Never Tell (21 page)

‘Kill me or I’ll kill him.’ Dalziel smiled beatifically and I thought that I might be sick now myself. ‘It’s up to you.’

Lena was crawling towards the door, crying and retching.

‘Don’t bother.’ Dalziel laughed a strange reedy laugh. ‘It’s locked, loves, it’s locked – and I threw away the key.’

‘I don’t feel well,’ Lena moaned. ‘I don’t feel well at all.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t be so greedy, should you, love?’ Dalziel taunted her, but his beatific smile was fading. He looked unsure suddenly, as if he might be coming round from whatever madness, whatever drug held him in its grip. He put an unsteady hand out, held on to the bedpost.

‘Dalziel, please,’ I implored. When he looked at me I saw there were tears in his eyes.

‘Why not?’ he said, and I saw he was crying. ‘It’s an eye for an eye, my love, isn’t it?’ The tears ran down his face, tracking through the smeared pentangle. ‘My beautiful Rose. My morning star.’

And then the child on the bed stirred and moaned in his sleep, and I struggled desperately for a moment and I felt Brian’s hands still shaking although his grip was like steel. I looked at James across the bed and we stared at each other for a second or perhaps it was an hour, it was too hard to tell, and adrenalin and fear took over. I sort of threw myself out of Brian’s grasp with the vague idea of bringing him down, only he was too quick, and he picked up something from the sideboard. I didn’t see exactly what but I thought it was a crystal vase, and he brought it down over my head – and for an instant the pain was excruciating. My eyes were swimming with water from the vase, or perhaps it was blood, and then I was falling down, down, down and I hit my head on the floorboards. I lay there on my side and I thought I heard someone screaming and—

And then all was darkness.

Chapter Twelve
GLOUCESTERSHIRE, MARCH 2008

Before I left for my parents’, I locked the house up carefully, checking every window, every door. I’d just reached the junction for the motorway when my phone rang.

‘Rose,’ a desperate voice whispered, ‘Rose, I don’t have much time. I need to talk to you – now.’

I knew it was madness going back, but everything that had forced me to seek out the truth in my work felt heightened; I was compelled to follow the story until the facts became completely clear. I squared it with myself: the children were safely out of the way; I was still a free agent for the next twenty-four hours and I was determined to do something right.

My phone bleeped again. A text from Xav.

‘Call me: I’m in a meeting but I’ll come out. Do not go near Kattan again. We need to speak NOW.’

I threw the phone back on the seat beside me and put my foot down.

Rain clouds were travelling fast across the horizon, gathering darkness as they moved nearer. Verdi played on the car radio; something dramatic and tragic that I didn’t know. It suited my mood.

The housekeeper answered the door.

‘I’ve come to see Maya.’

‘She’s not here.’

‘I’m sure she is. I just spoke to her.’

‘I think you’ll find—’

Maya ran down the stairs. ‘It’s all right, Miss Ellis, she’s a friend.’ She suddenly looked dubious. ‘You
are
a friend, aren’t you?’

‘Of course.’

A doubtful Miss Ellis retreated reluctantly. Maya, it had to be said, looked slightly deranged: barefoot, in a white vest and jeans, her arms tattooed with unicorns on one side, a rainbow and what looked like a pentangle on the other. She presented a completely different picture from her previous glamour.

‘I don’t have much time,’ she said, dragging me into the house from the doorstep, peering over my shoulder anxiously. Her face was free of make-up for the first time, huge shadows beneath her limpid eyes, her hair wavy and mussed. The wind moaned through the great oaks behind us and I stepped inside, pulling my jacket tighter. None of the lights were on and the old house was dark and gloomy.

‘Look, I was worried about talking about Nadif yesterday.’ She led me into the vast drawing room, speaking quickly, frenetically even. ‘But I’m a virtual prisoner, and I want people to know the truth about my father before it is too late. He is a tyrant.’ She lit a cigarette with a gold lighter; there were scratches on her shaking hand. ‘He is a tyrant and a murderer. But you, Rose,’ she looked at me and her bloodshot eyes were blazing, ‘you can tell the world the truth.’

I had found my old dictaphone in the glove box; Alicia used it sometimes for her singing. I pulled it out now, placed it on the coffee table between us. Maya eyed it suspiciously and then shrugged elegant shoulders. She seemed slightly glazed by her obvious misery.

‘Nadif had such ideals. No one understood. They didn’t understand.’

‘Who?’

‘My dad. His yobs. They just used him until he couldn’t say no. And then they tried to use him to get to me.’

I was lost.

‘Maya, hang on. Can you slow down a sec?’

‘You know my father has been hoping to be awarded a peerage?’ She slumped on the sofa, ash dropping onto the floor. ‘It looks doubtful now, but he thinks there’s a chance he might have a seat in the House of Lords soon.’

‘Really?’ I was fascinated. I saw the headlines now: ‘Peer locks up his daughter.’ ‘Does he have British citizenship?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Dual citizenship.’

‘What’s his connection in the Lords?’

‘Never mind,’ she said. She seemed slightly hyper, her mind skittering from topic to topic. ‘That’s not important now. Rose, he has made me a prisoner here again to stop me speaking out.’

‘Again?’ I leaned forward. ‘Speaking out about what?’

There was a knock on the door and we both jumped. It was the housekeeper.

‘Would you like some tea or coffee?’ she asked, her small pebble eyes scanning the room quickly. Maya waved her away impatiently. ‘Not now. Please, leave us.’ She ground out her cigarette in the ugly marble ashtray and then immediately lit another one. Her French manicure was chipped. ‘He did not like my boyfriend. Amongst other things, he was a black man, he was African. My father doesn’t believe in mixing cultures or religion.’

‘And what religion do you follow?’

‘That doesn’t matter, does it?’ she laughed rather hysterically. ‘I follow my own god.’

My heart sank. I’d hoped I’d been wrong about some of my assumptions, about facing the facts that seemed obvious about Maya.

‘I saw you on that march in London,’ I said. ‘The pro-Islam one. With Nadif, weren’t you? There was a picture in the paper. Were those his ideals you mentioned?’

She looked confused for a moment. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I remember now. He wanted to go. I was there to – it was—’

There was another knock on the door and a rather stooped middle-aged man in a slightly threadbare suit entered the room. He was paper-thin, a shadow of a man.

‘Hello,’ he said politely. ‘Excuse me, but, Maya, I think you should come with me now.’

‘I won’t,’ she said rudely. ‘Go away.’

‘It’s time for your medicine.’ He smiled apologetically at me. ‘Do excuse me, Miss—’

‘You can’t make me take that poison.’

I didn’t know what to do. I stood up, quickly pocketing the tiny tape recorder. ‘Please, Mr—’

‘Dr Fisher,’ he smiled again, stepping towards Maya. ‘Come on now, Maya. Be a good girl. Your father is so worried about you, you know that.’

‘Rose, please,’ she said, staring at me wildly. I was starting to feel like I was trapped in some sort of Victorian melodrama. I thought of Mrs Rochester locked in her husband’s attic. ‘Please help me.’

‘I really think –’ I said rather helplessly to the doctor – ‘I think you should do what Ms Kattan—’

‘And I think you should go now, don’t you, love?’ a voice interrupted. I spun round. The young man called Zack stared at me from the door. ‘In fact, you were just leaving, weren’t you?’

I gaped at him stupidly whilst the doctor moved towards a now sobbing Maya, and then Zack took me firmly by the arm and marched me to the door, down the front steps and to my car.

‘Help me, Rose,’ I could hear her calling pathetically. ‘Please, help me.’

‘You’re hurting me,’ I complained. ‘That girl needs help. Let me go.’

‘Do us all a favour, love. Get in the car and go now,’ he said. He smelled unpleasant, of stale sweat and something I couldn’t place. Something like ammonia. Something chemical.

‘Is – is Danny here?’ I said.

‘Danny?’ He stared at me like I was stupid. ‘He won’t help you, love. God, you’re all the same, you bloody birds. See those blue eyes and think he’s come to save you.’

He took my car keys from my pocket, opened the door, thrust me into the car, put the key in the ignition and turned the engine over.

‘But I tell you what, love, he’s worse than me. He’s dangerous. He might be a good fuck, and believe me, he’ll fuck anything, but he’d sell his granny for a quid. OK?’

He was so near I could smell his dinner on him, fighting with the chemical stench. I felt nauseous.

‘Go home. Be a good girl, OK? Go home, and stay there.’

By the time I got to the road I was shaking with rage and anxious indignation, and I did what Zack told me. I went home. I went home and I called the police.

Chapter Thirteen

I thought they would send someone but they didn’t. They took details and they knew who Kattan was – but they didn’t seem unduly alarmed or surprised by my call.

‘Are you making allegations of domestic abuse?’ they asked, and I couldn’t really say yes, because I had no evidence.

‘Just talk to her,’ I implored. ‘There’s something very odd going on.’ But they said they already had interviewed Kattan and his daughter in connection with Nadif”s death, and that unless I had evidence of any sort of violence, there was nothing they could do.

‘What is the conclusion about the death?’ I asked casually before I hung up, but the policewoman told me that was undetermined still.

‘The inquest is scheduled for some time next week,’ was the most I could wring from her.

When I hung up the phone rang again. It was James – finally.

‘All right, petal,’ the line was terrible, ‘sorry I’ve been—’

‘What?’ I found I was yelling. ‘I can’t hear you. Where are you?’

‘The mobile doesn’t work on the—’ Another massive crackle. ‘No signal this far south. I’ll be in Ho Chi Minh by tomorrow night. I’ll call then.’

‘OK,’ I said. I could hear my own voice echoing down the line. ‘Have you got a number where you are? At your hotel?’

‘What? It’s so hard to … Kids all right?’

‘They’re at my mum’s if you want to ring them there direct.’

‘It’s not worth it. I’ll speak to them tomorrow.’

‘OK,’ I repeated. I felt an almost nauseous sensation deep in my belly. ‘James, Liam was here, he—’

‘What? I can’t hear you. I—’

The line went dead.

I paced the house, thinking. I turned the computer on and searched Maya Kattan again, but there was nothing apart from the picture on the London march, and a random shot of her with Paul McCartney’s daughters and a small Geldof at some nightclub two years ago. Then I looked for Hadi Kattan again. His handsome face on the computer: his achievements, his family, his polo team, the possible al-Qaeda allegations that had come to nothing. I searched every article I could find. What was I missing? My brain felt like some old-fangled machine, the cogs grinding uncomfortably against each other.

I tried calling Xav, though I just got his voicemail, despite his earlier message. On Sundays he usually went to ground; we rarely talked about where he disappeared to, but he’d obviously gone there now.

I rang the kids again. My mother sounded surprised – they were still all fine. I paced the house.

I stared at my mobile phone, willing it to ring. It didn’t.

When he came back, my hands shook on the latch as I tried to open it. I looked up into the blackness behind him, and there was a shadow on the half-moon suspended in the sky.

‘I can’t stop thinking about you,’ he said, and he tried to smile, but I saw he couldn’t.

And when he pushed me gently against the wall and kissed me, I felt that great wash of feeling again like a tide, like a wave that has been coming over the sea all this time; it is gentle as it picks you up and you don’t want to fight it, you surrender to the inevitability.

The wave that brought me home.

Afterwards we lay in the darkness, and he said quietly, ‘This isn’t meant to be happening,’ and I said, ‘No, I guess not.’

I thought of Zack’s words. ‘Is there – do you – is there anyone else?’

‘No.’ He was almost vehement. ‘No, there isn’t.’

Neither of us moved. We talked quietly for a while; he asked me about the children, and I thought I detected a yearning in his voice.

Later, when all I could hear was his steady breathing and the silence stretched loosely across the room, I asked, ‘Do you regret it?’

‘What?’

‘This.’

‘No. The opposite.’

I felt relief flood over me for the second time. For a while neither of us spoke.

‘I just wish—’ He stopped.

‘What?’

‘I just wish you weren’t married,’ he muttered into my hair. His voice was so quiet I could hardly hear him.

For a moment, a very short moment, I considered his words. ‘So do I,’ I murmured.

Then he turned over and he laid his mouth on that part of my neck above my collarbone and I thought, I could stay here for ever.

Then the wave finally hit the shore.

Chapter Fourteen

I tried my best to avoid her, but to no avail. Dashing out of the village shop with water and badly needed headache pills, I saw she’d spotted me already.

‘You’re out early,’ she cooed, checking her gold watch, her perfect bob swinging like a shampoo advert. Helen Kelsey – the summation of all I loathed about the Cotswolds, the twee main street, the shops that sold too much sickly fudge and pastel teacosies and nothing real; the unsmiling shopkeepers who eyed my noisy children suspiciously each time we entered.