Come Clean (1989) (3 page)

‘Fool. No. Just imagine a prize project goes badly wrong for them one day. Say the police are waiting, an ambush. It happens. The lads here start wondering who’s the leak, and your
name floats to the top. It would.’

‘No. I don’t know about their projects, never have, not just because of you. I don’t want to. I drink here because I’ve drunk here from the old days, when the Monty was
something else. Why should I let them muck up my way of life?’

‘Love me, love the Monty, even if it is tainted?’ she asked. Christ, but she must get a look at that yard, at the rubble container out there and the rest.

‘Sarah, sweetie, calm down,’ Ian said. ‘If there’s ever the threat of trouble, I’ll pick up early warnings and disappear, don’t worry. Ralph would hear and
tip me. He’s not just owner of this place, he’s a mate.’

She said something then which, when she thought about it very soon afterwards, looked to contain a fair degree of clairvoyance. ‘Oh, Christ, Ian, you know as well as I do, there are
villains in this patch who could scare Ralph dumb, terrify even him. He’s still got both eyes and pretty kids. They come first. He wouldn’t want more damage.’

He laughed. ‘Some black picture of the world! We’re not New York or even Peckham.’

‘Des says it’s harder every day to tell the difference.’

‘Police hype. To get their pay up.’

‘What did he mean, Ian, the injured man? “A silver day?”’

‘Search me. Delirious?’

‘It could be. And “in case”. In case of what? In case he dies?’

‘Might be,’ Ian said, ‘but Ralph’s got to be right, hasn’t he? It’s obvious something had gone on earlier.’

From the corridor came the healthy, cheerful slap of the mop on the tiles, and Ralph began to let in a bit of tremolo to his whistling. Nearer, there was the nice sound of pool balls clipping
one another, and people had begun talking again, even laughing. Everyone appreciated getting back to normality.

Sarah took another drop of brandy. ‘I hate it when people keep saying something’s obvious. It’s because it’s not.’ But she felt the drink begin to work real comfort
on her now, doing just what it had lain waiting in the bottle over all the years improving itself for, smoothing the spiky bits of life, melting trouble and truth away for a time, warming the facts
until they melted into something else. She sensed her determination to look outside in the yard begin to fade and she was sliding fast again towards a convenient agreement with Ralph and Ian. They
did have a case. It might be easier and simpler, more mature, to let what had taken place fade in her mind. She should not be here and should not have seen it, whatever it was, so she had not seen
it. Yes, just close your eyes.

‘Sarah, I told him to do the lights because, well, I just thought it would be better all round if you saw as little as possible,’ Ian said. ‘Occasionally, it can be more
comfortable like that. I mean, for you, as much as anyone.’

‘Yes, I understand.’ As sometimes happened, she began to grow bored with the Monty, its stresses, its concealments, its less than half-truths. ‘Ian, can we go to your place
now?’

He laughed. ‘A minute ago you insisted on staying.’

‘I want you.’

‘I wish you’d contain yourself.’

‘Now I want to contain you.’

What he called ‘rough talk’ always embarrassed him, which made her use it more. He reddened and glanced about, then whispered, ‘Sarah, I –’

‘Sorry, I forget they’re all angels and shockable virgins here.’ She leaned into him on the bench and turned her hand over, to lace her fingers with his. Often in this grubby
den she could be as happy as she ever remembered being, happier than since the very earliest days with Des. Ralph, returning to the bar, gave them his fulsome, marriage-broker smile, the old knife
scar from under his ear and two or three inches along the jaw-bone looking very pale and creamy in the subdued light, like a line of mayonnaise on a plate rim.

‘We’ll go soon, now,’ Ian said. ‘Not quite yet. Things have changed. I don’t want it to look as if we’re deserting Ralph after the bother, like those other
two creeps.’

‘No.’ That would be one of those important male considerations: the compulsion not just to be loyal but to show the loyalty. In a way it was admirable, and came from real
sensitivity. Sensitivity could stop, though, when the person needing it was not regarded as a friend, no matter how bad a state he might be in. Did anyone expect sensitivity to reach a lavatory
corridor or an unlit yard? Men laughed at women’s inconsistencies, but they weren’t all that hot themselves. Anyway, she did not prize consistency very much. Who wanted to be
consistently wrong?

‘One more drink,’ Ian said. He went to the handsome old mahogany bar, with its beautiful brass inlay and lovely, original beer handles, and began chatting and laughing with Ralph as
if everything was as well as it could possibly be. Monty’s had a good history. Once, apparently, it had been a select meeting place for businessmen, but now business had moved out to the
high-tech industrial estates, and this district was entering its second decade of inner city dereliction. Men like Ralph were part of the new scene, maybe men like Ian, too.

She watched the two of them, clearly comfortable with each other, and felt almost envious of the ease and quickness of their conversation. She felt, too, a worry that came her way continually,
despite all Ian’s assurances: how had he got himself so well in with these sharp-clawed, cagey people? Ralph guffawed at something Ian said and thumped the bar with his fist, in delight.
Nice. Such understanding between them. Perhaps Ralph really would look after him if the worst happened. Her doubts might be only the cynicism picked up as a cop wife. All the same, big laughs cost
nothing. Comradeship came and went, like happiness, unless it was trained into you, grained into you, the way the police did things: canteen culture.

Watching them, she felt excluded, even resentful, and suddenly realized that the niggling, persistent wish to know the truth was edging its way back again, subduing the brandy and the boredom,
and even the fear. She had to smash that shady, smug alliance between the two men. In any case, she never reacted very well to restrictions. After all, social considerations would say she should
not be in the Monty at all, but she was. Now, though, she felt irked by the club’s own particular inhibitions, couldn’t swallow these, either. ‘Listen, Ralph, sorry about this,
but I’m still bothered. May we borrow your flashlight?’ she asked.

‘But for what?’ he said.

‘I’d really like to have a look at that yard. The rubble container.’

‘The builder’s skip? Why? Nothing out there,’ Ralph said. ‘They’ll be miles away. I heard a car.’

‘Not all of them might be miles away.’

Ian was embarrassed. ‘Once she’s got her teeth into something.’

‘This is stupid,’ Ralph said.

‘Can I borrow it?’ she asked.

Ralph looked sullen and tried to sound untroubled. ‘Why ever not?’

‘Thanks, Ralph.’ She stood up at once and took the flashlight from him across the bar. Again she led into the lavatory corridor and again Ian came sheepishly behind her. She pushed
the fire doors open and, switching on the beam, stepped out into the yard.

‘What are you hoping to find, Sarah?’ Ian put a hand on her wrist and helped direct the light slowly around, taking in a couple of vandalized, decaying cars and a newish-looking
Montego that might be Ralph’s. They all seemed empty. Ian said: ‘Who’d hang about in a place like –?’

‘Hush,’ Sarah told him. She was listening for the appalling din of the injured man dredging into himself for breath, but heard nothing except occasional traffic and the gentle rush
and rustle of a few sheets of newspaper whisked by the wind across the yard surface. The beam reached the loaded rubble container and she kept it there, resisting the slight pressure on her wrist
from Ian to move it on. ‘Let’s go closer, Ian.’ She began to walk.

‘Debris. Ralph’s having some outhouses cleared, that’s all. They weren’t safe.’

‘I’d like to look.’ She felt as she had felt earlier, afraid, crazily pushy, weak in the legs, wanting to give it all a miss, and determined to keep going and to find out what
was wrong. Schizo? Maybe. But sometimes she understood why she had married the police.

They stood alongside the builder’s skip, leaning on the side, like languid passengers at the rail of a liner, and she shone the flashlight in. The acrid, depressing smell of rubble and
rotten wood hit her and she gazed at old beams, clusters of bricks held together by ancient mortar, slates, splintered rafters. A couple of wooden doors lay on top, overlapping each other and
making it hard to see very far in. She reached out with her free hand and tried to shift one of the doors to the side, but it would not budge.

‘What? Have you seen something?’ Ian asked.

‘Can we move it together?’

‘Sarah, what for? We’re going to get filthy.’

She put the flashlight out and placed it on the ground, to make two hands available. ‘Come on,’ she said and took hold of one of the doors.

‘This is mad.’ He gripped it with her, though, and they shoved. The door slid a little towards the far edge of the skip and the other one moved with it.

‘A bit more,’ she said. They had to lean over further to push again. The doors moved, though much less this time because the top one came up against the skip’s far side.
‘Right.’ She stood back and bent down to pick up the flashlight, then switched it on again and hung over the edge, letting the beam reach now into the heart of the container. Her own
breathing felt tight. Ian gazed with her.

‘So?’ he said.

Still leaning over, she moved the whole length of the skip, the light still searching. She switched off and turned to face him. ‘All right. Nothing. Nothing but your genuine rubbish. There
might have been.’

‘Like?’

‘You know what like.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘Honestly, Sarah, I –’

Ralph called from the fire-door exit. ‘What the hell are you two doing? Looking for treasure? Come on back in before you hurt yourselves.’

‘Yes, we’re coming,’ Ian said.

‘No, let’s go to your place now, Ian. I’ve had enough here.’ She took his arm.

‘Why not?’

In his bed a little later they tried to put aside the events at the Monty and she said: ‘This is no fly-by-night, empty affair. Don’t think I don’t know
exactly what I love in you, Ian Aston.’

‘God, what’s that mean, all the don’ts?’

‘And not just your hands, although your hands seem to know everything there is to know about – Oh, your hands can put everything right, can’t they? Like now. Yes, yes, just
like now.’ She knew she was grinning with pleasure like an idiot at what he was doing to her. One day she must start working on efforts to ration her responsiveness with him: it was such a
give-away. ‘Your hands are good, and all the rest of it, but it’s not everything.’ Her own hands reached out silkily under the clothes to him.

‘Yours know something, too.’ He groaned happily in his quiet, apologetic way.

‘You made me gentle and loving, Ian.’

‘Only ten minutes ago you were being so tough, shoving chunks of building about.’

‘That’s what I mean, you change me, make me somebody different. Nobody else can do that.’

‘Why you want me?’

‘It’s part of it.’

‘I hope you realize, you’ll never make me somebody different or change me, Sarah.’

‘I don’t know so much. This is changing. It’s growing.’

‘Christ, but you’re so crude.’ In a little while he said: ‘You’re responsive absolutely everywhere on your body, you know that? I bet you get a thrill cleaning your
teeth, even.’

‘Only up and down. Listen, Ian, do we have to wait?’

‘No, of course not, love.’ He moved towards her.

‘Sometimes I like to wait, sometimes, no.’

‘Seems reasonable.’

‘Tonight, no.’

‘Good.’

‘Yes, you don’t want to wait either, do you?’

‘How can you tell?’

When she reached home there was a light on in the front room downstairs and at the kerb an old Viva, the worse for wear. That would probably mean her husband was with Colin
Harpur, Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur, head of criminal investigation. Harpur often drove battered-looking cars, hoping they would give some cover, though his big body and head, and
thick fair hair jammed up against the top, were almost comically conspicuous in a small vehicle. He was Francis Garland’s boss, and worked a good deal with Desmond, too, so presumably had
heard most of what there was to hear about her life and ways though he never gave any sign. None, except, possibly, that he seemed to treat her with special gentleness. Police knew how to sit on
secrets, and especially Harpur. The story went that his own marriage and love life had their complications. At any rate, there had been days when she was very grateful for his tender, understanding
style with her.

‘Sarah’s been at bridge, Col,’ Desmond Iles said. Both men had stood when she came in and folded down back into the leather chairs now. What could be the sound of a crushed
crisp packet came from deep under the cushion of Harpur’s. One day she was going to have a big clean-up in this room, and probably the whole house. Yes, definitely, one day: the same sort of
target date as for cutting back on her loving warmth in bed with Ian.

‘How was it?’ her husband asked.

‘Fine.’

‘Never got to grips with bridge,’ Harpur said. ‘Bridge, crosswords, chess and the veleta I can’t manage.’

‘Bridge needs a certain kind of mind,’ Desmond told him. ‘Subtle, bruising, painstaking. Col, you’d be lovely, unbeatable, on the last. But you’re far too
charitable. Sarah’s goodish all round. Yes.’ He turned to her. ‘We’re chatting policy, love. You know, whether we should advise kiosks to put the Mars bars at the back of
the displays, to beat shoplifters, with the Maltesers at the front, or might it be the other way about? Criminologists are silent on this and Nietzsche only tentative.’

The two men were in shirt-sleeves, drinking tea from the best, real china cups. Desmond had a thing about decent crockery and glass when guests came, even subordinates. His upbringing had been
what he called ‘wholesome and chintzy’. In front of Harpur was a pad, with a few very brief pencil notes on it.