A Room Swept White (37 page)

‘No, because he looked petrified. I thought: what kind of policeman can he be if he gets the willies so easily?’ She shook her head, her mouth assuming the shape of disapproval once again. ‘I mean, he should have stopped it, really. He shouldn’t have relied on me.’

‘Though now you believe there was no “it” to stop,’ Simon reminded her.

‘No,’ she agreed, looking uncertain for a second. She pushed the last corner of the toastie into her mouth.

‘In that case, what would have made Proust look so scared?’

‘You’d have to ask him that.’
Chew, chew, chew
.

Simon thanked her and left, couldn’t wait to get away. He turned on his mobile. Sam Kombothekra had left a message. Simon rang him back from the car. ‘What happened with Leah Gould?’ Sam asked.

‘She’s a bovine waste of space.’

‘Nothing useful, then?’

‘Not really,’ Simon lied. He felt as if a huge weight had been lifted. He’d got exactly what he’d been hoping for. Leah Gould had changed her mind because it was no longer fashionable to believe Helen Yardley was a murderer – simple as that. Simon was certain Gould
had
seen Helen try to smother Paige, and that Proust had seen it too.

Proust must have fallen for Helen’s grieving mother act at the first time of exposure, fallen for
her
. He believed she was innocent, and he was always right – that was the one fact he knew about himself, above all others. And he had to
stay
right, even when he witnessed the attempted murder of Helen’s third child. His preconceived ideas made it impossible for him to take the action that needed to be taken; he was powerless – as powerless as he’d been making everyone around him feel ever since. With one frantic look, he put the responsibility for saving Paige Yardley’s life onto Leah Gould, then resumed the pretence: Helen’s innocence, his rightness. He lied at the trial, but told himself he was doing the opposite.

In his heart, he must have known the truth. If he hadn’t once visited Helen in prison, as Laurie Nattrass claimed . . .

Deep down, the Snowman had to know how grievously wrong he’d been. Was he afraid of it happening again, in as serious a situation? Was that why he needed everyone to pretend his judgement was flawless?

Knowing all this – knowing the Snowman didn’t know he knew – had shifted the balance of power between them in Simon’s mind. He no longer felt sullied and threatened by the dinner invitation. Charlie was right: he could easily say he didn’t want to have dinner with Proust. Or he could accept, turn up with a bottle of wine and tell Lizzie Proust the truth about the man she’d married.

He had the power now – ammunition. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t prove it; he knew he could destroy the Snowman any time he wanted to.

‘You on your way back, then?’ Sam asked, pulling Simon out of his victory trance.

‘After I’ve grabbed a sarnie, yeah.’

‘Gibbs spoke to Paul Yardley.’

‘Poor sod.’

‘Gibbs?’

‘Yardley. First he loses three kids, then someone offs his wife, then Gibbs engages him in conversation.’

‘He’s now admitting he rang Laurie Nattrass before he rang an ambulance. Apparently Nattrass told him to say he rang the ambulance first.’

‘Did he, now?’ said Simon thoughtfully.

‘Not ringing the ambulance straight away looks bad, he said. He told Yardley we’d do everything we could to pin Helen’s murder on him. “The filth always frame the husband if they can, and in your case they’ll be especially keen to.” ’

‘For fuck’s sake!’

‘Gibbs thought Yardley was telling the truth,’ said Sam. ‘Nattrass isn’t stupid – he must have known we’d do a telephony check on the Yardleys’ line.’

‘You think he told Paul Yardley to lie because he wanted us to suspect him? He says to Yardley, “Say this and they won’t suspect you”, while secretly thinking, “Say this and they
will
suspect you”?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sam sounded worn out. ‘What I
do
know is that in the course of their conversation, Yardley told Nattrass about the strange card he’d found on Helen’s body, sticking out of her pocket. And wait till you hear this: Sellers spoke
to Tamsin Waddington, Fliss Benson’s friend, who told him Nattrass had been sent the sixteen numbers too – she saw the card on his desk on 2 September, a month before Helen Yardley was shot. He said he had no idea who’d sent it to him.’

‘What?’ Simon leaned forward in his car seat, sounding the horn by mistake. He mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ at two women who turned to glare at him. ‘So when Paul Yardley rang Nattrass and told him about the card in his dead wife’s pocket . . .?’

‘Nattrass should have been straight on the phone to us, scared of being the killer’s next victim, yes. Even if he wasn’t afraid for himself, when he found out Fliss Benson had been sent a similar card, he should have . . .’

‘I spoke to Benson about the card,’ said Simon. ‘She took it into Nattrass’s office and showed it to him, asked him what he thought it meant. He can’t have told her about the card Paul Yardley found on Helen’s body – Benson didn’t mention it to me, and I think she would have. Come to think of it, Nattrass can’t have told her about the card
he’d
been sent – she’d have mentioned that too.’

‘Would she?’ said Sam dejectedly. ‘Fliss Benson’s agenda in all this is starting to worry me. We can’t find her, we can’t alibi her for Monday . . .’

‘If Benson’s a killer, I’m Barack Obama.’

‘Sellers and I were in her office this morning. She’d left her email inbox up on the screen. While we were there, someone emailed her a photo of Helen Yardley’s hand, holding a card like the others – same numbers, same layout – and a copy of
Nothing But Love.’

‘What?’ First a card, then a photograph of a card . . .

‘You said Benson was odd,’ said Sam. ‘Do you think there’s a chance she could be sending these things to herself?’

Simon thought about it. ‘No.’

‘I’ve just got off the phone with Tamsin Waddington,’ Sam told him. ‘She’s worried Benson’s losing her grip on reality – that’s how she put it. Benson rang her with a story about having locked Angus Hines in her flat, and could Tamsin go round with the spare key and let him out. When Tamsin got there half an hour later, the flat was empty – no Angus Hines in sight, no broken windows, everything the same as always. Hines couldn’t have opened a window and climbed out – Tamsin found them all closed and locked, which could only be done from inside. Benson also apparently claimed she’d been to Rachel Hines’ parents’ house in Twickenham.’

‘Did she lock them in too?’

‘Rachel Hines’ parents don’t live in Twickenham, never have. I’ve just spoken to them. They live in Winchester.’

‘So Laurie Nattrass and Fliss Benson join a police artist’s drawing of a skinhead with bad teeth at the top of our “most wanted” list. Are we stepping up our efforts to track them down?’

‘
I
am.’

‘There’s one more thing I need to do, then I’m straight back,’ Simon told him.

‘A sandwich, right?’ Sam sounded suspicious. ‘Please tell me you’re talking about buying a sandwich.’

‘Two more things,’ said Simon, and pressed the ‘end call’ button.

Ten minutes later, he was sitting on a sofa made out of bean-bags at number 16 Bengeo Street, drinking bitty yellow
lemonade and watching horse-racing with four-year-old Dillon White. So far his attempts at conversation had been unsuccessful; the boy hadn’t uttered a word. It occurred to Simon that one thing he hadn’t tried was talking about horses. ‘You’ve seen this race before, then?’ he asked. Dillon nodded. His mother had mentioned that it was a recording, Dillon’s favourite of a large collection. ‘Because his favourite horse always wins,’ she’d added, laughing.

‘I wonder who’s going to win,’ Simon said.

‘Definite Article.’

‘Do you think? He might not.’

‘He always does in this one.’

‘It might be different this time.’

The boy shook his head. He wasn’t interested in Simon and his strange ideas, didn’t take his eyes off the screen.

‘What do you like about Definite Article, then?’ What was it Proust had said?
Try, try and try again, Waterhouse
. ‘Why’s he your favourite?’

‘He’s a vegetarian.’

Simon didn’t know what answer he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. ‘Are you a vegetarian?’

Dillon White shook his head, eyes still on the screen. ‘I’m plain.’

Plain as in unattractive? No, he couldn’t mean that. Wouldn’t all racehorses have pretty much the same diet? Weren’t they all herbivores?

Stella White appeared with a large cardboard box, which she placed at Simon’s feet. ‘Here’s my box of fame,’ she said. ‘There’s quite a bit about JIPAC and Helen in there – hope it helps. Sweet-pea, I’ve told you, you’re not plain – that’s the wrong word. You’re white. Or pink, if you want to be pedantic about it.’

‘He said Definite Article was a vegetarian,’ Simon whispered to her over her son’s head, feeling like a grass.

Stella rolled her eyes. She sank down to her knees so that she was the same height as Dillon. ‘Sweet-pea? What does vegetarian mean? You know what it means, don’t you?’

‘Black skin.’

‘No, it doesn’t. Remember, Mummy told you? Vegetarian means you don’t eat meat.’

‘Ejike’s a vegetarian and he’s got black skin,’ said Dillon tonelessly.

‘He’s got very dark brown skin, and yes, he’s a vegetarian – he doesn’t eat meat – but that doesn’t mean all brown-skinned people don’t eat meat.’ Stella looked at Simon. ‘If it’s not about horses he doesn’t listen,’ she said, standing up. ‘I’ll leave you to it, if you don’t mind. Give me a shout if you need an interpreter.’

Simon decided to give the boy a break, let him watch his racing in peace for a few minutes. He took a handful of newspaper cuttings from the box Stella had given him and started to look through them. It didn’t take him long to piece together her story: she’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of twenty-eight. Instead of feeling sorry for herself and waiting to die, she’d immediately set about turning herself into a world-class athlete. She’d sought out marathons, treks, triathlons; set herself physical challenge after physical challenge; raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charities, including JIPAC.

Halfway down the pile, Simon found an article about Stella’s relationship with Helen Yardley: how they’d met, how much they relied on one another’s friendship. There was a picture of the two of them together: Helen was sitting on the
floor at Stella’s feet and Stella was leaning in over her shoulder. The headline was ‘Two extraordinary women’. Beneath the photograph, a quote from Helen had been isolated and put in a box, separate from the main text: ‘Knowing Stella won’t be here for ever makes me appreciate her more. I know she’ll always be with me, even once she’s gone.’ There was also a quote from Stella in a box, further down the page: ‘I’ve learned so much about love and courage from Helen. I feel as if my spirit will live on through hers.’

Except that Stella White wasn’t the one who died. Helen Yardley was.

‘So you like Definite Article because he’s got black skin?’ Simon asked Dillon.

‘I like black skin. I wish I had black skin.’

‘What about the man you saw outside Helen’s house on Monday, when you were on your way to school? Do you remember?’

‘The man with the magic umbrella?’ Dillon asked, still watching the horses.

So now it was magic. ‘What’s an umbrella, Dillon?’ If vegetarians were people with brown skin, and white people were plain . . .

‘You hold it over your head to keep the rain off you.’

‘Did the man with the magic umbrella have black skin?’

‘No. Plain.’

‘You saw him outside Helen Yardley’s house on Monday morning?’

Dillon nodded. ‘And beyond. In the lounge.’

Simon leaned forward. ‘What does beyond mean?’

‘Bigger than infinity,’ said Dillon, without hesitation. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, ninety-nine, a hundred, a thousand, infinity, beyond. To infinity and beyond!’ The last part had to be a quote; Dillon sounded as if he was mimicking someone.

‘What’s infinity?’ Simon asked.

‘The biggest number in the world.’

‘And beyond?’

‘The even biggest number of days.’

Days
.

‘Definite Article’s going to win.’ Dillon’s face lit up. ‘Watch.’

Simon did as he was told. When the race was over, Dillon reached for the remote control. ‘We can watch it again from the beginning,’ he said.

‘Dillon? When did Definite Article win the race we’ve just watched? Did he win it today?’

‘No. Beyond.’

‘You mean a long time ago?’ said Simon. He was sorry Dillon was only four; he’d have liked to buy him a pint. Gently, he took the remote control from the boy’s hand. For the first time since Simon had arrived, Dillon looked at him. ‘The man you saw outside Helen Yardley’s house on Monday morning – it wasn’t the first time you’d seen him at Helen’s house, was it? You saw him before, a long time ago. Beyond. The first time you saw him it was raining, wasn’t it? That was when he had his magic umbrella. Not on Monday.’

Dillon jerked his head up and down: clear agreement.

‘You saw him in the lounge. Was anyone else there, in the lounge?’

More affirmative head-jerking.

‘Who?’

‘Auntie Helen.’

‘That’s good, Dillon, that’s really helpful. You’re doing brilliantly. You’re doing as well as Definite Article did when he won that race.’

The boy’s face lit up, and he beamed. ‘I love Definite Article. When I grow up, I’m going to live with him.’

‘Was it just Auntie Helen and the man, in the lounge?’

‘No.’

‘Who else was there?’

‘Uncle Paul. The other man. And a lady. And Mummy and me.’

‘How many people altogether?’

‘All of us.’ Dillon nodded solemnly.

Simon looked around the room, hoping to see something that might help him. Then he had an idea. ‘One: Auntie Helen,’ he said. ‘Two: the man with the umbrella . . .’

‘Three: the other man,’ Dillon took over, speaking quickly. ‘He had an umbrella too, but it wasn’t magic so he left it outside. Four: Uncle Paul, five: the lady, six: Mummy, seven: me.’