The Truth-Teller's Lie Read Online Free PDF Page B

badly missed the point. ‘Once you start looking into it, you’ll find that Robert is missing. Or something else is very seriously wrong. I don’t want you to take my word for it, Sergeant Waterhouse. I want you to look into it and find out for yourself.’
    ‘DC Waterhouse,’ Charlie corrected her. ‘Detective Constable.’ She wondered how she’d feel if Simon were to take and pass his sergeant’s exams, if she were no longer higher than him in rank. It would happen eventually. It shouldn’t bother her, she decided. ‘Does Mr Haworth have a car? Might he have taken that to Kent?’
    ‘He’s a lorry driver. He needs his lorry for work, and he works every minute that he can when he’s not with me. He has to, because Juliet doesn’t earn anything—it’s all down to him.’
    ‘But does he also own a car?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Naomi blushed. ‘I’ve never asked.’ Defensively, she added, ‘We hardly have any time together, and we don’t waste what little we have on trivialities.’
    ‘So, you were looking through Mr Haworth’s lounge window—’ Charlie began.
    ‘The Traveltel has a cancellation policy,’ Naomi talked over her. ‘If you cancel before noon on the day you’re due to arrive, they don’t charge you. I asked the receptionist and Robert hadn’t cancelled, which he definitely would have if he’d been planning to stand me up. He would never waste money like that.’ There was something hectoring—punitive, almost—about the way she spoke. You try to be tolerant and patient and look what happens, thought Charlie. She guessed Naomi Jenkins would remain in this mode for the rest of the interview.
    ‘But Mr Haworth didn’t turn up last Thursday,’ Simon pointed out, ‘so presumably you paid.’ Charlie had been about to make exactly the same objection. Once again Simon had echoed her thoughts in a way that no one else ever did.
    Naomi’s face crumpled. ‘Yes,’ she admitted eventually. ‘I paid. It’s the only time I have. Robert’s quite romantic and old-fashioned in some ways. I’m sure I earn a lot more than him, but I’ve always pretended I earn hardly anything.’
    ‘Can’t he tell from your clothes, your house?’ asked Charlie, who had known as soon as she’d walked into the interview room that she was looking at a woman who spent considerably more on clothes than she did.
    ‘Robert’s not interested in clothes, and he’s never seen my house.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I don’t know!’ Naomi looked tearful. ‘It’s quite big. I didn’t want him to think . . . but mainly because of Yvon.’
    ‘Your lodger.’
    ‘She’s my best friend, and she’s lived with me for the past eighteen months. I knew she and Robert wouldn’t like each other from the second I met him, and I didn’t want to have to deal with them not getting on.’
    Interesting, thought Charlie. You meet the man of your dreams and instantly know that your best friend would hate him.
    ‘Look, if Robert had decided to end our relationship, he would have turned up as planned and told me face to face,’ Naomi insisted. ‘We talk about getting married every time we meet. At the very least he’d have phoned. He’s the most reliable person I’ve ever known. It comes from a need to be in control. He’d have known that if he suddenly vanished, I’d look for him, that I’d go to his house. And then his two worlds would crash into one another, as they did this afternoon. There’s nothing Robert would hate more. He’d do anything to make sure his wife and his . . . girlfriend never met, never talked. With him not there, we might start comparing notes. Robert would rather die than allow that to happen.’
    A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘He made me promise never to go to his house,’ she whispered. ‘He didn’t want me to see Juliet. He made her sound as if . . . as if there was something wrong with her, like she was mad or sick in some way, like an invalid. And then when I saw her, she seemed