The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

Blandford, Darville, Elstow, Goundry, Heathcote, Margerison, Rodwell, Winduss.’

Mary cries out, as if I’ve stuck a needle in her heart. Her body folds in on itself.

‘What is it, Mary? Why do those names frighten you?’

‘He told you, didn’t he?’

‘Told me what? Who are they?’

Her eyes glaze over. ‘I don’t know who they were,’ she whispers. ‘They never told us. Isn’t that funny?’

‘Were?’ The word falls through my brain in slow motion. ‘They’re dead?’

She makes an effort to pull herself together. ‘Gemma Crowther’s dead,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘Did you know she was out of prison?’

I didn’t want to know. I asked not to be told. I wrote that in my letter…

‘Ruth?’

‘No. No.’

In some parts of the world, they stone you to death for fucking another woman’s man.

Dead. Did Mary say that Gemma Crowther was dead?

‘I didn’t want to tell you like this.’ Her words come out jerkily. ‘When you came round yesterday, you were in such a state-I couldn’t tell you then. You were ranting about Aidan hiding in my house. You wouldn’t have listened. I’d spent most of the day with a detective from London. He’d just left when you arrived. Gemma Crowther was murdered, she was shot. Twice-in the head and in the heart.’

Gemma Crowther, murdered. Yes; it makes sense. People who behave as she did might well end up getting murdered. In the head and in the heart.

I’m trying to get a grip on what I’ve heard when Mary says, ‘If you still think it’s the truth you want, ask me who killed her.’

14

5/3/08

Olivia was looking out of her first-floor window as Simon and Charlie got out of the cab. By the time they’d paid, she was at the front door.

‘I don’t give a fuck about Martha Wyers,’ said Simon, by way of a greeting. Then, to Charlie, ‘Kerry Gatti’s who we should be talking to.’

‘Did you say Kerry Gatti?’ Olivia asked. She got no reply. ‘I don’t believe this.’

‘I say we go.’

‘I wouldn’t.’ Olivia glared at him. ‘There’s a great big whopping connection between Martha Wyers and your case, or whoever’s case it is. Are you helping the London police or are they helping you?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ Charlie told her. She hadn’t forgiven her sister for yesterday. I’m sorry, Char. It’s bad news. Charlie had imagined Simon half dead, held hostage by a psychopath, until Olivia had abandoned the grief-stricken act and passed on his message. She hadn’t forgiven Simon, come to think of it, for leaving the message with Olivia rather than telling her himself. Charlie knew why he’d done it. He’d thought she’d be angry with him for dragging her into it, or that she’d taunt him for being careless and getting caught out.

That the two of them weren’t wanted back at work for as long as they were of interest to Dunning and Milward was no more than an inconvenience that would, in time, be rectified. Charlie wasn’t worried about her job, and no one at work wanted to lose Simon, not even the people who disliked him personally. Not even the Chief Super and the Chief Constable, neither of whom could stand the sight of him.

‘Tell us what you think we need to know,’ he said grudgingly to Olivia.

‘Thank you. Well, firstly, even though I didn’t manage to find anything about Martha Wyers’ death, I’d bet a million pounds that she committed suicide. She wasn’t murdered.’

‘That’s the equivalent of a less extravagant person betting a fiver,’ Charlie pointed out.

‘A billion, then. She published one book-a novel. I looked it up on Amazon. It’s about a woman who falls passionately in love with a man she hardly knows, and it ends up wrecking her life. The blurb on Amazon even contains the word “suicidal”.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ said Simon. ‘Half the novels that have ever been written are about that. That’s the plot of Anna Karenina. Tolstoy didn’t commit suicide. Charlie, we’re wasting time here.’

‘Listen, will you?’ Olivia snapped. ‘When I told Senga McAllister at The Times that Martha Wyers was dead, the first thing she asked me was if she’d killed herself. In 1999, while Senga was still a jobbing arts reporter, she wrote a feature called Future Famous Five, a profile of five arty types that readers ought to look out for in the new millennium: stars of the future, that sort of thing.’ Olivia paused to draw breath.

‘Martha Wyers was the author they chose. Senga chose her personally. She hadn’t read the novel at that point, but she’d read a few of her short stories and thought she was easily the most brilliant new writer she’d come across for years.’

‘Brilliance requires originality,’ said Simon. ‘A novel about a woman with a broken heart’s not original, not if it’s written in 1999.’

‘Does he really mean that?’ Olivia asked Charlie.

‘Carry on, Liv. Ignore him.’

‘There are different kinds of broken hearts, Simon. I hope you never have to find that out.’

‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Liv,’ Charlie waved her hands in front of her sister’s face. ‘Carry on.’

‘Senga was a bit embarrassed about having picked Martha Wyers.’ Olivia glanced at Simon as if she planned to deal with him later. ‘Her first novel turned out to be her only one. She sank without trace.’

‘That’s death for you,’ said Charlie. ‘It tends to impede productivity. ’

‘Wyers never wrote anything else, and faded into obscurity soon after the feature went to press. Some of Senga’s colleagues who’d picked these up-and-coming stars-the music critic, the drama critic-their choices are now famous, household names.’

‘Such as?’

‘Pippa Dowd was the music choice.’

‘From Limited Sympathy,’ Charlie told Simon. ‘He hasn’t heard of anyone,’ she explained to Liv.

‘And the actor was Doohan Champion.’

‘He’s a talentless streak of piss!’

‘As well as a multi-millionaire, yes,’ said Liv drily. ‘I suppose it must be hard to predict which careers will succeed and which fail-no one can foresee the future.’ Seeing the look on Simon’s face, she went on quickly, ‘Anyway, then Senga said something I remembered later on, when she emailed me the article and I saw that all the bits apart from the section on Martha were missing. She said, “At least I wasn’t the only one who got it wrong. The art critic and the comedy buff ended up with egg on their faces, too. Their picks also sank without trace.” I thought: I wonder who the art critic chose? I wondered if it was Mary Trelease.’

Simon turned on Charlie. ‘What does she know about Trelease? ’

‘Plenty,’ said Olivia. ‘I know there’s a woman called Ruth Bussey who’s got a thing about Charlie, whose boyfriend Aidan Seed thinks he killed an artist called Mary Trelease even though she isn’t dead.’

‘You told her the names?’

Charlie looked away. She’d told Liv a lot more than she normally would. They’d needed something to talk about that wasn’t the cuttings on the bedroom wall and how Charlie felt about them. She’d had a good story and she’d