The Other Side of the Door, Nicci French [new reading .TXT] 📗

a self-fulfilling prophecy. It almost made you want to sleep with them just to see what their secret was. But usually it irritated me—and it irritated me now. If only I hadn’t been so tired, my head so fuzzy and generally inoperative . . .

‘Are you all right?’ said Joy Wallis.

‘I had a bit of a bad night.’

‘Anything you want to tell us about?’

‘What for?’ I said. There was a pause. ‘Sorry. That came out sounding wrong. I just meant that there isn’t anything to talk about.’

Brook leaned back and folded his arms. ‘I know these things are difficult,’ he said.

Even in my utterly befuddled state, I could see what he was doing. He was trying to get a conversation going in which I would be carried away or led into an area I didn’t want to go. Since there was no area in which I did want to go and since I was in an utterly confused state, it was clear that the only possible strategy for me was to play dumb. That wouldn’t be too hard. Brook began in the usual way by worrying that maybe I’d be better served if I had legal representation but I just repeated that I didn’t want that. He seemed disappointed but also slightly confused. Could it be that my behaviour was the sign of someone who was innocent or stupid or both? Finally he shrugged as if he realized, with regret, that there was nothing more he could do to help me.

‘I know what you’re going through,’ he said, ‘being involved in a case like this and having to talk to people like us, all the fuss and the media.’

‘I’m not involved,’ I said.

Brook looked puzzled. ‘Of course you’re involved,’ he said. ‘You were intimate with the victim. Did you think I meant something else?’

‘I thought you were accusing me of something,’ I said.

Now he looked even more puzzled, like someone on stage acting out bafflement for the spectators at the back.

‘What would I be accusing you of?’

I suspected he was trying to get me to do his work for him, to accuse myself of what I thought he might suspect. I just mumbled something. The impulse to spill the truth, to let it flood out of me and be empty and peaceful at last, was almost impossible to resist. Only the thought of Sonia and Neal kept me mute.

‘I’ve been reading through the file,’ said Brook. ‘I’ve looked at the witness statements, talked to people. Your Hayden was a difficult man. He clearly had some sort of charisma. At least for women.’

I gritted my teeth so that I couldn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to volunteer any information, any opinion unless asked point-blank to do so.

‘Clearly he had a difficult side to him,’ Brook continued. ‘He wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea.’

Still no question.

‘As I went through the file,’ he said, ‘I saw him as someone people had strong feelings about. He was someone you loved or hated, someone you could be angry with. Very angry.’ He looked at me. ‘Were you ever angry with him?’

Everything in the room seemed slightly strange as if the contours around objects were indistinct. How long had I slept? Two hours? Maybe a bit less? This was what the authorities did to torture people before interrogation. You deprive them of sleep. I’d done it to myself and delivered myself up to the police.

‘Why are you asking that?’ I said. ‘Why are you asking all of these questions? What’s the point? He’s dead. What does it matter any more what I felt about him? That’s all over. It’s over.’

I listened to myself as I talked. I sounded slightly drunk or insane; I sounded like someone about to veer out of control. Brook just smiled sympathetically, nodded.

‘It’s all about patterns,’ he said. ‘A detail here and there.’ He paused as if waiting for a reply from me, which didn’t come. Then his face took on an expression of concern. ‘Have you told us everything you know?’

‘I don’t know what that means,’ I said. ‘I’ll answer any question you put to me.’

‘My colleague is correct,’ he said. ‘You don’t look well. Trouble sleeping?’

‘Not really,’ I said.

He leaned across the table so that he was uncomfortably close. I could see the little laugh lines at the corner of his eyes. I could even see little purple broken veins in his cheeks. ‘I’ve been doing this job for twenty years,’ he said. ‘And one thing I’ve learned is that when you tell everything, when you own up and finally tell someone the full story, it’s the greatest relief you can imagine. People tell me that afterwards. They thank me. They tell me they feel suddenly clean for the first time in ages and ages.’

I knew he was right. There was nothing I wanted more than to tell the full story in a way I had never told it before, not even to myself. Would have. If it had been only me. But I would have been taking Neal and Sonia down with me. And both of them were in that vulnerable position because of what they’d done for me, in their own deluded ways. ‘I’ve answered every question,’ I made myself say. ‘That’s all.’

‘You were the one involved with him,’ said Brook. ‘People say it was quite tempestuous.’

‘What people?’

‘Two of you, both with a bit of a temper, both with wills of your own. Your relationship had its ups and downs, did it?’

‘It wasn’t really much of a relationship,’ I said.

‘Not enough for you?’

I could see he was still trying to suck me into a conversation, perhaps taunt me into saying something reckless that would give me away. I shrugged and didn’t reply.

‘I could imagine an argument,’ he said. ‘Almost a fight. He comes for you, you pick up something and hit him with it. If you confessed to that, get a good feminist lawyer, you could walk away with a suspended sentence for manslaughter.’

I didn’t reply. Brook’s face darkened.

‘But if you don’t