by Keith Dixon
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I RANG LAURA Marshall’s mobile phone from the Ascot’s car park, pacing backwards and forwards on gravel that was slowly whitening under a night frost. Planes took off and passed overhead every couple of minutes like an insistent metaphor for the passing of time.
There was no reply from Laura, so brooding over what the receptionist had said, I drove home and drank three whiskies in a forlorn attempt to bludgeon myself into sleep. I only managed a couple of hours before my alarm dragged me back into a world that was becoming less and less predictable.
I rang Laura from my office as soon as I got in and drew another blank. Carol-the-receptionist told me she was on leave and would be out until the following day. But she gave me Laura’s address and home telephone number when I convinced her it was urgent. Then I had another task for her.
‘Carol,’ I said, ‘I’d like to ask for your help.’
There was a pause. ‘I’ve already done as much as I can.’
‘You can do more,’ I said. ‘Tara’s still missing.’
‘I know that.’ This time the pause was lengthier. ‘All right. What is it?’
‘I’d like you to email everyone in the company and ask them to hand in or post their swipe cards to you. Say that the police want to check the electronic signature on the cards.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s dishonest. I won’t lie for you, Mr Dyke.’
‘So stay honest and feel good about yourself when you’re crying in the back row at Tara’s funeral.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Fairness has got nothing to do with it.’
‘You can’t track people’s movements through the cards anyway.’
‘Not everybody will know that. Do you really want this murderer to get away with it? Is that being loyal?’
‘You can be a bit of a swine, can’t you?’ she said. ‘Very well, I’ll do it.’
I spent a couple of hours making notes on what I’d learned so far, but by early afternoon I couldn’t distract myself any more and got in my car to drive to Laura’s house. A computer mapping programme put a location to the address that Carol had given me, and I set off towards Nantwich and the bypass system that would swing me round towards Chester.
It was just over three weeks to Christmas, and the weather had been slowly deteriorating. The sky to the west was yellow with the prospect of cold rain as I headed towards it, into the flat countryside that led eventually to the grey desolation of the Irish Sea. By the time I reached Tarvin, the small village on the Crewe side of Chester where Laura lived, it was already dark.
She was in her driveway unloading her car. The house sat in a row of squat sixties semis, each one different to the one next door. There was a lot of slate cladding, angled roofs and tall chimneys. Very chic forty years ago. Garages were built into the front of the houses, and some of her neighbours had converted them into living rooms or kitchens. It was a sizeable property for a single person. From her front room she would have seen nothing beyond the laurel hedge that shielded the houses from the main road into the village.
I watched Laura make two trips as she unloaded supermarket bags from the boot of her Saab. When she came out to push down the boot and lock the car, I got out of mine and waved at her through the gloom. She took a step back before recognising me.
‘You frightened the life out of me,’ she said. ‘I’m already seeing shadows everywhere.’
‘Good. I want you to be careful.’
She turned towards the house and I followed. Even walking on gravel in sensible shoes and wearing jeans, she was elegant. Her straw-coloured hair bushed out like a beacon for me to follow.
Inside, she pointed me towards a room decorated in a modern style that still had enough wood, framed pictures and leather to capture that late Victorian feel that the Cheshire set seemed to prize. I sat and allowed a large sofa to swallow me up. She asked if I’d like a drink and I told her water was fine. She went through to the kitchen and came back with water for me and what looked like a gin and tonic for herself. She sat down facing me. For a moment the fizz of the tonic in the glass was the only sound in the room. I looked at her for a few seconds.
I said, ‘So tell me about your affair with Rory.’
She didn’t look away or give any indication of surprise. Eventually she took a deep breath and began.
‘It was over a long time ago,’ she said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with his murder.’
‘I’m glad you’re so confident. We’re not the ones to make the judgment. It’s not my job and it certainly isn’t yours.’
‘Oh come on, Sam. Pot and kettle. Are you telling me you’re not making judgments all the time? Yeah, right, you’re the objective recorder of factual evidence. In a pig’s eye. You’re no less judgemental than the rest of us, but you can dress it up and call it detective work. Inferences based on assumptions. Isn’t that called circumstantial evidence?’
She’d become more agitated as she spoke. Now she stood and went to the window, looking out across her gravelled garden.
‘So prove me wrong,’ I said to her back. ‘Talk to me about you and Rory.’
‘It was a mistake,’ she said. ‘We both knew it. We’d been working together for a couple of years, and there was always, you know, a little something there. He was a pain to work with, but he could be charming. I suppose that made him a challenge.’
‘Ah, the old women-like-a-bastard routine.’
She ignored me. ‘We went to an exhibition down in London one week—this was after Gill left him and before Tara swanned in—and we were staying in the same hotel and we got a little drunk. It was a thing that happened.’
‘But it carried on happening.’
She turned to face me, eyes burning.
‘I don’t report to you,’ she said. ‘We were both adults. We were both single. I’m not proud of sleeping with the boss, but there you are. It happens. As far as I know he never let it get in the way of working with me.’
‘And you?’
‘If anything, it made me stricter. I wouldn’t let him so much as shake hands with me at work. God,’—she let out a sigh full of weariness—‘even in the middle of it I knew it was a bad idea. But it’s easier to carry on with it than go through the trauma of calling it off.’
‘Who did call it off?’
‘He did. He’d met Tara and was completely captivated. I suppose you can understand that, can’t you?’
I looked up, expecting to find her gloating. But her expression was resigned and humorous.
‘We get ourselves into these things, Sam, when we’re not at our strongest. When we’re vulnerable. You can’t always expect good judgement.’
She dropped back into her chair as if the effort of remaining upright was too great.
‘The test of character,’ I said, ‘is how you get out of them.’
‘I failed, then,’ she said. ‘Rory was polite but strong. I was a wreck. He was completely professional, which I have to say surprised me. I expected him to lash out when I started to give him a hard time. It was tough when Tara came into the company. But I’ve been here before. I’m thirty-two, Sam. Rory wasn’t my first affair. It’s what we career girls do, now. We have affairs. We’ve got too much to lose by giving it all up for a man. But we can still have affairs and think we’re in charge, in control.’
I went and sat next to her. I’d arrived full of anger and wanting to punish her. Now she seemed alone and somehow exhausted, as though any kind of emotion had been drained from her. Without looking at me, she leaned her weight sideways against my arm. I moved it and placed it around her shoulders. I felt the strength in her square-set torso, and then she seemed to soften and melt and leaned into me with all of her need. Her rich blonde hair was under my nose, and smelled how I imagined South America to smell, filled with a raw and vibrant sensuality. I took a deep breath and was lost in its voluptuousness.
Later, when she too
k off her clothes, I was surprised by the implicit sexuality of her body. Although I’d thought of her as slim and rather angular, her nakedness revealed a firm but rounded fleshiness that moulded itself perfectly into my hands. She gasped when I touched her hip and, in the shadowed darkness of her bedroom, I saw her move into the curve of my arm and after a delicious moment of suspense, the tips of her breasts gently touched my chest. Her lips came to me and found mine, and we lay gently on the bed and began to find the places in our bodies and our minds where we made an acceptable fit.
When I woke the next morning, she was already up on one elbow looking down at my face. Her hair was perfectly arranged while I knew mine would be displaying its usual morning dishevelment.
‘This doesn’t need to have happened,’ she said. ‘I have no one to tell, and I guess you don’t either.’
‘I like a client who’s sensitive to my needs.’
‘I’ll say.’ And she rolled on to her back to stare up at the ceiling. Her shoulders above the covers were as smooth and rounded as the rest of her body had been.
‘Laura, I’ve taken advantage of you.’
‘I know. But that’s okay, because I’ve returned the favour. You needed it as much as me.’
‘It’s not the kind of thing I usually get up to with clients.’
‘What—the half dozen clients you’ve had in the last two years?’
‘I think you misunderstood that. Most of them were long projects.’
‘Who for?’
‘I can’t talk about them.’
She raised herself on one elbow again. ‘Why not?’
‘Official Secrets Act,’ I said. ‘I’d have to kill you.’
She nodded slightly but seemed unconvinced. Her eyes moved over my face. ‘Tell me—you said you were kicked out of Customs and Excise. What was that about?’
I stared at the ceiling. ‘There’s a lot of nonsense been written about them,’ I said. ‘They do great work there, day in, day out.’
‘Will the witness please answer the question?’
‘Let’s just say it’s sometimes hard to be completely honest. There’s too much temptation.’
‘So you ... ‘
I turned to her. ‘No. Not me,’ I said. ‘Not me.’
Realisation sparked in her eyes. ‘People you worked with. It was the people you worked with.’
‘Not even them,’ I said. ‘Think higher.’
We were quiet for a while. Then she let out a breath to change the subject. ‘Don’t think for a second that you’ve done the dirty here,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about this for some time.’
I said nothing. I’d been thinking about it too. But also, I’d suddenly thought about Tara. For one night I’d been able to forget about her and her situation. Now I felt a spike of guilt in my stomach. Despite the years of absence and the depth of her dislike for me, I couldn’t seem to prevent myself having feelings for her.
Laura said, ‘What are you thinking?’
I turned to look at her and found her gaze and held it. ‘How good people can do bad things when they forget to be good.’
She looked at me with an expression that I couldn’t read as I climbed out of bed and got dressed.
