Woman with a Secret (10 page)

“IT MEANS NOTHING,”
I blurt out, breaking the silence that’s closing in on me. “What is it, some kind of riddle?”

No answer, only a half-smile from the detective sitting across the table from me, Sam something or other. His surname is multisyllabic and weird; I forgot it as soon as he’d said it. I try to look only at him and not at his thick-set, heavy-jawed, hulking colleague who is hovering in the corner by the barred window and hasn’t smiled once.

“It’s nonsense,” I say. “There’s no such thing as less dead, or more dead. There aren’t . . . levels of deadness! You’re either dead or you’re not.”

This can’t be happening. I can’t be in a too-small, too-hot interview room in a police station, answering questions in connection with the murder of Damon Blundy.

I clutch the tissue Detective Sergeant Sam gave me. It’s already soaked and shredded, falling apart.
Taken from my home, bundled into a car by police without being told why, driven to a police station to be interrogated . . .
It’s my worst nightmare.

I daren’t ask for another tissue, which means I have to stop crying. And shaking. I’m terrified of how guilty I must look, even
though I’ve killed nobody and know nothing about any murder.

The police are trained to sniff out guilt, but not to distinguish one variety from another.

“Those words mean something to whoever killed Damon Blundy,” says DC Simon Waterhouse, the unfriendly one. “But you’re saying that’s not you, right?”

It’s the third time he’s asked me. “Look at me!” I sob, seeing myself as they must see me: a cowering wreck in a flower-print dress, tiny compared to the two of them.

And to Damon Blundy
. I saw him on TV once. He looked tall and sturdy. The idea that I could overpower a man of his size is laughable. “Do I look as if I’d have the mental or physical strength to kill anyone?” I ask tearfully, praying that Waterhouse will see sense. “I didn’t know Damon Blundy! I’ve never met him! I only know what he looks like from seeing him on TV and in newspapers. I couldn’t have known him any less if I’d tried.”

The word “less” vibrates in my mind.

He is no less dead
.

What is that? It reminds me of something, but I can’t think what; there’s a familiarity about it, an association in my mind: the faint, far-off tickling of a memory.

It’s gone before I can grasp it. If I’ve heard those words before—and I’m fairly certain I haven’t—then I’ve no idea where or when.

How are they linked to Damon Blundy’s death?

I mustn’t ask. It’s none of my business. I’m not a detective, not a murderer; uninvolved and uninformed is what I am, and I have to make sure I stay that way, which means conquering my curiosity, asking no questions.

“There are ways of killing that rely less on physical strength and more on psychological manipulation,” Waterhouse says woodenly. “How good are you at that?”

“Not as good as you! You’re trying to bully me into confessing to something I didn’t do.”

Do they know about my encounter with the sand-haired policeman? Has he told them? That must be why I’m here; he must have seen me do a U-turn on Elmhirst Road, recognized my car . . .

“If you had nothing to do with Blundy’s death—” Waterhouse begins.

“I didn’t!”

“Then why are you so upset? Why are you refusing a lawyer?”

“Because . . . no one can know I’m here. Not a lawyer, not my husband, not my children—nobody! It’s bad enough that
I
know I’m here!” I don’t want this to be real. A lawyer would mean it was serious, and it’s not. It’s a misunderstanding. Soon they’ll be telling me I can go. Before I have to set off to pick up Sophie and Ethan from school, definitely. Long before.

“My husband can’t know about this,” I say. “Can you give me a guarantee that he won’t find out?” The idea of Adam getting involved makes me shake again. This can’t be allowed to spill over and touch him and the kids. How can I explain that I’m not really a whole person, however much I might resemble one? I’m split down the middle: two Nickis, two lives that must never meet. The Nicki that’s married to Adam would never get herself noticed by the police.

“What are you so worried about?” Waterhouse asks. “If you’re innocent and you know nothing about Damon Blundy’s murder, then we’ve brought you in for no good reason. We’re the ones who’ve messed up, not you. Wouldn’t it be an interesting story to tell your husband over dinner—how you got dragged into a murder investigation through no fault of your own?”

“No!” Bile rises in my throat. I press my hand over my mouth.

“We’ll do our very best to respect your privacy, Nicki,” says Sergeant Sam. “If you tell us the unedited truth, that will make it easier—for us and for you.” He looks puzzled, as if he doesn’t understand why I’m so distraught. Does that mean the Elmhirst Road policeman hasn’t told him about the first time he met me? If Sam and Waterhouse knew, they would understand my fear, my desperation to get the hell
out of here. Would they confront me, or test my commitment to honesty by waiting to see if I volunteered my sordid little secret?

It doesn’t feel little anymore. It feels as if it’s taking over the safe, respectable part of my life. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I remember being certain it never would.

Stupid. Recklessly, inexcusably stupid
.

“I don’t think she wants to tell the unedited truth,” Waterhouse says to Sam. He’s spot-on. My commitment to honesty? I don’t have one. I’m committed to only one thing: making my life as happy and fulfilling as possible, and protecting the people I care about, making and keeping them happy too, all of them: Adam, the children; Gavin, until recently; King Edward before him . . .

I can do both
. When I’m feeling strong, it doesn’t feel like too much to cope with; I’m confident that I can manage everything and keep everybody in their different compartments. All I need is to get the police off my back; then I’ll be fine. I’ll be able to persuade myself that I’m a fearless optimist, not a negligent idiot.

“You don’t want to confide in us, do you, Nicki?” Waterhouse says. He pulls out a chair and sits down at the table, next to Sergeant Sam. “You’re hiding something, and since it doesn’t involve Damon Blundy or his death, you think it’s got nothing to do with us. If it’s so bad that you can’t bear the thought of telling your husband, why would you be any more willing to tell two strangers? I understand that—so let me give you an incentive. Sergeant Kombothekra and I don’t care what you’ve done if it has nothing to do with our investigation. It’s probably none of our business, but we need to know what it is so that we can satisfy ourselves that it’s unrelated. So . . . what’s the story? What are you withholding?”

Panic rises in my throat. I hear an undignified yelping sound and realize it came from me. How much more self-control am I going to lose before I can leave this room? Thinking about this frightens me more than being suspected of murder. Is the truth going to spill out of me whether I want it to or not, like my endless tears? Waterhouse
looks confident. As if he knows he can make me talk. I’m not sure I can hold out when everything about him suggests he knows already, but I have to try.

How can he know? It’s impossible; if PC Sand-Hair had told him, he’d have mentioned it by now
.

“Try to stay calm, Nicki,” says Sergeant Sam. “Let me ask you a few simple questions, give you a chance to compose yourself. We need to get some basic details from you.”

Why?
I want to scream.
We’re not going to be keeping in touch. I’m going to be leaving here very soon, pretending this never happened, and you’re going to forget you ever met me or knew my name
.

“How old are you?”

If I had a lawyer here, he or she would know if I had the right to refuse to answer. “Forty-two.”

“Full name?”

“Nicki Clements.”

“No middle name?”

“Yes, one that I hate, which is why I don’t mention it. Do you really need to know my middle name?”

“We always take full names,” Sam says. “Sorry.”

“Jasmine.” It’s a big clue to the kind of daughter my parents wanted: uncomplicated, sweet, compliant. I hate flower names. I might label a packet of potpourri “Poppy” or “Daisy,” but never a person.

“Just Nicki?” Waterhouse asks. “Not short for anything?”

Bastard
. “Nichola.” Which would be OK if my father’s name weren’t Nicholas.

“Are you employed?” asks Sam.

“No. Not since I had my two children.”

Damon Blundy, murdered. I can’t believe it.
Gone. Irreplaceable
. I never met him, but I know he was unique—somebody the world couldn’t afford to lose. No one else will ever think what Damon thought, or write what he wrote. Why can’t it be some boring average person who died instead? Someone like me.

“Names and ages?” Sam asks.

“I . . . Pardon?”
Get it together, Nicki
.

“Your children.”

“Sophie and Ethan. Ten and eight.”

“And before you had them, what did you do?”

“I was an NHS manager. I supervised a team of midwives and health visitors in North London. We only moved to Spilling very recently.”

“How recently?” Sam asks. “And from where?”

“Just over six months ago, from London. Highgate. On December twentieth last year.”

I’m surprised to find that answering these questions is doing me some good. Listing facts about myself makes me feel as if I have a solid presence in the world that couldn’t easily be erased.

“And your husband? What’s his name, and what does he do?”

He doesn’t erase me. None of this is his fault. I love him
.

The only person threatening the Nicki Clements that Sam and Waterhouse are looking at now, the only person likely to want or need to erase her, is the other Nicki, the secret one.

If the only danger I’m facing comes from within me, there ought to be something I can do to stop it. So why do I feel as if I can’t?

“Nicki? Your husband?” Sam prompts.

“Adam. Clements—same surname as me. He works in IT support. For the army.”

“Did the army transfer him from London to the Culver Valley?”

“He got a transfer to the Rawndesley army careers office when we moved, yes.”

“Thank you.” Sergeant Sam smiles, my reward for good behavior. “And your address?”

“Nineteen Bartholomew Gardens, Spilling.”

The urge to pull my phone out of my bag and check my Hushmail account is overwhelmingly strong. Has Gavin emailed me since I last looked?

Who cares? How dare he call Damon Blundy evil? If that’s what he really thinks, then he doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

He might have emailed to say sorry
.

Maybe I could subtly slide my phone out and . . .
No. Crazy
. I clench my fists in my lap.

Waterhouse says, “If you’re wondering why you’re here, it was your car that gave you away. We were trawling CCTV for anything unusual around Elmhirst Road. Do you want to have a stab at telling us what we saw?”

All right, Nicki. This is the bit you’ve prepared, your chance to come across as honest. This should be easy
.

“I don’t know where your CCTV cameras are positioned, so I don’t know what you saw, but I’ll tell you what I did,” I say. “I set off midmorning in the car to go to my children’s school. My son had left his gym bag behind and he needed it for the afternoon. My normal route takes me down Elmhirst Road, but there was a delay on my side of the road. The traffic was slow, and I could see police officers farther up, stopping drivers. I realized that if I carried on up Elmhirst, they’d get a good look at me and my car, and I couldn’t let that happen.” I swallow. All true, so far.

“Because?” Waterhouse asks. He shuffles his chair closer to the table.

Calm. Focused. You can do this
.

“For the past week or so, my car has been missing its side-view mirror on the passenger side. If I’d carried on along Elmhirst Road and they’d stopped me, there’s no way they wouldn’t have seen it—seen that it was gone, I mean.” I sigh. “I know I should have taken it straight to the garage. I know I shouldn’t have been driving without a side mirror, but I’m so busy all the time . . . I thought I could get away with it, just for a few days. Obviously I would have gotten the car fixed eventually. I mean, soon. I would have done it later this week, probably.”

It’s not exactly a lie; it’s an old true story, chronologically enhanced for present-day purposes and with my current car replacing my old Renault Laguna in the lead role. I
was
too busy to go to
the garage immediately, even though I didn’t have children then. And I drove far more carefully for those six weeks than I ever have before or since, to compensate for my car’s deficiency.

In a last-minute burst of defiance, I add, “It is actually perfectly possible to drive safely without one side mirror.”

“Spare us your theories about road safety,” Waterhouse says. “You didn’t want to get too close to the police in your nonroadworthy car, so what did you do?”

“Turned around and went back the way I came. I drove to school via the Heckencotts—”

“Which school?” Sam asks. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“Freeth Lane.”

“Thanks. Carry on.”

“I dropped off my son’s gym bag, drove home again, same detour. I passed the end of Elmhirst Road on my way back, so I had a nosey—I was curious to see if the police were still there, and they were. Then I hadn’t been home more than five minutes when I got another phone call saying that my daughter had been sick. I wanted to get to school quickly to check she was OK, so I stopped
again
at the junction of Elmhirst Road and Lupton Road to have a look. I thought maybe the police would be still there but not stopping people. I might have risked it if I’d seen drivers sailing past, but no such luck. They were still stopping every car and saying something to whoever was inside it—I figured there was no way they wouldn’t notice my missing mirror, so I took the long, inconvenient detour again. And on the way back, and on my way to collect the kids from school at the end of the day, and on the way back. I drove to school and back four times yesterday—eight journeys in total. If you’re thinking that’s a ridiculous way for an intelligent woman to spend her day, I agree with you.” As soon as I’ve said this, I feel horribly guilty; I would drive any distance, repeat any journey a hundred times, if my children needed me to.