don’t need us to go over it again,’ he said. ‘We’ve both told you everything we know.’ He was acutely aware of the details Charlie hadn’t volunteered: Mary Trelease’s post-mortem portrait of a dead woman called Martha Wyers, Ruth Bussey’s bedroom wall. Simon knew her silence was down to embarrassment. There was probably no connection between Martha Wyers and the murder Dunning and Milward were investigating; Charlie didn’t want to look stupid, and she wanted even less to tell a pair of hostile strangers about Bussey’s collection of Charlie Zailer memorabilia.
Simon felt uneasy about his role in the lie. Even an arsehole like Neil Dunning had the right to do his job unimpeded. On the other hand, if Dunning ever got round to taking the interest in Bussey and Trelease that Simon had told him countless times he ought to, he could find out for himself about Martha Wyers and Bussey’s collection of cuttings, decide for himself if they were important.
Last night, all Dunning had seemed to want to talk about was Simon’s ‘irregular’ behaviour on Monday. He persisted in using this description, even after Simon had explained that taking things too far was something he did habitually.
Simon knew Dunning didn’t really fancy him for Gemma Crowther’s murder, but Dunning wanted him to think he did. Coral Milward was an unknown quantity, a fat middle-aged woman with short blonde hair, three thin gold chains round her neck and gold rings with pink cameos of women’s faces at their centres on three of her stubby- nailed fingers. Probably coral, Simon thought, in honour of her name. This was the first he had seen or heard of DS Milward. Unlike Dunning, she smiled a lot. She was smiling now. ‘You don’t ever ask witnesses to repeat their stories?’ she asked in a soft west-country accent.
‘I’m glad you said “witness”, not “suspect”.’
Another smile. ‘I was being tactful. I want to show you a photograph.’
‘Of Len Smith?’ asked Simon.
‘No.’
‘Show me a photograph of Len Smith, so I can tell you that the man you know as Len Smith is Aidan Seed.’
Milward hesitated before saying, ‘We have no photograph of Len Smith.’
‘There is no Len Smith. Have you found Seed yet? Have you looked for him?’ Simon only ever felt this alert and
