The Lying Room Read online

  ‘He looks like an undertaker,’ said Tamsin, staring through the glass.

  ‘He’s nothing like an undertaker. He’s like a boxing manager,’ said Gary.

  Neve didn’t say anything. She thought he looked like a detective.

  He spent a lot of time in Katie’s office. A couple of uniformed officers were making their way round the floor. He didn’t get to see them until after three, when he came into their room with a young woman whose hair was tied back so tightly it stretched the corners of her eyes. She didn’t utter a single word during the meeting, just wrote things down with a pen that scratched on the paper. The tip of her tongue rested on her upper lip. DCI Hitching put out a broad hand to the four of them in turn. Neve saw Renata wince at his grip. When it came to her, she made herself look at him in the eye and give a slight, polite smile. He held her hand longer than she would have liked and looked at her in a way that scared her. Perhaps he already knew everything, she thought. She saw that there was actually a faint prickle of stubble on the sides of his scalp: he must shave his head each morning. He made a short statement, saying he just wanted to ask some preliminary questions. Informally. Neve found it hard to concentrate on what he was saying.

  They introduced themselves, though he seemed to know who they were already.

  ‘Irish?’ he said, in response to Neve.

  ‘Kind of. My parents came over from Cork when they were in their twenties. I’ve always lived in London.’

  ‘Nice place, Cork,’ he said. His voice was low and surprisingly soft; he had a slight northern accent.

  ‘I don’t really know it.’

  ‘You can see whales along that coast,’ he went on. ‘If the mist clears for long enough.’

  Hitching balanced his solid body on the corner of a desk and looked around him.

  ‘You’re new here,’ he said to them. It wasn’t a question. ‘Keep yourselves to yourselves.’

  ‘Is that what they say?’ asked Gary. He looked so small and ragged next to the bullet-headed detective that Neve felt a rush of affection for him.

  ‘Did you have much to do with Mr Stevenson?’

  ‘No,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘No,’ said Renata.

  ‘Why would we?’ asked Gary. ‘He was management and we’re just the underlings.’

  The beam of Hitching’s attention settled on him. Neve watched as Gary’s face started to flush.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly, just so Hitching would turn away from Gary. ‘We didn’t have much to do with him. But we’re very sorry.’ Her voice was calm. ‘Do you . . .’ She made her way through the sentence carefully, testing each word before she uttered it. ‘Do you have any idea yet of how he died?’

  Hitching smiled suddenly, and his face was transformed by the creases that radiated out from his eyes. Neve didn’t know if he looked more or less alarming. ‘I can’t talk about that.’

  ‘But he was killed?’ asked Renata. ‘That’s what everyone is saying.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’ His dark eyes swept over all of them.

  Afterwards, Neve could barely remember what he had asked and what they had answered. It was quite brief and formulaic; he was just trying to get a feel of things, he said, his eyes flicking from face to face. He was asking everyone in the company the same basic questions: their relationship to the deceased, the time they last saw him, their routine at the office, whether they had noticed anything odd in Mr Stevenson’s behaviour recently.

  ‘Oh, and your whereabouts at the time of his death,’ he added, casually, like it was an afterthought.

  ‘We don’t know when he died,’ Tamsin said.

  ‘In general terms. Where were you between Tuesday evening and Wednesday mid-afternoon?’

  One by one, they answered. Renata said she had been at home with her husband on the Tuesday evening.

  ‘It’s just us at the moment. My son is on a gap year.’

  ‘And yesterday?’

  She told Hitching that she’d come to work, arriving shortly after nine.

  Gary had gone to a movie with friends the evening before, then to the pub. He’d returned home at about half past eleven.

  ‘Do you live with anyone?’ asked Hitching.

  ‘My partner Jane.’ Gary looked away from the detective. ‘She was in bed when I got in but she woke up when I came to bed. And she was there next morning before I left for work.’

  What Gary didn’t say was that Jane, who he had lived with for fourteen years, had MS, which had deteriorated considerably over the past five years. Gary looked after her devotedly. He was a neurotic and sometimes bitter man, but with Jane he was sweet natured and patient, almost motherly. They hadn’t been able to have children. Neve didn’t know if they had wanted to and he never said, although when her own children were smaller she used to catch him looking at them and wondered if she detected a kind of longing.

  ‘I was alone,’ Tamsin said it defiantly. ‘No one waiting up for me or seeing me off in the morning!’

  Hitching turned to her, waiting.

  ‘My husband left me six months ago,’ she continued. ‘So I live by myself now.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m better off without him. Good luck to her.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, with another faint smile. ‘I get it.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Tamsin. ‘That has nothing to do with anything. On Tuesday, I went to the swimming pool on my way home from work. I had steamed cauliflower with yoghurt and tahini for supper. I talked to my mother on the phone. I went to bed early and I ran to work the next morning. Eight miles in under an hour.’ She looked at Hitching’s face. ‘I’m getting fit,’ she said. ‘Post-break-up fit. New me. Too much information?’

  ‘You can never have too much information,’ he said. He turned to Neve. ‘What about you?’

  Neve remembered she had told Fletcher and Mabel that she was with Tamsin. Another mistake.

  ‘Just an ordinary evening at home. With my husband, Fletcher. And my three children.’

  ‘And the following day.’

  The memory of that following morning flashed upon her. She hesitated, as if she couldn’t quite remember, then said: ‘I went to the allotment. I’ve quite recently gone half-time and yesterday was my day off. I left at about nine and came back home at lunchtime. I was there for the rest of the day except for a visit to the shops up the road for food. And to the florist. Fletcher was there – he works from home mostly.’

  Hitching nodded. ‘Thank you. As I say, this is just routine stuff. We might come back to you but for the time being, that’s it. You can get back to work.’ He smiled, looking through the glass. ‘Not that it looks like much work is being done out there.’ He stood up to leave, then seemed to remember something. ‘You’ll probably need to give individual statements.’

  ‘Why?’ said Gary. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘You mean, apart from someone in your office being murdered?’

  ‘I wondered if there was a problem with something we’d said.’

  Hitching shook his head.

  ‘It’s just form-filling,’ he said. ‘The bane of my life. There is one thing, though. Have any of you been to Mr Stevenson’s flat?’

  ‘You mean in the last few days?’ said Renata.

  ‘I mean ever,’ said Hitching.

  ‘No,’ said Gary.

  ‘No,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘No,’ said Renata.

  In those few seconds, Neve’s mind became icily clear. She knew that even as they were speaking there were experts examining the flat, searching for any kind of trace: hairs, fibres, fingerprints. She had spent hours cleaning out the flat but it would only take one mistake, one thread.

  ‘I have,’ she said.

  Hitching showed a flicker of interest. ‘When was this?’

  She gave what was supposed to be a casual sort of shrug. ‘I don’t know. A week or two ago, I think.’

  ‘Why did you go there?’

  ‘He asked me to d
rop a package off.’

  ‘Was anyone else there?’

  ‘No. It was all very quick.’ An idea occurred to her. ‘He was having a coffee so he poured a cup for me and we chatted and I left.’ She thought that would cover her if they found a fingerprint on a mug or somewhere in the kitchen.

  Hitching took a little notebook from his pocket and wrote in it. ‘What was his mood?’

  ‘I don’t remember anything special,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’ve seen him – we’ve seen him – in the office since then.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hitching, closing his notebook and putting it in his pocket. ‘It looks like I’m done here. Shortly my colleague will come and take your fingerprints and do a swab for DNA.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Gary.

  ‘Just routine. Do you object?’

  ‘Of course I object,’ he answered. ‘I know what my rights are. I can refuse.’

  Hitching smiled. ‘That’s true. If you want to refuse, you can.’

  ‘Gary,’ said Neve, touching him on the shoulder. ‘It’s all right. They’re just doing their job.’

  ‘How many times have I heard that?’ said Gary. ‘They were just doing their job.’

  He was squaring up for an argument, but Hitching seemed unbothered. He turned to Neve.

  ‘That’s a nasty bruise you’ve got.’

  ‘A bike accident,’ said Neve. She waited for him to say that it was turning yellow.

  The others drifted back to their desks but Hitching remained, standing beside Neve. She wasn’t sure whether to pretend that she had work she needed to get on with.

  ‘One more question,’ he said to her.

  She felt a wave of unease. Had she made a mistake? It must be so obvious that she was concealing something. This was his job. He must be able to see it in her eyes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was wondering what you grow in your allotment?’

  ‘Oh, right,’ she said in relief. ‘All sorts. Mostly vegetables – potatoes, onions, green beans and broad beans, chard, garlic. But I have a redcurrant bush and a blackcurrant bush as well. And late-autumn raspberries.’

  ‘Isn’t this the time of year when you have to pick it all?’

  ‘Yes.’ Neve thought of her little, neglected patch. She had to go there soon or everything would rot.

  ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘I’ve been wondering whether I should try and get one.’

  ‘You might have to wait quite a long time. It was years before ours became available.’

  ‘I’m a patient man,’ he said and he nodded at the four of them once more, then strolled out.

  Neve waited for a few minutes, then went to the Ladies. She shut herself into a cubicle, locked the door. She leaned over the bowl and vomited in several spasms. Then she washed her face and rinsed out her mouth. When she returned to the office, she found a pack of mints in the drawer of her desk and put one in her mouth. Tamsin came across to her.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d been to Saul’s flat,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t worth mentioning,’ said Neve.

  ‘It seems quite a big thing to ask you to bring a package from the office across town.’

  ‘It’s not exactly across town,’ said Neve, wishing Tamsin would just stop but feeling unable to stop her. ‘It’s a few minutes from here by bike.’

  ‘But why didn’t he ask Katie?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Neve. ‘Look, it didn’t seem important at the time and now I can’t even remember what it was.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Tamsin, ‘I was always surprised they took all of us to work here. I’ve been waiting for them to let one or two or all of us go. So I suppose if someone goes to Saul Stevenson’s flat and doesn’t mention it, I become a bit paranoid.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be paranoid about,’ said Neve.

  ‘I mean, we’re like family, aren’t we? None of us would take sides with the company against us, would we?’

  ‘It was nothing like that.’

  In the end, Gary had his fingerprints taken and obediently opened his mouth for the DNA swab along with everybody else in the office, although he continued muttering darkly about a surveillance society. As Neve was finally leaving, Renata approached her.

  ‘It’s an insane day to have a party,’ she said. ‘I should probably cancel it.’

  ‘It’s your birthday,’ said Neve.

  ‘That’s another reason to cancel it. Getting older is nothing to celebrate.’

  ‘It’ll be good,’ said Neve, not believing it.

  When she arrived home and got off her bike, she saw there was a commotion at the front door of her house. She could only gradually make out what was going on. A gangly young man in jeans and a white tee shirt was struggling with something, which she noticed was a large armchair jammed at an oblique angle into the doorway. He looked round and saw her.

  ‘There’s no way through,’ he said.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Neve.

  ‘I’m Robbie,’ said the young man. ‘We met at Mabel’s party.’

  Mabel’s party. Neve remembered that summer night as a combination of a witches’ Sabbath and the world turned upside down. It had been a night of throbbing music, exotic smells and a tide of young people that came in and then finally, as the dawn was breaking, went out, leaving a trail of smashed glass and sticky floors and damp carpets behind. She had no memory of Robbie.

  ‘What’s this?’ Neve said, pointing at the chair.

  ‘I was getting rid of it,’ said Robbie.

  ‘But she’s about to go to university,’ said Neve.

  ‘It can go in my room,’ said a voice from behind the chair.

  ‘It’ll fill your room,’ said Neve. ‘And you won’t even be there.’

  Neve had had visions of disposing of some of the clutter in Mabel’s room. In its disorder, it had sometimes seemed like an emblem of what was going on in her daughter’s head.

  ‘I think the door might need to come off,’ said Robbie.

  ‘It’s a front door,’ said Neve. ‘You can’t just remove it.’

  ‘I’ll put it back.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I think the door has a special kind of hinge for security. But you can do what you want. I just need to get inside.’

  ‘It’s a bit stuck at the moment,’ said Robbie.

  ‘If you can just pull it out,’ said Neve, trying to keep her voice calm. She had an impulse to shout at Robbie and drag him out of the way by his straggly beard, but she knew that it wasn’t really about the chair, irritating as it was.

  He pulled the chair backwards and tipped it slightly so that Neve could squeeze through. Mabel looked at her mother sourly.

  ‘It would have been easier to push it in than pull it back out,’ she said.

  ‘Is Fletcher here?’ Neve asked.

  ‘If he was here, he’d be down here helping us, wouldn’t he?’ said Mabel.

  ‘Oh,’ said Neve. ‘Did he say when he would be back?’

  ‘I was joking. He’s up in his office like he always is when there’s something to be done.’

  ‘Don’t be mean, Mabel.’

  ‘How was your day?’ said Mabel. There was an unsettling note in her voice, challenging.

  ‘Strange,’ said Neve. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

  ‘So tell me.’

  ‘Later. When you’ve dealt with the chair.’ Neve looked at it. The idea of it in the house gave her a headache. ‘Have you thought of taking the legs off?’

  Neve left Mabel and Robbie examining the legs. She walked straight up the stairs and knocked on Fletcher’s door. There was a murmur from inside and she opened the door and stepped in. The sight of Fletcher’s study often provoked a twinge of envy in her. It was the one beautiful room in the house, facing east across their garden and over to the gardens of the next road along. It was almost like looking out on a park. The room itself was dominated by Fletcher’s drawing board and the retro movie posters on the walls, and the shelves
of catalogues and art books. Fletcher himself was seated in the old leather armchair with his laptop.

  ‘How was your day?’ said Neve, just as Mabel had asked her.

  ‘I saw a couple of people.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Projects.’

  On any other day, Neve might have probed a little more deeply. ‘Couple of people’ and ‘projects’ sounded like Fletcher’s code for ‘nobody’ and ‘nothing’. But not today.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ she said.

  And she told Fletcher about the day’s events. It required fierce concentration: she was informing her husband about the death of her lover, but she had to tell the story as though it didn’t affect her a great deal. She must seem upset but not too upset and she must only know what they had all learned in the office. She tried to speak calmly through the dread that was gathering around her as she looked at Fletcher’s face.

  When it was over, there was complete silence. He just looked blankly at her.

  ‘Say something,’ said Neve. ‘Please.’ It was like a sob. She put her hand over her mouth, terrified she would let something else escape.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like how awful it is. How sad. How shocking.’

  Fletcher looked at her thoughtfully. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘It’s awful. And very shocking.’

  ‘This is someone at my work,’ she said. ‘You met him.’

  ‘I met him once. At that party just after you moved into the new offices. It was for about one minute and he mainly talked to you not me.’

  Neve didn’t want to continue this conversation. There was something indecent about her talking to Fletcher about Saul. It felt like lying even when she wasn’t lying directly.

  ‘Can you tell the kids?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t bear to talk about it anymore,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘I will if you want.’

  ‘Thanks. We need to leave soon,’ she said.

  ‘What?’