The Crime Tsar (26 page)

He seemed to make a decision and pushed her on to her back. He kissed her again as though that was an important thing for him. Lucy loved the hardness, the sharpness of his tongue. Again he caressed her and brought her so close to orgasm she thought she might lose it. Then, as if knowing how close she was, he let his fingers rest. She held him in her hand, slowing her movements and lightening her fingers so they barely stroked him. Then, with great care, he moved on top of her.

‘It's all right, I won't break,' she whispered.

She felt him aware of his size and weight. His care not to hurt her. She moved to accommodate him and felt the blind probings before he slipped inside her. He was bigger than she had remembered. She tilted her hips and felt the weight of his balls on her … what? Small expanse of skin between vagina and anus. Perineum – was that it? Her mind screamed: Shut up, Lucy! You're not doing the
Cosmopolitan
crossword now.

She reached down and took his balls in her hand. She felt them tighten and harden. His fingers found her nipple again. The pleasure was almost too much, she wanted him to stop, not to reach the end, but he went on and she could hear gasping and sighing. It was her. Quiet, undemonstrative Lucy. She tensed, trying to keep quiet, and cramp paralysed her right hip. She couldn't believe it – this wouldn't have happened if she'd kept going to Keep Fit. She raised her leg and the pain shot down into the bones of her foot. Mistaking her rictus for pleasure he redoubled his efforts. Miraculously her muscles relaxed and the spasm of agony was replaced with a plateau of pleasure, the moment almost better than fulfilment. She wanted to stay there, in perfection. He felt the new change in her and slowed his movements. He almost stopped and she could feel his involuntary pulses inside her, and then she couldn't hold it any more, she raised her legs and gripped him, pulling him further inside her.

And then the release came and with it a sound she had never heard before and she was making it. He arched up, his thrusting faster and faster, like an animal balanced on its back legs, and as they shuddered and gasped with the glorious intensity of the rare simultaneous orgasm, Lucy started to sob. Uncontrollably from the depth of her being, she sobbed in his exhausted arms.

The last thing he heard before slipping into that sleep that's like no other except, hopefully, death, was her love for him. Too late to argue or reject. He slipped into unconsciousness.

Lucy lay listening to him breathing, enjoying the almost forgotten discomfort of seeping wetness.

Lucy had gone when Tom woke up. It was still dark. He felt disorientated. He groped for his watch and the light. Half-past three. Maybe it had just been a dream – he felt more relief than disappointment. Then he saw the earring. The cliché earring. It was caught on the edge of the pillow, clinging on like a tick.

And she had said she loved him.

He closed his eyes and winced. The spartan simplicity of his inner life suddenly felt cluttered, grubby. He didn't want her love. He didn't want any kind of commitment from anyone.

He showered, trying to leave feeling in the bed. Washing her away. He wouldn't see her again until Jenni was back. He felt a spider's web across his face, felt his fingers caught in the drain at the bottom of a swimming pool: the childhood fears of being trapped, unable to escape. How could gentle quiet Lucy make him feel like this? She should have known better than to cry and talk about love.

He shaved. He wanted to put on his uniform and just be the sum of that uniform. He felt oddly angry with Jenni for leaving him exposed to this. He was irritated with himself, these bouts of uncontrollable thoughts, the involuntary need to see Lucy, to hear her voice. Like a small boy kicking against his mother he resented her love, didn't want that feeling of ownership directed towards him. Why did she have to love him? Why did she have to say it? He didn't want to hear all that. All they'd had was sex. Love was a gift he didn't want and couldn't reciprocate.

When Gordon arrived at eight-thirty precisely Tom had defeated Lucy. She had got what she wanted and he had had some relief. That's all it had been. He would make sure he was not similarly distracted again.

By the time Jenni was discharged Tom had slept with Lucy eight times. Every night his self-contempt choked him after she'd slipped
out of his bed and padded downstairs. He listened for the front door closing and gave himself up to an orgy of self-hatred, but by the time he returned home from work he ached to be with her, to bury himself inside her.

When Jenni walked back into the house her husband had discovered self-doubt, uncertainty and a sort of love. And between him and Jenni an unbridgeable chasm filled with mutual accusation. And, worse for Tom, the unspoken accusation of the clinic staff.

Jenni wouldn't say where her injuries were from or who had inflicted them – she just looked pale and wounded when asked if it was her husband. Her brute of a husband. And benzodiazepines became her new best friends, her quiet companions protecting her against the violence of men. Tom as always had no idea how to react to Jenni in need and withdrew into cautious formality.

Lucy was hoovering Jenni's fluff-free carpet one morning when Jenni called her from the hall. Obediently Lucy went out to her. Jenni was wearing a light tweed suit, cut by a master. Since her spell away she was more fragilely beautiful than ever, almost translucent, thought her lumpen friend. How could Tom not find her attractive? How could he have preferred Lucy's dimpled thighs to the gazelle legs of this creature?

Jenni, for once, noticed her mood.

‘What's the matter, Lucy?'

Lucy smiled, a horizontal tightening of the lips.

‘Oh, I was just thinking about Aristotle Onassis missing Maria Callas's thighs when he was married to Jackie.'

Jenni laughed.

‘I doubt it, Lucy. She could have played for Arsenal. Now, you remember I've got to go to Vienna today? I should be back tomorrow night – just have to do a piece on some actor who's been elected to Parliament. Too boring. Keep an eye on Tom for me, will you? Oh … and how is poor Gary?' She turned to pick up her elegant overnight bag as she asked.

Lucy moved to open the front door for her as she said, ‘He's no better, thank you, Jenni. But no worse either.'

Jenni wasn't really listening as she waved to the taxi driver waiting patiently, watching the fare tick up.

‘Good. I must get him a healing crystal. They are fantastic. See? I've got one on now and I feel fantastic.' She fished inside her Armani shirt and pulled out a lump of faceted glass on a silver chain. ‘It deflects bad radicals. Frees you to be strong, Lucy. Maybe I'll get you one too. Bye.'

Jenni was in the taxi and gone. Lucy stood on the front doorstep. Although they had not discussed Jenni's illness, Lucy sensed she was only just maintaining her mental balance, but whatever Jenni was feeling neither Lucy nor anyone else was going to know.

Lucy saw Jenni was taking more and more refuge in New Age claptrap. Everything from colonic irrigation and feng shui to aura readings and sea-shell tarot.

She should finish the cleaning then go back to Gary. Gary with his rock of belief. His inner strength. She mentally contrasted Jenni with him. What did Jenni believe in? Her divine right. And Lucy, what was her faith? She wished she had one. She realised she was bobbing about on a poisoned sea just as Jenni was. Only it was a different sea. And Tom? What did he believe in? The inevitability of death. Nothing more. Gary, believing in the inevitability of life, was, she knew, a better person than any of them. But it was too late. She'd joined the church of hopeless love. Lucy could see the light and longed for its warmth but couldn't stop herself walking into the cold shadow of Tom Shackleton.

She put the hoover away and went upstairs into Tom's bathroom, blocking out the wave of nostalgia she felt walking through his bedroom.

Jenni had asked her to change the bedsheets when she came out of the clinic, not knowing Lucy had changed them almost daily since she'd gone away. But changing them that day, holding his pillow cases to her face and smelling his soap on them, had nearly broken her heart. Nearly broken the heart she'd only found she had in the last two weeks.

Lucy, trying to feel determined, picked up his hairbrush, an old silver-backed affair, no doubt a gift from Jenni. Taking tweezers from her pocket she pulled out a few black hairs, carefully dropping them into a tiny envelope. Then she went downstairs. In Jenni's bookshelf of recipe books she found what she wanted:
The Herbalist's Book of Remedies and Traditional Spells
, between
Buddhist Nutrition
and
Eating to a Better You
.

She opened the book and laid it on the kitchen table, studied the page for a moment then took an apple from the dish in front of her. She sliced it open. Studying the spell intently she took the hairs she'd taken from his brush and placed them on a piece of tissue paper. Then, cutting a few of her own, she laid them on his. She looked at the book again:

Fold the paper seven times concentrating on your loved one's face, then place it on one half of the apple covering it with the other so the apple is complete again. Bind the apple with a green ribbon and plant it close to your desired one's house. Love will blossom in the untouched heart for you.

Lucy followed the instructions, substituting green electrical tape for the ribbon, and planted the apple between the lavender bushes by the back door. She needed faith in something to stop her sliding into despair over his change since Jenni's return. The withdrawal of his affection was eating away at her sanity. She knew she was not treating Gary well. Nothing in her life had any flavour or joy without Tom, so here she was, sensible, practical Lucy, casting a spell. A love spell on a forty-eight-year-old married policeman.

She set the burglar alarm and left the house quickly before she could dig up the apple and throw it in the bin. It might, just might, work and she would have Tom Shackleton's love. It didn't occur to her it hadn't been invented yet.

Jenni took the train into London. She disliked the city now. The heaven of her parochial childhood had become a dirty, aggressive place populated by people whose lives seemed squalid and pointless as they rushed around in cheap shoes eating out of bags, smoking in doorways and pouring inanities into mobile phones. But there were still pockets where the dream survived, Bond Street, parts of Knightsbridge, tea upstairs at Fortnum's. But today she was in Baker Street and her excitement was as great as when she'd been brought to Madame Tussaud's at the age of six.

Her flight wasn't until late afternoon but she was so keyed up she kept checking her watch. She loved the feeling, the adrenalin released
by ambition. The thought of being an also-ran stimulated her more than the brief certainty of victory had.

She withdrew £200 from a cashpoint, as she had regularly since the day of the Ivy lunch. Then she walked up Baker Street until she came to a plain glass-fronted shop. The lettering on the windows indicated that within was held everything a modern spy could want in the course of his or her job. Jenni was wearing large designer dark glasses and a headscarf tied under the chin and behind the head. She looked like Audrey Hepburn as she pressed the buzzer for admittance.

The man who greeted her was a squat version of her husband. His face though was completely unlike Tom's. The skin was darker and the features coarse in comparison. After their mutual good mornings Jenni could see no resemblance. She had him completely spellbound as she asked him to show her his ‘bugs'.

She was, she explained in a shy little voice, writing a spy novel and she hoped he'd forgive her using him for her research. He was captivated and happily showed off his polished-wood presentation boxes containing small black cubes. Out of the cubes grew matt black aerials.

‘And what are these called? They're exactly what I'm looking for. How exciting!' She gazed up at the man adoringly.

Like a seal thrown a fish, he performed.

‘Those, madam, are UHF room transmitters. What the public would call bugs.'

‘I see.' Jenni gazed at these small objects of her desire. ‘And are they what the CIA use?'

He laughed, charmed by her naivety.

‘They are certainly developed from an original used by the intelligence forces, yes. What you must avoid are the cheap imitations – they're aircraft-frequency transmitters. Hopeless. Everybody can listen in. You can probably call minicabs on them. No. These are what you need.'

She held one in her hand: discreet, matt black body, stumpy black aerial. Perfect. She wanted to buy it. Now. Cash. Her bag was heavy with used notes, the fruit of weeks of quiet withdrawals. Risk it. Before she could give in to the temptation she handed it back, then dimpled and fluttered her way out of the shop, promising volumes in the literary future and certainly an autographed first edition. Patience, Jenni. Do nothing that could be traced back to you.

She was all but sweating when she went into Marks & Spencer. Passing the sensible blouses she put her headscarf and sunglasses in her bag and emerged from the front of the store to hail a taxi which took her to the airport.

The ride was an enjoyable hour of picturing the future; by the time she checked in at the Lufthansa desk she was glittering with excitement. She had a plan and that plan would lead to the implosion of Geoffrey Carter and a clear path for her husband. Who was it said if you want to kill a man don't use poison or a gun?

She sat back in her business-class airline seat, and sipped a glass of wine. With it she took one of her magic little pills. By the time they landed she was feeling invulnerable with only a nagging whisper of the paranoia that had begun to dog her. Before disembarking she checked her appearance, though the admiring glances she had been getting from the sweating businessmen near her told her more than her small mirror.

The air hostess with poor skin had looked at her with undisguised admiration and envy for which she had been rewarded with one of Jenni's secret conspiratorial smiles. For want of anything better to do and in the mood to enjoy the girl's attention, Jenni chatted with her. If there was time Jenni always encouraged disciples. The girl had been warmly pleased when Jenni asked her what tights she used. They were obviously expensive, with a high sheen. Enthusiastically, bubbling about how they were her one extravagance, the stewardess produced some packaging and Jenni copied down the name. The girl couldn't know she was doing so to ensure she was never tempted to try them. Shiny Lycra would make a snake look fat.