The Truth-Teller's Lie Read online

  ‘What?’ Sellers couldn’t grasp the implication, if there was one.

  ‘Traditions are important, aren’t they? Wouldn’t want to miss out,’ said Gibbs. The last two words sounded clipped, exaggerated. Foam from his pint coated his upper lip.

  Hearing the song that had begun to blare from the jukebox, Sellers realised that every day he liked Chris Gibbs less and less. ‘Are you having second thoughts?’ he asked.

  ‘Second thoughts about what?’ contributed a voice from behind them.

  ‘Waterhouse! What are you . . . Oh, you’ve got one.’ Sellers was pleased to see him. Anything to avoid a heavy conversation with Gibbs about feelings. Was Gibbs even capable of such a feat?

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Simon. ‘There’ve been some developments. I just got off the phone with forensics.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The stain-remover on the Haworths’ stair carpet. There’s blood underneath it—Robert Haworth’s.’ Sellers opened his mouth, but Simon answered before he had a chance to ask. ‘The stairs are visible from the front door. The master bedroom isn’t. Anyway, there was too much blood in the bedroom. There’d have been no point even trying.’

  ‘What other developments?’ asked Sellers.

  ‘Robert Haworth’s lorry. Traces of semen all over the floor. Not his.’

  ‘I bet loads of lorry drivers have a wank in the back of the van when they stop at services,’ Gibbs mused.

  ‘Not his?’ Sellers echoed. ‘Definitely?’

  Simon nodded. ‘That’s not all. The keys to the lorry were in the house, and they’ve got Juliet Haworth’s fingerprints on them as well as her husband’s. That in itself might not be significant. All the keys in the Haworths’ house live in a pottery bowl on the table in the kitchen, so Juliet could have touched the ones for the lorry when she was replacing her house keys, but . . .’

  ‘The long, thin room Kelvey and Freeguard mentioned . . .’ Sellers thought aloud. ‘Haworth’s lorry.’

  ‘That was my first thought too,’ said Simon. ‘But where’s the mattress? It wasn’t in the lorry, and forensics got nothing from the one Robert Haworth was found lying on in his bedroom, just Haworth’s DNA and Juliet’s.’

  ‘Naomi Jenkins mentioned a plastic cover on the mattress in her statement,’ Sellers reminded him.

  ‘Kelvey and Freeguard didn’t,’ said Simon. ‘I rang Sam Kombothekra, asked him to check. There was no plastic cover in either case. Just a bare mattress. Which, let’s face it, was probably taken to some tip and dumped.’ He exhaled slowly. ‘You’re right, though. Kelvey and Freeguard were raped in Haworth’s lorry. One of the long sides isn’t metal—it’s made of a sort of thick canvas. It’s just a huge flap of material, basically, with ties all along the bottom to attach it to the side of the floor. Freeguard said something about a cloth wall. It’s got to be the lorry.’

  ‘I reckon Juliet Haworth’s the driving force behind the rapes,’ Gibbs tried his theory out on Simon. ‘She’s got a male accomplice, the one who’s been dripping his cum all over the back of Haworth’s lorry, but she’s the brains behind it. She’s been using hubby’s lorry as a venue, selling tickets to live rapes. Nice little earner. So much for her not working.’

  ‘Naomi Jenkins looks down on her for being a kept woman,’ said Simon thoughtfully. ‘She’s always making jibes about it.’

  ‘Kept, my arse.’ Gibbs snorted. ‘She probably makes more money from her little business than Haworth does from his driving.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Sellers. ‘We only know of four definites: Jenkins, Kelvey, Freeguard and survivor thirty-one. And only two of those were in the long, thin room. The others were in this theatre place, wherever the fuck.’

  ‘Why the change from theatre to van?’ said Simon.

  ‘There might have been a lot more who didn’t report it,’ said Gibbs. ‘Jenkins, Kelvey and Freeguard all said the rapist threatened to kill them. And if that wasn’t enough of an incentive to keep quiet, let’s face it, a lot of women wouldn’t want to go public and be seen as damaged goods, and a lot of men would see them that way. Whatever they say.’

  ‘All right,’ said Sellers wearily. ‘But assuming you’re right about Juliet and her accomplice, did Robert Haworth know? Was he in on it?’

  ‘My gut feeling is that he didn’t. Maybe he found out, and that was why Juliet went for him with the doorstop,’ said Simon. ‘Here’s something, though: when Charlie spoke to Yvon Cotchin, Cotchin told her that Naomi Jenkins had said Robert didn’t do overnight jobs any more. Apparently Juliet didn’t like him being away from home—that was the reason he gave Jenkins, anyway . . .’

  ‘But you’re thinking maybe she didn’t like the lorry being away from home, because she needed it for her own work,’ Sellers completed Simon’s hypothesis for him. ‘If you’re right, it’d explain a few things. Robert Haworth started going out with both Sandy Freeguard and Naomi Jenkins after they were raped—three months after, in Freeguard’s case and two years after in Jenkins’. Maybe Juliet fixed him up with them somehow.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Gibbs sneered. ‘How exactly would she have managed that?’

  ‘How, and why?’ Simon chewed the inside of his lip, thinking. ‘And even if she tried to, would Haworth really go along with it? I wondered about that, and decided it was impossible. Unlikely, at least.’

  ‘I can answer the why,’ said Gibbs. ‘She’s a pervert. She gets a sexual kick out of knowing her husband’s knobbing these women who have already been knobbed by the rapist. Whoever he is.’

  ‘But then Haworth’d have to contrive to meet them and strike up a relationship with them—it’s too much effort. What’s in it for him? Is he also a pervert? And who’s to say the women’d want to get involved with him?’

  ‘That’s the kick, for both of them,’ Gibbs persisted. ‘Her arranging the rapes, then him fucking the victims. Spices up their sex life. That’s why Robert Haworth isn’t doing the rapes himself. The women’d hardly go out with him if they recognised him as the man who raped them, would they?’

  Sellers couldn’t see it. ‘Kombothekra said Sandy Freeguard never had sex with Haworth. She wanted to, he didn’t. And he’s been seeing Naomi Jenkins for a year. Why so long, if it’s just so he and his wife can get their rocks off?’

  ‘Is it possible for a couple to suffer, jointly, from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy?’ Simon wondered aloud. He wasn’t hopeful, but it was a theory. Sometimes the bad ones led on to good ones. ‘If it is, perhaps the idea’s that Juliet arranges the ordeal, then Robert comes along afterwards and looks after the women, helps them recover, rebuilds their confidence. Kombothekra said Sandy Freeguard complained about Haworth trying to mollycoddle her. He didn’t want her to do too much too soon. Wouldn’t have sex with her, for that reason.’

  He frowned, seeing the flaw in what he was putting forward. ‘But Naomi Jenkins didn’t even tell him she was raped, and from what she’s told us, it sounds as if he treated her completely differently, not like a victim at all. The two of them went to bed together within a couple of hours of meeting.’

  ‘It’s bollocks.’ Gibbs yawned. ‘I’ve never heard of couples having Munchausen’s by proxy. It’s an individual thing. You wouldn’t talk about it, would you? How would they find out they both had it?’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said Simon. ‘I might check with an expert, though.’

  ‘Expert!’ Gibbs scoffed.

  ‘It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever come across,’ said Sellers, his forehead creased with concentration. ‘Robert Haworth’s got to be the link—Juliet knew the MO for the rapes, and two of the victims went on to be Haworth’s girlfriends . . . but that’s it, isn’t it? They went on to be his girlfriends. Does it make sense to say he’s the link when he only met Freeguard and Jenkins after they’d been kidnapped and raped?’

  Simon ran his finger around the circumference of his pint glass. ‘“Human uncertainty is all that makes the human reason strong. We n
ever know until we fall that every word we speak is wrong.”’

  ‘What the fuck’s that?’ Gibbs snapped.

  ‘Juliet Haworth wrote it down for us,’ said Sellers.

  ‘It’s by a C. H. Sisson,’ said Simon. ‘He died recently. The poem’s called “Uncertainty”.’

  ‘Great. Let’s set up a fucking reading group,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘Do you think it means anything?’ asked Sellers. ‘Was Juliet Haworth trying to give us some sort of message?’

  ‘Loud and clear.’ Gibbs looked disgusted. ‘She’s taking the piss. Give me ten minutes alone with her . . .’

  ‘She’s implying that we’re wrong about everything.’ Simon tried not to sound as depressed as he felt. ‘That we’ll only realise how wrong when it’s too late.’ Or perhaps that she herself had only realised, too late, that she was wrong about Robert, and that was why she tried to kill him? No, that was reading too much into it, surely.

  Simon changed the subject. ‘How did you do with the backgrounds? Is there anything in Juliet Haworth’s that looks like it might lead us to her accomplice, assuming she’s got one?’

  ‘I’ve got a list of names of old friends, one or two business contacts, ’ said Sellers. ‘Her parents were helpful.’ And distraught to hear that their only child had been charged with attempted murder. Telling them that hadn’t been a pleasant task.

  ‘Business as in making and selling her pottery cottages?’

  ‘Yeah. She did pretty well with it. Remmicks stocked some of her stuff for a while.’

  ‘So she’s got a head for business.’ Gibbs looked pleased with himself. ‘Tell him the interesting bit.’

  ‘I was just about to.’ Sellers turned back to Simon. ‘She’s not seen them for years, the names on the list. She’s not seen anyone but her husband, basically, since she had a nervous breakdown in 2001 due to overwork.’

  ‘She doesn’t seem the nervous type,’ said Simon, remembering Juliet Haworth’s confident manner; regal, almost. ‘The opposite. Are you sure?’

  Sellers gave him a withering look. ‘I’ve spoken to the woman who was her doctor at the time,’ he said. ‘Juliet Haworth didn’t get out of bed for six months. She’d worked like a maniac for years, apparently, without a break, no holidays. She just . . . burned out.’

  ‘Was she married to Robert then?’

  ‘No. She lived alone before the breakdown, then moved back in with her parents after. She married Robert in 2002. I spoke to both her parents this morning, at length. Norman and Joan Heslehurst. Both say there’s no way Juliet would harm Robert. But then they also insist she would want to speak to them and have them visit her, and we know she doesn’t.’

  ‘They won’t be lying,’ said Gibbs. ‘They want to feel needed. Parents, aren’t they?’

  ‘Juliet and Robert met in a video shop,’ Sellers continued to fill Simon in. ‘In Sissinghurst, Kent. Blockbuster, on Stammers Road, near where the Heslehursts live. It was one of Juliet’s first trips out, after the breakdown. She’d forgotten to take her purse and got upset when she got to the counter and realised. Robert Haworth was in the shop, in the queue behind her. He paid for her video and made sure she got home safely. Both parents seem to regard him as a bit of a saint. Joan Heslehurst’s as upset about Robert as she is about Juliet. She says they’ve got him to thank for getting Juliet back on her feet. He was brilliant with her, apparently.’

  Simon didn’t like the sound of any of that, though he wasn’t sure why. It sounded a bit too neat. He’d have to think about it. ‘What was Haworth doing in a video shop in Kent? Where did he live at the time?’

  ‘He bought the Spilling house just before his and Juliet’s wedding,’ said Gibbs. ‘Before that, who knows. Fucking black hole’s all the background we’ve got on him so far.’

  ‘Was it something specific about Juliet Haworth’s work that caused the breakdown?’ asked Simon. ‘Some change in her situation or circumstances?’

  Gibbs leaned over to growl at a passing waitress about the food and why it was taking so long.

  ‘She was becoming more and more successful,’ said Sellers. ‘Her mum said she was fine at the beginning, while the business was still struggling. It was when it started to do well that she fell apart.’

  ‘Makes no sense,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘Yeah, it does,’ said Simon. ‘When things start to go right, that’s when the pressure’s really on. You’ve got to keep it up, haven’t you?’

  ‘Juliet’s mum said she ran herself into the ground, worked day and night, stopped going out. She was completely driven. Always had been.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Simon.

  ‘She was a high-flier all her life, before the breakdown. She was head girl at both her primary school and her secondary. An athlete too—she competed at county level, won bucket-loads of prizes. She was in the choir, got a music scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, which she turned down, went to art college instead . . .’

  ‘She’s still a high-flier,’ said Gibbs, his face brightening at the sight of his steak pie emerging from the pub kitchen. ‘Except now she’s in the kidnap-and-sexual-assault business.’

  ‘What sort of impression did you get of her personality?’ asked Simon. The smell of Sellers’ fish and chips was making his mouth water. He’d have to buy himself a sandwich on the way back. ‘Manipulative? Devious? Defiant?’

  ‘Not really. An extrovert, lively, sociable. A bit manic, though, her dad said, and when she was stressed about work she could get ratty and unreasonable. He did tell me she had a temper, before the breakdown. The mum was pissed off, as you can imagine. Thought he’d landed Juliet in it. I didn’t point out how deep in it she was even before he opened his gob. The strangest thing was that both parents—everyone I’ve spoken to—talks as if there have been two Juliets, almost like two separate people.’

  ‘Pre- and post-breakdown?’ said Simon. ‘That can happen, I suppose.’

  ‘Her mum described the breakdown—what happened, you know.’ Sellers rubbed his eyes and swallowed a yawn. ‘Once she got going, I couldn’t stop her.’

  ‘What exactly did she say?’ Simon ignored the dismissive grunt that came from Gibbs.

  ‘One day Juliet was supposed to go round to her parents’ place for dinner, and she didn’t turn up. They phoned and phoned—nothing. So they went round. Juliet didn’t answer the door, but they could tell she was in—her car was there, and loud music was playing. In the end her dad broke a window. They found her in her work room, looking like she hadn’t eaten, slept or washed for days. She wouldn’t speak to them, either—just looked through them, like they weren’t there, and carried on working. All she said was, “I have to finish this.” She kept saying it, over and over.’

  ‘Finish what?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Whatever she was working on. Her mum said she used to get loads of commissions, and customers often wanted a fast turn around—presents, anniversaries. When it was done—in the early hours of the morning, after her mum and dad had sat and watched her half the night—they said, “You’re coming home with us,” and she didn’t resist or anything. It was as if she didn’t care what she did, her mum said.’

  Gibbs nudged Sellers with his elbow. ‘Waterhouse is starting to feel sorry for her. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Go on,’ Simon said to Sellers. ‘If there’s more.’

  ‘Not much, really. Her parents asked her who the model was for, the one she’d been working on until three in the morning—they thought, if it was that urgent, maybe they could deliver it, you know—but Juliet had no idea. All that frantic work, saying she had to finish it, and she couldn’t even remember who it was for.’

  ‘She’d flipped,’ Gibbs summarised.

  ‘After that night, though, she wanted nothing to do with work, couldn’t even be in the same room as any of the stuff she’d made. She’d done a few for her parents, and they had to put them all in the cellar, so she didn’t see them. And all the ones from her own house went
in the parents’ cellar too. And that was that—she’s not worked since.’

  ‘Yes, she has; she’s just had a change of career,’ said Gibbs. ‘She’s a workaholic, capable of driving herself mad—maybe that’s what happened this time as well. The kidnap-and-rape business was a runaway success, she couldn’t handle the pressure, so she lost it and went for her husband with a rock.’

  ‘Her mum said she knew something was wrong,’ Sellers spoke into his pint glass. ‘Now, I mean. Before she found out what’d happened to Robert.’

  ‘How come?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Juliet phoned out of the blue and said she wanted all the stuff back, all her pottery models.’

  ‘When was this?’ Simon did his best to conceal his annoyance. Sellers should have told him this first, the rest later.

  ‘Last Saturday.’

  ‘Two days after Haworth failed to show up for his meeting with Jenkins at the Traveltel,’ said Simon thoughtfully.

  ‘Right. Juliet didn’t explain, just said she wanted it all back. She went and got it on the Sunday. She was in a good mood, according to her mum—better than she’d been for a long while. That’s why her parents were so surprised when they heard—’

  ‘So the little houses that Naomi Jenkins saw in the Haworths’ lounge on the Monday . . . they’d been there less than twenty-four hours?’

  ‘So what?’ said Gibbs.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just interesting. The timing.’

  ‘Maybe she was going to go back to it, making the models,’ Sellers suggested. ‘If she and Haworth had been involved in the rape thing together, and now he’s in hospital, and maybe never coming out . . .’

  ‘Yeah.’ Gibbs nodded. ‘She was planning to pretend all that never happened, and take up pottery again. She’s a real charmer.’

  ‘What about background on Haworth?’ said Simon. ‘And Naomi Jenkins?’

  Sellers looked at Gibbs, who said, ‘Nothing yet on Haworth. And nothing on his sister Lottie Nicholls. I’ve been busy with the websites this morning, but I’ll chase it.’

  ‘Naomi Jenkins is straightforward,’ said Sellers. ‘Born and grew up in Folkestone, Kent. Went to boarding school, did very well. Middle-class background, mother a history teacher, father an orthodontist. Studied typography and graphic communication at Reading University. Plenty of friends and boyfriends. Lively, an extrovert . . .’