by Peter May
He nodded. ‘Sure.’ He turned away.
‘Jack.’ Her voice was imperative, and he turned again. ‘Promise me.’
He drew a deep breath. He hated to lie to her. ‘Promise.’
Outside, he looked up into a grey and purple bruised sky, and it spat tiny drops of rain in his face. He remembered standing helplessly in the hallway as Martha emptied the pills down the toilet. They said that twenty-five per cent of the population would catch the flu. Between seventy and eighty per cent of them would die. He had been directly exposed to it, and the odds weren’t good.
II.
Amy steered her wheelchair across the vast expanse of floor in her attic living room, the whine of its motor piercing a silence laden with depression and regret. If anything, the cloud had thickened, and the afternoon seemed darker. But she couldn’t face the glare of the electric lights.
The daylight from the window cast deep shadows across Lyn’s face, animating it in a way that somehow full light on it did not. And from those shadows, the little girl stared back at her. From a distance the hair looked real. Only the putty-coloured plasticine betrayed the fact that this was a head sculpted from inanimate materials. Amy felt impotent to do any more. She had given the child back her face, but not her identity, and beyond that she was helpless. Trapped in her wheelchair while others sought her killer.
She wondered if things would ever be the same between her and MacNeil again. Grief could change people, scar them irrevocably. Especially the loss of a child. And then there was the very real possibility that either, or both of them, might be struck down by the flu. It was easy for her to forget, locked away here in her ivory warehouse where once the air had been filled by cinnamon and clove, that out there in the real world, the able-bodied world, people were dying in their thousands. In their tens of thousands.
Her entry buzzer cut through the silence and startled her. For a moment she thought that perhaps it was MacNeil returning, that maybe there was something he had forgotten. And then she remembered that he had a key and would not need to buzz. She wheeled her chair across to the entry phone and lifted the receiver. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Tom.’ He knew the entry code to the outer gates.
‘Come on up.’
She pressed the buzzer and waited a few moments for him to open the door. And then she heard him on the stair. When finally he emerged from the staircase into the attic he looked pale and tired.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, concerned.
‘Oh, just the usual.’
‘Harry?’
‘It’s because I’m on nights at the moment. He just can’t seem to stay home alone. I used to worry about AIDS, now I wonder what else he might be bringing home with him.’
‘Where does he go?’
‘Oh, God knows. He won’t tell me. We had a blazing row after you phoned, and there was no way I could get back to sleep.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Amy said, suddenly full of guilt. ‘That was my fault. I shouldn’t have called you at home.’
Tom waved a hand dismissively. ‘It’s been brewing for days. It was bound to blow up sometime.’ He crossed to the kitchen. ‘Okay if I make myself some tea?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘You want a cup?’
She shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’ She watched him for a while, preparing his tea in a strange, brooding silence. Then, mug in hand, he crossed to the window to take a look at the head. He stood, his own head canted at an angle, staring at it for some time.
Then, finally, ‘God, she’s ugly,’ he said.
And Amy felt unaccountably defensive. ‘No, she’s not. There’s something beautiful about her. Almost serene. If someone had cared to spend the money they could have fixed that lip, or at least improved it. You have to see past that.’
Tom looked at her curiously. ‘It’s just plasticine,’ he said. ‘She’s not real.’
Amy detected an odd antagonism in his tone. ‘She was once.’
Tom sipped thoughtfully at his tea, never taking his eyes off her, until she felt quite discomfited by his stare. Then he said, ‘So what was he doing here?’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, come on. You know who I mean. MacNeil. I saw him leave.’
Amy felt her face flush. ‘He came to see the head.’
‘Oh? And did he think she was beautiful, too?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Oh, so I’m ridiculous, am I? Since when did police officers start coming round your house to see your facial reconstructions?’
She said nothing.
‘I wondered this morning, when you seemed to know all about him and his wife being separated.’ He paused. ‘What’s going on, Amy?’
She didn’t want to lie to him. ‘It’s none of your business, Tom.’
‘Amy, he’s the ape man! A big stupid gay-hating ape. I can’t believe you’re having a relationship with him.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, for a start, because you never told me. I thought I was supposed to be your best friend.’
‘You are.’
‘Not any more, apparently.’
‘Now you really are being ridiculous.’
‘Am I?’ Tom puffed himself up with indignation. ‘How do you think we could ever co-exist, Amy. You, me and the ape man?’
‘He’s not like you think he is.’ Amy knew that this was all slipping away from her.
Mirthless laughter exploded from Tom’s lips. ‘Oh, of course he’s not!’
‘He’s not! He’s not homophobic. He doesn’t hate you; he just doesn’t understand you, that’s all. He might even be a little afraid of you.’
‘Oh, yes, shaking in his boots.’
Amy was angry with him now. ‘You’re so obsessed with your sexuality, Tom, you let it define everything you are. You’re gay, and proud of it, and want the world to know – which is great. But you thrust it in people’s faces, and you don’t realise how intimidating or embarrassing that can be. Especially to a Presbyterian country boy from the Scottish Highlands.’
Tom glared at her, filled with fury. ‘You lied to me,’ he said, barely keeping it under control.
‘I did not! I didn’t tell you, that’s all.’
‘Which is lying by omission. And friends don’t do that. Friends tell one another everything.’
‘And you’d have approved, I suppose?’
‘No, of course I wouldn’t.’
‘So in other words, I can’t have a relationship without your approval.’
‘He’s the ape man, for God’s sake. What the hell do you see in him? And even more to the point, what the hell does he see in you?’ It was out before he could stop it.
Amy turned deadly pale, and her whole world concentrated itself into a silent centre so filled with hurt it took her several moments before she could speak. ‘In a cripple, you mean? What does he see in a cripple?’ Her voice was very small, very quiet.
The colour rose high on Tom’s face. ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘No, that’s not what I meant at all.’
‘I think you’d better go.’
‘Amy . . .’
‘Go. Please, Tom, just go before either of us says anything else.’
He seemed to realise that there was no way back. At least not now. Bridges had been burned. He lay his cup on the table. ‘I’m sorry, Amy,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I came.’
III.
The night they met, or at least the night it all began, nobody had been more surprised at the way it turned out than Amy. They’d encountered each other several times at the lab, and she knew there was some kind of animosity between him and Tom, but she had no idea then what it was. She had only recently started doing freelance work for the FSS, and MacNeil was just another policeman. A big, taciturn Scot who treated her like she didn’t exist. Unti
l the office night out.
It was Tom who had persuaded her to go. Someone was leaving, and they had booked a room in a wine bar in Soho for the farewell do. Amy was persuaded to leave her car at home so that she could drink, and since most London taxis these days carried ramps for wheelchair access, she ran out of arguments for not going.
She was shy and self-conscious. She had only been working at Lambeth Road for a matter of weeks, and didn’t know many people, and so she had clung to Tom during the early part of the evening. But, as usual, Tom drank too much, and it wasn’t long before he found himself a man and disappeared off into the night, leaving Amy to fend for herself. She ended up sitting in a corner on her own, nursing an empty wine glass, and no one thought to offer to refill it for her. Until a big shadow fell across the table, and she looked up to see MacNeil looking down at her. ‘You want another one of those?’
Really, all Amy wanted to do was go, but here was Tom’s ape man offering to buy her a drink. And very nicely, too. So how could she refuse?
He returned with a glass of Pinot Grigio for her and a whisky for himself and sat down beside her. ‘You don’t look like you’re having a great time.’
‘Neither do you.’
‘I’m not.’
‘So why are you here?’
He shrugged. ‘One has certain social obligations.’
She laughed. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a policeman talk about social obligations.’
He smiled ruefully. ‘Aye, well, they like us to use big words in the force these days. You know what a defensible space situation is?’
She looked at him blankly. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘It’s a garden.’
She laughed again. ‘You’re kidding.’
He straightened up and composed a serious expression. ‘M’lud,’ he said solemnly to some imaginary magistrate, ‘I was proceeding in a westerly direction on the south footpath when the accused person and other unknown assailants emerged from the defensible space situation at the apex of the highway.’ Then he relaxed and grinned. ‘You know, they send us to foreign language classes to learn to speak like that.’
‘You seem pretty fluent.’
‘I was always good with languages. I speak pretty good profane.’
‘I like your accent.’
‘Do you? Most people down here make fun of it. And in Scotland they’d call me a teuchter. That’s a daft boy from the Highlands, for your information.’
‘I’m glad you told me. And are you?’
‘Am I what?’
‘A daft boy from the Highlands.’
‘Oh, aye. None dafter.’
She looked at him as if for the first time. There was something unexpectedly open about him. No hint of side, or angle, and he didn’t seem to mind making fun of himself. He was a big man, with big hands which, she was sure, could do some damage if he chose to use them as weapons, and yet there was an appealingly gentle quality in his manner. It was in looking at his hands that she noticed the ring.
‘How long have you been married?’
‘Eight years,’ he said without hesitation.
‘Any kids?’
He smiled, and she saw the affection in it. ‘Aye, a wee laddie. Eight years old. Great kid.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Sean. Named after his father.’ When she frowned, he explained. ‘Sean is Irish for John, but I preferred to be called Jack. My father’s called Sean, you see. And his father, and his father’s father. Way too many Seans in the family, Irish roots going way back. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to break the tradition, and it was Martha who said, what about Sean? Sounded good to me.’
‘Martha. That’s your wife?’
‘Aye.’
The party was breaking up. Someone from toxicology came over and said a bunch of them were going on for a curry if they wanted to join them. But Amy said she had better be getting home. And MacNeil said he had, too. The place emptied quite rapidly, and MacNeil said, ‘I’ll get you a taxi, if you like.’
‘Thanks.’ She let him help her out into the street with her wheelchair. The streets were crowded with drinkers who had spilled out of pubs and bars into the warm summer air. MacNeil steered her down to the corner where a bunch of yobs speaking some Slavic language were drinking cans of Fosters. One of them looked at Amy and made some comment, eliciting laughter from the others. MacNeil grabbed his shirt by the collar and nearly lifted him off his feet. His can went clattering across the pavement. ‘You got something to say, sonny, say it to me. And say it in a fucking language I understand.’ His pals were startled and instantly on the defensive, but wary, and kept their distance.
‘Don’t, Jack, don’t. Please,’ Amy said, and reluctantly MacNeil let go of the youth, pushing him back into the arms of his friends.
‘Sorry,’ he said to her, embarrassed, and he wheeled her on down to Shaftesbury Avenue.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘I hate unfairness.’ He kept his eyes dead ahead.
‘What was it you imagined he’d said?’
‘Something unpleasant. Something about you.’
‘You get used to it,’ she said. ‘I’ve been called a “chink” all my life, “slanty eyes” sometimes. And worse. Now it’s “slanty-eyed cripple”.’ As soon as she said it she thought how bitter it sounded. And she didn’t want to be bitter. She had seen what bitterness could do to people.
On Shaftesbury Avenue he hailed a taxi. The driver apologised. He didn’t have a ramp.
‘We can wait for the next one,’ Amy said.
‘Don’t need to,’ MacNeil told her. And he lifted her out of the wheelchair as if she weighed nothing at all, a child in his big, strong arms, and he put her into the taxi before lifting in the wheelchair. ‘I’ll go with you,’ he said. ‘Then there won’t be a problem at the other end.’
On the drive across town she said, ‘You really don’t have to do this, you know.’
‘Nothing else to do.’
‘You’ve a wife and child waiting for you at home.’ There was a long silence. He was looking out of the window at the passing lights and didn’t respond. ‘Haven’t you?’
He turned to face her, and in the fleeting light of a passing streetlamp she saw a look in his eyes like a wounded animal. He couldn’t hold her gaze. ‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘No, I haven’t.’
It seemed like a very long time before she summoned the courage to ask. ‘Why not?’
‘We’ve separated,’ he said simply. He was looking at his hands in his lap, and turning his wedding ring around and around. This time she knew he wasn’t going to elucidate, and she knew better than to ask.
The Tower of London was discreetly lit as they drove past and across Tower Bridge to the South Bank. The taxi dropped them at the corner of Gainsford Street and Shad Thames.
‘I’ll see you to the door,’ MacNeil said when he’d got her out and back into her wheelchair.
‘There’s no need, really. I’m a big girl. I come home in the dark all the time.’
‘Aye, but not when I’m around to worry about it. It’s alright, I’m not looking to get asked up for coffee. I never drink the stuff.’ He paid the driver, and Amy punched in her entry code at the gate. He pushed it open and they crossed the courtyard to the ramp which led up to her front door.
She frowned. ‘That’s odd.’
‘What is?’
‘The light’s out above the door. I always leave it on when I go out.’
‘Just to advertise to burglars that the place is empty?’
She gave him a look. ‘I need to see to get in.’ She unlocked the door and opened it into the stairwell. The whole apartment was in darkness. There was a light switch within easy reach of the wheelchair, but it produced no light.
‘Where’s the fuse box?’ Mac
Neil asked.
‘On the top floor.’
MacNeil looked at the redundant stair lift at the foot of the stairs. ‘How the hell do you get up and down when the power’s out?’
‘It’s never been out before.’
He closed the door and picked her up out of the wheelchair again. She put her arms around his neck, and remembered how safe she had felt as a child, carried up the stairs to bed by her father who would sing to her every night as they went. Carry me, carry me ’cross the world.
‘You’d better show me,’ MacNeil said, and he carried her in the dark up two flights of stairs to the sprawling attic room at the top. Here street lights shone through the windows, casting a pale yellow glow across the room. He lowered her gently into the top floor wheelchair and opened the door of the fuse box. He flicked a switch and all the lights came on. He shook his head. ‘Must have been a power surge or something. Tripped the fuse. You want to have some kind of battery back-up on those stair lifts if you don’t want to get stuck.’
‘I could always call you to carry me up and down.’
‘I’d be here like a shot.’
Something in the way he said it made her heart skip a beat then pulse a little faster, and he seemed suddenly self-conscious. Her mouth went dry, and she couldn’t believe that he might be interested in her. Not in that way.
Later, he told her the reason he’d hesitated was because he had no idea how to kiss someone in a wheelchair. It explained his clumsiness as he took a step towards her, and then stopped, before dropping awkwardly to his knees and taking her face gently in both of his big hands and kissing her.
It was a moment that would live with her always. A moment when she felt as if God had given her back her life.
CHAPTER NINE
I.
MacNeil parked outside the police station which stood in what Scots would have called the gushet between Kennington Road and Mead Row. It was a word MacNeil had used several times when he first arrived in London, but which nobody seemed to understand. He looked once in a dictionary and couldn’t find it. The closest he got was the word ‘gusset’, which described a triangular piece of cloth sewn into a garment to reinforce it. And so he’d figured that must be it. And it described the positioning of Kennington Road Police Station precisely – built in the triangle created by two streets intersecting at acute angles.
