The Company of Fellows (40 page)

Tommy and Jane
looked at each other without saying anything, holding on to each
other’s eyes to protect themselves it seemed from vertigo. Finally,
Jane spoke again, softly, no longer in the flat dead tone of
recollection. “That isn’t really what I want to tell you, Tommy. I
know you know most of it, if not all of it, already. I saw that in
your eyes the other day.”

Tommy found
himself flinching his eyes away from her instinctively, as if to
preserve his modesty.

“
You’re not
the only one with the ability to read people. Remember that, and if
I’m right that you did know, remember how good my instinct is when
I tell you that whatever you think my husband might have been
involved in, he wasn’t.” Jane smiled, “What I want to tell you is
what happened after Charles left.”

Tommy
tightened his grip. It was the worst time he could imagine to have
to be taking any of this in. And he didn’t know what reserves, if
any, he had left to be supportive for Jane. But as he looked at
her, and felt her responding to the warmth of his hand, he didn’t
feel any need coming from her, only a resolute strength, fixed with
a permanence as sure as if it had been set in ambergris.

“
It must have
been two or three hours before Barnard came to bed. I don’t know
what they talked about, but in that time I could have sat for an
hour, thought my options through, left goodbye messages, packed for
all of us, and been somewhere along the M40 with the children
before he would have known I was gone.”

Tommy sensed
that he knew what she would say next. He thought of himself, just a
few days ago, staring at John’s body as it took a beating from the
rain.

“
I must have
done, of course, because everything that followed for the next
twenty years surely needed such an act of will that it must have
started with something momentous, some die-shattering,
Rubicon-crossing moment, but I don’t think I can recall making a
decision at all. I just knew as soon as I closed the door and sat
at the dressing table that a choice had been made that I would
never go back on, but even then I can’t remember making it for the
life of me. Does that sound ridiculous?”

Tommy knew it
wasn’t a question, that no answer he gave would ever make her
change her mind. But he also knew that she was right. “That’s the
way we make life-changing decisions,” he said. “It’s how we know
they’re the really important ones, too important to risk letting
ourselves prevaricate and procrastinate over.”

“
Then you will
understand why I needed to speak to you. That sometimes the truth
is less important than being true to the choices we have made. That
sometimes what we can give people by drawing a line under the past
and never going back is more real than what we can give them with
the truth.”

Jane looked
straight at him. Not pleading. There was no need for her to glance
to the left where Tommy knew there were pictures of her children on
dresser. Through her gaze he saw eyes looking up from beneath a red
fringe, and whether they were Becky’s eyes or those of the poor
dead girl in London didn’t matter. He knew exactly what she meant.
And he could see in her eyes that she knew he did.

“
Take care,
Tommy.” He wondered for a minute if she would kiss him on the
cheek, wondered if it would be the first time her lips had touched
anyone since her children left home, but instead she held out her
hand. He shook it, not knowing what to say. “It’s OK,” She said.
“Whatever the choice you’ve made, you’ve got enough strength to see
it through.”

____

63

How is it
that people can pretend something like that had just never
happened?
Tommy wondered. He didn’t know
whether to be full of admiration for Jane, or full of pity, but
most of all what he felt was incomprehension at the possibility of
that kind of sustained act of will. It was what Charles had always
chided him for.
Couldn’t wait for a rare
steak
, one of the first things Becky had
said to him, and as he shut the door behind him and headed for the
Warden’s Lodge he realised that perhaps Charles had been right.
He’d always assumed there had to be a happy medium between that and
waiting for a lifetime for one moment. But maybe there
wasn’t.

That was,
after all, the possibility that had brought him here, wasn’t it?
The idea that a person could base their whole lives around a single
decision, every day an act of will that would carry them on a path
that one day, at just the right time, would lead them to a single
moment. A whole career path followed just to be in the right place
to carry out a single act. Or a life spent seemingly aimlessly
following a spouse.

Tommy realised
that perhaps this is what he had been witnessing in the
relationship between the Sansoms, not the revelation of a hidden
bond that was always there, but relief that the one obstacle to
their happiness had been removed, and now, at last, they could
retire and begin their life. And the final peace of mind would come
when Harry provided the proof of the kind of monster one of them
had slain.

Time to
knock.

“
You do have a
home, don’t you, Tommy?” Clarissa said through the open door,
almost before he had finished knocking.

“
I wonder
sometimes.” He smiled.

“
I’m afraid
we’ve finished lunch, but you’re more than welcome to a chocolate
pastry.”

“
That sounds
just about perfect.”

Clarissa took
him through to the kitchen and slid a flat tray out of one of her
many fridges. “Help yourself.” She pushed the tray towards
him.

How clever was
she, he wondered? He looked for a hint of eagerness in her eyes as
she kept her fingers on the tray but the light was shining from
behind her. Was that deliberate? Should he wait for her to have one
first? He’d licked the spatula clean earlier but how did he know if
this was the same batch? God, he sounded paranoid.

“
Thank you.”
He took an enormous bite of heaven and at once he felt the sugar
feeding his brain.

He scanned the
kitchen as best he could without her noticing. There was a mobile
on the table. Almost certainly hers, he thought. For business
probably, a number that was easily traceable. Not the one that had
texted him. “They’re incredible.” he said. “I don’t suppose you’ve
got some milk to go with it?”

Clarissa was
clearly comfortable enough to turn her back on him. Tommy scanned
the room. He couldn’t see anything on the sides; he craned on
tiptoe to see the shelves. Clarissa was at the fridge, her back
still turned to him. Good, he stood up silently and scanned the
topmost shelves quickly. No sign of a phone. No books pushed out
from the others, all flush to the wall.

Something
wasn’t right. He sat down at once, just as she was closing the
door, milk in her hand. She didn’t turn straightaway. What was it?
His eyes lingered on her, apron tied behind her back, covering her
front but not covering her back, not covering her jeans, not
covering the outline of a slim mobile in her back
pocket.

That was the
phone. In the instant he clocked it he knew the recognition had
been written across his face, but her back was turned long enough
for him to bring the shutters down. Time to get out of the kitchen.
Time to get away from the knives.

“
There you
are, Tommy.” She handed him the milk. “Now, what can I do for
you?”

“
Is there
somewhere we can sit down? I’m exhausted, I’m afraid.”

“
Certainly.”
Clarissa pulled a couple of stools out from the large breakfast bar
in the centre of the room that was still dusted with flour. She sat
at one of them, and pointed him to the other. Not what he meant. He
hovered but she stayed glued to the stool, smiling and pointing him
to the other.

He tried to
gauge how far she was from the knife block on the side without
making it obvious. She must have noticed his eyes, distant. If she
didn’t, she couldn’t miss it when they stopped, staring at the
bright brushed steel fridge door. That was why she took her time.
She’d had a perfect view of him in the door. Had seen everything,
including the moment when he registered the phone.

It was too
late for anything else but to front it out.

“
Clarissa.”
She looked straight at him, through him he thought.

“
Tommy.”
She knows what’s
coming.

“
You want me
to stop looking for Charles’ killer, don’t you?”

For a moment
she seemed to be sizing up what the question meant, but no longer
than that. “Yes.”

“
You’ve been
sending me letters, haven’t you?”

“
Yes.”

“
And the phone
in your back pocket.”

Clarissa
laughed, the resigned laugh of a chess player down to his last pawn
who knows he’s about to make it into a queen.

“
Why?”

For a second
he thought she was weighing up her answer, her eyes raised top left
in deliberation. By the time he worked out her eyes were fixed
behind him it was too late.

He heard the
ching of a knife pulled from its holder and before he could turn he
felt the cold, flat steel on his neck and an arm around his
chest.

“
It’s OK,
Clarissa.” Hedley’s voice at his ear.

“
No,
H.”

“
He’s a good
boy. He doesn’t know when to stop digging but I don’t think he’s
told anyone. Not his ex the DCI, not his girlfriend the DS. And
I’ll bet he hasn’t written anything down. I think he’s the only one
who knows. It’s the part of him that never stopped playing the
academic jealously guarding his sliver of an idea.”

“
I could
pretend that’s not true,” Tommy said, but the blade didn’t flinch.
How could he buy time?
Come on. You’re
stronger than he is. A moment’s distraction and you’re safe. What
to do? Come on. Calm. What do they talk about at night? That’s got
to be it. Put some kind of doubt between them.

“
Clarissa.”
Tommy fixed her in his eyes, and in the spit second’s hesitation he
knew the answer.

“
Shut up,
Tommy,” Hedley snapped, his arm pulling tighter down on Tommy’s
collar-bone.

“
Clarissa, do
you know exactly what your husband has done? Did he explain all the
detail to you?”

“
Be quiet.”
Not a waver in the voice coming from his ear.

“
H, no.”
Clarissa glancing behind him, begging.

“
I don’t have
a choice.”

“
No, H.
Charles I can understand. But not Tommy, not like this.”

“
Hedley, how
are you going to make this look like an accident?” Feeling all the
time with what seemed like nervous spasms of his muscles. Feeling
for looseness. Feeling for a hesitation.

“
I don’t have
a choice, C.”

Clarissa
flicking her eyes behind him. A moment’s incomprehension as she saw
something in Hedley. Her head to one side in anticipation. Waiting
for a response. Hedley was going to answer her but he was thinking
about what to say. The blade still dull against him but harder to
feel, gone warm as his skin in the heat of his fear.

Tommy jabbed
his head back. Crack. No movement from Hedley’s right arm. Tommy
ducked under the blade and in a moment he was on top of Hedley, the
knife in his hand. “It’s OK, Clarissa. It’s OK, I’m not going to
hurt him.”

“
H!” Clarissa
rushed. Coming for him. No, coming for Hedley. Throwing herself
against him and burying her head in tears in his chest. For a
moment Tommy tried to work out what had happened and then he knew
what she had seen in her husband’s eyes.

“
You need to
talk,” Tommy said, sliding the knife back into the
block.

He helped
Clarissa to her feet and checked Hedley over. He’d only caught him
on the chin. Tommy pulled him up and sat him on the
barstool.

“
Clarissa
tried to warn me off, Hedley, because she thought you killed
Charles.”

Sansom held
his head, cradling his chin, looking up at his wife in disbelief.
“You thought I killed Charles?”

“
She’s only
just realised you thought she’d killed Charles.”

“
Why? Why
would I kill Charles?” Hedley pleaded.

“
Ever since I
met you, you’ve spent your life chasing him,” said Clarissa. “You
blamed him for Val’s death and you were going to hound him till he
paid.”

“
Yes I wanted
him punished for what he’d done. By the police.”

“
Because of
what it did to Val,” she said.

Tommy could
almost see the years of bitterness spat out in that one short
syllable. It was as though she were trying to exorcise the ghost
she thought had come between them all their married
life.

“
At first,
yes.” Hedley winced as the salt of his tears caught in his wound.
“Val thought Carol died because Charles wasn’t there when she was
born. She killed herself because she couldn’t cope with a world
where someone who cared that little about their child got to be a
father. God I blamed Charles. I promised I’d make him
pay.”