The Telling Error (30 page)

Sergeant Zailer produces a sheaf of papers from the folder on her lap. ‘I’m going to show you some papers, Nicki. One of them’s an ad from Intimate Links, from 2010. The others are your comments on Damon Blundy’s newspaper articles.’

I take them and start to leaf through, hoping my hands aren’t visibly shaking. Of course the police would read the comments sections beneath all Damon Blundy’s articles in search of nutters threatening to kill him for causing them offence, but how the hell did they get hold of an ad I posted on Intimate Links three years ago?

Unless it was in Damon Blundy’s house. Which would mean …

My heart starts to race, up into my throat. I can’t breathe or swallow. My mind blurs around the edges.

‘Nicki? Are you all right?’ says Sergeant Zailer.

‘Can you get her some water?’ asks Adam. He’s taken the papers and is reading the advert.
Oh God.
Even the word ‘nightmare’ feels inadequate – it doesn’t begin to describe the situation.

I have to deny I wrote and posted that ad. I’ve no option. If Adam finds out I lied to him even while making my impressive confession, he’ll leave me.

‘I don’t need water,’ I say. ‘I’m fine. I recognise Damon Blundy’s
Herald
columns and my comments, but what’s this ad?’

‘You didn’t put it on Intimate Links in 2010?’

‘No. Who said I did? I categorically did not.’

‘Are you a fan of BBC4?’ Sergeant Zailer asks.

‘Yes. And people close to me know that about me.’ I see a change in Sergeant Zailer’s eyes and know that I guessed right. The police didn’t find my ad at Damon Blundy’s house. ‘Melissa drew your attention to that advert, didn’t she? Told you I must have posted it? Or was it my brother, Lee? One of them, for sure.’ Pretending to be thinking hard through my shock, I say, ‘Which means … But Lee wouldn’t have written that ad, no way. Melissa must have written it. She must have written it as if it was by me.’

‘I don’t think she’d do that, Nicki,’ says Adam.

‘She’d do anything,’ I snap at him. To Sergeant Zailer, I say, ‘Are you
sure
the ad was posted in 2010? She couldn’t have posted it since Damon Blundy died and backdated it?’

I know Melissa did no such thing. Her bringing my Intimate Links ad to the police could mean more than that she suspects me of killing Damon Blundy …

‘You commented on Blundy’s columns a lot,’ Sergeant Zailer pushes my thoughts off track. ‘Always to support his point of view most enthusiastically. I can’t find a single instance of you arguing against him.’

‘I usually agreed with him.’

‘It was more than usually,’ said Charlie. ‘Between October 2011 and February this year, you agreed with nearly every column he published. You only missed two or three. Did you know him personally?’

‘No. Never clapped eyes on him, never spoke to him. I just happen to think he was a very clever man, and right about most issues.’

‘Why did you only start commenting in 2011? Damon Blundy’s had a column in the
Daily Herald
since 2009.’

‘Surely Nicki’s allowed to—’

‘I started when I started to read him. I don’t remember the exact date. I didn’t know how long he’d had his column for. I just discovered him one day, when I was wasting time online.’

‘Why did you stop commenting in February this year?’ Sergeant Zailer asks. ‘Didn’t you say that was when you answered Gavin’s advert?’

‘Yes, it was,’ I say as smoothly as possible. ‘And yes, the two are connected. I stopped commenting on Damon Blundy’s columns because I’d had enough of getting attacked by his many enemies every time I spoke up for him. Suddenly, there was a gaping hole in my online time-wasting, so I looked on Intimate Links and got … drawn in.’

‘Do you still have your email correspondence with Gavin?’

‘No. When I decided to tell Adam the truth, I deleted everything – from my deleted box too. I might have decided to come clean, but Gavin hasn’t, as far as I know. I thought it was only fair to protect him.’

‘What was his email address?’

‘I don’t remember,’ I lie. ‘And if I did, I’d pretend I didn’t. Sorry, but Gavin’s married and wants to stay married. Not everyone’s as understanding as Adam.’

‘No, they’re definitely not,’ Sergeant Zailer agrees.

‘Why did Melissa show you that Intimate Links advert?’ I ask her. ‘It’s … too much. It’s more than doing her duty as a good citizen. Why didn’t she just tell you I asked her to lie about a car mirror and leave it at that?’

‘I don’t know. What’s your theory?’

‘She must have wanted to make
absolutely certain
that you’d believe I posted that ad, and that Damon Blundy replied to it, and we had an affair, and I ended up killing him. I don’t know why she’d want that so much, unless …’ I break off. I wish I’d never started. I don’t really mean what I’m about to say.

Don’t you? Then why are you trembling?

‘Unless what, Nicki?’ Sergeant Zailer asks.

‘Unless she murdered him herself,’ I whisper.

‘I need you to drop me somewhere,’ I say to Adam. We’ve hardly spoken since we left the police station. He’s shocked that I accused Melissa of murder.

Except I didn’t. I was thinking aloud, that’s all. A thought crossed my mind and I blurted it out. Despite having done so, it’s still there – I didn’t succeed in banishing it. If Melissa believes I had an affair with Damon Blundy, and if she persuaded Lee to believe it too; if the two of them made the effort to bring my Intimate Links advert to the police’s attention …

No.
No way they murdered Damon Blundy.
Why would they? I’m the one they’ve got it in for. If they were going to kill anyone, they’d kill me. My parents have always wanted me not to exist – me as I am and have always been. Adam would protest if I said this, but it’s true. If you want, endlessly, to change someone’s attitudes, behaviours and personality, it means you want that person as they are to be discontinued.

‘You’re not coming home?’ Adam asks.

‘I need to go to Kate Zilber’s house. There’s something I need to ask her.’

‘About the kids?’

‘No.’ I’m too embarrassed to say that I need a new best friend and I’m hoping Kate will be it, but I can tell him part of the truth. ‘I’m being followed. By a man with streaked hair and a blue BMW. He hangs around the school gates at the end of the day. Well, he used to – before he knew I’d clocked him.’

‘
What?
’ Adam does an emergency stop on Spilling’s Main Street. The car behind beeps its horn. ‘A man’s following you and I’m just hearing about it now?’

‘I’ve only known since Tuesday. He must have followed us to the station and then the car-hire office. He followed me to Melissa’s. I came out and there he was, across the road. Smoking. I haven’t seen him since.’

‘Why didn’t you tell the police? And what’s Kate Zilber got to do with it?’

‘I told you – he used to hang around at school. I assumed he was one of the dads, there to pick up his kids, but Kate says there’s no parent who fits that description. I believe her. She’d know if there was. I asked her to ask some of the other parents if they’d noticed him, or his car registration. I was so shocked when I saw him outside Melissa’s on Tuesday, I didn’t think to look at it.’

‘You didn’t answer my first question,’ Adam says impatiently. ‘Why didn’t you mention any of this to Sergeant Zailer?’

‘Because …’ I breathe. ‘Grim though they are, I don’t want to get my family into trouble. Not that that’d happen necessarily. Is it illegal to hire someone to tail your sister, or your daughter? It probably isn’t.’

Adam rolls his eyes. ‘Nicki, you’re not seriously suggesting—’

‘Who else?’ I twist in my seat to face him properly. ‘Who else would bother to pay a stooge to follow me around – me, an irrelevant housewife that no one’s heard of? Only my parents and my brother have ever taken an unhealthy interest in my day-to-day behaviour. Of course they’re behind it.’

‘I think this is dangerous paranoia, Nicki.’

‘I know. Because you don’t understand how it felt to be me, in my childhood.’ I hide behind a bright fake smile. ‘It’s OK. Actually, it’s character-building. I didn’t get where I am today by being understood.’

They didn’t break me. You can’t either.

Defeated, Adam shakes his head. ‘All right,’ he says quietly. ‘Kate Zilber’s house. What’s the address?’

‘Gunstool Road. Number 31.’

‘So what’s the plan? Why do you want to try and find out more about this guy, his car registration? I thought you said you hadn’t seen him since Tuesday.’

I’m good at answering neutrally and fully without revealing how I feel about the question I’m responding to. ‘I haven’t. So either he’s being more subtle now that he knows I’m onto him, or he’s stopped following me. Either way, I’d like to know who he is and who hired him. I’d like to find out for myself.’

‘Is there any point in me trying to—’

‘No.’

Adam drives me to Kate’s house in silence. All the way there, I imagine telling him the true story of my childhood. It’s my fault he doesn’t understand, my fault he doesn’t know. I could have told him when we first met. I didn’t. Even Melissa didn’t get to hear the worst parts. I let her think my family situation was a normal one: the standard rebellious-teenager-clashes-with-parents scenario. I still think I made the right choice. Thanks to the safeguard of silence I put in place, no one has ever listened to me tell them how bad it was and, immediately afterwards, said, ‘That’s not so bad. I’ve heard worse.’

I tell Adam I’ll be back no later than ten, then watch him drive away and out of sight before I ring Kate Zilber’s doorbell. Her house is double-fronted, detached, with a bay window on either side of the door. In front of each one, there’s an identical landscaped garden patch, a continuation of the house’s symmetry.

Kate comes to the door wearing grey yoga trousers and a white sleeveless top, no shoes. My smile withers when I see her hard face. I’ve never seen her look like this before: completely different from the woman I know. ‘I’m sorry, Nicki,’ she says.

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘I can’t have you round for the evening. We can’t socialise. Your children are at my school. You’re a parent; I’m the headmistress. Let’s keep it professional, OK? Again – I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have invited you round. It was a bad idea.’

‘Kate, what the hell’s going on? I was a parent yesterday, when you invited me round. Since when do you care about professional? You’re constantly telling me which of your staff you’d like to sack.’

‘Nicki,’ she says gently, ‘you should go.’

‘I’ll go as soon as you’ve explained your change of heart. Luckily for you, I no longer want to socialise with you either – I tend to prefer socialising with people who don’t suddenly disown me – but I’m not an idiot, and I want an explanation.’

‘The police contacted the school about you,’ Kate says. Behind her, in the house, I see encaustic tiles on the floor, a pale blue rug that looks like seagrass or something similar. There’s a spicy smell – curry or Mexican food.

‘About Monday morning? Yes, I know – Izzie told them I was on and off the phone to her for much of the morning.’

‘This is in connection with the murder of that journalist, isn’t it? Damon Blundy?’

‘Yes. Which, as Izzie made clear to the police, I can’t possibly have been responsible for.’

‘I’m not accusing you of murder. But … you’re clearly mixed up in a murder, and you told me on the phone that some weird man’s following you—’

‘Wait, wait!’ I put up a hand to stop her. ‘I’m only mixed up in Damon Blundy’s murder to the extent that I drove along his road on my way to school—’

‘Nicki,’ Kate silences me with her loud head-teacher voice. ‘Listen. Spare me your innocent-until-proven-guilty speech. This isn’t about what you’ve done or haven’t done. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. I just don’t want to get close to anyone right now who’s going to bring any kind of trouble or stress into my life. I’m up to my eyes as it is. This is about protecting myself. Sorry if that sounds selfish. And I’m sorry if you’re in a difficult place at the moment, but – again, forgive me for being honest – you’re not the kind of friend I need. I thought you were. I thought you’d be fun—’

‘Oh, I am, believe me,’ I say, nearly choking on what feels like a red spiky ball at the back of my throat. ‘I’m great fun when I’m not being wrongly suspected of murder or trying to shake off strange men following me.’

‘I understand that you’re angry, but I’m trying to be honest. I need friends who are going to lift me up, not drag me down. I really am sorry. And, just so’s we’re clear, this doesn’t affect Sophie and Ethan – all right? Try taking them out of my school and I’ll ring the police and un-alibi you!’

Unbelievable. She’s actually trying to save face with a joke. Yes, let’s have a good laugh about me being trouble and best avoided.

I can’t bring myself to say anything in response. I turn and walk away from her house as fast as I can.