The Crime Tsar (16 page)

Carter couldn't bear to let go of his family and reached across them to turn out the landing light. He looked down at the plant.

It looked beautiful.

By six o'clock Lucy was plucked and trussed like an oven-ready turkey. She had bought a new shade of eye shadow and kept checking in the mirror that it was all right.

Jenni's flowers were arranged and she had made cups of tea for the caterer who was to prepare the meal.

‘Why don't you take your frock off. It'll crease sitting here.'

Gary broke the silence that had settled on them. In Lucy's head there was no silence, though. She was deafened with contradictory thoughts. Wishes. Hopes. And the one word, Tom, repeating over and over.

‘Yes. You're right. I'm ready much too early.'

She went upstairs and put on a shapeless dress she'd bought years before when she thought she was pregnant. She could put it on now without even a moment's thought of those few weeks. Was this really the most excited she'd been since then? She tried to think of other times as she re-hung the silk on its cushioned lilac hanger.

Suddenly her life looked poor and mean. An existence on the periphery of experience. In less than a minute she had gone from the intoxication of anticipation to the flat recognition of futility. What hopes did she hold for tonight? Whatever they were they shrivelled as she summoned them up for scrutiny.

Lucy, you are ordinary. You are an ordinary woman, neither plain nor pretty, married to a pleasant man with a progressive disease. Don't make a fool of yourself. Why not? If it's all so written, if there's really no hope of slipping the chain of inevitability, you might as well delude yourself into happiness as much as possible. Yes. Well, why not just take drugs and be done with it.

And of course she knew Jenni didn't really want her there – she was just a cover for Jenni and her politician. Jenni probably didn't know any other women who could come to dinner alone and not be competition. Lucky for Jenni she had someone quite sad and unlikely to upstage even the soup.

Her thoughts were speeding again but now in a downwards spiral. If she didn't stop them she knew she would think herself into the fuck-off, Big Ears position.

She sat on the bed, picked up the stuffed pink elephant Gary had given her for their first Christmas and plaited the ridiculous tuft of nylon hair on its head.

‘You see, Noddy wants to borrow Big Ears' lawn mower.' Talking pushed her thoughts away. ‘So he leaves his house full of optimism, but by the time he reaches Big Ears' front gate he's thought of a thousand reasons why he'll refuse him and humiliate him so when Big Ears answers the door Noddy says, “Fuck off, Big Ears.”'

The pink elephant's expression didn't change but Lucy lay back and laughed out loud at the idea of belligerently banging on Jenni's door and shouting, ‘Fuck off, Jenni,' when it was opened. She said it again and it made her laugh more. She said it again and laughed until she ached, clutching the pink elephant to her stomach. The ringing doorbell brought her back to a sort of reality. A reality where there were at least possibilities and the future wasn't written out like a bus timetable.

The nurses bundled into the hall, as always, full of good humour. This particular team, Denise and Mel, were Gary's favourites. They always flirted with him and made him laugh. Watching them with Gary Lucy felt guilty over not being more grateful for what she had. As she put the kettle on for his girls' cup of tea (‘Mugs, please, Lucy, mugs, me and Mel only have cups at funerals') she wondered about the workings of her mind – it was always scurrying about trying to find an emotion or a feeling to wallow in.

One minute elation, next depression and anger, now guilt. She looked at her carefully made-up face in the chrome of the kettle: but you'd never know it from that ovine stare, would you? She made the tea and took it through.

Gary was suspended above his wheelchair in a sling attached to a flimsy-looking mobile hoist. It had cost £700 but meant that, theoretically, they could get away on holiday, just booking a local nurse at the destination. Of course they had never risked it. And now they'd bought the hoist they couldn't afford a holiday.

Denise was threatening to leave him hanging there while they drank their tea and all three were shrieking with laughter. Gary so
helpless he looked in danger of falling out of the grubby white cradle. Lucy looked at them. If she could only settle for what she had. Be content. Be grateful. If she could just go to the phone and call Jenni, tell her Gary wasn't well, his cold had got worse today, that wouldn't be a lie. If she didn't go to dinner maybe she could start tomorrow without Tom Shackleton, without discontent and this fidgety longing for excitement.

Maybe if she joined the Open University or the amateur dramatics. A nice hobby. Something to take her mind off the great expanse of nothing inside her. That big echoing hole shaped like Tom Shackleton.

‘Gary, how's your cold now?'

‘Oh, getting worse,' he said cheerfully as he was lowered on to his bed.

‘Only I could not go tonight. I wouldn't mind. Really.'

She found she was desperate for him to say yes, stay at home. She panicked. She suddenly saw the evening as a science-fiction window between dimensions; if she passed through she would be unable to turn back. Nothing would be the same again.

Gary was sipping his tea, a biscuit, brought by Denise, held ready for dunking.

‘No, you go. I told you, I'm talking wheelchairs tonight.'

‘That's his story,' hooted Mel. ‘He's got girls coming in, haven't you, Gary? You're having one of them orgies.'

‘Ooh, can I come?' Denise's voice was loud, as if talking over the noise of a party. ‘I'll bring the baby oil.'

Gary was enjoying himself.

‘I think I'd be better with WD40.'

Lucy wanted to be a part of this fun. It might be false, it might be forced, but it was safe. She wanted them to let her in. But it was good for Gary because she wasn't a part of it, this was his. He was the centre of attention for these two women. They knew his body better than Lucy: they were close, they were his. Lucy remembered from her brief youthful sojourn as a care assistant the way the intimacy of illness would exclude wives. The unconditional love offered by infatuated patients to their nurses. The simplicity of affection between strangers.

‘Isn't it time you put your dress back on, Luce? Show Mel and Denise.'

Lucy smiled and said, ‘I'll just pop over the road and make sure everything's all right.'

Jenni and Tom arrived back from Buckingham Palace at five o'clock. They had eaten their Lyon's Swiss rolls and chatted briefly with members of the Royal Family who had been politely curious about the Flamborough Estate and politely concerned about Tom's burns. Jenni was thrilled when a princess in a hat said she was an avid reader of her newspaper articles. Several junior members of the government paid them court.

Jenni was very satisfied. Her husband was being regarded with respect. And he was, above all, her creation. She let him hold her hand in the car on the way home. Shackleton found holding hands comforting. It was never a prelude to further intimacy. She approved of him and that made his life more comfortable.

Lucy tapped apologetically on the door. A radiant Jenni let her in, pleased to see her, overwhelming her with gratitude and praise. The caterer was pottering in the kitchen and there was an atmosphere of happy anticipation. Tom went upstairs to change. As he did he winked at Lucy, a funny, conspiratorial flicker that made her giggle. Lucy went into the kitchen to see if there was anything she could do, reluctant to go home and leave the memory of that half-smiled wink. When she came out, Jenni was picking up and putting down bottles. Tom was coming down the stairs and the mood had changed. He felt it as cold as the air from an open freezer. Jenni turned on him, two mixer bottles in her hand. Tom winced, ready for her to throw them. Lucy, taken unaware, stood still in the doorway, not daring to move.

‘Where's the ginger ale?'

As always Jenni caught him unprepared, the most successful policeman in the country, the darling of the media, the man of achievement.

‘What ginger ale?'

‘Yes,' she hissed triumphantly. ‘What ginger ale? There isn't any. You've drunk it, haven't you?'

He was unsure what the right answer was. He took too long to decide.

‘You stupid prat. Don't look at me like that! Why the hell didn't you tell me we'd run out?'

As always he rolled over.

‘I'll go and get some. Now.'

The caterer, coming out of the kitchen, was embarrassed by this onslaught.

‘I've got some ginger beer in the van.'

‘Don't be so stupid,' spat Jenni.

The caterer quailed and went back to her hors d'oeuvres. Lucy, helpless, looked at Shackleton but he could only look away, braced for the onslaught. All he could feel was humiliation, which seemed to hang round him like the smell of unwashed clothes.

‘I can't believe you didn't tell me. You're unbelievable …'

Jenni was screaming now, incoherent. Her outbursts had been getting more frequent but he didn't want to consider the possibility that she might be deteriorating. That these ‘turns' might be a sign of something seriously wrong. While he sometimes hated her he often thought nostalgically – and probably inaccurately – of their early, gentle days together when she was his beloved Jen. Now Lucy was showing him that gentleness but he knew what would happen if he trusted her. He glanced across at her, cowering in the kitchen doorway, willing the carpet to swallow her. Witnessing his cowardice. How could any woman love or respect a man too weak to stand up to his wife? Jenni was destroying him and Lucy was part of the humiliation.

But the pain Jenni caused him concentrated his mind remarkably on his job. Lucy was a luxury he couldn't afford. He picked up his car keys.

‘Oh, you can't even walk to the shop – no wonder you're so fat.'

She was still shouting as he closed the door.

He didn't drive to the nearest repository of ginger ale but to a large busy supermarket where he knew he'd have to queue behind families with trolleys of industrial packs of everything from pizzas to nappies. Buying time with a dozen small bottles of ginger ale. Even the wailing of ill-disciplined children was preferable to the screaming of his wife.

When he parked back in the driveway he glanced across the road. He could see Gary laughing, his nurses clowning with the hoist. Lucy, minutes ago holding him in her eyes with a gentleness that hurt, now holding mugs of tea. She couldn't have understood it was her tenderness that caused him more pain than Jenni's onslaughts. Shackleton saw her laughing too. Had she told Gary? Had they had a
laugh about poor pussy-whipped Tom Shackleton? She looked so happy. He envied the warmth of the scene. He wanted to be in the picture as he'd wanted to be in Christmas cards when a child. To feel wrapped round with love. He envied Gary his wife and saw no irony in envying a man whose wife was all that was left of a life once as successful as his own.

Once Tom was out of the house Jenni calmed down. While she was changing for dinner she thought about Tom and his inability to take the initiative. It wasn't just the ginger ale, it was everything. She brushed her hair, getting angry again thinking about the way he coerced her by inaction, but then she looked in the mirror. She knew she looked extraordinarily beautiful. Everything was prepared for the evening ahead. Her table was perfect, her house a triumph. Gary had once described it as Yorkshire chic, recalling his own mother's fondness for reproduction grandeur and Franklin Mint objets d'art.

The final pleasure of the day so far was a phone call just now from a broadsheet editor asking her to do a personal in-depth of her husband. She put the tantrum and her dissatisfaction with Tom out of her mind. It was his own fault, he would insist in provoking her.

Occasionally she was tempted to examine why she attacked him, rather in the same way she examined her breasts once a month. She had allowed herself to look inwards once and saw a picture of her mother beating her father with clenched fists. He had just stood there. She never looked again.

When you were beautiful it wasn't necessary to be a nice person. The catechism of youthful indoctrination didn't apply to her. Nice people would inherit the earth, but only after the beautiful and powerful had finished with it.

She scrutinised her flawless face in the mirror. She was still thrilled and surprised by the extraordinary power of her looks. Sometimes she wondered if she should have married Tom so early. Maybe she should have waited, caught a bigger fish.

No. A bigger fish wouldn't have been hers to mould. She was sorry she had shouted at him. But she couldn't say it. Couldn't bring herself to admit she found it more and more difficult to control her outbursts.

‘Anyway,' she repeated out loud, watching her lips in the mirror, ‘it's his own fault.'

Seven-thirty. She must go downstairs. The Gnome would be here, and Lucy. Hopefully wearing something a little more inspiring than the shapeless tent she'd left in. Poor, dull Lucy. She smiled. She really was quite fond of Lucy – Gary's illness had brought out the best in her. Before, she'd suspected Lucy of being a bit competitive, pitting her quiet intelligence against Jenni's fiery beauty. But now? Lucy was just a sweet, slightly dumpy friend. No threat. She and Tom really must do something for them.

The doorbell rang.

Tom was approaching the front door, the small bottles of ginger ale now nestling by the Scotch.

Aware of the picture she made, Jenni posed halfway down the staircase. He opened the door. It was Lucy. Jenni relaxed and came to kiss air either side of Lucy's cheeks. This was Lucy the guest, not Lucy the staff.

Tom took her coat and Jenni was fulsome in her praise of Lucy's silk dress. Tom noticed how it moulded softly over her breasts and how rounded her buttocks were.