The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

threaten to nick them for theft-taking her money under false pretences. Finally, one of them-the marginally brighter one-started yelling at her. Too loud, really hamming it up, but it didn’t matter. Charlie let him insult her and threaten her for about half a minute, then backed away from the bar, saying, ‘Look, forget it. I don’t want any trouble.’ As she walked back to the table, he shouted obscenities after her. Earning every penny, the fucker. Charlie heard the barman threaten to bar him if he didn’t pack it in.

‘What was that about?’ Kerry looked amused. ‘Where’s your drink?’

‘Not worth it,’ she said tersely.

‘Liver going by the name of Lily these days, is it? I’d heard as much. Come on, give us your money, I’ll go for you.’

‘I’m not giving you fuck all.’ Charlie restrained herself from asking what he’d heard. Was he referring to her transferring out of CID? Did people think that was down to fear? ‘If you want, you and your sponsor can buy me a vodka and orange.’

As soon as he’d gone to the bar, she put both her feet around his open briefcase and pulled it over to her. Inside, there was a copy of a book called Voice and the Actor, season two of The Wire on DVD, an iPod, some CDs-Rush, Pink Floyd and Genesis-and two thin blue envelope files. Charlie opened one and saw the name Aidan Seed. She froze for a second, unused to having things happen the way she wanted them to.

She slipped both files under her shirt and folded her arms over them as she walked to the stairs that led to the ladies. Instead of following the drunk girl with the chunky calves and mud-dipped stiletto heels up to the next floor, Charlie carried on to the end of the passageway. Beside the door of the gents’ there was another one marked ‘emergency exit’. She pushed the silver bar and it opened on to a yard full of empty crates and recycling skips.

She ran round the side of the pub, through the car park at the front and on to the road. Her Audi was parked half on the pavement, under a street light. Pulling the files out from under her shirt, Charlie pointed her key-fob at the car and pressed the unlock button. Nothing happened. ‘Come on,’ she breathed through gritted teeth. She pressed again. Nothing. And again. And again. Shit. She looked over her shoulder. No sign of Kerry. Yet.

She unlocked the car manually and set off the alarm. The noise, an ee-aw-ee-aw screech, sounded like an amplified saw cutting through metal. People on the street were giving her dirty looks, mouthing things at her that she couldn’t hear and wasn’t sorry to miss.

Sweating in spite of the cold, Charlie jabbed the unlock button several more times with her thumb. Useless. She tried the lock button, also to no effect. The battery was beyond resuscitation. Without a new one, she assumed there was no way of turning off the alarm.

She looked behind her again and this time she saw Kerry. He was in the car park, looking left and right. She ducked down behind the wall that separated the pub from the street, then raised her head in time to see him run round the back of the Swan. She knew he’d be back soon, having failed to find her there.

With no time to think, Charlie abandoned her wailing car and ran across the car park, up the front steps of the pub and back inside, clutching the files tight so that nothing fell out. He wouldn’t look inside. Knowing what she’d done, he wouldn’t think she’d be stupid enough to come back.

Charlie ran up the stairs to the ladies’, pushed a couple of indignant drunk teenagers out of her way, and locked herself in a cubicle.

She didn’t open the files straight away. She was too busy breathing, which felt like something she hadn’t done for a while. She could still hear the sodding car. Once her head had stopped throbbing and she could see an immobile, much-graffitied toilet cubicle rather than one that pulsated and warped in front of her eyes, she was ready to read what she’d taken from Kerry’s briefcase.

There was a file on Aidan Seed and one on Ruth Bussey. Ruth’s told Charlie nothing much that she didn’t already know: evangelical Christian parents, garden design business, three BALI awards. Most of the information Kerry had gathered had to do with Gemma Crowther and Stephen Elton. There was a lot about the court case. Charlie imagined how he must have congratulated himself on sniffing out that juicy morsel.

She opened the other file. Here were things she didn’t know about Aidan Seed: details of his education, his father’s death from lung cancer. She skimmed the pages, looking for anything that stood out. Aidan’s mother’s cancer-also in the lungs. His stepfather…

Charlie cried out in shock. Aidan Seed’s stepfather. This was it. She pulled her phone out of her bag and rang Simon. Voicemail. Shit. Where was he? He never ignored his phone; he was too neurotic. To him, each missed call was an opportunity for ever lost. It was one of the things Charlie took the piss out of him for, along with getting more calls from his mother than from anyone else.

Someone flushed the toilet in the next cubicle. Charlie waited until the gurgling of the cistern had stopped, then rang Simon again. This time she left a message. ‘Seed’s stepfather-his name’s Len Smith. He’s in an open prison, Long Leighton in Wiltshire, serving a life sentence for a murder he committed in 1982. He strangled a woman.’ Kerry had written nothing in his report about whether the woman was naked or in bed when she died, but Charlie knew. She did a quick calculation in her head. Aidan Seed had been thirty-two when The Times feature was published in 1999, which made him… fifteen in 1982.

‘Smith murdered his partner in their home,’ she told Simon. ‘I don’t need to tell you the address: 15 Megson Crescent. They lived there with Smith’s three stepkids, Aidan and his brother and sister.’ In case Simon was as full of disbelief as she was, Charlie added, ‘I’m not making this up. Aidan lived in that house until he left home. The woman Len Smith’s inside for killing-her name was Mary Trelease.’

There were photocopies of photographs from newspapers: grainy, but distinct enough for Charlie to be able to see that the Mary Trelease Len Smith had killed looked nothing like the Mary Trelease Charlie had met. Met in the same house the first Mary Trelease had lived and died in. She held the clearest of the pictures close to her face. She’d seen this woman before, but where? It wasn’t possible. The first Mary Trelease had been dead for twenty-six years. Smith was seventy-eight now, Kerry had noted. He’d been denied parole on several occasions.

Charlie was about to put her phone back in her bag when she noticed a small envelope symbol on its screen. A message. How long had it been there? How long since she’d checked? She pressed ‘1’ to play it, expecting to hear Simon’s voice, and heard, with a jolt of surprise, Ruth Bussey’s instead.

25

Wednesday 5 March 2008

‘Wait here,’ I tell the driver, halfway out of the cab as it draws to a slow halt outside Garstead Cottage. ‘Keep the engine on.’ I run past the cardboard cow with the yellow earring and pound on the cottage’s back door. Mary’s ‘Survivor’ song is playing. She opens the door and squints at me, as if I’m a bright light and she’s been in the dark for a long time. She wasn’t expecting me back. ‘You’ve got to get out of here,’ I tell her. ‘No time to explain. The taxi’s outside. Go somewhere, anywhere. Go to Martha’s mother’s house.’

‘Cecily?’ She looks down at her bare feet, doesn’t move. She’s wearing torn jeans and a black shirt with paint on it. I want to grab her, pull her outside and out of the way. ‘What’s going on?’ she asks.

I’m going to have to tell her something. ‘I rang the police in Lincoln. Two of the gardens I designed have been vandalised-turf torn up, plants pulled out of the earth. One last summer and one in the early hours of Tuesday morning.’ Not more than six hours after Gemma Crowther was murdered.

Mary’s eyes widen. ‘Cherub Cottage?’

‘No. Two of the three I won awards for.’ I can’t understand it, not really, and I don’t want to try. For someone to attack something as beautiful and natural as a garden, something so irreplaceable-it’s beyond my comprehension. The owners will replant and reseed, but it won’t be the same. No two gardens are ever the same.

I can’t let the sadness in, not now, when I need to stay alert.

Mary grips the door frame. ‘He did it to you as well.’

‘Look, there’s no time. He’s coming here. Go.’