by John Burke
“You can make regular visits here,” I said. “And hand over the instalment for my services. Give you an extra frisson.”
She smiled thinly. “If it were about that sort of thing, shouldn’t you be paying me?”
“That would muck up the whole plan. Anyway, better for you to regard me as a gigolo than for me to regard you as…well….”
“Do stop talking rubbish.”
We did stop talking for a while. She had got her way, so I could have mine.
I then told her that Nina Whiteley would like to meet her again. And suggested that we should both go along. Gemma, very cool and offhanded, said she would prefer to handle it on her own.
“Look,” I said, “this isn’t just girl-to-girl chat, you know. Not with Nina Whiteley. She’s tough. A real butch lady at heart. Not safe to tangle with her unless you’ve got good back-up.”
“I’ll tell you later how it goes,” she said with dismissive firmness.
We made love again. Or, rather, I made love and Gemma let me. But, again surprisingly, when we parted she kissed me more fervently than usual—yet with a bit of an effort, I sensed—and said: “You’re really not bad, David.”
Not bad…at what, specifically?
* * * *
Crispin was complacent rather than grateful when I called him to announce that I had found a buyer for his Dummy Run. He has always assumed the attitude of a strong, silent man of action. “About time, too. Glad they’ve come to their senses at last.” His tone of voice was the equivalent of a condescending pat on the shoulder. One of his NCOs had at last come up to scratch.
I imagined him being just as taciturn and doing things according to a strict discipline when making love to his wife. That might go some way to explaining Gemma’s own unyielding face and voice even when her body was at its most yielding. Lie to attention…at ease…wipe that smirk off your face….
Not that I very often let myself think of the two of them together. It wasn’t a picture I enjoyed.
Would you be very jealous?
The next time we were together I deliberately made her whimper. She had spent a lot of time in the bathroom before coming to bed, and her face looked set and almost hostile. She stared up at me with something I could almost have interpreted as revulsion. So I made it a bit rough, until she uttered that little moan of protest.
Having got her way over the deal to save Crispin’s pride, was she going off me?
I said: “How did you get on with Nina?”
“She’s delightful. A truly strong character. Beautiful.”
It wasn’t a word I would have used myself. Striking, yes. Strong, when it suited her, indeed. But beautiful?
“Well, it’s all settled now, anyway.” I said. “You don’t need to get too involved. From now on you can leave it all to me.”
“Oh, but we’re having dinner together next week. We’ve got so much in common.”
“I’d never have thought so.”
“You could say she regards me as part of the package.”
“Look, are you trying to cut me out?”
“You’ll continue to get your usual percentage.” It came out as a cool, matter-of-fact insult. “Your usual cut.”
I tried to keep things going my way. “Speaking of which….” My fingers strayed over her in the familiar preliminaries. “Time for some more of my perks.”
She flinched. “Don’t you think this is getting a bit of a routine? A bit repetitive?”
It wasn’t good enough. Not after all the trouble I had gone through on her husband’s behalf. She gritted her teeth—I actually heard her do just that—as I mounted her; and when I lay back she said: “So that’s what rape is like.”
“Rape? For Christ’s sake, Gemma, what’s wrong?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, I think I’m beginning to understand. You let me shaft you when you wanted me to do something for bloody Crispin. Now it’s fixed, and I’m superfluous. Back to the joys of the marital bed? Back to normal?”
“It was never normal. Nothing like the real thing.”
“The real thing? Like what the two of us have just…?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said again, infuriatingly.
We parted very coolly. Early next evening, despising myself, I couldn’t restrain myself from picking up the phone to ring her. Then at the last minute I put it down again.
Ten minutes later it rang. It was Crispin, inviting me round for a drink.
“We’ve just been talking about you. Gemma thinks we ought to have a little celebration. Tell you what, come round right now. Just for drinks.”
The invitation sounded stiff and oddly uninviting. Maybe Gemma’s suggestion hadn’t appealed to him at such short notice. I tried to argue, but at once he got into forceful mood and sounded downright angry at any idea of my not doing as I was told. He might not really have wanted to offer one of the lower ranks a drink, but now that the offer had been made he expected it to be regarded as an order.
I rang for a taxi. If we were going to knock back toasts to the revivified career of Crispin Brooke, I wasn’t going to risk taking my own car and driving back awash with celebratory booze.
* * * *
When I arrived, my discretion proved justified. Crispin immediately poured a large Scotch and stared at me as if to see whether I was man enough to knock it back. I had seen him in many moods--swaggering he-man, charismatic author at a signing session, and resentful, neglected author—but never in quite this tautly aggressive mood. If this was going to be a celebration, its atmosphere was no jollier than some of our dismal sessions discussing his falling sales.
Gemma swept in and kissed me more effusively than she had ever done before in her husband’s presence or, for that matter, when we were alone together. “Darling David,” she gushed. “The miracle worker!”
She sat down, crossed her exquisite legs, and went on looking roguishly at me—yes, roguishly—while Crispin without a word poured her a vodka and tonic.
There was a silence.
Gemma broke it. “Crispin, do tell David about your idea for your next book.”
My heart sank. It would surely sound drearily the same as the theme of the last two. But for a moment he seemed to relax, and threw out a few vague ideas. Doubts and gloom had been banished. His present novel had been accepted and would come out later in the year, so what was there to worry about?
Yet he remained prickly and resentful about something.
I wondered how much more money Gemma was prepared to invest in their life together.
“A pity,” she said out of the blue, “that you’ve never tackled a straightforward murder mystery. There’s a market for them, isn’t there, David?”
“If you’ve got the knack, yes.”
“Not my scene,” said Crispin dourly. “Too much contrivance.”
Gemma wasn’t looking at either of us but contemplating something far away. “Isn’t that the point? Working out a problem just for the fun of it. Dreaming up twists and turns, and then surprising everybody with a clear-cut logical ending. Aren’t you even tempted?”
“Maybe you ought to try one yourself,” I suggested.
Now at last she glanced at me, with that same sudden gleam as when I had joked about Crispin killing her. “Maybe.” It was an echo of that whisper: Kill me…kill….
And Crispin was glaring. Alert to any threat of competition as a writer? Or as something else?
Standing awkwardly in the middle of his own Persian rug, he emitted a bluff, would-be no-nonsense laugh. As if to show who was in charge here, he leaned down to kiss Gemma just as extravagantly as she had kissed me. Only I was sure his mouth didn’t open. He kept his lips hard, compressed, assaulting. I saw her shiver.
“This last week”—he raised his mouth and spoke to me over her head—“I’ve hardly seen Gemma.”
“Been out buying bottles of bubbly?” I suggested feebly.
Gemma got up and, although the roo
m was not particularly warm, opened a window which, I vaguely recalled, faced out across a passage between this house and the one next door, Then, not leaving the honours to her husband, she reached for the whisky bottle and insisted on refilling my glass. She took her time, leaning over me so that her left breast rested against my cheek.
Crispin glared at me. “You’re not really interested in my next book, are you?”
“Well, old lad, until you’ve come up with a few pages—”
“It’s not me you’ve been interested in for a long time, is it? Not me or my work. It’s my wife you’re after.”
“Crispin, what the hell’s got into you?”
“It’s you. That’s what. You getting into my wife. Every bloody day of the week. D’you think I’m blind and deaf and bloody stupid?”
I’d only been with her a couple of hours that one day in that one week, If she’d been away from home more than that, it wasn’t with me. But protesting that it had certainly not been every day of the week would hardly have been a sensible defence. While I shook my head, playing for time, Gemma sat down again and looked coolly from one to the other of us as if to guess who might risk the first blow and who would qualify to carry off the prize.
I took it slow and dignified. “I do think you’d find it more fruitful to keep your lively imagination for your writing, Crispin.”
“And don’t patronize me, Milburn.” My Christian name had been ditched and his voice was rising to a parade-ground bellow. “You’ve done damn-all to promote my books until even you could hardly fail to sell this last one. And all the time you’ve been having it off with my wife. Sniggering behind my back.”
“Where’d you get all these crazy notions?”
“From the way she looks, and the things she’s told me.”
“Told you?”
Still Gemma wasn’t saying a word. Might almost not have been in the room with us. Yet she was the most important person in that room, round which everything was revolving. Had they already had a big scene before I arrived? Was she planning to leave him? To come to me?
I put my glass down. “I’m not going to listen to any more of this.”
“You’ll listen to just as much as I choose to say to you.”
Now I was the one who was shouting. “And who d’you think you are, insulting me without the—”
“How could anyone insult anyone as two-timing as you?”
I got up. “I’ve had enough of this.”
“You’re not leaving here until we’ve—”
“I shall leave here when it suits me. And it suits me right now. So just get out of my way, or else—”
“Or else what?”
He stood there, swaying from side to side. And we went on swapping ridiculous insults and accusations, standing in the middle of the room and making a racket like football hooligans. Enough, you’d have thought, to get the neighbours phoning or coming round and ringing the doorbell to complain.
I risked a glance at Gemma, hoping for a hint of some kind, wondering how much she had really told him, or if that had just been a wild stab of his.
Her smile was distant, almost contemptuous—contemptuous, I thought, of both of us. Sitting there so silently, just letting it happen.
I said: “I’m going to ring for a taxi.”
“Not from my phone, you’re not. You can start walking. But only when I’ve finished with you.”
His threatening sway from side to side became erratic. He lurched forward, put out a hand, but could find nothing to grasp except my arm. I tried to steer him towards an armchair. He recovered for a few seconds, long enough to bellow a string of obscenities at me before collapsing into the chair.
In an undertone, hoping not to start him off ranting again, I muttered to Gemma: “Look, how much did he have to drink before I got here?”
She seemed to wake up at last, and motioned me to follow her out into the hall.
“I do think you’d better go home and leave this to me.”
“But just what have you been telling him? What started all this?”
“Let him sleep it off. I can cope.”
“If you’d ring for a taxi for me, then. Don’t want him to wake up and start another battle over his precious phone.”
“I’ll drive you back.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I think it’s a very sensible idea.” She had been so silent, and now was so decisive. “Come on, David, I do know what I’m doing.”
She closed the front door very quietly, walked briskly but soundlessly down the short path to the gate, and then even more briskly along the pavement to the corner of the street. I had to hurry to catch up with her, “Don’t you keep your car in the garage?”
“There was somebody blocking the way when I got home today. Had to park it round the corner.”
When we were in her Mégane I said: “You were talking about when you got home—home from where?”
“Shopping, of course. I do have to do some real shopping sometimes, you know. Not just as a cover-up.”
She pretended to concentrate on the road, although there was little traffic and it was no more than a ten-minute drive to the block where I lived. We stopped a hundred yards from the entrance. That was unremarkable: we had always been careful to cover our tracks. Maybe we wouldn’t need to from now on.
I said: “Are you planning to leave Crispin?”
“We’ll talk about that some other time.”
I put my hand on her arm. It tensed; and then she made too obvious an effort to relax. “Are you coming in?” I asked. “We can talk about things then. About everything.”
“The state he’s in, I’d better get back.”
“The state he’s in,” I said, “you don’t know what he’ll do.”
“Oh, I think I know him well enough. Leave it to me, David.”
She kissed me quickly and meaninglessly.
“Tomorrow?” I said. “I can take the afternoon off. Sort things out,”
“Tomorrow,” she said, “maybe things will sort themselves out.” And as I got out of the car, she said with unexpected intensity: “Thanks, David. Thanks so much for everything.”
* * * *
So here I am in a police cell, refused bail. My solicitor has just left, and obviously doesn’t believe a word I’ve told him, any more than the police do.
Their first assault had left me winded, incredulous. I didn’t feel that I could really be in my own office, on an ordinary day, listening to something far more crazy than anything some of my clients offered as storylines.
“But hold on a minute,” I was protesting. “She was there with us last evening. Having a drink. The three of us.” And when that stony face yielded no response, I demanded: “Look, how did Crispin die? Fall over blind drunk, or something? Alcoholic poisoning?”
“Not alcoholic,” said the inspector. He cleared his throat and said very formally: “Do you think we might come and have a look round your flat, Mr. Milburn? In your presence, naturally.”
“What on earth for?” I groped through memories of so many detective stories for the right procedure. “Anyway, have you got a warrant?”
“If we have to get one, we shall get one. In the meantime, have you any reason to be worried about what we might find?”
I had no reason at all to be worried; but that didn’t stop me being worried. There was something very threatening in the atmosphere.
And they soon gave me reason to worry. Once they had driven me home the two of them prowled from room to room with a hideous determination to find something where there could not possibly be anything to find.
“Look after things yourself, Mr. Milburn?” asked Emerson.
“I have a cleaner in twice a week.”
“Yes. All very tidy Systematic. Do your own cooking?”
“When I’m not taking clients or publishers out,” I said as loftily as possible, “or being taken out.”
“A very agreeable arrangement, s
ir.”
They peered about in the kitchenette, sifting my spice pots and condiments and jars of this, that and the other to and fro. It took a further fifteen minutes of trawling before the detective constable called from the bathroom to show the little phial tucked under the ball-cock of the lavatory system.
“Not alcoholic,” the inspector said again. “A different kind of poison. Far quicker.”
It was grotesque. “D’you seriously think I’d be clumsy enough to hide something, whatever it is, in such an obvious place? If I’d had anything to hide, that is.”
“In a hurry, last night? Going to tidy up when you’d got your breath back?”
“Last night.” I drew a deep breath and tried to keep my voice steady. “If you ask Mrs. Brooke about last night, she’s got to admit she was muddled. The shock of it, all right. Must have thrown her. She’s simply got to confirm that we were there together, and she drove me home, and—”
“No, Mr. Milburn. Mrs. Brooke was away. She had gone to stay with a publishing friend. She was apparently scared of the hostility between her husband and yourself, and when she heard you were coming round she didn’t want to be there.”
“A publishing friend?”
“A Miss Nina Whiteley. She went there for protection.”
A terrible, incredible suspicion was dawning. I thought of Gemma paying her usual quick visit to the bathroom that last time she was here. Thought of her strange silences and that recent conspiratorial expression of hers.
“Look,” I said. “Exactly how did Crispin die?”
“Cyanide poisoning. And you wouldn’t know that, Mr. Milburn? Even though there were only two glasses in the room, one of them with traces of cyanide. And both with fingerprints on which may just possibly turn out to be yours, Mr. Milburn.”
“And once we’ve had the stuff in this bottle analysed….” His constable let the words hang in the air.
“I think we’ll continue this down at the station,” said his inspector. And he began to recite the rigmarole I already knew off by heart, thanks to those client authors who went boringly through it every few chapters: ‘“but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court….”
