‘Ms Greenside?’
‘Yes.’ The fine hairs on Carrie’s arms stood up. She held the phone tightly as she stood in her hallway.
‘It’s DI Hunt. I’d like to ask you a few more questions, if I may. Can I pop over to see you?’
‘Now?’ Carrie asked. ‘What’s this about?’
‘If it’s convenient, I’ll drive over right away. In fact, I’m close to your house.’
He hung up, not giving her a chance to even think. She could pretend she was out, but he’d called on her landline. Who did that? Cops trying to catch you out, you dumb bitch. She looked around her house frantically. What was she looking for? Anything incriminating. He wouldn’t have a warrant: he didn’t have cause, and he hadn’t had time to secure one. But he’d turned up to Tony’s last night with the right to search, how the hell had he managed to find a magistrate that quickly? Perhaps he was bent. They all were. She called her lawyer, but it went to voicemail.
She was nineteen again. The night her father sat bloodied and bruised in the back of a police car, bundled in there after they’d come to the house, when her mother called 999. But her mother hadn’t done it to protect her daughter, she’d done it because Carrie was attacking him. She’d finally shown the courage to hit the bastard back and her own mother had called the police on her. She’d never spoken to her mother again after that night. That was the end of her years at home, if one could call it a home. She walked out and didn’t look back, until she was arrested and charged with actual bodily harm.
Her hands shook. She dialled Tony’s number. He answered, and she could tell straight away that he’d been drinking.
‘Tony, can you talk?’
‘Carrie? I’m with friends, wait, let me move into another room. Er, yes, how are you? I’ve been thinking about coming over, I need to apologise. And you need to collect your car.’
‘There’s no time for that. The police are on the way to my house, right now. That detective, Hunt, what does he know?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tony, listen to me: he’s coming here, right now, I need to know what you told him this morning.’ She sighed. ‘When did you last see your wife?’
‘Tuesday. She was drunk and she fell and hit her head.’
‘What else?’
‘I went to bed and left her ranting.’
‘Ranting about what?’
‘I don’t know! The usual shit.’
‘But you didn’t say that to the police, right? You came across as a loving husband who made a mistake asking me over because you were grief-stricken and lonely?’
‘Sort of, I told them she was a prostitute.’
‘What?’
‘I hired a private detective to find out about her past, you know, so I had something on her.’
‘No, I don’t know why you would do that.’
‘Well it turns out I wasn’t far off the mark, she was carrying on with other men.’
Carrie let the sinister irony go.
‘Have they got anything on you?’
‘Like what?’
‘Evidence that you ever hit her, or cheated with anyone else? Fucking hell, Tony, have they surprised you with anything?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Have they been snooping around any other friends?’
‘Not that I know of. Oh, wait, they were interested in our kitchen fitter. In fact, I might have let on that she had a thing going with him.’ He hiccupped and Carrie felt sick. ‘I can’t remember what I told them, I was exhausted, I identified my dead wife late last night.’
She closed her eyes. ‘Henry Nelson? Are you talking about the kitchen fitter I recommended? Nelson? The one with Nelson’s Column on his van? The one I recommended?’ She repeated herself. He’d already confirmed that Henry did the work on her recommendation, when she stood in his kitchen admiring it. She needed it affirming again. She held her breath.
‘Yes, him. Turns out she was screwing him all along.’
‘What do they want with him?’
‘No, wait, I didn’t tell them about him, just a friend. Christ, Carrie, my brain is mush. I need to see you,’ he said.
‘Tomorrow. I need to think. Get some sleep. Where are you?’
‘At a friend’s.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘Are you my mother?’
She hung up.
The doorbell rang and she jumped, dropping her phone. She ran into the hall and took the stairs two at a time. She sprinted into her bedroom and went to the wardrobe, flinging back her clothes, revealing the safe she kept in there. She froze. It was open.
The doorbell rang again.
She checked the safe. The knife was still there but the cash was gone. She slammed the door shut and punched in the code, and covered the unit with a thick coat she wore for formal events. Then she thought against it and removed the bulky garment, and opened the safe again, taking the knife and crawling under her bed. Under there, she unzipped her mattress cover from the underneath and ripped open the foam layer, stuffing the weapon inside it, zipping the whole thing back up again. It had been a stupid, momentary moment of madness. To hide such a thing for somebody who was a virtual stranger to her.
She crawled back out of the tiny space and looked in the mirror, straightening her hair and her clothes, and pinching her cheeks.
The doorbell rang again.
She ran down the stairs and went to the door, opening it.
‘Sorry, I was in the bathroom,’ she said to DI Hunt.
He stood with his hands in his pockets, examining her, and she had the same visceral reaction to him as she had at Tony’s house. She wanted to punch his face and wipe the grin off it.
‘Come in,’ she said. She watched him cross her threshold and the tiny hairs on her neck stood up. Like vampires: once you let the cops in, they didn’t leave until they sucked you dry.
Her heart had settled, and she showed no outward signs of panic. Despite being alone with a man she didn’t trust, in a house that had been invaded once again: she was sure of it. She certainly hadn’t touched the money; why would she? She didn’t need it. Somebody had been inside her bedroom and her alarm hadn’t sounded. Had she been in the house at the time? Or was it last night when she’d come home to the alarm disabled? She’d dismissed the noises as neighbourly cats, but panic gripped her and now she wasn’t so sure.
This time she wouldn’t report it to the police; she didn’t need any more attention from them right now than she already had.
Hunt stepped into the hallway and looked around, hawkish, and Carrie felt as though he were assessing her whole soul. She closed the door and showed him into the kitchen at the back of the house. Instinctively she went to the back door and checked it was locked. It wasn’t. She silently chastised herself.
‘Can you give me a minute? I think I have a cat problem.’
She didn’t wait for him to reply. She walked round the back of the house and went to the control box for the alarm, which was situated on the wall to the side. The flap was open and her heart sank. The whole system was down. No lights illuminated the panel and she swore under her breath at being duped by yet another incompetent company. They’d assured her that the console was impenetrable from the outside, but here she was, staring at it, wondering how anybody could have manipulated it so expertly. The master control was inside, of course, and only an expert, or somebody inside the company, could possibly know how the networked functioned. She cast her mind back to the last time she’d checked it, and it had been before she left for Tony’s yesterday afternoon, so whoever had been in, it had to have been then. Her skin went cold despite the heat, and she shivered. She swore nothing else had been disturbed. She chastised herself for being an idiot, but she had been so thrown by the events last night that she hadn’t checked the system properly before she went to bed, assuming it was another test. How remiss of her. She felt like she was losing her hold on reality. The fragility of her situation shocked her and she went back to the kitchen.
‘Cats sorted?’ Hunt asked. He’d made himself comfortable at the kitchen bar. Her chest felt tight, as if Hunt was sat on it.
‘One of the locals likes to hang out here,’ she said. She forced a smile. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she asked, trying to delay whatever it was he’d come to say.
‘Thank you, anything cold,’ he said.
She got him a glass of ice and water from the fridge. She felt him staring at her as she moved around and he made her feel like a caged animal.
The fact was, she didn’t have to let him into her home. However, she knew that he already saw her as a person of interest because she was sharing his prime suspect’s stash of cocaine, and his bed. This was her opportunity to change his mind.
‘So, how can I help you?’ she asked, turning back to him. He took the water. She stood, leaning against the counter with her arms crossed.
‘Great place you have here,’ he said.
She didn’t reply.
‘You’ve come a long way.’
She felt her clothes tight on her body and wanted to adjust them but couldn’t move lest she betray her true intentions towards him. She had a passing vision of plunging a knife into his neck and she tried to free it from her mind.
‘I mean, from your record. I looked you up. You did a nasty job on your dad. And look at you now.’
Carrie froze. How the hell did he know about that? She thrust her memory into overdrive and went over everything she knew about DI Hunt’s investigation so far. Then what Tony told her slammed into her conscious and made her stop breathing for a miniscule beat. An expert would have logged this unconscious action as a sign of stress, but she hoped DI Hunt was no expert.
Henry Nelson. The police would always look for somebody with a past, and Tony had just told her that he couldn’t remember if he’d told the police about him or not.
‘Why is my history interesting to you?’ she asked.
‘Well, here’s the thing. I’ve got drugs popping up all over the place in my most pressing inquiries, not just the murder of Monika Thorpe, but the murder of Brandon Stand too. The kid who died last night. I reckon they got their ecstasy from the same dealer as your friend Tony.’ He grinned like a wolf.
‘Murder? I thought the child overdosed,’ she said calmly. She’d watched it on the news, like everyone else in Cambridge. She hadn’t known the boy, so why was Hunt bringing him up? Maybe Henry had. From his work at the school. The penny dropped. They were framing Henry.
She closed her eyes for what she felt was hours, but she knew was only half a second. In that time, she regretted ever meeting Henry Nelson. Falling for his brawn. It was as if she were drawn to him to help her bridge her present and her past. He massaged her ageing ego and healed her wounded inner child. A piece of frivolous fun with the kitchen fitter, but a momentary liaison that turned into a deeper connection. Until he met Monika. Maybe she recommended him to Tony on purpose, because she knew he was dangerous baggage. Just like she rid herself of all impediments in her life.
‘Our enquiries have taken us in the direction of murder – or manslaughter, however you like to dress it up – because we think that Brandon might have been supplied dodgy pills on purpose.’
‘I don’t like your tone, Detective. I don’t think I would ever “dress up” death. And as for Brandon Stand’s drug supplier, I have no idea. I’ve been dry for five years.’
‘Until last night.’
She felt her cheeks burn.
‘Henry Nelson fitted your kitchen, right?’
‘He did.’
‘It’s beautiful. He’s very talented.’ He ran his fingers along the marble counter, caressing it, and Carrie thought she might throw up. ‘He fitted Monika’s new kitchen too.’
‘Monika, as in Tony’s wife?’ she asked.
He nodded.
‘Just her kitchen, not Tony’s?’ Her sarcasm was lost on him, but his misogyny made her burn.
‘I’m thinking Monika was quite taken by the young man. He looks after himself in the gym. She even wanted to leave her husband for him. The third wheel always knocks a marriage off balance.’
Carrie watched him slither his fingers along her counter and wondered if he was whispering lies into her ear, like all hissing fiends, just to get her to jump over the precipice. Henry hadn’t told her that Monika was leaving Tony for him. But it made sense.
‘But perhaps the feelings weren’t reciprocated, I mean, to a young fit guy like Henry, she’d have just been a bit on the side. Drug her up and get rid of her when she got clingy,’ he said.
Carrie took in what he was saying and saw where he was going. It wasn’t so farfetched, but she still didn’t believe it. Henry wouldn’t hurt anyone. But he had. He’d been inside for eight years for it.
‘I have no idea about that, but we no longer live in the 1970s and it takes more than a gym body for a woman to be “taken in”, as you put it. Why would you underestimate Monika? I didn’t know her but she sounds like a discerning woman to me.’
‘Not enough to earn your respect though? Didn’t you feel uncomfortable having a mini party with her husband when she was missing?’
‘I feel as though this conversation is more about my private life than your investigation, and if that’s the case, you need to leave. You came uninvited and I’ve given you my time. What exactly are you getting at?’
He took a sip of water and the clink of the ice grated on her nerves.
‘I’m piecing together a picture of my victim, and so far, I get the impression that somebody would be better off without her around. Who supplied the cocaine that you took with Tony last night? Was it you? Or was it Henry Nelson?’
Carrie had refused a blood test last night, as was her right. The detective’s story of drugs and debauchery was at best circumstantial, but in court, with her past, it wouldn’t look good. She’d beaten up her father, she’d lived on the streets as an addict, and her mother had testified that she was a liar. Society didn’t like people who came good, not after all that shit; it liked to keep losers down, or else where did that leave everybody else? If you could climb up the greasy pole and triumph over adversity then it left no excuse for those who didn’t make it. She felt trapped but, at the same time, her overwhelming sense of injustice fuelled rage. It was just like being hidden in her bedroom again, waiting for her father to find her and act out his self-loathing on the easiest target around: his defenceless child. Suddenly, the detective’s face morphed into her father’s and she saw him, red-eyed and full of hate, coming toward her, about to rip out her heart, again and again.
The noise of glass being placed on the counter jerked her away from the vile image and she saw Hunt getting up from his seat.
‘How well did you get to know Henry Nelson when he was fitting you out?’ he said. The upturn of the sides of his mouth made her shake inside.
She saw scores of faces behind his: all police, and all men.
‘I’ve got daughters, it can be tricky.’
‘Are you antagonistic?’
‘Do you get on his wrong side?’
‘Your bruises aren’t that bad, did you fall over and hurt yourself?’
‘Your school grades are pretty poor, did it disappoint your parents?’
Her eyes glassed over as she tried with every fibre of her body to keep control. Her fingernails dug into her arms; sweat trickled softly down her back.
‘Are you feeling okay?’
It was Hunt who spoke and she was brought back to the present moment.
‘There’s my card. If you think of anything else, no matter how insignificant you might think it is, please give me a call. We’ll get to the truth eventually. We always do. Henry Nelson is next on our list, so I’m sure he’ll clear up any gaps for us.’ He smiled again and flashed his stained, crooked teeth. He left the kitchen and went to the hallway. She followed him. He opened the door and turned to her.
‘Your burglary five months ago,’ he said. ‘They’ve started up again. Kids looking for drug money. Keep everything locked.’ And then he was gone.
She staggered into the kitchen, took his glass, and smashed it on the floor. Knife-like shards of crystal flew everywhere and she stood panting over the mess, her face contorted in stormy wrath.