The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down Page 21

  Now Charlie wished she’d thought to ask her sister for the first three names on the list. Liv had said nothing about Lund being callous, entirely lacking in social graces and, as a result, impossible to talk to. On the phone this morning, his PA had told Charlie he would see her today but not in his office-for lunch, at Signor Grilli, an Italian restaurant on Goodge Street. In response to Charlie’s mystified silence, the assistant had said, ‘It’s where he meets people. He likes it there,’ as if she’d assumed Charlie might know this already.

  Lund had arrived late, patting his pockets and muttering that he’d forgotten his wallet. He could go back to the office for it, he said, but then he and Charlie would lose their ‘window’. Charlie told him it didn’t matter, she’d pay. Always worth splashing out on a miracle, she’d thought to herself. Lund had tossed a perfunctory thank you in her direction without looking up. Now she was wondering if it was a ruse. Did everyone who consulted him have to buy him lunch? And why this loud, hectic little restaurant in particular? Lund seemed hardly to notice what he was shovelling into his mouth. His BlackBerry was the main recipient of his attention. It lay on the table in front of him; every time it bleeped, he grabbed it with both hands and spent a couple of minutes panting and huffing over it as if it were an addictive pocket computer game that he couldn’t bear to put away, one that offered bonus points to anyone who gave it his all.

  Charlie’s pizza lay untouched on the table in front of her. She wanted to ask Lund to repeat back to her everything she’d told him, to check he’d listened properly before deciding her problem wasn’t worth his time or effort. ‘I’m talking about a display,’ she said. ‘It’s not tucked away in a cupboard somewhere-it’s blatant. She’s got them up on a wall for anyone who walks into that room to see: a complete… information resource about the worst, most traumatic event of my life, my past, and that’s only the bit I saw. Who knows what else she’s… collected? The wall might be just a fraction of it. Last Friday she was waiting for me when I arrived at work…’

  Lund’s BlackBerry beeped. He grabbed it and slumped down in his chair for a session of enthusiastic finger- and thumb-jabbing, throughout which he breathed heavily, muttered occasionally and ignored Charlie. When he’d finished, he looked up briefly and said, ‘She waited for you at work for a valid reason, right?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. She told me a bullshit story about her boyfriend saying he’d murdered a woman who’s not even dead. And she refused to tell me why she wanted to talk to me in particular. When I asked her yesterday why she’d had an article about me in her coat pocket, she didn’t give me a proper answer. ’

  ‘Miss Zailer…’

  ‘It’s Sergeant,’ Charlie corrected him angrily.

  ‘If I were you I’d relax.’ Lund wound some more strands of spaghetti round his spoon, the long fringe of his dark hair dipping into the sauce in his bowl. Then he sucked up the pasta, making a noise like a vacuum cleaner, spattering the tablecloth and his shirt with sauce. He raised his voice and said something in Italian to nobody in particular-into the air, or so it seemed. Then, as if nothing unusual had happened, he switched back to English. ‘It’s her bedroom wall, she’s got a steady boyfriend-how many people are likely to see it? Her, him, a few close friends maybe.’

  ‘I don’t care if no one sees it,’ Charlie snapped. ‘She’s got no right to have it. Has she? Are you telling me a complete stranger-stalker-weirdo can amass information about my life and turn it into an… an exhibit for her own amusement, and there’s no way of making her stop?’

  ‘You’ve not been listening to me if you need to ask.’

  ‘I want her to destroy it, everything she’s got on me, or hand it over to me so that I can destroy it!’ Charlie was aware that she was almost shouting.

  ‘Your wishing something doesn’t make it legally enforceable,’ said Lund. His tone suggested nothing could matter to him less. ‘There’s nothing here for me to work with. Zero. First, there’s no exhibiting involved. If she was going round sticking this stuff up on billboards all over town, it’d be a different matter, but her home’s her private property. Any information she’s got about you was in the public domain-in newspapers, which she bought, presumably. She didn’t steal them from your house, did she? Haven’t you got any old newspapers or magazines lying around at home? Vogue, Elle, The English Home?’

  ‘No.’ Charlie spat the word at him. Did she look like she had nothing better to do than read about handbags and cushions? ‘Keeping a few newspapers and magazines isn’t the same thing as obsessively gathering cuttings about one person. I don’t keep anything that constitutes an invasion of someone else’s privacy, no.’

  Lund had disappeared beneath the table. He was rooting around in his briefcase. When he surfaced, he was holding a crumpled copy of the Daily Telegraph. He put it down on top of Charlie’s untouched pizza. As he pointed to a small article at the bottom of the page, orange oil began to seep through the paper. ‘David Miliband,’ he said. ‘Our Foreign Secretary. Not for too long, hopefully. If I want to cut out these three paragraphs about him and glue them to my shaving mirror, that’s my choice, a choice I’m perfectly entitled to make. Do you think the boy Miliband could stop me? I’ve said this twice already, but I’ll say it again: the invasion of privacy argument doesn’t stand up. If this woman was broadcasting your private diary to the world, or going through your knicker drawer to find this stuff, the situation would be different. It’d be different if she was using the information she’s collected for a purpose that’s deterimental to your well-being, but she isn’t.’

  ‘She’s fucking stalking me!’ Charlie pushed Lund’s newspaper off her plate, towards him. ‘You don’t think that’s detrimental? Her bedroom wall’s part of it-it’s all part of the same thing, and I need it to stop! She waited for me outside my nick, she wouldn’t explain…’

  ‘From what you said, you didn’t try very hard to get an explanation out of her.’ Lund rotated his lower jaw to mask a yawn. It made a clicking sound. ‘I’d have demanded to know what she was about and refused to take no for an answer. You didn’t even tell her you’d seen the bedroom wall-why not?’

  ‘Because I was shit scared, all right?’ Charlie hissed. The truth was embarrassing, but since she was never going to see Dominic Lund again, she decided it didn’t matter. So what if the fourth most influential person in UK law thought she was a pathetic, gutless wimp? ‘Even you can’t deny this woman’s unnaturally obsessed with me. At the moment she’s restraining herself-she thinks I don’t know, so she can afford to take her time. If I’d told her what I’d seen, she might have pulled out a knife and sliced me up-how did I know what she’d do? She’s not normal. I needed to get away and think it through.’

  Charlie sniffed hard, wiping away her tears quickly so she wouldn’t need to admit to herself she was crying. Two tears didn’t count as crying. ‘I was desperate to get the hell away from her, but I didn’t, not immediately. I sat in her house for another two hours, listening to an elaborate story about an art fair. I kidded myself I was staying to try and figure her out, but it wasn’t that. It was fear. This woman’s had me in her sights for God knows how long, she’s toyed with me, manipulated me-me and maybe several other people. I’ve no way of knowing how much of this dead-woman-who-isn’t-dead act is genuine-it could easily be a trap of some kind. And last night she wanted to tell me a story, and you know what? I listened like a good girl, hoping that if I did what she wanted, if I could convince her I was her friend and her ally, then maybe she’d change her mind about whatever God-awful thing she’s planning to do to me.’

  Lund looked unsurprised but amused by Charlie’s outburst. ‘Miss Zailer-Sergeant, rather. You’re in retreat from reality. From what you’ve said, there’s no reason to think this lady’s stalking you or that she wants to harm you. Yours was clearly a name she knew, so when she had a problem she wanted to take to the police, she thought of you. That’s not stalking. As for not explaining why she had the artic
le on her person when she came to see you-so what? It’s not against the law to withhold an explanation, or to cut things out of newspapers and stick them on the wall. If everyone in the UK decided to fill their houses with column inches about you, there’d be damn all you could do about it.’

  ‘Okay.’ Charlie forced herself to breathe slowly and steadily. ‘Realistic. I can be realistic.’

  Lund raised his eyebrows, making no secret of his doubt. His BlackBerry bleeped again, sucking his attention towards it like a mind-magnet. In an instant, Charlie had become invisible. Even more invisible. By the time Lund had finished prodding his machine, she’d composed herself. ‘What if we were sneaky about it?’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you send the woman a letter, scaring the shit out of her? I’d be willing to pay over the odds.’

  At this, Lund looked up and grinned. ‘I’m not a thug-for-hire. What’s your sister told you about me?’

  ‘I’m not asking you to give her a kicking.’ Charlie tried not to sound as if she was begging. ‘What about threatening her with a court case unless she takes the whole lot down and destroys it? Even if there’s no legal action we can take, she won’t know that. She’s a picture-framer, not a lawyer. She’ll be scared-anyone would.’

  Lund shrugged, wiping his face with his napkin. His entire face, not only the area around his mouth. Now his cheek as well as his chin was smeared with orange grease. ‘And when she consults a lawyer and he tells her it’s a joke? That’s my reputation stuffed, isn’t it? Either I’m unethical or completely tonto. And if your woman’s got anything about her, she’ll take it to the press. I would.’

  ‘Please. There must be something you can do. I can’t bear it, knowing it’s there. I keep seeing it in my mind, wondering who’s seeing it in real life, reading all those things about me. Can’t you understand that? Are you telling me that’s not a violation of my privacy?’

  ‘The law doesn’t care how you feel,’ said Lund. ‘Legally, you’re trying to violate her privacy. I’d go to the papers if I were her, for sure. “I was harassed by psychopath’s ex-girlfriend, says picture-framer.” More headlines for her to stick up in her gallery, more infamy for you.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘What?’ Lund frowned. ‘Oh, come on. Let’s not pussyfoot around.’ He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling.

  Charlie dug her fingernails into her palms as hard as she could. Focus on the physical pain. ‘I didn’t know he was a psychopath. I was another of that evil fucker’s victims.’ Seeing Lund’s expression, she said, ‘Not in that way. I just mean… it wasn’t my fault. The inquiry found in my favour, even if the shitty tabloids didn’t.’

  ‘I know all that,’ said Lund, yawning openly. ‘I’m telling you what the press would say, if this woman was canny enough to approach them.’

  Charlie stood up, pushing back her chair. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Invoice me for the hour you’ve spent ripping my self-esteem to shreds. You can pay for your own lunch.’

  He waved away the suggestion. ‘They know me well enough here,’ he said. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? ‘Don’t take it out on me-I’m trying to help you. The best thing you can do is forget the whole thing: the psychopath, the gutter hacks, the woman-all of it. Why let it bother you? You should put it behind you.’

  Charlie couldn’t breathe. He’d refused all her appeals for real help, and now he was trying to fob her off with hackneyed snippets of homespun wisdom. She wanted to kill him.

  Lund smirked as if he’d remembered a filthy joke. ‘Olivia tells me you’re getting married.’

  Charlie moved the words around in her brain. Liv hadn’t mentioned knowing Lund personally. ‘Have you seen my sister recently?’

  ‘Last week. Simon, isn’t it? Your fiancé? Also a cop.’

  ‘How well do you and Liv know each other?’ Vogue, Elle, The English Home… The magazines Lund had suggested to Charlie were all ones Olivia subscribed to. No. Please, no.

  ‘How well does anyone know anyone? Liv can’t believe your parents haven’t tried to talk you out of marrying him,’ said Lund amiably. ‘Says she’s tried, but you won’t listen to her.’

  Charlie’s insides had turned to lead. She opened her mouth to speak, but found she couldn’t. Every last word had declared itself unavailable.

  ‘My impression is that you don’t really listen to anyone,’ Lund added, his eyes drifting to the screen of his BlackBerry. Were there messages on it from Olivia?

  Charlie pulled her handbag off the back of her chair and marched out of the restaurant. Outside, walking fast in no particular direction, she realised she’d broken the strap. She heard a stifled cry that must have come from her. Where to go, what to do next? Not Olivia’s flat. She’d kill her sister if she saw her now. Better to calm down first. Charlie pulled her phone out of her bag, made sure it was still switched off. She ached to ring Simon, but knew that if she spoke to him in her present state, they’d end up having a row. Simon, like Dominic Lund, didn’t understand why she hadn’t simply tackled Ruth openly about the newspaper cuttings. He thought the bedroom wall thing was odd, but didn’t understand why it had upset Charlie to the extent that it had. He thinks I’m overreacting.

  A street sign caught her eye as she tried and failed to light a cigarette in the cold wind: ‘Charlotte Street’. How many Charlotte Streets could there be in London? Charlie answered her own question: more than one, easily. Still, it was possible. This seemed the right sort of area, and she could see what looked like a gallery further down the road.

  She dropped her unlit cigarette and lighter back into her bag and broke into a run. A few seconds later, the possibility became a reality. There was the name, in orange and brown letters on the glass: TiqTaq. This was the gallery Ruth Bussey had mentioned last night. Charlie took a deep breath and went in.

  Did a paper cut-out count as art? Charlie couldn’t ask the tanned middle-aged woman in the patchwork jacket who sat behind a battered wooden table at the back of the gallery. She was on the phone, trying to make an appointment to get her legs waxed, sounding upbeat at first, saying, ‘I completely understand, ’ and then increasingly impatient when it started to become apparent that even next week was fully booked. Charlie wondered if she was the older woman Ruth Bussey had met at the art fair: Jan something or other. TiqTaq’s owner.

  If she was, presumably all work exhibited was approved by her. She evidently saw some merit in the framed lines of paper dolls holding hands that were up on the walls. Each had been cut out of different coloured paper and was a different size; each carried a price tag of between two and five thousand pounds. I could have done these, Charlie thought. A few big sheets of paper, a pair of scissors… What a scam.

  ‘Can I help you?’ The woman was off the phone. ‘Shall I talk you through the exhibition? I’m Jan Garner. TiqTaq’s my gallery.’

  So Ruth Bussey had told the truth about that, at least. In fact, Charlie had believed every word of her story. Even feeling the way she did about Ruth at the moment, she could tell when a person stopped lying; the relief was unmistakeable. Simon disagreed; they’d argued about it last night, at some ungodly hour. ‘Anyone who’s lied once is untrustworthy always,’ he’d said.

  ‘Clever liars admit to old lies to distract you, so that you don’t spot the ones they’re in the middle of.’

  Charlie shook Jan Garner’s extended hand. ‘Charlie Zailer,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping you can help me with something else, actually-nothing to do with the exhibition.’

  ‘Happy to if I can,’ said Jan. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

  Could this work as a matey chat? Charlie wondered. Useful if it could, since she had no official reason to be here. ‘Yes. Thanks.’

  ‘Earl Grey, Lady Grey, lapsang, green with mint, green with jasmine, lemon and ginger…’

  ‘Earl Grey’d be lovely,’ said Charlie. The long list of fancy teas made her think of Olivia, who drank things like fennel and nettle, and would no doubt drink weeds stewed in di
rty bathwater if it had the right label on it. Charlie pushed the thought of her sister away.

  While Jan made the drinks, she pulled an information sheet out of a plastic rack near the door and read about the paper dolls exhibition. It was called ‘Under Skin’. The dolls weren’t cut out of coloured paper, as Charlie had assumed, but out of pages from road atlases which were then stuck together and ‘encased in watercolours’ so that each row looked like a continous, uncut piece of paper. How long must it have taken, Charlie wondered, and what was the point of it, apart from to show that appearances could deceive? Big deal. Did anyone need something so obvious pointing out to them?

  Jan appeared from the back of the gallery with two tall china mugs. ‘Right, fire away,’ she said, handing Charlie her drink.

  ‘Are you familiar with the work of an artist called Mary Trelease? ’

  The smile on Jan’s face instantly became strained. ‘Not in touch any more,’ she said.

  ‘I just wondered… I’ve seen some of Mary’s paintings and-’

  ‘You’ve seen Mary’s work? Where?’

  ‘At her house.’

  Jan laughed. ‘She let you in and showed you her pictures? So I’m guessing you’re her closest friend, if not her only friend.’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that.’ Charlie smiled and took refuge in her cup of tea. ‘I hardly know her. I’ve met her once, that’s it. I went to see her about something else.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like the Mary Trelease I know, letting a stranger see her paintings. She hates anyone to see her work. She won’t sell it, won’t exhibit, won’t promote herself in any way.’

  ‘How do you know her?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Why do you want to know, if you don’t mind my asking? What did you say your name was again?’