Free Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah Page B

Holling, near where they both live?’
    Nobody said anything. Nobody would. Whenever the Snowman pointedly refused to answer a direct question, it meant that everyone else present was forbidden to respond; it was one of the many unwritten rules they had all grown used to.
    ‘Amber Hewerdine saw the words “Kind” and “Cruel” in Charlie’s notebook, and she made a connection,’ Simon persisted. ‘She asked Charlie about it because it mattered to her. Something about those words bothered her. She wanted to look at the notebook. Charlie said no, but that wasn’t good enough for Hewerdine. Charlie left her car unlocked and the notebook on the passenger seat when she went in for her hypnosis appointment, wanting to test how determined Hewerdine was to get her hands on it. She soon found out: very. She came out a few minutes later, found Hewerdine sitting in her car reading it.’
    ‘Seriously?’ said Sellers. ‘Cheeky cow.’
    ‘Why did it matter to her so much to know if those words were in the notebook?’ Sam asked.
    ‘Ginny Saxon answered that question for me about twenty minutes ago on the phone,’ Simon told him. ‘During their session together, she asked Hewerdine for a memory . . .’
    ‘A memory ?’ said Proust. ‘That’s how it works, is it? In a café, you ask for a serviette; in a hypnotherapy clinic, you ask for a memory?’
    Simon couldn’t help noticing that the Snowman’s mood seemed to have improved. Did he enjoy watching Simon lose control and rant? Had he notched it up as a victory? ‘Hewerdine didn’t respond at first. Then, according to Saxon, she said “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel”. Saxon asked her to repeat it because it sounded odd and she thought she might have misheard. It’s not the kind of thing her clients normally say when she asks them to describe the first memory that comes to mind.’
    ‘I hope they normally tell her to mind her own business,’ said Proust.
    ‘Here’s the strange part: Hewerdine repeated the phrase, then asked Saxon what it meant. Saxon said she had no idea and asked Hewerdine the same question, at which point Hewerdine denied that the phrase had originated with her. She claimed Saxon had said it first and asked her to repeat it. When Saxon denied this, Hewerdine threw a fit, called her a liar, refused to pay her for the session and stormed out.’
    ‘And bumped into Charlie?’ said Sam.
    Simon nodded.
    Sam chewed his lip, thinking. ‘So . . . Hewerdine thought Saxon had said the magic words and that Charlie had written them in her notebook?’ He frowned. ‘Why wouldn’t that seem as implausible to her as it does to me?’
    ‘Haven’t you been paying attention, Sergeant? Waterhouse has just explained to us the logical flaw in our finding anything implausible ever again. This evening heralds the dawning of a new era: the age of unqualified credulity.’
    ‘I can’t work out what Hewerdine was thinking,’ Simon told Sam. ‘That’s why I’m keen to talk to her.’ He gestured towards the door.
    ‘Is that your way of asking permission to leave?’ said Proust. ‘Leave away. Next time, save yourself the trouble by neither arriving in the first place nor arranging a meeting to arrive at. I know you’re opposed on principle to taking anything I say seriously, but on the off-chance that you might make an exception in this case: this Hewerdine person is a dead end. Until we know what the words mean, or what they are, we can’t know how many people they might mean something to. What if they’re a jingle from a well-known advert? What if they’re the catchphrase of a cartoon character from a children’s television programme?’
    ‘We’ve searched and searched and got nowhere – nothing on the internet, no one who’s heard of “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel” in any context,’ Simon reminded him.
    ‘That doesn’t prove there aren’t ten thousand people for whom the phrase has significance,’ said Proust, in the sort of menacingly