Troy stared at his boss in puzzled disbelief. ‘Who on earth else could it have been?’
‘Someone perhaps who loved him.’
‘Not with you.’
‘And didn’t want him mocked and jeered at, even in death.’
‘Laura?’
‘It’s the only name that springs to mind. It’s not entirely out of the question that, seeing how strangely he behaved throughout the evening, she may, in spite of her denials, have gone back to the cottage to see if he was all right.’
‘Found him dead, stuff spread about everywhere . . . Could be. Jesus.’
Troy ran his fingers through his hair several times and with such vigour it stood on end. ‘Every time we discover something on this case it leaves us worse off than we were before. Now we’ve got at least two Hadleighs, both of which look to be completely unreal. Do you think he’s a headcase?’
‘I really don’t know.’
‘It happens. I saw this movie - woman had three separate personalities. None of them clocked what the others were up to.’
‘I know exactly how they felt,’ said Barnaby.
When Sue got back to the house after play group a hand delivered envelope was lying on the mat. It was not very clean and the torn flap had been stuck down with Sellotape. The pencilled words ‘For Brian’ were scrawled across the front. She put it on the kitchen table, propped up against the sauce bottle, where he couldn’t miss it.
Mandy got in first. Once upon a time, in the days when she had been daddy’s pet, she’d have waited for him and they would have driven home together. Now, even though she hated being the odd one out, she preferred to travel on the school bus. Packed in like lively sardines; wriggling, screaming, giggling, smoking, sitting on each other’s laps. Mandy, always on the very edge of the shoal, would laugh at all the jokes until her lips and throat ached, whether she got them or not. Sometimes she laughed too soon and they’d know she was putting it on.
Tonight, rather than laughing with them, they had been laughing at her. Three or four of the bigger girls, halfway down the bus, kept turning and staring in Mandy’s direction, whispering to each other, then cracking up. Edie Carter leading them on.
Mandy hated Edie worse than anyone. Hated her sly, white triangular face and piled-up tangle of flaming hair and slanty eyes. And Tom was worse. Always making dirty remarks in a very soft, curling voice that made them sound even dirtier than they were already.
The
status quo
apropos Mandy’s previous position in class had now been quite restored. Her connection with the murder having been examined and milked dry she was of no further interest to anyone. Even the most unpopular girls in the class barely spoke and Haze Stitchley had gone back to ignoring her completely.
A dozen got off the bus at the Green, linked up in twos and threes and hurried off. Though only four o’clock it was nearly dark and there was a cutting edge to the wind. Mandy raced up the garden path and into the house, banging the door behind her. She dropped her bag and coat on the sitting-room floor and switched on the telly. The fire was a depressing heap of smouldering paper and twiggy sticks beneath a tottering pyramid of coal.
Mandy remembered this time yesterday, when she had been sitting in a big, soft armchair in her nan’s cosy lounge. She had barely fallen into its downy embrace before a tray containing a monster iced Coke, buttered crumpets and chocolate-fudge Swiss roll had been placed in her lap together with the TV remote control.
Her nan and grandad didn’t drone away about school, asking dreary questions about her day and how she was getting on. Just let her eat and drink and zap through programmes to her heart’s content. Unlike her parents they really seemed to want her to be happy. Mandy wished she was there now.
Barging into the kitchen she said, ‘What’s the matter with the fire?’
‘It’s sulking.’
‘But you know I get home at four.’
‘I do, Amanda,’ Sue lowered her
Guardian
, ‘but I don’t think the fire has quite got the message.’
Mandy stood gaping at her mother. Instead of being on the flit, hovering somewhere between the cooker, sink and table, as was usual whenever anyone entered the kitchen, Sue was sitting by the Aga with her legs up at an angle. Her ankles were crossed and her feet, in their thick, felted fisherman’s socks, were perkily tilted in the air.
Mandy went to the table. At her place was the usual home-made gravelly finger of oaty molasses-flavoured goodness, a piece of fruit and a glass of apple-juice concentrate diluted one to twenty.
‘I got chocolate cake yesterday,’ said Mandy.
‘I had chocolate cake myself, this morning.’
‘Great! Where is it?’
‘I’ve eaten it. I bought it to share with the play group. We were celebrating.’
Sue waited, to give the lines, Oh, really, mum? Gosh, how interesting. What were you celebrating? Do tell me all about it, plenty of time to waste their sweetness on the desert air. Then she took her feet down and turned to face her daughter.
‘I heard from Methuen this morning.’
‘Who?’
‘They publish children’s books. I sent them my story about Hector. The editor wants me to have lunch with her. In London.’
‘Big deal,’ said Amanda.
‘I think so,’ replied her mother.
Sue got up, opened the fridge and got out a wine bottle. There wasn’t much left, but what little there was she poured into a tumbler that had been resting on the floor beside her chair. Then she threw the bottle into the pedal bin, returned to her seat and disappeared behind the arts page of the newspaper.
Her eyes prickled and the print was definitely on the swimmy side. In fact one feature heading (‘A Hundred and One Dalmatians; the Influence of Pointillisme on Dodie Smith’) actually seemed about to dissolve. But Sue scrunched up her eyelids and swilled the tears back into her head by sheer force of will. It was nothing but foolishness to be cast down. After all, Amanda’s response was no more than she, Sue, had expected.
Sue laid her fingers briefly on her breast, where the precious letter lay, folded small inside her bra. She had rung Methuen’s about an hour ago. At first she had talked too much from nervousness and wine, but then, fearing they might think her wildly unstable and change their minds about the book, she had clammed up entirely. She had hardly been able to choke out an acceptance of the first date suggested. When she tried to make a note of this, the pen had twice slipped from her fingers and she’d had to put the phone down while she crawled around looking for it. The editor, who sounded very kind, and neither impatient nor amused at Sue’s ineptitude, then gave her the name of the nearest tube and directions on how to find the building, It was only after Sue’s palsied hand had clattered the receiver back onto its rest that she realised the thirteenth was only four days away.
‘I got buttered crumpets as well last night.’ Amanda affected to gag on the cookie. ‘My nan says I need—’
‘I don’t give a stuff what your nan says. She wants to try managing on my housekeeping. You’d be lucky to get a glass of water and a cream cracker never mind a buttered bloody crumpet.’
There was a long silence. Neither of them could quite believe their ears. Mandy gawped, mouth hanging open, sticky brown tongue clearly visible. Sue retired once more behind her screen, proud that, though her heart was riven with tremors, the sheets of newspaper remained completely still. She thought, I must be drunk. Was it possible that
in vino veritas
was not just some bibulous old soak’s tarradiddle but a matter of simple fact? And that, beneath the self-preserving layers of submissive docility, slept a person capable of extreme nastiness? Oh God, prayed Sue, I do hope so.
She lowered the
Guardian
. Amanda had gone. Scooby Doo had come. As now had Brian, kicking his boots against the front step in an attention-seeking, exaggerated way for all the world as if he had just bid hail and farewell to Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
He came into the sitting room, grumbled at Mandy for throwing her things on to the floor, laughed over-heartily at Scoob then strode straight through the kitchen into the toilet. Here he withdrew his penis, which looked and felt as if it had spent the previous twenty-four hours marinading in a jar of chili paste, with extreme care. He urinated, tucked himself tenderly away and zipped up very, very slowly. Emerging from the bathroom he stared, much as Amanda had done, at the sight of his spouse sitting (lolling might be more accurate) with her feet up.
Brian gave the room a sharp once-over but everything looked clean and tidy and tea was, as usual, on the table. Propped against his mug was a letter. Brian picked it up. As soon as he saw the writing he knew it was from Edie. His stomach heaved. Feeling both excited and alarmed he wriggled into the piney niche and forced himself to sit calmly and make some show of eating.
The food nearly choked him. The food and apprehension. Coming to the house! He’d have to put a stop to that. That sort of thing could lead to trouble. She was obviously desperate to see him again. Understandable. He was pretty keen to see her too. In fact, during a day spent teaching on automatic pilot (not that his class had noticed the difference) Brian had done nothing but dream of the future. He had already decided that, once he had obtained his freedom, they would be married. His parents would kick up of course, because of the social gap, but they’d come round. And eventually he would want children, though obviously he and Edie would be all in all to each other for a long time first.
‘There’s a letter for you.’
‘I do have eyes, thank you.’ Brian picked it up and pursed his lips, casually judicious. ‘Any idea who brought it?’
‘No. It was here when I came back from play group.’ Brian was quite proud of the cool way he dropped the bulky envelope into his cardigan pocket and carried on munching his banana and walnut bap while it lay there, sizzling.
‘Probably someone can’t make rehearsal.’
‘How’s it doing? Your play?’
‘Fine.’
Sue watched him poking food into the pink hole in the middle of his beard, then priss up his lips and use his little finger to dab at the tight corners, checking for crumbs.
‘I shall be going to London on Tuesday.’
‘London?’ He stared across the room without seeing her. ‘What for?’
‘My lunch. With the editor.’
‘Oh. Right.’ It was no good. He couldn’t wait. Not another second. Not another heartbeat. Certainly not as long as it took to get out from the table and hide himself away. ‘Could you do me a favour, Sue? Please.’
His wife could not conceal her consternation. She said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Would you mind getting me some dry socks? These are soaking.’
She took forever. Twenty-four hours to drag herself to the edge of her chair. A week to attain the vertical. A month to make it to the door. Six more to cross the sitting room. A year to climb - God’s truth! - she was coming back.
‘Any special sort?’
‘No, no, no. No. You choose.’
Somehow he waited, fists clenched and his body in a tight little ball. Holding his breath like a drowning man conserving energy. Then, when he heard her clogs clatter on the floorboards overhead he tore at the envelope, his fingers all thumbs. And drew out the contents.
When Barnaby got back to Arbury Crescent there was a postcard from Cully - in black and white, of the Radziwill Palace in Warsaw. The greeting was, as usual, dryly noncommittal. Playing to great houses, invited everywhere. The weather was fine, Nicholas was fine, she was fine. Don’t forget to video
The Crucible
. Love Cully. Cross, cross, cross.
Barnaby wondered, as he so frequently did, just how much she did love them. Or even if she loved them at all. Surely, she must. You couldn’t devote years of protective tenderness and concern, gut-wrenching anxiety and supportive admiration to someone and not have that person reciprocate, if only to a modest degree, in kind.
But of course you could. Beloved children took their place in your heart carelessly for granted and your devotion as no more than they deserved. They did not see it for what it was, the best you could do, but merely as the least you could do. It was only the desolate and deprived, the youthful walking wounded amongst whom Barnaby spent so much of his time, who saw the truly colossal magnificence of such a gift.
Joyce watched her husband, frowning down at the postcard in his hand. He was wearing his ‘better than nothing’ look. Half resentment, half relief. The light caught his grizzled sideboards and his still thick, black and silver hair. Thirteen hours since he had left for work and she could tell from his absent and distracted movements that he was still there in spirit.
Some cases were like this. She simply lost him. Watched as he became subsumed into an alternative universe in which there was no honestly relevant part for her to play. It was not that he didn’t, quite frequently, describe to her what was engaging his attention. But there was no way that these occasions could be mistaken for discussions.
Lying back on the sofa, Tom would ramble on in a shapeless, repetitive manner, with his eyes closed, rather on the ‘how do I know what I think till I say’ principle. And Joyce would listen with attentive and sympathetic interest even as she remained aware that, for quite long periods, he would have forgotten her presence entirely.
She had, very early in their marriage, seen exactly what a policeman’s wife was in for. Loneliness, disorienting time patterns, stressful periods of isolation and the constant apprehension that today might be the day he would be brought home, like a Roman soldier, lying on his shield.
Wives had various ways of coping - or not - with all these aspects of police life. Joyce chose what seemed to her the safest, most pleasant and most sensible. Whilst Tom and, later, Cully remained the emotional lynchpins in her life, from the earliest days of her marriage she had looked constantly outwards, developing and sustaining friendships (virtually none within the Force) and working on the second most important thing in her life, her music. She had a lovely, rich mezzo-soprano voice and still sang frequently in public. Lately she had started to teach.