by Janet Neel
Henry shrugged. ‘There may be some hanky-panky with some salesmen on a higher rate than others. That’s always embarrassing. I’ll warn Hal, but he’ll be looking for all that. OK, let’s look at these schedules so we can talk sense about the market when Hal and Ed come and ask for money.’
‘They were interested, then?’ Martin asked.
‘Oh yes. They were on the hook, but on a receivership basis not as a going concern. Barclays is going to go down on this one. Connecticut won’t want to pay anything like enough to get Barclays’ debenture paid off, and we shouldn’t be assisting them if they were prepared to. We ought to be able to control the situation, though, so Britex can go into receivership, but have a deal set up so all the customers and suppliers know that Connecticut will take it over.’
They discussed the schedule exhaustively and then Francesca removed herself to another table, closed her eyes and was asleep within minutes.
‘Active social life, that one,’ Henry observed drily and Martin Bailey, who was newly married, said wistfully that he remembered those days well. Just before Kings Cross they woke her up, but she was obviously still tired and as the train pulled in, Henry told her he would take her home. She was protesting feebly that it was out of his way when Henry saw John McLeish on the platform.
‘The boyfriend’s come to meet you, Fran. Must have got the earlier train.’
‘To whom are you referring?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Your policeman,’ Martin confirmed. ‘The large one.’
‘Well, that’s very nice.’ She reached for her briefcase and brought it crashing down on herself, together with a mackintosh belonging to another passenger. Henry pushed down the window and waved to McLeish.
‘We’ve got her, lad, she’s busy vandalizing the train,’ he called cheerfully, adding a further ingredient to Francesca’s embarrassment.
‘You’re tired,’ McLeish said in greeting, taking her briefcase from her. ‘Come on, we’re going straight to eat.’
‘See you tomorrow,’ Francesca called, waving to them as McLeish efficiently took her away. Henry watched them go, trying not to feel envious.
14
McLeish groaned to himself as he started his run round Holland Park. He had been feeling heavy and tired and unfit, and had decided that he must start to do a long run on his off-duty days. He was due to pick up Francesca at noon, to take her to Newmarket for the racing, but had decided to finish up some tiresome paperwork and had thought he might as well have a run on his way in, and change at the station. He distracted himself from the pain of getting going by thinking about Francesca. After he had met her from the train on Thursday and given her dinner, he had considered fleetingly whether it would be worth trying to sweep her out of the restaurant and into his bed, but she was still looking exhausted. So he had taken her sedately home at 8.30 and met James Miles Brett and his mother, and watched with interest and respect while Francesca had shown James how to do his Latin translation and accompanied him on the piano through a difficult Bach cantata. At least James and his mother had now gone, so he would not have to share Francesca with the maths prep or the clarinet practice or whatever else young James could have devised. He grinned to himself as he remembered the instantly suppressed look of disappointment with which Francesca had bade him goodnight when he left at 10 p.m.
He swung round his final circuit, breathing more easily even though he was now running uphill, and steadily overhauled another runner who was making heavy weather of the hill. A jogger, not a runner, he thought professionally, not moving from the hip, and obviously labouring. A girl, he observed further as he got closer and pulled out to overtake, running evenly. The girl turned her head as he came level, checking him in mid-stride because it was Francesca, scarlet and struggling for breath. She stopped, astonished, and he blinked at the vision she presented, with her elegant length obscured by a dingy grey tracksuit much too big on the top and too long in the leg.
‘I didn’t know you ran,’ he said, watching with fascination the slogan CM Wilson, Locke’s rising and falling as she fought for breath.
‘The word “ran” hardly meets the case,’ she pointed out between gasps. ‘It really isn’t my thing, but I just felt I must have some exercise and it was too cold to go swimming, which I am good at. I wish I’d stayed in bed.’
McLeish closed his eyes, momentarily dizzied by the vision of Francesca staying in bed. She considered him, still breathing hard. ‘Do you want to come back and have coffee? Or have you got too much to do?’
McLeish promptly consigned all the morning’s chores and the rest of his run to the scrap heap, and drove back behind her car to the now-familiar little terrace house.
She let them into the house and busied herself in the kitchen making coffee. She was extremely conscious of McLeish, and sneaked a glance at him as he leant against the kitchen divider watching her fill the kettle, seeming even larger than usual in the bright blue tracksuit with the London Scottish flash on it. He felt her eyes on him and looked steadily back at her, the hazel eyes very bright. In a blessed moment of sanity she saw him clear, a good and loving man, sensitive and unsure of his welcome in the light of some confusing signals she had been giving. She put the kettle down and drew a deep breath.
‘John. Good morning.’
His whole face lifted into a grin and he padded over to her and put his arms round her.
‘And good morning to you,’ he said softly, and kissed her gently on the cheek. She turned her head, so that he was kissing her lips and put her arms around his neck. He kissed her till she was breathless and shaking as she leant against him.
‘Darling Fran. I haven’t even shaved.’
‘Oh dear.’ She moved her cheek against his and stroked the thick dark hair at the back of his head. ‘I could rise above this problem.’ She settled back on her heels to look into his eyes, and then, as she was always to remember, he simply picked her up and carried her up to her bed with no apparent strain or self-consciousness. He was also impressively unbothered by having to separate her from her running shoes, whose laces had become hopelessly knotted as she tried to take them off in a hurry. He then took the rest of her clothes off for her, without in any way losing impetus.
Both of them fell asleep afterwards. It was McLeish who woke first, and gently roused her as she lay with her cheek tucked in between his neck and collarbone.
‘You lured me here with promises of coffee,’ he pointed out smugly. ‘No darling, don’t move, I’ll get it.’
‘No, no, I read somewhere that gentlemen are exhausted afterwards.’ Francesca, barely awake, rolled out of bed on to her feet, and pulled blindly at her dressing-gown which came off the hook with the sound of rending fabric. ‘Blast.’
McLeish propped himself up on a pillow and observed her with love as she tried to force an arm down an inside out sleeve. He reached out and disentangled her. ‘It’s just as well I’m neat-handed,’ he observed. ‘I’d have had to make love to you with your running shoes on otherwise. Do you always wind the laces round the shoes and finish up with a double bow?’
‘They are an old pair of Charlie’s and they are a bit big. I’m sorry it was all so difficult.’
‘The tracksuit is Charlie’s too, I take it?’ McLeish pulled her down beside him and kissed her, wondering if he would be allowed to give her a new one for Christmas.
She found the belt of her dressing-gown and tied it round her with dignity. ‘Are we going to the races? Or shall I put my shoes on again, so you can take them off? I’m only asking.’
McLeish lay back and considered the options. ‘I’d like to stay here all day, but I said we’d meet Mike and Jenny and I think they will have started out already. They won’t mind too much if we don’t turn up.’
‘Of course we go.’ Francesca sounded shocked. ‘You can’t mess your friends round like that. We’ve got all weekend.’ She caught his eye. ‘That is, unless you are doing something else tomorrow?’
He assured her
gravely that while he had not been so bold as to hope to spend the night with her, he had hoped to see her on Sunday, so he had kept it free.
‘Would you have sought to seduce me if I had not offered?’ Francesca had her back to him and was sorting through clothes as he put his tracksuit back on, preparatory to collecting his clothes from the car.
‘Yes I would.’ He swung her round indignantly to face him. ‘I fancied you from the first time I ever saw you. I wasn’t quite sure what you wanted, mind, so it might have taken me a little longer.’ He pushed her fringe back from her eyes. ‘It’s not good for you taking all the decisions,’ he said seriously. ‘You don’t have to; let me do a few of them. Wear that blue dress — I like it.’ She grinned at him, amused but unconvinced, he observed.
He drove like a dervish to Newmarket and they arrived just before the first race, finding his friends exactly where they had agreed. Mike was a chartered accountant in a crack city firm, who had played rugby with McLeish and remained fascinated by the police and police work. His wife Jenny had worked as a secretary before settling down to produce three small children in as many years, and McLeish noticed a shade of reserve in her greeting of Francesca. All reserve was dispelled, however, when the whole party backed an outsider on Mike’s recommendation at 10 to 1, and a shocked Francesca repudiated his suggestion that they should put the lot on the next race.
‘I put a fiver on,’ she pointed out to Mike, ‘so I’ve got fifty whole pounds, which is one-fifth of a washing-machine. I’m not going to put all that on a horse!’ This totally illogical sentiment so plainly reflected Jenny’s feelings that she instantly warmed to Francesca, while Mike was simply amused. The two women went off, chatting amicably, to put the fiver on the next race.
‘You’ve got a star there, John.’ Mike, as broad as McLeish but three inches shorter, nodded at Francesca’s retreating back. ‘One of our lads is seconded to the Department and he marked my card. Very much one of their high-flyers I hear. Got them all under control.’
McLeish, thinking of the morning, beamed at him wordlessly and Mike’s eyebrows went up.
‘All except you, then. Lucky sod. Ah, those were the days — you just wait until you have three under four and they all cry in the night. Nice-looking girl too.’
‘I’m afraid she has me under control, too.’ He watched placidly as she hurried back to him and smiled down at her with pleasure. She was so quick and such a good-looker, and after this he would be going home with her, and they would go to bed and he would find out what she really liked. She looked beyond him, the bright face suddenly strained and anxious.
‘My ex-husband is here.’
‘So smile, don’t look so worried. Where?’
‘Coming over to us.’ She smiled up at him, ravishingly but artificially. ‘I’ll just wave.’
McLeish, feeling fully as self-conscious as Francesca, turned to greet a man of his own age, very nearly as tall but slightly built, blond and quite extraordinarily good-looking, provided you ignored the tense, bad-tempered line of the mouth in repose.
‘Francis Lewendon, John McLeish,’ Francesca said in bright, social tones.
‘How nice to see you, darling.’ Francis Lewendon bent to kiss her, disconcerting her and making her blush. McLeish watched unmoving, recognizing a private fight in which assistance would be unwelcome, and was rewarded by seeing Francesca, unhampered, get her blush under control and greet, with careful kindness, Francis Lewendon’s second wife, a tall plain girl, also slight and blonde, who was plainly terrified of her. He spared an ear from dealing with Lewendon’s courteous pleasantries to listen to Francesca silkily enquiring whether Miranda was doing anything with herself, or (with a pitying inflection) whether looking after Francis constituted a full-time job?
‘I’m a policeman,’ he said firmly, in answer to a direct question, watching Francis Lewendon very slightly grit his teeth in response to Francesca’s skilled point-scoring. The well-set blue eyes widened.
‘CID presumably? A Chief Inspector?’
‘Not yet, but it’s the next step.’
‘I had a great friend at school who joined the police and is now doing rather well. William Forrester.’
McLeish reflected with resignation that he might have known that this polished specimen and the Lancia-driving Hon. William would have been at school together. ‘Yes. A very clever copper,’ he observed deliberately. As opposed to a good one, he thought, but it hardly seemed the moment to air these doubts. He felt a small pressure from Francesca at his side.
‘Very nice to see you both,’ she said graciously. ‘We had perhaps better go and join the rest of the party.’ Francis Lewendon’s tight mouth quirked as he nodded to McLeish.
‘I expect you had, if Francesca says so,’ he said maliciously. ‘See you soon. We must go and lose some more money betting on Miranda’s favourites.’
‘I can’t pick them either,’ McLeish said equably, and smiled at Miranda. ‘Come on, then,’ he said to Francesca, took her hand, smiled courteously around him, and withdrew in good order. ‘Unkind sod. He rattles you, doesn’t he? Did he always?’
She checked, amazed, and walked on soberly considering. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Why, do you think?’
‘Well, he wants to, doesn’t he? Not very nice to his wife, either.’
‘Yes, and you were quite unnecessarily civil. Serves her right — she set out to take him off me at a time when we were having trouble. If he is horrid to her, she has only herself to thank.’
McLeish considered her brooding profile. ‘Is it all still very painful?’
‘Yes. He made me feel dreadful and he can still do it.’ She spoke firmly, ending the conversation.
They came up to Mike and Jenny, and McLeish looked at her anxiously, but she shook off her preoccupation and joined smoothly in the conversation, making them all laugh, using what his mother would have called really thoughtful manners — a concept which he had hitherto viewed with mistrust. He was by now used to her ability to do several different things at once, and he noticed that under the easy flow of chat she was thinking hard; in repose she had the inward anxious look of someone trying to add five columns in their head.
The day picked up again, with a couple more good wins thanks to Mike’s wholly unexpected knowledge of form. They did so well that they agreed to have supper and champagne. McLeish was just relaxing over his second cup of coffee when Francesca tugged at his jacket, looking anxious and whispered to him.
‘Aye aye!’ Mike, who was well away and treating Francesca as a sister, beamed at them. ‘Trying to take him home, are you? Well, Jenny and I can take a hint.’
‘It’s not that,’ Francesca said with dignity. ‘I promised my brother to check on his girl-friend — I told you, Jenny — who is in hospital, and I’m trying to remind John. No need to break the party up, we can go any time, but I don’t want John falling down drunk over the uniformed branch.’
‘I expect he’s not been over-indulging,’ Mike said, uproariously. ‘I wouldn’t be, in his circumstances, but I’m a father three times already.’
Francesca blushed scarlet and Mike let out a smothered cry as his wife kicked him. McLeish, who had been drinking carefully for precisely the reasons Mike had imputed to him, firmly held on to Francesca’s hand, said he thought it was time they went anyway, and the party broke up with considerable amity.
He kissed her as they got into the car with the relieved sense of coming home, but despite a very willing response, he realized that at least half her attention was elsewhere. He drove quietly to the hospital and showed his card, which got them straight up to Sheena Byers’s room on the third floor. He nodded to the policeman on the door and stood aside to let Francesca through. She stood, silent, considering the beautiful unconscious face, the bruise on the temple now faded to dirty grey.
‘How has she been today?’ she asked the night sister quietly.
‘Oh better. She’s coming closer to the surface.’
‘What a relief.
Did Perry ring?’
‘Several times.’
The two women, much of an age McLeish realized, smiled at each other in an understanding that excluded the men in the room.
‘Thank you. I’ll call Perry anyway, in case he thinks you are not telling him everything. I — we — are picking him up from the airport tomorrow.’
She glanced anxiously at McLeish, plainly feeling that he might not want to do this chore, but he smiled at her reassuringly and the sister looked at them wistfully. McLeish watched with the same detachment as Francesca rushed him out of the hospital, back to her house so she could ring Perry. Lovers take second place round here, he thought, but was mollified by listening to Francesca on the phone.
‘Yes, he is here. He took me up to the hospital. Yes, he is coming with me to collect you and Jamie. Yes. No. Yes. Mind your own business. See you tomorrow.’
He took her to bed immediately she put the phone down, firmly unplugging the phone by the bed as he helped her undress. He was very tired, having previously struggled through a long Friday evening shift, and after they had made love, he shifted his fourteen stone over, kissed her neck and went out like a light. He woke three hours later with his head clear and the exhaustion gone. Francesca had moved over to her side of the bed and was lying curled up. He woke her unapologetically.
‘That wasn’t any good to you, was it, my sweet?’ He felt her tense and turned her towards him. ‘Close your eyes, I’m going to put a light on.’
He flipped on one of the small reading lights and looked down at his love, who was watching him defensively.
‘You have to tell me if it isn’t working for you,’ he stated, firmly.
‘I knew you were going to turn out to be bossy.’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed, and then, his eyes adjusting to the light, ‘What are you wearing? No, don’t tell me … one of the boys grew out of it.’ She clutched the shrunken striped pyjama-jacket round her, wideeyed. ‘Take it off and we’ll give it to Oxfam in the morning, if they’ll accept it. Oh my God, it comes with legs as well!’
