A Clear Conscience (3 page)

‘Joe? Please? I hurt all over, Joe?'

He wavered, then hooked his right thumb inside his ear and used his whole large hand to cover his face. She watched him, hardening her heart without great success, even while her own fingers moved cautiously across her aching ribs. He always covered his face when he was ashamed.

She went to make tea, bending in the middle to ease the pain, wanting nothing more than her bed. He spoke in a small voice, at odds with his well-muscled frame, in keeping with his height.

‘I love you, Cath. I'm sorry.'

She felt his left hand clutch at her skirt as she passed, feigned anger. Inside the kitchen, she tidied with long, slow, regretful movements, coughing, spewing into the sink. Carefully, she chose his favourite mug, put a tea bag inside, poured on the boiling water from the new kettle without a cord. The kitchen gleamed. After a deep breath, which caused as much pain as effort, she took the tea in to him.

He
was asleep in the chair, his face wet with tears. She brought the duvet from the bedroom, covered him and left him.

Their own bed was new, with drawers in the base, from which she withdrew a spare duvet, as pristine as the one over his knees. There were other rooms, all of them bursting with goods.

Cath worked hard to achieve this daily promise of oblivion. In the bathroom, postponing the real bath until morning the way they both did unless there was blood, she forced herself to slosh cold water over her warm body and face, recognising the nature and degree of this kind of pain and doing her best to ignore it. She averted her eyes from the puckered scar on her abdomen, washed carefully and estimated the size of tomorrow's bruises. He never hit her face. Never.

Nothing broken: nothing which quite needed fixing.

‘C
an anyone remember Cath's phone number? Oh, Christ, where have I put it?'

‘Darling, why do you want to know? You don't need to phone her, surely? She'll be here in the morning; besides, she doesn't like being phoned at home, certainly not this late.'

‘Late? Time for bed, then,' said Emily Eliot, roguishly, ruffling his hair, winking in the mirror which hung over his desk. He looked up from the papers across the surface in orderly confusion, caught her eye and smiled.

‘Not tonight, Josephine. I need another hour on this. What on earth were you doing downstairs? Bit of a row.'

‘Oh, sorry, playing Scrabble. Mark was winning, he crows when he's winning, frightful child. Have you really got to work?' By this time, her arms were draped round his neck, smiles meeting in the mirror.

‘Yup. You know how it is.'

‘Dreadful,' she said mockingly, the kiss placed on his cheek denying even the slightest hint of resentment. ‘A wife refused her connubial rights in the interests of paying the mortgage. OK, I know my place, I'll simply warm the bed. Now, where's that number?'

‘For
the second time of asking, why?'

‘Oh, Helen rang. Can you believe, she said she was asking me because we're such an organised household, little she knows.' Emily's laugh was loud, clear and genuine. ‘Only she was looking for a cleaning lady. Our Cath was saying she wouldn't mind a bit extra, and knowing Helen, she'll pay the earth, so I wanted Cath's number.'

‘At this time of night?'

‘Oh, yes, it is, isn't it? Bedtime.'

She stood slightly perplexed, as if she had totally forgotten the urgency. Emily's hectic sense of priorities, her need to fulfil each task as soon as it was suggested, fuelled this house and made it work, with the effect of a huge and elegant boiler. The occasional irritation this caused a hard-working barrister on the up was more than compensated for by the very sight of her and every single one of their children. Emily shared their high energy and that sand-washed look which was pale, interesting, and fiery; a big-boned woman, dressed in an old dressing-gown patterned with dragons cavorting on a purple background. Her hair stood on end: her face was scrubbed and shiny. Alistair pulled her into his lap:

‘Give me a hug. You smell gorgeous.'

She plumped herself down while he pretended to groan at the weight and, with her arms round his neck, she squeezed the breath out of him. Then she looked at the papers on the desk. There were bundles of them, loosely undone, with the red tape which had bound them pushed to one side.

‘What have you got here, my love? Murder and mayhem?'

‘Bit of both. I told you about it.' He did; he told her all about his cases, including the most tedious ones, and, even in the middle of the night, she listened. ‘Murder, of course. What else can you call it when you have a fight in a pub, one side loses, goes away, arm themselves and come back? One youth stabbed, but only one man caught. Someone else is getting off scot free.'

‘Won't he say who?'

‘Nope.'

‘Is this one of Helen's briefs?'

‘No,
Bailey's. These are Helen's.' He waved his hand towards the white-taped bundles. ‘Even worse. Domestic violence. Wife-bashers. She seems stuck on wife-bashers at the moment. I wonder if that's connected to wanting a cleaner?'

Emily rose and kissed the top of his head.

‘You wouldn't ever bash me, would you? However aggravating I am?' He slapped her large behind gently as she moved away. His hand made a clapping sound against the fabric of the dressing-gown; she felt the caress without irritation. It had the sound of shy applause.

‘Bash you? I couldn't, even if you begged. Perhaps, if it was strictly consensual. A long, slow collision. No-one's injured by a meeting of true minds.'

‘Certainly they are, if the meeting of minds also involves skulls. And I think,' she added demurely, holding out her calloused hand, ‘you could finish that work in the morning.'

They got as far as the door, leaning against each other lightly, the old familiar relief flooding through him. What did men do, if they did not have a partner like this who bullied, cajoled, seduced and led them to bed with the stealth of a courtesan? A chameleon she was, a sometime tigress, tolerant, fierce; she kept them safe.

I
t was an impractical house, full of nooks, crannies and the assembled possessions of five individuals of varying ages. On the first-floor landing stood Jane, the youngest child, with snot congealed on her nightdress. A plump nine-year-old, moist with sweat and tears, her face framed against her brother's surfboard which rested against the wall, her skin pale and pink in patches. Older brother Mark was dark and handsome at fifteen, her twelve-year-old sister, serenely fair and sophisticated, but Jane's carroty hair grew in twisted, uneven curls about her face, the longest locks sticky with saliva from being sucked into her mouth. Jane was not lovely, although in the eyes of her parents and in the words of their constant praise, she was beauty incarnate.

‘It's that thing in my room, again,' she said, trembling. ‘That thing, Mummy. He's been there again.'

She
flung herself into Emily's arms. Father had his arms round mother's waist; they stretched from there to tickle Jane's damp and curly head.

‘Well, what a nerve he's got, coming back after all this while. You'd have thought once was enough,' Emily said indignantly. ‘Some people have no consideration. Come on, we'd better go and fumigate the beast. You know he loves warm weather. Funny how he never visited when it was really cold.'

Jane snuffled, mollified.

‘Cath cleaned my room today. I thought if it was clean, he wouldn't come back.'

‘But Cath doesn't know about the perfume, and anyway, he's gone now. We'll just make sure, shall we? And then leave all the lights on, so you know to run upstairs to find Mark or us, OK?'

Emily's voice denied the right to winge. The child nodded, made a sound like a hiccup and then turned away from their tableau of hugging and set off downstairs, confident they would follow. Alistair marvelled, and occasionally worried, how it was that Jane had acquired her mother's authority and graceful, plodding tread. They pounded downstairs with maximum thumping of feet. One of these days they could get the kind of carpet which softened sound: school fees came first. Jane had detoured, with a swiftness which belied her weight, into their own bathroom, where children were forbidden most of the time. She was after her mother's cologne. There was plenty of perfume in this house. Alistair brought it from duty-free shops on those visits abroad which left him sick with longing for home. Then he would buy more whenever he saw it. Nothing extravagant, but always the largest size, a habit of his. The end result was a wife who always smelled sweet, even when knee deep in household dirt, and a daughter with such a passion for
eau-de-parfum
sprays, she used them to control her own childish demons.

The ghost who Jane insisted haunted her room on an intermittent basis – usually as the aftermath of either bad behaviour or greed on her part, her father noted wryly – only did so when the room was a mess. Tidiness and cleanliness deterred him. Perfume killed him off completely. Emily sprayed the room, liberally. It had the same effect as a charmed circle. Alistair laughed and supposed it was cheap at the price.

H
elen
West fell asleep with the grilles left undrawn across the basement windows, the way she did when Bailey slept alongside her but never dared otherwise, and never told him what he already knew, about her being tough and also constantly scared. The presence of the grilles induced a distinct sense of bitterness and a slighter sense of panic when they were closed. Supposing the threat was fire or flood, something from within rather than without, how would she escape when panic made her fumble? Why was it always assumed that the danger came from outside?

Because that was usually so. Certainly so for her. The memory of that violent intruder, faded by the passage of time, came back not only when she saw someone in a street who resembled him, but also at night, making her sweat. Sometimes she could smell his presence in this room, simply by brushing away her hair, from where it fell over the scar on her forehead.

She could taste the blood in her mouth, squirm at the memory of her own violent reaction and all the helplessness which followed. She turned restlessly, distracting herself with visions of daylight streaming in to a clean and sanitised room, washed bare of all reminders. Yellow. The colour of corn and cowardice; bright enough to exorcise the devil.

Bailey felt for her hand.

‘You all right, love?'

‘No.'

He drew her close. ‘All right. Come in here then. I'll tell you a nice, long story. A good one. Happy endings.'

She wanted to stick her thumb in her mouth, wishing she could give up thinking about present, past or future. You do not need me as I need you, Helen thought, taking the hand gratefully, listening to the voice talking through some silly tale until she would fall asleep.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

M
ary
Secura stepped out of her car, in the clean light of a summer morning, pretending to look as nonchalant as a local authority official come to check on a broken window pane or the defective lift in Bevan House. She realised as she saw her own reflection, distorted in the driver's door, that she had slightly overdone the disguise. Officials from the council's repair department might have been in proud possession of identity cards pinned to the lapel, but they did not generally look quite as tidy. Mary had a weakness for handbags, too; and suspected that the average council official might not possess the same good, worn leather. It was big enough to hide a radio, the only weapon in her armoury which did not depend on common sense.

The radio was heavy, not intended as a weapon although sometimes used as such when it was quicker than calling for help. Bevan House stretched above like a sheer cliff; her mission would take her no further than the third floor.

She ran her fingers (bitten nails, indicative of something, she was not quite sure what) through her short hair to make it appear less groomed, and walked briskly along the walkway to flat fifteen, steeling herself to be both brisk and reassuring against the possible hysteria of the inmate. Shirley Rix might be as brave and resolute this morning as she had sounded on the phone yesterday, but she might not. The two of them had spoken almost every day for the last six weeks and if it was not quite friendship, it passed as such. All Mary had to do was get Shirley to the door, and she'd be fine. Once she had introduced her to Miss West, who was good at her job, then, hey presto, the bastard husband would be committed for trial.

The one thing which bothered her, less obscurely than the nagging doubt which made her nervous, was the hope she carried like a torch for women like Shirley Rix. Plus the fact that when she, a police constable specialising in domestic violence, was finished with the case, Shirley Rix would realise that despite all the support, she was still on her own after all. Having a husband who tried to murder you with the regularity of Mr Rix did not exactly enhance your prospects, either, even if he remained, as Constable Secura hoped he would, in prison on his wife's evidence for a long time. Poor Shirley: she did not have much of a curriculum vitae.

Mary
knocked at the door, amazed, as she always was, at how Shirley managed to keep this little flat as free from squalor as it was, not exactly clean but far from filthy. Once upon a time, using the standards of her own parents, Mary would have regarded the semi-cleanliness of the Rix household as intolerable. Now she saw it as the triumph of motherhood, which also saved the lives of half her witnesses since it was usually the kids who made the mothers either leave or give evidence, in the end. The day this violent daddy forced his three-year-old son to drink beer, made him sick, shoved him into bed and then beat his wife for remonstrating, was the day Shirley Rix decided to give evidence. Good girl, Shirl.