Because She Loves Me

  When Charlie called me, a couple of hours later, I had almost finished the wine. I didn’t ask her whether she’d been in Herne Hill yesterday afternoon, unable to think of a way of asking it without revealing all my suspicions. She told me about an amusing incident on the course, said that she missed me, told me they were going out in Newcastle but she didn’t really want to go.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. Staying in, watching TV.’

  ‘You should go out. Why don’t you go and see Sasha?’

  ‘Really?’

  A soft sigh. ‘Yes, really. I know there’s nothing going on between you, and she’s your best friend. Apart from me, I mean.’ She laughed. ‘I need to make an effort to be friends with her.’

  I felt like my brain was being ripped in two. ‘She said something very similar earlier.’

  ‘You saw her today?’

  ‘No, she emailed me.’

  ‘Oh, right. Well, that’s good. You don’t want the women in your life to be at war, do you?’

  I couldn’t tell Charlie that I didn’t want to go out because I had no energy, that I was worried sick, that all I wanted to do was hide in my flat. So I said, ‘No, I think I’m going to stay in. There’s a film on that I want to watch.’

  I woke up late the next day with another hangover, having polished off nearly two bottles of red wine. This needs to stop, I thought, running myself a hot bath, planning to sweat out the alcohol.

  Charlie would be back the next day and, sitting in the bath, I made my mind up. I was going to ask Charlie about everything. I would tell her I knew about her offering Kristi money and visiting Karen. I would also tell her I knew she lived with her ex-boyfriend. It was the only way forward. I would be able to gauge her reaction to the news that Karen had died of a drug overdose, see what she had to say about Kristi and Fraser. I would look into her eyes as we spoke and, I felt confident, I would know.

  I didn’t know, however, what I would do with this knowledge.

  I got out of the bath and walked, dripping and naked, into the bedroom. The heating was cranked up and the flat was tropical, the windows steamed up. I was sick of winter, was reaching the point I got to every year where I started to crave sunshine, my body starved of vitamin D. It had been a long winter and now even the brightness Charlie had brought into my life was diminished, black clouds over the sun. I wanted to get that brightness back.

  The phone rang. It was Tilly.

  She went straight into the conversation without niceties, in the same way I had with Sasha the day before.

  ‘Did Rachel stay at yours on Friday night?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘And what did she say she was going to do afterwards?’

  ‘Why? What’s happened? You sound like you’re about to have a panic attack.’

  ‘No, I’m fine. I’ll explain in a second. Just tell me, please.’

  ‘She said she was going to ride up to Cardiff to stay with her sister. She left here Saturday morning. What’s going on?’

  I sat on my bed wrapped in just a towel, the last droplets of water on my body evaporating. I could hear the couple downstairs arguing. I wondered vaguely what colour my aura was at the moment. Red, probably. Cabernet sauvignon.

  Tilly’s voice tightened, like she was on the verge of tears. ‘She never got there. Her sister waited for her all afternoon. Rachel’s not answering her phone, either. I’ve tried to ring it a hundred times but it goes straight to voicemail, like it’s turned off.’

  ‘Oh Jesus.’

  ‘I’m so worried, Andrew. We’ve been on to the police but there haven’t been any reports of motorbike accidents.’

  ‘Maybe – I mean, I don’t like to say it, but what if she went off the road somewhere remote and the bike’s . . . concealed somewhere.’

  ‘In a ditch, you mean.’

  Neither of us spoke.

  ‘How did she seem Friday night?’

  I realised straight away what Tilly was asking. ‘You mean did she seem suicidal? No, she didn’t at all. She was scared, shaken by what had happened with Henry. But she struck me as someone who very much wanted to survive.’

  ‘That’s what I told the police. Listen, they’ve got your name and address. They might come round to talk to you.’

  ‘OK.’ The couple downstairs had stopped arguing and were now having sex. ‘What about Henry?’

  ‘I don’t know. The police asked me a lot of questions about him. I told them what he’d done.’

  ‘You think he caught up with her, intercepted her?’

  ‘Oh God, I hope not. But that’s the most probable explanation, isn’t it?’ Her voice caught. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without her. I couldn’t cope.’

  All I could do was reassure her, say words I didn’t believe. Tell her everything would be all right. But inside I was thinking, She’s dead. Another one. And I heard Harold’s voice again, talking about the dark spirit. Rachel had stayed with me – and now she was dead.

  It was my fault.

  Monday morning. Charlie was due back later. There was no news about Rachel, except that the police had arrested Henry, were questioning him. I kept the news channel on, waiting for a story about how the body of a female motorcyclist had been found. But there was nothing.

  I needed to change the bed. The sheets smelled and a ridiculous part of me was worried that Charlie would be able to smell Rachel on them. I stripped the sheets and opened the wardrobe to get out a clean set.

  A few of Charlie’s clothes had slipped off their hangers onto the wardrobe floor, including a coat and the suit I’d had dry cleaned. I picked them up and took down some coat hangers. As I held the coat, something struck me. If I was looking for evidence, surely here was somewhere else to look.

  I felt terrible delving in her pockets, but reassured myself that the ends justified it. Besides, I had already looked through one of her bags, and I didn’t really expect to find anything, anyway.

  The coat contained nothing but a few balled-up tissues, an old Oyster card and a pair of gloves. Next I checked the trousers of the suit. Empty.

  Finally, I tried the pockets of the suit jacket. There was just one pocket, on the inside, and I could feel, immediately, that there was something inside. A small brown envelope, sealed. I took it out and held it in my hands. Had the envelope been there when I’d had it dry cleaned? I hadn’t checked, had just taken it out of the wardrobe and put it in a bag.

  If I opened the envelope, Charlie would know. Unless I went out and bought an identical envelope, which wouldn’t be hard. This one had no marks on it, no writing.

  I had to do it. I ripped it open and something dropped to the carpet.

  I stooped to pick it up. It was a little plastic bag, as big as a credit card. It was quarter-filled with pale brown powder.

  Thirty-four

  I waited in the interview room at the police station, sipping from a plastic cup of coffee. It was, I imagined, exactly like the coffee dispensed by the machines at the eye hospital, the coffee that had given me an excuse to talk to Charlie that first day. I set it down on the table. I couldn’t stomach it.

  The policeman at the front desk had listened to the beginning of my story with an inscrutable expression before holding up a hand to stop me. Twenty minutes later, during which I almost changed my mind and went home, a guy in a smart-but-inexpensive suit came out and gestured for me to follow him. This was Detective Constable David Moseley. I had seen enough cop shows to know this was the lowest detective rank, and Moseley had the air of somebody who was ambitious and impatient to progress. He took me into an interview room and I showed him the little bag of heroin, began to tell him my story. As I spoke, DC Moseley stared at me, occasionally glancing at the little packet of powder on the desk between us. Then he disappeared and left me waiting for another twenty minu
tes.

  Now, DC Moseley came back into the room. This time he had a notepad with him. He licked his index finger and thumb and flicked the pad open.

  ‘OK, Mr Sumner. Let’s go over all this again. Start by telling me how and where you found what you believe to be heroin and how you believe it relates to Karen Jameson’s death.’

  He had taken the packet with him last time he’d left the room.

  ‘Are you saying it might not be heroin?’ I asked.

  ‘We need to check that.’

  ‘Have it analysed, you mean?’

  He rocked his head back and forth and made a non-committal sound in the back of his throat. ‘Please tell me again how you found it.’

  So I recounted the tale, and then went back and told the whole story from the beginning. Trying to stay calm, though my heart was trying to burst out of my chest, I told him all the things I suspected Charlie of doing, from murdering Karen using the heroin I’d found in my flat, right back to Harriet’s burglary, taking in the attack on Kristi, the framing of Victor and all the other odd and worrying things that had happened over the last couple of months. My voice cracked as I told him about going to see Fraser, what Kristi had told me in the hospital, about Charlie’s jealous rage. As I spoke, DC Moseley wrote everything down in his notepad in a series of bullet points. He kept writing for a few minutes after I stopped talking, catching up while I tried to catch my breath.

  He sat back and tapped the pen on the table.

  ‘That’s quite a litany of accusations,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’ I sank my face into my hands. I hated this. Hated it. ‘But the only one I can prove is Karen’s murder.’

  The detective lifted a dark eyebrow. ‘Prove?’

  ‘Well. I mean, that’s the only one with any evidence. That’s probably the one we, you, should concentrate on.’ My voice trailed off when I saw the look he was giving me.

  ‘Leave the detective work to us, please, Mr Sumner.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He tapped his pen on his teeth, studied his notes. ‘How well do you know this woman, Charlie Summers?’

  ‘I told you. She’s my girlfriend. Or she was my girlfriend.’

  ‘Hmmm. Would you describe it as a close relationship?’

  ‘Yes, very.’

  He remained quiet, waiting for me to fill the silence. Although I suspected this was a technique he’d been taught, I still surrendered.

  ‘Very . . . intense.’

  ‘Intense, eh?’ That eyebrow lifted again. ‘And Karen Jameson, the deceased, is an ex-girlfriend.’

  I met his eye. ‘She wasn’t really a girlfriend. But we had a relationship, yes.’

  ‘Were still having a relationship?’

  ‘No! It ended a long time ago.’

  ‘So why would Ms Summers be jealous enough to want to kill her?’

  ‘I told you this too. Because Charlie is obsessive. I was working for Karen and Charlie must have hated it.’

  ‘Must have? She didn’t tell you she hated it?’

  ‘No. Not in those words.’

  I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d expected, but it wasn’t this. I had imagined the police being keenly interested, treating me as some kind of tragic hero, understanding the pain I was putting myself through. How naive can you get? My story sounded like the invention of a lunatic or a fantasist. But the bag of heroin was real. Surely the police could see that this proved that Charlie was the killer?

  ‘All right,’ DC Moseley said. ‘Let’s go through it again.’ As I started to protest he said, ‘Just the last bit, involving Karen Jameson.’

  ‘You need to talk to Harold,’ I said. ‘He lives in the ground floor flat in Karen’s building. He might have seen Charlie . . .’ I paused. I didn’t want to start talking about Harold reading auras. I could imagine how that would go down with the detective. ‘Victor Codsall too. Karen told him that Charlie had been to see her.’

  DC Moseley doodled a number of swirls and stars around his notes. He said, ‘OK, thank you. Leave it with us.’

  He stood and I looked up at him. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘We’ll talk to Ms Summers.’ I had already given him details of Charlie’s movements.

  ‘And you’ll be in touch?’

  ‘We will indeed.’

  I stood outside the police station with no idea of what to do next. Charlie was due back in London in a few hours. I knew she would come straight round to mine. But I couldn’t be there, not now I’d found the heroin. I needed to head her off. I had no other choice: I would have to lie.

  I sent her a text.

  Hi Charlie. Have had to leave flat. Suspected gas leak. Why don’t you go back to yours and I’ll text you with the all-clear later?

  I agonised over whether to put a kiss at the end. If I didn’t, she would definitely know something was up. I decided to add a couple. What harm could it do? As soon as the police went to talk to her she would know I had been lying anyway.

  She texted back a minute later. Oh, OK. What a nightmare. See you later. xx

  I went to a coffee shop and sat at a table on the pavement, embracing the cold. I felt utterly miserable, more unhappy than at any time since my parents had died. It felt like all my emotions had been put into a spin dryer which was churning and tossing them around inside me. I didn’t know it was actually physically possible for a heart to ache, but right now, mine did.

  I had just lost the woman I loved, the woman who had made me so happy over the last couple of months. Regardless of what she’d done, I loved her. You can’t turn your feelings off like a tap. Love doesn’t die like that. Look at all those husbands and wives who stand by their spouses even after they’ve been found guilty of the most terrible crimes. Picture the mother who stands by her murderer son. Even if they know their spouse or offspring is guilty, even if it goes against everything they believe to be right and decent, they still love them. Love is hard to break. Adultery, violence, betrayal, cruelty. Love can survive them all. Although I didn’t expect Charlie’s love for me would survive what I’d done. She had, I believed, committed murder. But, in a way, my crime against her was even worse. I’d betrayed her behind her back.

  I missed my girlfriend. I wanted to erase the last couple of weeks, to go back. I had a kind of waking dream in which Charlie and I were lying in bed, her head on my chest, talking to me, laughing, and the only other sound I could hear was the rain beating against the window.

  ‘You all right, mate?’

  I looked up. One of the baristas from the coffee shop was looking at me with a mix of concern and amusement. And who could blame him? I was sitting in the middle of a downpour, the rain lashing down on me, drenching my skin and hair, plopping into my coffee. I hadn’t even noticed.

  I went to Sasha’s, sat outside on the steps till she got home. Luckily, the rain had stopped.

  She took one look at me and said, ‘Andrew? What the fuck’s happened?’

  ‘Can I come in? I’ll tell you all about it.’

  We sat on her sofa and she listened while I poured out the whole story, for the second time that day, though it came out as more of a jumble this time, jumping back and forth, Sasha constantly stopping me to ask questions, gasping, swearing, her mouth hanging open. It all came gushing out, like telling it to Sasha was a kind of exorcism. When celebrities write their autobiographies they always, without fail, say it’s been a cathartic experience. That’s what this was like. Sasha was particularly interested in the part where I described Charlie’s jealous frenzy the night I stayed over with her. There was part of me that thought Sasha was enjoying this tale a little too much. Though I couldn’t blame her. It was a great story, involving people she knew, and the baddie was someone she hated, who she’d warned me about.

  ‘You haven’t said I told you so yet,’ I pointed out after I’d finished. I w
as spent.

  ‘I’m not going to. How the hell were you supposed to know she was . . . like that?’ She laid a hand on my arm. ‘How are you coping?’

  I hung my head and fought back tears. ‘Not well, to be honest. I miss her, Sash. Despite everything. I love her.’

  Sasha stroked my hair. ‘I know. I feel the same about Lance, despite all the shit he’s done.’

  ‘How is everything with that?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s gone quiet. I saw him at work today and he ignored me but he didn’t look at me like he wants me to die. I think he realises I’m not going to leave Wowcom but that I’m not going to cause any trouble for him. I mean, it makes me sad to see him but a little less sad every day. So tell me—’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more.’

  ‘All right. I understand.’ She squeezed my knee. ‘Let’s get drunk.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Come on. You could definitely use a drink. You look like you haven’t eaten for days as well.’

  She was right. I had barely eaten anything since meeting up with Victor on Friday.

  ‘I’ll pop out,’ Sasha said, ‘get us a takeaway and some booze. What do you fancy? Fish and chips?’

  I nodded. I wasn’t hungry. But the booze, and the prospect of temporary oblivion, sounded perfect.

  Sasha came back with two bags, the greasy smell of cod and chips emanating from one, the other containing two bottles of gin that clonked together. She put the food onto plates and poured us both a large G&T.

  ‘Put the TV on,’ she said. ‘Unless you’d prefer music.’

  ‘Telly’s fine.’

  It was strange being with Sasha sometimes, like we were an old married couple, completely at ease with each other. It came from when we’d lived together for two years at uni, our bedrooms adjoining. We did our food shopping and cooked together to save money, went out together all the time. Spent many nights sitting up putting the world to rights, dreaming of our futures. Most people thought we were a couple, which Sasha blamed for her lack of success with men, but we were firmly in the friend zone.