Sleeping Cruelty

by Lynda La Plante

  There was cold appraisal in the balding Hudson’s hazel eyes. He knew William must have taken a diary, perhaps even letters, and he also understood why. These society types were all the same; their sole priority was saving their own backsides, and it infuriated him that he had been ordered to clear up the investigation as quickly and with as little scandal as possible. He knew that William was somehow caught up in this and given half a chance, Hudson would come down on him like the proverbial ton of bricks.

  ‘Thank you for your time, sir,’ the Superintendent said as he left, ushering his inspector ahead of him. He kept his head down as he walked out into the street beyond the high barred gates. The vultures hovering there with their cameras and microphones, screamed for him to stop and say a few words.

  ‘No comment. No comment.’

  A uniformed officer stood by the plain patrol car, the door open. Joan settled in the back seat, Hudson in the front with the uniformed driver.

  ‘What did you think of him?’ she asked, checking over her notes.

  ‘Not a lot. Lying through his teeth about the “no items removed from victim’s premises”. He certainly had time enough to clean the place up. He’s probably scared his own sexual peccadilloes will get out – every politician’s hiding something or other.’

  ‘He’s not a politician, though. He was Maynard’s benefactor. He’s rich as Croesus.’ She paused. ‘Didn’t you think he reacted strangely to Justin Chalmers’s name? I wonder why.’

  ‘Justin Chalmers …’ the Superintendent mused. ‘You ran a check on him, right?’

  ‘Yes, sir, clean as a whistle. Neighbours say he keeps himself to himself – not at home much, apparently. He has a sister who visits regularly. She has some sort of psychiatric complaint. I think he looks after her pretty well. Oh, and he’s openly gay, which explains Maynard’s generous will. Probably partners.’

  ‘Oh, well, there you have it. That probably explains Sir William’s reaction then. Maybe he had a scene with him too and doesn’t want it to come out. Half of the society set are in the closet, not that it concerns me.’

  Joan smiled. She’d liked Sir William, and felt sorry for him, but she said nothing more as they drove past the flashing photographers. She often wondered what they did with all the photographs they took, and laughed to herself.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Oh, I just wondered if they’d caught my best side.’

  He grinned. ‘Don’t let it concern you. They’re not interested in us – we’re not rich or famous enough. Now, if it had been a murder, we might have made the front page departing from Sir William Benedict’s mansion!’

  Chapter Four

  On that evening’s news programmes William did not come across well. Blustering, he denied any knowledge of Maynard’s sexual predilections, and refused to be drawn into any discussions on weird sexual practices. He said he was saddened by the death of a friend, and hoped people would remember Andrew Maynard as a young, highly intelligent, well-meaning man. When asked whether he had removed any items from Maynard’s home, he remained silent.

  The press had a field day. They printed exclusive interviews with Maynard’s cleaner, Mrs Skipper, and his secretary, Sara Vickers. Both women spoke of Maynard’s private life in a way that was easy to embroider. William’s next few days were beyond his worst nightmare. The affair mushroomed and dragged in people from under every stone of his own past. A photograph of William with his arm around Maynard appeared on the front page, an innocent photograph, with four other people cut from it to make it appear over-affectionate, if not loving. Headlines screamed, ‘GAY MP’S SUICIDE’, and further details of Maynard’s life appeared, more photographs of him taken in seedy nightclubs, and on beaches. Where they came from was a mystery, but they kept appearing, and William constantly featured in one doctored picture or another. The trouble the press took to make it appear that William was the lover over whom Maynard had slashed his wrists was beyond belief. His first wife, Lady Margaret Pettigrew, gave an exclusive interview for one of the Sunday colour supplements headlined ‘My Husband – The Adulterer’. She had waited twenty years for her revenge and she took it with relish.

  William’s humiliation did not end with her revelations. His second wife, Katherine, the mother of his two children, jumped on the bandwagon with equal enthusiasm. It was as if the two women had got together to destroy him. In a double-page spread in one of the tabloids, Katherine painted him as a mean, vicious, brutal man who spent his days trawling the streets for nubile flesh, neglecting his two children in favour of prostitutes.

  Every day brought another outrageous defamatory onslaught, another person creeping out of the woodwork to tell their story. Maynard’s suicide was beginning to take second place to the hounding of William, as if his death had simply acted as a catalyst. William could do nothing but look on with stunned helplessness. None of the sexual slanders was true, but the fact that he had indeed used a few girls made it impossible to sue.

  In any case his lawyer, Brian Sutherland, appeared frightened for his own reputation. William felt as if he was hitting his head against a brick wall. ‘For God’s sake, yes! Yes, I’ve hired a few call-girls over the years, but who hasn’t? It doesn’t make me some insatiable sex addict! If I’m not a homosexual, I’m a lusting pervert. Something has to be done to stop them printing these lies about me.’

  Sutherland was one of the most respected lawyers in England. He warned that if, as William had admitted, he had occasionally used call-girls, then to bring a massive and costly lawsuit against someone as powerful as Humphrey Matlock, the proprietor of the newspapers, would end in catastrophe: ‘… the reason being, William, that any one of the girls you’ve known in an intimate way could be tracked down and offered money to refute these denials of yours. And as you have admitted, albeit in the privacy of my office, that you have occasionally used the services of certain illegal agencies for, ah, intimate massages and so on, you could not swear otherwise on oath.’

  William interrupted, ‘But no more than any other man has, for fuck’s sake. Name me anyone you know who hasn’t,’ he snapped.

  ‘That, old fellow, is not the issue, because you are not “any other man” but Sir William Benedict. So I suggest, and this is my best advice, that you lie low and ignore the slanders. Look at Jeffrey Archer! For God’s sake, don’t antagonize them, just let it blow over.’

  ‘But it’s a bloody outrage,’ William stormed.

  ‘I admit that it is,’ said the suave Sutherland, in mellifluous tones as he wandered around his elegant Mayfair office, ‘but you must look at it in a logical way, old man. The fact is that you don’t want any of these women with whom you have had sexual relationships, albeit infrequently, to testify against you. And as they will want their fifteen minutes of fame while Humphrey Matlock is known for cheque-book journalism, I really do think you should just let it blow over.’

  The meeting was at an end, and William knew he should heed Sutherland’s warning. He agreed angrily to do nothing, but he couldn’t help wishing for a minute alone with Humphrey Matlock so that he could swing a punch at him.

  The final straw came the following weekend, when yet another Matlock-owned newspaper gave centre-page coverage to interviews with William’s children, who said they hated him for betraying their mother. He noted bitterly that neither made any reference to the substantial allowances he made to them, way over what he was obliged to pay, and that he maintained the entire family in a luxurious lifestyle.

  Desperate to stem the flow, William tried to contact his ex-wives. Margaret refused to speak to him, and when he threatened Katherine with reducing his maintenance payments to the amount stipulated by the courts, he was met with screams of ‘Do that, you bastard, and I’ll make up the difference by selling the rest of our story to the highest bidder.’

  For six weeks after Maynard’s death – six horrific weeks of humiliation and degradation – the country was privy to the personal details of his two marriages, his h
ousehold costs, his earnings and even his children’s school fees. Now everyone thought he was an obsessive, sex-crazed man, hell-bent on personal gain and even using his own children to achieve it. However, in every single article, there was still a kernel of truth, no matter how distorted, which made his lawyers balk at legal action. Had Matlock got to them, William wondered. Was there no one he could trust? Was he really so despicable?

  The answer came from his sixteen-year-old son, Charlie. William drove to the school to take his son to lunch. It was an awkward, strained occasion and Charlie was unable to look his father in the face. It was not until pudding was served that William asked, ‘Why, Charlie? Why have you said these terrible things about me?’ The boy shrugged, still refusing to meet his father’s eyes. ‘I’ve never stopped loving you, providing for you. You’ve wanted for nothing.’

  Charlie looked up at last, and William noticed for the first time his son’s resemblance to himself. ‘You left us. You’ve never been a father. All you were ever interested in was making money. And now I think we should go back, Dad,’ he said. ‘My band’s got the music room booked this afternoon.’

  William drove his son back to school in silence. When he leaned forward to embrace him, Charlie recoiled. ‘Bye,’ he said stiffly and got out, slamming the car door. He walked straight through the gates, hands clenched at his sides. He was hoping and praying that none of his friends had seen him. Even the car was embarrassing: no one who was anyone had a two-tone Rolls Royce with a gold Spirit of Ecstasy.

  The following day William had an equally excruciating luncheon with his daughter, Sabrina. She was more aggressive than her brother, refusing to eat, and sitting with pursed lips – so like her mother’s. William had married Katherine because he wanted to be accepted in high society. She had bubbled with delight at the balls and at the races. She enjoyed posing for photos with William in the winner’s enclosure, and showing them to her friends when they appeared in the society columns. But the effervescent, giggling young socialite of courtship had vanished immediately after the wedding. She began to reprimand him as if he were a child for the way he held his knife and fork, the way he dressed. She made little jibes that exploded into huge rows. Eventually she had hired Miss Drumgoole to teach him etiquette. The truth was, William had needed to learn from Katherine so that he could feel at ease in the social circles to which she introduced him, but her scornful carping made him uncomfortable and afraid to open his mouth.

  And here was Sabrina, his offspring, as like the whingeing Katherine as if she had been spat out of her mouth. She was pale, with straight blonde hair, heavy-lidded eyes with fair lashes and braces on her teeth. She might have been attractive but her long, thin nose and full lips made her face lack animation and she seemed loath even to attempt a smile. William had no one to blame but himself: it had been his choice to divorce one vacuous titled blonde and marry another. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ lisped Sabrina. ‘Besides, Mummy said I really shouldn’t have agreed to see you at all. We’ve had these press people everywhere.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said flatly. ‘Perhaps if your mother hadn’t been so eager to spill her vitriolic lies about me, this would all have blown over.’

  ‘I have been teased unmercifully because of you. The other girls do nothing but giggle about you, and mince around like willy woofters, pointing at me. It’s embarrassing having someone like you for a father. They call me “Rough Trade”, because of you and your boyfriend.’

  ‘I’ll take you back to school.’ William folded his napkin. He was too tired and too hurt to argue.

  Had he brought all this vituperation upon himself? Surely there had to be someone he could call a friend. He went through lists of names, people who had stayed on one or other of his estates, all those he entertained regularly. But then it dawned on him that no one except his employees had made contact in the past few weeks. He kicked at the sofa in a drunken fury, as his father had when the bailiffs arrived to remove the family’s few possessions. Unlike his father, he had no woman on whom to take out his frustrations. At least his mother had always been there, even if it was only as a punch-bag.

  His mother had scrimped and saved for him to stay at school for extra tuition, and it was she who had told him there was a way out. She always said, ‘Get your maths, Billy. You got to have maths.’ Why she had this fixation with maths he never discovered, but his high grade in that subject netted him a scholarship to Liverpool University. Sadly, she had not lived to see this and his father’s advice was that he should go out and work, rather than ‘loll around at university with a load of ponces’. Billy had rolled up his sleeves and punched his father – so hard that he sent him sprawling into the fireplace – and walked out. He never saw his father alive again.

  Fortified now by anti-depressants and sleeping-tablets, William remained closeted in his bedroom where his past became his focus. There had been around forty mourners at his father’s funeral from the bars and clubs at which he had virtually lived. They all told funny anecdotes about him, what a character he had been, what bad luck he’d always had in his business ventures, how near he had been to doing well, and how many times he had tried to earn a decent living. Hidden among various drawers at home, William had found the remnants of his father’s so-called ‘business ventures’. Most were unpaid bills, but astonishingly he found a life assurance policy worth four thousand pounds. William sold the family house and made a further three thousand. Throughout his university life he hardly touched the money; his grant was sufficient to live on, and he was too scared to mention his nest-egg in case it was taken away. Not until he graduated, with a double first in mathematics and electronic studies, and moved to London, did he begin to utilize it.

  In 1968, seven thousand pounds was a lot of money. Today it would have been worth almost ten times as much. William began to study the Financial Times share index as meticulously as his father had studied the dogs and, still only twenty-three, he began to accumulate a small fortune. He invested it in a small factory to make a computer circuit board he’d worked on at university. In those days the most elementary computer filled a room, but William’s circuit board was set to change that. By the time he was twenty-eight he was a millionaire – not in the same league as Bill Gates, but rich none the less. By thirty he was one of the most eligible bachelors in Britain.

  But William wasn’t very interested in women. He preferred a brief fling, usually with one of his employees. It was easier, because all he really thought about was work. It had been Angela Nicholls, one of his secretaries, who had first encouraged him to attend social events, go to the theatre or the opera. On her advice William bought an apartment in Knightsbridge and joined a golf club, a tennis club and a luncheon club, and soon had a wide circle of friends. Angela gave him a confidence in himself that he had previously lacked. She was an attractive girl from a good family, the sex was easy and comfortable, and William was fond of her. When Angela fell ill with glandular fever and was forced to take time off work, he was caring and considerate, sent flowers and paid for the best medical attention. He had imagined when she recovered that they would pick up where they had left off. But hadn’t reckoned on Harriet Forbes, the willowy blonde sent by the agency to fill in.

  William remembered Harriet clearly. Only twenty years old, she had an insatiable sex drive and represented all the girls he had lusted after when he was a teenager but was too shy to date. Harriet was the youth he had lost in making himself rich. He was quickly and foolishly besotted with her; Angela was forgotten. He was surprised to discover how well connected and wealthy Harriet’s family was. One evening, as they strolled home arm in arm, they stumbled upon Angela. Harriet made some stinging remark about how plain she was, and Angela ran up the street in tears. William did not follow her. He was too intoxicated by Harriet. Too intoxicated to see his relationship with Harriet for what it really was.

  One day Harriet arrived at William’s apartment with an ast
onishing collection of ballgowns from some of the most exclusive boutiques in London. ‘For the Berkeley Square Ball tonight,’ she gasped, tugging at a zip.

  ‘But you know I’ve got dinner with the Japanese.’

  She looked up at him with amazement. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! I couldn’t take you with me – it’s a society do.’

  So he was good enough to fuck and pay for endless champagne, meals and clothes, but even with all his millions he was not good enough for her precious aristocrats! ‘I don’t want to go to some tin-pot ball with a load of overdressed slags cavorting round with a bunch of chinless twats anyway,’ he snapped petulantly.

  Harriet laughed, picked up her purchases and made for the door. ‘You obviously do or you wouldn’t be getting so uptight,’ she said, over her shoulder. Then she flounced out, banging the door behind her.

  He remembered how he had smarted with anger, and then how he had told himself that it was time he straightened out and got back to work. For the first time in months, he called Angela, but was told she had gone to Yorkshire to stay with her family. A month later he saw her at the opera, a few seats in front of him. He was alone, and during the interval asked if she would have a glass of champagne with him. She introduced him to her party of friends, one of whom was Margaret Pettigrew. That evening they all dined together: he was attentive to Angela, but intrigued by Margaret. As he helped Margaret into a taxi she slipped him her phone number.

  Two months later William and Margaret were married. William paid for the wedding, an elaborate affair that made all the society columns, even ‘Jennifer’s Diary’. Margaret’s family, it turned out, owned a stately home and acres of Hertfordshire, but didn’t have two pennies to rub together, so it was an advantageous union on both sides. The Pettigrews needed the money; William desired the social status. Again Angela was dismissed from his thoughts. In a moment of madness, William invited Harriet to the wedding, thinking she would never come, but she did, in an overlarge hat and tiny dress in skin-pink. She strode up to him, kissed him on the lips, and whispered, ‘She looks like a fucking horse!’