The Crime Tsar (23 page)

Jenni didn't object when the other woman said she'd like to visit again and soon Jenni was looking forward to the increasingly rotund figure waddling in, always carrying flowers or fruit or silly magazines.

It soon became their habit to sit with a box of chocolates reading out the horoscopes and the problem pages and shrieking with laughter. All the jagged sophistication fell away from Jenni and Eleri was rewarded with the revelation of a very funny, wonderfully attractive and totally natural companion.

But then Eleri had never seen her as anything else. She had touched a part of Jenni no one else had ever realised was there. A small good heart arrested in development by sex, envy and mistrust. And now, twenty-five years after that little heart stopped, a late girly flowering had restarted it.

It was raining the afternoon the conversation turned to husbands and lovers. They were playing an endless game of Monopoly and working their way through a box of Harrods chocolates. Jenni liked Harrods, Eleri found it rather vulgar, having been brought up to dislike conspicuous expense, but she battled through sprawling tourists and the loud-voiced wealthy for her friend.

‘Were you a virgin when you met Geoffrey?'

It wasn't the reply Eleri had expected when she asked for rent on Leicester Square but she just said, ‘Nearly. That'll be ten pounds.'

Jenni burst out laughing.

‘What do you mean nearly?'

Eleri tilted her head coyly.

‘Well, it didn't really count because he was wearing a condom.' She paused. ‘And he lost his erection. So I don't think that counts.'

Jenni nodded and handed over the money.

‘I never tried again till Geoff. What about you?'

Jenni laughed.

‘Oh, I don't think I was ever a virgin. Tom was.'

Eleri threw the dice. Five.

‘Why do you ask?'

Jenni sat back, elegant even in a towelling dressing gown.

‘I've …' She stopped.

Eleri waited.

‘It's stupid, all this crap they put you through here. We do what we do.'

She stood up quickly and toppled the game board off the low table between them. Eleri automatically put her hands out to stop it falling. Jenni didn't seem to notice.

‘It was his own fault. Tom had only himself to blame. He made me feel trapped. I can't tell you how he used to look at me. God, it was horrible, like a fucking dog. He worshipped me, followed me around. If he'd stayed at home that night … it was his own fault. These fucking psychiatrists … there's nothing behind it.' She was arguing with a voice in her head. ‘No fucking trauma. It's a weapon …' She was angry now, impotently furious.

Eleri, far from being shocked at Jenni's language or savagery, saw a desperately unhappy child she wanted to calm and comfort.

‘Sleeping with men has got nothing, fucking nothing, to do with self-esteem. It's crap. Total crap.' She was talking not to Eleri but at the walls, the door. ‘I'm beautiful, you ugly, ugly bastards … I'm not like you. I'm different …'

She stepped backwards and caught her leg on her chair, causing her to sit down suddenly, comically. But Eleri wasn't laughing. She reached towards her friend and, at the touch of her fingers on Jenni's hair, Jenni calmed down but she was coldly angry.

‘Tom thought I was some porcelain doll. It was his own fault. Sex is just something men want, that's all. That's all it is. It doesn't mean anything. It's like money, Eleri, you spend it. It gets you things.'

‘Oh Jenni … come on. Shh. You don't really think that.'

Eleri stroked her hair. Jenni allowed the other woman to comfort her but she was out of reach, somewhere in her head.

Eleri spoke very softly, her accent taking any judgement out of her words.

‘I think sex is the most precious part of yourself. I … I couldn't
imagine … well, just doing it, like, like animals. I couldn't do it without love, Jenni.'

Jenni looked at her.

‘Does it really mean that much to you?'

‘I mean that much to me.'

Jenni wasn't really listening.

‘Tom has never done it with love – he can't. D'you know that? Sex is something he does to you, but he doesn't like it, Eleri. None of our children was any more than a fuck to him.'

‘And what about you? What did it mean to you?'

‘He doesn't like women. Not really. Oh, he likes tits. But you know what he does? He grabs you by the scruff of the neck. That's how you know he wants it… No. No, I've never felt what you do. Christ. I wouldn't want to. Sex isn't about being sentimental and love really isn't enough.'

Jenni said it with such contempt Eleri was upset. She knew her love-making with Carter was probably a bit staid, a bit dull, that maybe he'd prefer something more exotic. She wanted to leave, get away from the thought of her modest sexual vocabulary not being enough. That love didn't change everything.

She stopped herself but changed the subject.

‘What did the psychiatrist say?'

Jenni reached for a cigarette. Eleri was surprised; she'd never seen Jenni smoke before. It was, as she might have guessed, extra long and extra thin. Lit with an incongruous throwaway lighter. Jenni took the cliché deep inhalation, bent her left arm across her body and rested her right elbow on it. She pushed her hair back with her little finger, holding the cigarette between index and middle. Suddenly the picture of forties Hollywood sophistication.

‘He said I have poor self-image and asked me if I'd ever heard of borderline personality disorder.'

‘What did you say.'

‘I told him he was a cunt.'

Eleri didn't visit again for ten days but then guilt and her genuine fondness for Jenni had her making the journey to the clinic again. Her pregnancy was beginning to tire her and she almost collapsed into the easy chair opposite Jenni. Jenni, seemingly recovered from
her previous outburst, brought her a cup of tea and fussed over her. Eleri thought it better not to mention it; after all, it may just have been a side effect of Jenni's medication.

That afternoon Eleri told her Geoffrey was thinking of taking early retirement to spend time looking after her and to watch this miracle baby grow up. She was sadly serious when she talked about the impossibility of caring for Alexander and a newborn. Apart from the possibility that Alexander might attack the baby.

Jenni appeared shocked at the thought but Eleri just said, ‘I know, Jenni, it's awful and I didn't want to think about it but it's something we've got to consider. You know he hates change. He'll attack anything new. It frightens him, poor dab. Everything frightens him, poor little boy.'

So it seemed the choices were: a full-time nanny, residential care for Alex, or Geoffrey staying home. He could of course take the statutory thirteen weeks' paternity leave but … was a chief constable an employee? And would thirteen weeks be enough for her to find some way of coping? Her worries were beginning to overwhelm her.

‘But I don't want to put pressure on him because the Home Office has dropped some heavy hints about another job. Something bigger.'

Not a hope, thought Jenni. She waited for her to finish, watching the mobile, attractive face shadow with barely suppressed panic. Eleri was the only person Jenni had ever met who was transparent.

Jenni's enthusiasm for Geoffrey to retire took Eleri aback. Jenni told her in no uncertain terms that it would be for the best.

‘After all he's been chief of a large force – what else is there? I mean, London's not really a challenge, is it? Not in real terms. More money and a higher profile, yes, and of course you get a knighthood, but really it's just bigger. And you'd have to move. Or he'd have to commute. I spent far too long trying to keep a marriage alive with Tom doing all that. No, Eleri, it's ridiculous. He has to resign. The baby's far more important.'

Eleri was touched. She assumed it was because Tom had missed so much of his own children's early years.

‘And, darling. I'm not being funny, but you are forty-one.'

‘Forty-four.'

Jenni managed to control her look of horror. A first baby at forty-four? The woman needed psychiatric help more than she did.

‘Well, you don't look it. But, Eleri … you're already wiped out, aren't you? You can't do this on your own. You need his help. I mean, when I get out of here I'll do what I can – come and sit with the boys to give you a break. Now don't argue. I really don't mind Alexander at all. I'll just remember to leave the Versace at home. Oh … and of course you've no family here, have you? And even if you did they're usually more trouble than help. No, you're going to need him at home. You tell him: this is far too important to miss.'

‘I think you're right, Jenni, I know you're right but I've got to let him make his own decision.'

Jenni, convinced the future was clear and the recent past was merely a bad dream, dropped the last vestiges of her ever-present suspicion and wariness; so for a brief time Eleri became the best friend she'd never had.

But now, sitting in the lavatory at the Ivy …

She wished she could claw back all the trust she'd given. All the naive belief she'd put in the hands of a stranger. She wished Carter dead. She wished his gypsy bastards dead and especially she wished dead Eleri and her unborn baby …

The pills kicked in. She found that place that didn't hurt, a little above and a little to the left of real life. Where revenge was just a pleasure, not the only thing that would keep her from screeching like a banshee through the restaurant.

She was ready to go back to the awful Belinda and get the whole story. She opened the loo door. There was no tall black woman. They seemed to have gone as she could hear nothing. She walked out to the washbasins and was startled to find the three women there. She smiled at them quickly and bent slightly to wash her hands, watching herself, and them, in the mirror.

‘You look like you need a little sleep, girl. Thinking so hard about all those little chickens.'

Jenni wanted to tell the fat woman to shut up and mind her own business. The pills and good manners stopped her.

‘Thank you …' she murmured.

‘Sleep. Balm of hurt minds. You think so, Mrs Shackleton? The balm of hurt minds?'

The three black faces were smiling at her. Standing behind her.
Too close. Jenni felt panicky, even through the cotton wool of the tranquillisers.

‘Who are you? What are you doing in here?'

The women continued to smile.

‘You gotta knit up that ravelled sleeve of care, girl. Knit it up, I say!'

It was the thin woman speaking, her voice in the decayed cadence of the very old. She laid her bird's-claw hand on Jenni's arm. It was like thin dry paper. She peered with her bloodhound eyes at the others. They were not smiling now, but serious, nodding and agreeing with one another that this was the only way she could save herself. Then, as if a prayer meeting had ended, they went, the fat one skewering a hat to her head as she left.

Jenni was desperate to get out but didn't want their company on the stairs. The door opened, she jumped. Belinda came in.

‘You all right, Jenni? You've been gone ages.'

‘Yes … I was talking to those women.'

‘What women?'

‘The three … black ladies – cleaners, I think … you must have passed them on the stairs.'

‘No. I didn't see anyone.' Belinda looked at her, through the mirror, with pity.

Jenni recognised the look from hospital. Jenni the Sad Case. Oh no, that's not how Jenni Shackleton saw herself. She turned and looked at Belinda, unblinking, daring her to repeat that look.

‘They must have gone the other way, into the function room.'

Belinda looked doubtful.

‘There's a private room. Have you never been in it? Oh it's lovely – Tom and I were there for a party a few months ago …'

And still talking, Jenni led the way back down to the restaurant.

It was almost eleven-thirty when Tom got home that night, announcing himself in his usual ‘don't be angry with me' tone. Jenni was waiting for him. Normally she went up to her room when he was late, leaving him to creep round, careful of disturbing her and provoking an attack. But since she'd been in hospital something had changed between them. He hadn't mentioned the marks on her body; she didn't know whether to be angry or hurt. What if she'd
been raped? But he'd found something to keep him working late almost every night since she'd come home.

‘Tom … in here. I'm in the living room.'

There was a moment's pause, then he came in. She was surrounded by notes and press cuttings, preparing a piece for one of the Sundays for their regular column, ‘Making Dreams Come True'.

‘You're up late, Jenni. Everything all right?' He asked as if they were flatmates.

‘Fine. Look, I heard something today … yes, I'll have a vodka tonic. Thanks.'

Tom prepared their drinks. He didn't really want a drink but then he didn't want to have to sit down and talk to Jenni either. He handed her her glass and sat in an armchair. Not beside her.

‘I had lunch with one of the Follies today.' ‘Blair's Babes' had changed their name to celebrate the
nouvelle entente cordiale
with Europe. ‘She said there's going to be some sort of national police force and Geoffrey Carter's going to run it. Well?'

She looked at him as if he had kept the secret from her.

‘Well what? It doesn't affect the Met. He's thinking of putting his ticket in anyway but if it puts him out of the running, what's the problem?'

‘The problem, you prat, is that he will be higher up the evolutionary scale than you. Don't you see? This Crime Tsar –'

‘Oh God, not another Tsar. They'll have a Tsar's Tsar next –'

He saw she was within a hair of losing control.