The Crime Tsar (15 page)

‘“From Jenni and Tom. Get well soon.”'

He looked at his deputy. They had both seen the acres of newsprint devoted to Tom Shackleton since the night of the siege, the television chats, the modest acknowledgements of bravery, and since the first hours after they had got out Geoffrey Carter's name had hardly been mentioned. It was, at best, as if Shackleton had saved his life, at its worst it was made to look as if he had been a liability in a delicate situation. The footage shot in the community centre had been edited to feature Shackleton, a lighted cigarette and his subsequent smothering with his own body of the fire that engulfed Carter.

Danny looked at the plant.

‘Nice gesture. And so subtle.'

Carter smiled. ‘Mrs Shackleton will have sent it.'

‘Don't put it in your bedroom then. It might strangle you in your sleep.'

They stared at the monstrosity. Danny tried to move it.

‘Oh come on, Danny, she's not that bad.'

Danny grunted. Carter decided it was because of the effort, not a comment on the fragrant Mrs Shackleton.

Danny had been Shackleton's staff officer for a year and had briefly been the object of their daughter Tamsin's infatuation. She was still at school and persistently dogged Danny with tales of cruelty at home and staged faints beside his car. Every time there was a bizarre incident with the girl, who Danny had decided was unstable, he told her parents. Jenni had always been charming, Shackleton had made it obvious that it was women's business and didn't want to know.

Then Danny's wife decided to divorce him. She was having an affair with an officer at another station and one of his colleagues had thoughtfully pinned a pair of her pants to the noticeboard with a graphic photograph of how she lost them.

She took him for half his house and all his children, leaving him in a spiral down towards the bottom of a bottle. He'd pulled himself back but not before Jenni had decided he was flaky.

‘I think there's something just a tiny bit flaky about Dan Marshall,' she had said in passing to HM Inspector of Constabulary.

And though she never said it Danny knew it was because she didn't believe a black man could ever really make it. That there was an inherent weakness. Then he knew that Jenni was as crazy as her daughter. For all her veneer of sophisticated liberalism, Jenni Shackleton was a provincial mind in an elegant body and towards Danny she had always alternated between condescension and suspicion. It had never occurred to her he would make DCC and in her mind he had only done so because the police needed a black face for
Question Time
.

‘I'll call round later, to make sure everything's OK?'

Danny dumped the pot plant by the umbrella stand and returned to the front door.

Carter held out his hand.

‘Thanks, Danny, there's no need, my wife …'

Danny glanced around, up the stairs.

‘Is she here, sir?'

Carter suddenly looked quite lost. Bambi.

‘I thought she would be. And the boys … maybe they forgot it was today. But don't worry. They won't be far away.'

‘I could stay, sir, make a cup of tea …?'

Danny saw his boss wanted company but was shy of saying so. Without waiting for a reply Danny opened the living-room door. The noise hit them at the same time as a young boy launched himself at Carter.

‘Surprise!'

‘Daddy … Daddy … Daddy.'

‘Welcome home!'

Danny saw the whole room and the kitchen beyond was festooned with banners and bunting saying everything from ‘We love you, Daddy' to ‘Welcome home, hero.'

He also saw Carter's other son rocking from side to side, lost somewhere in an autistic world in which liquid, any liquid, was the only focus. And that focus was obsession. Danny knew no glass, vase or bottle must be left unguarded in case Alexander found it and drank the contents. Whisky, meths and undiluted Ribena all been pumped out of his stomach at one time or another.

He seemed not to know Carter, who greeted the child no differently from the other boy, Peter. Peter's intelligence and love of life was always enough for two, as if he was trying to compensate for his lost brother.

Eleri was trying in vain to attend to the children, kiss her husband and make Danny feel welcome.

‘Sit down, Danny. You'll stay for tea, won't you? We've got jelly and blancmange –'

Peter was now sitting on Carter screaming, ‘And chocolate icecream!!' He turned to Danny. ‘That's Daddy's favourite, you're not allowed, it's all for him.'

The boy started bouncing up and down on his father's legs. Eleri saw the pain on Carter's face and quickly pulled the child off, dispatching him upstairs to get the welcome-home offerings Peter had made for their father.

Danny felt awkward and intrusive as Eleri sat on the arm of Carter's chair stroking his suddenly exhausted face. She was an attractive woman with a pre-Raphaelite tumble of auburn hair which
she tried to smooth with vast applications of Frizz-Ease. Her face was lightly freckled with prettily tilted hazel eyes and lips that always smiled. She was at once mumsy and sexy but, thought Danny, she'd never make a dirty woman. Not like the mad Mrs Shackleton. What on earth had put that thought in his head?

‘No, I'd better go. Thanks anyway. I'll see you in a couple of days then, sir. I'll see myself out.'

‘Yes please, Danny … Eleri will have given me egg-custard poisoning by then.'

He turned to go and was almost knocked over by Alexander who'd suddenly changed from what Danny had thought was a lowbrowed zombie into a furious, biting, thrashing animal. Not a sound did he utter as he attacked Danny. Eleri pulled him off so violently Danny was worried the boy's arms might be broken, but he saw quickly it was the only way to deal with him.

‘Too much excitement, I'm so sorry. Once he's in one of these tantrums there's nothing we can do – I'm so sorry. Can you see yourself out?'

Danny was only too pleased to go. Guilty though he felt about it he found Alexander's autism repellent. There was something not yet human about the boy. But the Carters loved him. Danny felt rotten that he couldn't detect anything to love.

Peter however was a totally different thing. He was hurtling downstairs with his dad's presents as Danny reached the front door. As always the child paused to spread happiness where his brother may have sown discord. He smiled at Danny and wished him goodbye, apologising for not shaking hands because his hands were full.

Good manners satisfied and Danny gone, he presented Carter with his armful of offerings while Alexander screeched and fought with Eleri in the kitchen. Egg cartons as dinosaurs, paintings on grey cartridge paper and a washing-up-liquid-bottle moon rocket.

Danny, getting back into the car, was still thinking about the family, the two boys who bore no resemblance to their parents. The sons the doctors told Eleri she couldn't have because faulty ovaries had robbed her of her fertility.

She and Carter had met at university, she a fresher as he was leaving. She had fallen in love with his humanity and delicate beauty and he with her capable serenity.

They married quickly and for years they'd fostered children of all colours and abilities then, some time after Ceauşescu when things should have improved, Eleri had gone to Romania and found two lice-ridden abandoned Roma boys. Illegitimate and gypsy, they had no hope. Sharing a rusting cot, tied to the bars and atrophying physically and mentally into some state less than human. Eleri, desperate for kids, and Geoffrey, desperate for her happiness, brought the boys home after two years of fighting domestic bureaucracy. Two beautiful smiling cherubs on whom they lavished love and food in the belief that would be enough to stop the nightmares, stop the rocking and the endless staring at their hands.

Peter responded quickly, miraculously finding himself at the top of his class at age ten and certain to find a place in a good academic senior school. But Alexander, a year younger, stopped smiling at eighteen months and had never spoken. Just noises, noises that sounded to Danny like the screaming of a chimpanzee. Terrified and terrifying screeches.

He had no idea what he would have done if one of his own children had turned out like that. Yes he did. He would have walked out rather than live with that level of damage. He wished he could be a better person but knew himself too well to think he might ever change.

Back in the house Carter was wondering how he'd ever thought they were happy without these two gorgeous monsters. He was the only person who could contact Alexander. Eleri tried, as she tried daily to love him, but she found his lack of response to her devastating. She'd never been hugged by him, never had a kiss or even felt his head asleep on her shoulder; it was like caring for an aggressive un-housetrained dog. But she would never give up trying.

Later that evening the two boys were asleep, tucked into the armchair either side of their father. Alexander, when exhausted, would always find a shelter by his father. Eleri was sitting on the floor sipping a cup of hot chocolate. She was no longer jealous of Alexander's attachment to her husband, but she'd never stop hoping it would be her he curled up next to one day.

She was very quiet. Carter's attempts at conversation had met with monosyllabic replies since tea. He'd asked her what was wrong but received short shrift.

This wasn't what he'd imagined for his homecoming. A bit of hero
worship would have been nice. A bit of tender loving care. She'd been an angel up till now, during the aftermath of the siege and in the hospital.

But nevertheless the security of domesticity had settled Carter's doubt and turmoil like a strong painkiller.

He was dozing with his cheek against Alexander's hair when Eleri said, ‘Come on. Bedtime. All three of you boys. Upstairs. Now.'

With great protests at Mummy's bullying Peter took his brother up to start the task of cleaning teeth and climbing into their pyjamas. Eleri got Carter to his feet, turned out the lights and checked the front door was locked. They stood together in the hall. Carter put his arms around her, full of quiet love, and content.

Carter breathed in deeply, feeling clean for the first time since the siege. Since being so close to Shackleton. It was as if something in the man had infected him. Ridiculous. He held the soft body of his wife tightly.

‘Oh Eleri. I do love you.'

Her response was automatic. But although physically close he could feel her distance.

‘And I love you. Did you see the plant?'

‘Couldn't miss it. What do you want to do with it?'

‘I don't know, Geoff… but we can't get rid of it, they might come round and you know what Jenni's like, she's bound to want to see it.' Guilty at being a little less than generous she added, ‘But it was a kind thought and she sent me a hundredweight of lilies.' She looked at the triffid. ‘We'd better leave it where it is, I suppose. I don't like it though, do you? Looks like something out of a Grimm's fairy-tale.'

‘Mmm.'

He wasn't listening but kissing her, burrowing into her generous welcoming flesh. Suddenly she pushed him off. Her face was contorted, trying to stop herself crying. She failed. She was sobbing and shouting and almost laughing.

Carter was completely taken aback.

‘Eleri … what is it? What's the matter?'

‘What's the matter? You … you. I hate you … I really hate you. No, I don't mean it … but how could you? You could have been killed. They wanted to kill you. Look at you. Look at what they've done to you. It wasn't your job … you should never have gone in there. You didn't think about us … we're your family. But your job,
your bloody job always has to come first. It wasn't worth it. Was it? Look at you. How could you? Why? Why? …'

She exhausted herself and slumped against him howling. Peter's worried face appeared over the banisters. Alexander started to moan and rock. Carter reassured them.

‘It's all right. Mummy's just a bit upset, she'll be all right in the morning. She's just tired.'

‘No she's not,' came the muffled voice from his chest. ‘She's pregnant.'

Time went into slow motion. And into the spaces between the previously close-packed seconds poured peace, love and warmth. A miracle had happened and there were no words, no whoops of joy or shouts of happiness that could encompass what he felt. It was as if they were suddenly alone in a snow-filled landscape, not a breath of wind, not a cloud to obscure the serenity of the star-filled sky. Muffled silence and absolute perfection. Carter went blank, didn't know what to say. Then he remembered.

‘Are you sure? How long?'

‘Twelve weeks on the day of the siege. I'd put the champagne in the fridge. I couldn't tell you before. In case. But they say three months is a milestone, don't they?'

Carter couldn't speak. Nothing in his life compared to this. Commissioner, Tsar, nothing. Just that little frog on a string growing inside the woman he was holding far too tightly in his arms. His own child. Their own baby.

He knew it was a girl. A girl whose grazed knees he'd already kissed better, a girl who'd want to tell her dad all her secrets. A girl he'd walk down the aisle on her wedding day. This was the only dream he'd had left and it had seemed as likely as scoring the winning goal for England in the World Cup Final. He beamed up at the two worried little faces squeezed through the banisters. Relieved that everything was all right Peter grinned back and quietened Alexander.

They went upstairs with not a word spoken. Eleri remembered the Virgin Mary had held the news in her heart. It had always puzzled her but now it made perfect sense.

Peter shyly cuddled his mum. Carter pulled Alexander towards him and his embrace encompassed them all. It was the moment he would remember as the happiest of their lives.

Reality would wait till tomorrow. He knew the future was now anything but a foregone conclusion. But tonight …