Life Sentence (6 page)

‘I know it’s not my usual time, my dear, but I thought it might help if I were to vary the pattern – change the routine. The thing is, most people are tired in the evening, aren’t they? I thought perhaps you’d be more receptive during the day. So here I am. I can’t stay long, I’m afraid. There’s a departmental meeting about restructuring this afternoon. It threatens to be interminable. Well, restructuring is a euphemism for mass-redundancies, of course, so we’ll all be wanting to put in our
three-penn
’orth. The government has this idea that fifty per cent of young people should have a university education. Wonderful. But they don’t give us fifty per cent more funding. That’s what all this argument about tuition fees and top-up fees is about. Except you wouldn’t have heard any of it, would you, apart from what I’ve told you? When you wake up, what a different world you’ll find. Because you really must wake up, Elise. Make an effort. And make it soon. Otherwise it will be too late.

‘They’re trying to bring in a law to stop parents hitting their children. I never understood why anyone would want to hit anyone. Not until the other day. I still can’t
believe I did it. But it was frustration, Elise, sheer frustration. I had to get through to you, had to. And nothing I could say or do made any difference. It must be like that with recalcitrant children, mustn’t it? Only they’re worse in a way because they’re noisy, too. You should see them in Sainsbury’s when they want sweets. Of course, the management make it worse by displaying confectionary at such tempting, such accessible heights. But that’s nothing new, of course. You must remember that. Like the song, eh?

‘Put it another way, Elise. You must remember that. Or something. Anything. And soon. For my sake as much as your own. I can’t go through the rest of my life knowing I’ve reduced you to this. Look at you, face stretched as if you were smiling at something, though I know it’s just a random rictus. I think I know.

‘Goodbye, my dear. I promise, absolutely promise, I’ll be back soon.’

‘But you’ve only been back in Kent about eight hours!’ Mark observed from the far side of his desk, making a huge effort not to explode at the outrageous demand. ‘You can’t turn tail and go back to Devon now! I don’t mean your work: I mean—’

‘I know. That’s what I told Pa. I haven’t even been home yet, as is happens. Which makes this all the more welcome.’ Fran gestured with her mug of tea and allowed the chair opposite his to take even more of her weight. ‘Thanks.’

‘So are you going down?’ He was trying to sound casual, but even he could hear the anxiety in his voice.

‘No. Big flat no.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘I’ve phoned their care worker, who says Pa sacked the woman I’d got in to sleep over every night on the grounds that she snored. Oh, and he had to make her an early morning cup of tea.’

He let himself laugh with her as he imagined the scene behind the bald summary. ‘It sounds a very reasonable response, in fact.’ Then he remembered
something. ‘But what’s this about his money?’

Shaking her head, she touched the side of her nose. ‘I have power of attorney and pay all the bills. It’s only a small town and still has some local shopkeepers, who all deserve sainthoods for their patience. They even deliver without charging, would you believe. So if any money were stolen, it would be peanuts.’

‘All the same – stealing from the old is about as low as—’

‘Stealing money is Pa’s cry for help. He accused my brother-in-law of stealing his treasure last time he and Hazel went to visit – and I don’t need my pocket Freud to work that one out. So I think I shall have to go down this weekend for all I was hoping for just one to myself.’ He could see the effort it cost not to let herself sigh. She even tried to smile, but her face was too stiff for her smile to be convincing. Stiff with fatigue and disappointment. Yes! He almost came round the desk to clasp her: they’d been talking of going to the coast this weekend, and she’d been looking forward to it. Dare he risk it? Dare he risk a ploy – hell, it was a lie! Did he look as shifty as he felt?

She was waiting.

Clearing his throat and fiddling with the corner of a file, he asked, ‘How far from Teignmouth is Salcombe? Because I have a friend who’s always on at me to mess about with him on his yacht, and I thought – you know, if the logistics worked out – we could share a car. I’m afraid we might have to head back on Sunday evening –
I’m not one for getting up before the crack of dawn.’ He’d book in at some hotel near Teignmouth, phone her to tell her his plans had fallen through and at least shoulder some of her burden. With luck he might lure her back to sleep with him in a clean bed in a clean room.

Yes and yes and yes. Her eyes gave her away. So did a tiny tremor as she swallowed a mouthful of tea and said coolly, ‘It might mess you around horribly. Every time I’m due to set out for home, they find another little job for me to do.’

‘You never know, I might do it for you.’ He added quickly, before she could change her mind, ‘It’s a deal, then? Split the driving if you like – or you can sleep all the way. So long as you don’t expect more than a service area cup of tea,’ he added with a severe frown. ‘Or snore.’

She laughed. ‘I have been known to sing “Ten Green Bottles” very loudly indeed to stay awake.’

She meant it as a joke. But he knew as well as she the dangers of fatigue. Hell, exhaustion, more like. After an obliging smile, he leaned forward, almost senior officer to underling, but not quite, he hoped. ‘That’s another thing I’m afraid of. Your falling asleep at the wheel. Or taking on board so much caffeine that you don’t sleep even when you should. The T-shirt’s hanging in my wardrobe. And the sweatshirt, come to think of it.’

She nodded. ‘I’m sorry. You’ve been through this squared. And you lost a lovely woman with years ahead
of her. I can’t imagine what it was like, seeing her suffer. At least Ian’s heart attack was – very swift.’

One day they might be able to talk about their bereavements – this was the first time he recalled her bringing that tutor of hers into the conversation – but not now. He had a point to make. ‘There’s a difference between wearing yourself out caring for the man or woman you love, and prostrating yourself for your parents – who must be how old?’

‘Ninety. Both of them. I told you I was the afterthought. But just because they’re old doesn’t mean I don’t love them, Mark.’

He had to screw honesty out of himself, however much he’d rather not. At last he looked her straight in the eye. ‘You come to love people…differently…when they’re chronic invalids, their personalities distorted by pain and suffering. Not less. Differently. All the demands: no matter how reasonable they are to them, they sometimes get to you. And it seems to me your parents are making – on a regular basis – totally unreasonable demands.’

‘Perfectly reasonable in their terms,’ she snapped back. More gently, reflectively, she continued, ‘But you have a point about loving them differently. In a sense, I’m probably in mourning for people who had died years ago. When had they stopped being the carers and become so utterly dependent on me? Was there a day, a week, a year when I lost them? Or was the change as seamless as it was inexorable?’

He could hardly speak, so tried to bluster, ‘Perfectly reasonable! Like your driving two hundred and twenty miles and back every weekend? And twice today! Fran, when you’re not so tired, you’re going to have to start thinking the unthinkable. Don’t flare up. Have another biscuit instead.’ He got up to offer her the tin, deliberately changing the mood. ‘And tell me how you got on with Elise.’

Perhaps she recognised his fear, or couldn’t confront her own. After a sharp blink, she took the biscuit and gave him a terse account of her morning.

‘I spent the afternoon looking through some of the evidence bags. Her clothes. And the doctor was right. Everything she had on, right down to her bra, was new. Marks and Spencer bra and slip – they never found her pants. Viyella suit and shirt. Middle-price range. The doctor might have sneered that it wasn’t your actual designer gear (I thought hospital doctors were supposed to be underpaid!) but it was the sort of thing I wore to court until I got the last promotion.’

‘Any theories?’

‘CID tried all the obvious ones first time round.’

‘Try the left-brain ones, then.’ It was so much easier to talk shop.

‘New everything, Mark. Even the soles of her shoes were still shiny,’ she recalled. ‘It’s the sort of fantasy I sometimes have when I have to go down to Devon. That instead of going there I’ll take another turning, go to a place I’ve never been and take on a new identity.’

‘I should imagine that the temptation must have been equally great on the return journey, when you had to battle into work and attempt to fit eight days’ duties into five working days.’

‘That’s much easier, thanks to you and this new case.’ She bit her lip. ‘This is so hard, Mark. I’ve never shared feelings like these before with anyone in the job.’

‘Is it the culture of the stiff upper lip or—’

‘That and – something in me. Anyway, now I’ve confessed I really can’t do a runner, can I?’ Her tone was far too bright.

He tried to respond in kind. ‘Hardly worth trying these days: we could trace you through your credit cards, your mobile phone, the anti-theft tracking device in your car. Not a good time to disappear, Fran.’

‘It was for Elise.’

‘Whose damn tune I seem to hear wherever I go these days. Famous pianists on Classic FM, tinny music while I wait for my bank to deign to answer my call, even mobile phone tones. Damn Beethoven and his little friend. De dah de dah de
dah
de dum, da di dum,’ he sang, infusing a savage irony into the melody. ‘“Für Elise”.’

‘Or in our case, poor Elise.’

They both used the German pronunciation, sounding the final
e
.

His phone rang. As he lifted the handset, he covered it: ‘What time are you leaving?’ he mouthed.

‘Five minutes.’

What a pity. He’d meant to suggest a drink and some pasta at his place. And after that… He resigned himself to his phone call, flapping a hand in farewell.

Having failed to get a hair appointment, at least Fran had talked her way into her GP’s surgery. She stared at Dr Jennings in disbelief. ‘Let me get this straight,’ she told the young woman, who was hardly older than Kilvert. She too was a steady size six, neatly compact rather than bony. She looked as if she had yet to experience the menarche, let alone the menopause, though the receptionist said she’d just returned from her second maternity leave. ‘I hot flush for England,’ Fran continued. ‘I can’t sleep; I can’t concentrate; there are days I’m not so much depressed as despairing and you say I’m not a candidate for HRT.’

‘Surely, Miss Harman, you read the papers. HRT is hardly without side effects. I would suggest that breast cancer is likely to cause you more sleepless nights than a few flushes.’

‘Indeed, Dr Jennings, I do read the papers, enough to know that statistically my chances of getting breast cancer are negligibly increased if I take HRT for a short period. Which is all I want it for. To enable myself to do my fairly taxing job as a senior police officer properly until I retire in a few months’ time.’

‘You’re retiring?’ Suddenly she appeared interested.

‘To look after my elderly parents.’

She was distinctly alert. ‘Does either of them have osteoporosis?’

‘Pa’s shaped like a question mark and Ma’s broken both wrists and her pelvis. I’d have thought that a very good reason on its own for me to take oestrogen for a bit.’

‘When you’re in your sixties, maybe. Meantime, you should take load-bearing exercise at least twenty minutes a day. Every day. There are plenty of excellent calcium supplements. And some people believe that alternative therapies can offer some assistance to your other symptoms, though in my opinion they’re little more than placebos. In any case, your symptoms shouldn’t last more than a year, two at most.’

A fresh flush burnt its way up her chest and neck. ‘So you can offer me advice and placebos but nothing else.’

‘Correct. I wouldn’t want your death on my conscience, Miss Harman. Of course, if you’d had a couple of children and breastfed them for twelve months each, things might be different.’

‘What a shame my forward planning wasn’t as good as yours,’ Fran snapped. ‘I have to tell you that I’m far more at risk of having a car crash when I fall asleep at the wheel than of any sort of cancer.’

‘In that case,’ Jennings said, smiling sweetly and getting to her feet, ‘shouldn’t you be travelling by train?’

Mark was there in the car park again at eight the following morning. What a good job Fran had rejected the impulse to return to the duvet and sleep out her sleep. And Mark was surely waiting. He was studying a file, so he couldn’t simply by coincidence have arrived a moment before she did. He was definitely waiting. And he had offered her a lift to Devon. So was he waiting for her?

This time it was she who walked to his driver’s door, and he who looked up with a grin. Perhaps he’d been there longer than he’d ever admit: it was he who winced and staggered as he unfolded himself. He wasn’t old. In her book he was scarcely middle-aged. After all, he was her exact contemporary. But he had given an intimation of his mortality and, when she inevitably sweated, this time it was with fright. This was a friend, someone who might be more than a friend. It was bad enough when her own back seized up but she’d always kid herself with explanations that were probably no more than excuses – the long drive, the heavy gardening, the hours on her feet. But it was worse to see someone else in trouble. To be specific, it was worse to see Mark in trouble.

He quickly righted himself, grabbing the hand she’d extended and clasping it, as she clasped his, a moment longer than necessary. But the sound of an approaching car sprung them apart, and both were ready with charm and dignity to greet the Chief Constable. She effaced herself while the two men strode hierarchically in together. But she wasn’t surprised when Mark mouthed
over his shoulder, ‘Breakfast at eight-thirty?’ or that his face lit up as she nodded.

The breakfast conversation, however, was devoted to the Elise case: the Chief was interested in what she was doing and wanted to be brought up to date over his muesli and green tea. Fran eyed his food with interest but not surprise. To have been promoted so far so young meant you had to take care of both body and brain. His muscles told her that some time in the week he found time for regular exercise, too, the sort the doctor had told her to take. Perhaps he balanced reports on the handlebars of his exercise bike.

‘Now I’ve seen the poor woman and spoken to those who treated her on her arrival in A and E,’ she said, ‘I’ve gone back to the original paperwork to see if anything sparks any good ideas.’

‘And to check for sins of omission and commission,’ observed the Chief, earning a dutiful laugh. He peeled an underripe banana to slice on his muesli. ‘Good for the heart.’

Fran had better add them to her shopping list.

‘I’m not expecting many of either. It’s just the fresh eyes syndrome. The other thing I want to do is talk to the man who often visits her. But there’s no regular pattern to his visits, and the hospital aren’t notably cooperative about letting me know if he turns up.’

‘We’re perilously short of manpower with the Royal Visit coming up,’ the Chief said warningly. ‘But if you think he’s a threat—’

‘A threat? It’d be a moot point if he could kill someone who’s brain dead. But I’d certainly like to eliminate him from our enquiries in a fairly low-profile way. Maybe I should take a file or two over and simply sit by Elise. Like a visitor. But even that might put him off.’

‘And I’m sure your skills could be put to considerably better use.’ The Chief eyed her shrewdly. ‘I must confess to finding it very hard to accept that you should be dedicating yourself to a single case, however important that may be. With your management and investigative experience you should be employed on wider projects. I know Mark says this is a special case – and I concede, that it’s better to have you sorting out a very tricky situation than taking endless unpaid leave and being no use to us at all – but surely you should be managing others, not acting as common gumshoe.’