The Loving Husband

by Christobel Kent

  ‘What doesn’t add up?’ said Fran, quickly.

  ‘Time of death,’ Ali said, unhesitating. ‘For example. By the time we got to your husband – by the time you got to him – you said he was cold? Very cold?’ Fran nodded. ‘The pathology report points to him having already been dead some time. Hours.’ Ali examined her. ‘Could you have been wrong? About him coming in at midnight?’ and when she didn’t answer Ali leaned in, even closer.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t say this.’ Her pale blue eyes looked into Fran’s, her mouth turned down, troubled. ‘Your knife or not, I don’t think you had anything to do with your husband’s death. All right? That’s my instinct. That doesn’t mean I think you’re telling me everything about your marriage, either, though.’

  Fran couldn’t look away. My marriage, she thought. That secret thing. ‘That might be because there’s stuff you don’t know about it yourself,’ continued Ali and then Fran pushed back, hands against the edge of the table. ‘Or maybe there are details that never seemed important, where he got to, who he spoke to. His work, his friends here, all that.’

  ‘I … I just … It wasn’t always like this,’ Fran said, and how lame it sounded. ‘We did use to do stuff together, till the, till the kids…’

  ‘But they came along almost straight away,’ said Ali softly. ‘And then you were … then there was no going back. Was that how it felt?’

  Fran blinked, unable to say it. But Ali went on, as if she knew anyway. ‘And then you came out here. He brought you out here.’

  A silence.

  ‘He grew up here,’ said Fran, defensive. ‘He told me about that. What that was like.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Just, just … hanging out. His last summer here, with his friends. They all shacked up in some squat, some farmhouse, he talked about it like it was paradise, only…’ She paused, because it didn’t ring true any more, in this landscape, the frozen plain, the poky cottage where he’d grown up. How much, in fact, had he told her?

  And as if she could read her mind Ali said, ‘Where was it exactly? The squat. When would this have been?’

  And all Fran could do was shake her head. ‘His father might know more,’ she began, quailing at the thought, at the memory of something his father had said, the word reckless, then, ‘Rob. Rob can tell you. His friend Rob.’

  ‘Yes, yes. He’s been in touch, Doug said. DS Gerard said.’ Frowning, she went quiet. ‘But you,’ she said, at last. ‘What about your friends? Where you worked? What did they think about you and Nathan, about you coming out here?’ A pause. ‘Do they know what’s happened?’

  Jo, thought Fran, Jo, and she held Ali’s gaze a moment, feeling something swell in her throat, threatening to choke her. ‘What happened at your briefing, this morning?’ she said, hoarse, stubborn. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be telling me that? What about suspects?’

  ‘It’s not even thirty-six hours,’ Ali began and as that hit home the future loomed, terrifying.

  ‘Have you got a single suspect apart from me?’ said Fran, standing up, wanting to shake something off, the fear, Ali’s dogged pursuit. ‘Because you’re right, I had nothing to do with my husband’s death, someone’s out there still, someone’s…’

  Then Fran sat back down, the shock of it, remembering it. Had she dreamed it? Had she dreamed that, too?

  ‘Last night,’ she said, wondering, feeling Ali’s eyes on her, ‘someone phoned the landline last night, about midnight.’ Zero zero thirteen, by the clock as she walked back into the bedroom, unbalanced in the dark. 00:13. Not a dream. ‘When I answered … he … they … hung up.’

  Ali was on her feet, and in the same moment there came the sound of a car pulling up on her gravel.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The trainers were old and pulverised, the sports bra too tight, but the feeling was the same. The sensation of things falling away, as Fran concentrated on the breathing. No babies, no house, no police. No Nathan.

  There was something in the air, sleet driving sideways.

  ‘You go,’ Ali had said, flicking a look at the two men. ‘You need some space.’

  How long did she have?

  Karen had said she would get Emme from school again. Turning to go back into the house she had flicked on the light switch and Fran had seen a row of framed photographs at all heights along the hall, family portraits. Karen had murmured down into Ben’s hair. ‘When he wants his mum back.’

  It was the police who would ask questions, if she stayed out too long. Ben would be fine, he’d be happy in Karen’s neat safe house.

  The knot inside Fran tightened, but she kept on running. She was out in the open now, on the flat. Up ahead was the row of poplars, then the remains of an ancient bus shelter.

  The grey sky seemed to flatten everything. It looked like there was nowhere to hide in a landscape like this but there were places. In a ditch, standing motionless behind the trunk of a poplar, around a corner, below the line of sight. She was in the trees now, leafless but thicker than they looked from the back of the house.

  Why are you out here? It was inside her head. What the hell do you think you’re doing out here? Out here where anyone – anyone – could see her. Leaving them there, inside her house. When she got back, they’d have gone where they wanted, opened every cupboard, every drawer.

  Ali had told them about the phone call straight away. Doug Gerard had looked flatly uninterested and she’d seen Ali harden. ‘I’ve said it before,’ he said. ‘We can find you accommodation, Fran. You and your kids. If you don’t feel safe here.’ And he’d crossed to the phone, dialled. Four digits, to find out who the last caller had been.

  ‘I did that already,’ Fran had said from the table. ‘It said, the caller withheld their number.’

  ‘Look,’ he said patiently, ‘plenty of people do that, withhold the number, it doesn’t mean anything. It will have been a friend, just heard the news.’

  ‘After midnight?’

  ‘His sister? Perhaps she’d have miscalculated the time difference, if she’s in the Far East?’ Brushing it aside. ‘There’s something we need to go over again,’ he said. ‘One last time.’ The same question, drilling deeper into her head though, each time. ‘Look,’ Gerard said, ‘I want you to think. What would you say is the earliest it could have been, when your husband came in?’ He spoke softly.

  ‘Eleven thirty?’ she swallowed. ‘But I’m sure it was later.’

  ‘And you couldn’t have, say, dreamed it? Imagined it? You did say, you were sound asleep.’

  She began to shake her head then, knowing what was coming next. Cautious, she said, ‘I don’t know.’

  They were looking at her. ‘I don’t know,’ she said again. Then, at a desperate tangent, ‘I left the baby because I wanted to go for a run.’ To forestall it, whatever was coming next. ‘I left him, Ben. I need to get out. I think it’d help.’ But she didn’t move: there was a pitying look on Gerard’s face.

  And there was something in the sigh he let out then that told her, before he said it, and Fran felt herself go very still. ‘Only the results we’ve got so far indicate beyond doubt that your husband died some time between ten thirty and eleven, so around the time you were going to bed. Around the time,’ he paused meditatively, ‘that you said you heard a noise outside.’

  She felt heat prickle, up the back of her neck, across her forehead. Beyond doubt. ‘Right,’ she said, her voice strained. ‘Well I must, unless … I must have … I don’t know.’ Her throat closed up.

  ‘We’ll conduct a fingerprint search, anyway,’ said Gerard, his tone reassuring, gentle. ‘Of your bedroom. You know, to be sure.’

  She just nodded, dumbly. ‘I … I…’ Ali Compton was close to her suddenly, her hand was on Fran’s arm.

  ‘You go for your run,’ she said, quietly. ‘Clear your head. We’ll sort the fingerprinting for tomorrow, you won’t know we’ve been in there.’

  Ahead, the bus shelter was bigger than she’d thought, a brick
box with a dark doorway and something spray-painted on it. Her chest burning, as she ran Fran looked back through the trees, searching, and what she could see now was a tractor with long mechanical arms spread wide for sowing moving slowly, almost invisibly, across the far end of the field.

  Fran turned away so quickly, swerving for the other side of the road, looking for an opening in the poplars, that she almost tripped – there were deep ruts on that side of the road where someone had parked when the mud was soft, now frozen hard. The opening in the bus shelter was an empty black rectangle: no one there.

  She scanned the low hedge for an exit point: there. She could loop back. Thought she could. Keep going, her steps pounded, it was the only message she had. Keep on. The tractor turned, lumbering slowly, and she saw that the field was nearly sown. The sun was low in the sky now, almost to the top of the hedge.

  It had been Jo that had started her running. They’d go so slowly through the streets of red-brick houses and cherry trees, just talking, grumbling, gossiping. She thought of Jo’s face, defeated, in the café. What do you even know about him? You don’t know anything about him.

  The tractor was almost at the end of the row. She glanced up at the cab and saw that it was the man who’d come about the pigs, Dearborn, and he was lifting a hand, he was waving. Fran lifted her hand in response and in that moment she felt dizzy. She tried to think when she’d last eaten but all she could remember was that box of chocolates Gerard had put in Carswell’s hairy-knuckled hands. She was in the rutted lane between the hedges.

  The sound came after her, a roar magnified in the narrow space. She was slower, her legs like lead. The tractor must be gaining on her, she could sense the noise blocking the space behind her but she didn’t want to stop, she couldn’t afford to slow enough to turn and look back. And then the last shot of whatever her body had been holding in reserve kicked in, for just long enough, her legs found the rhythm.

  At the end of the lane Fran swerved out of the way, grabbing a post to steady herself and feeling the prickle of the hedge at her back, the sweat sticking her T-shirt to her ribs. The tractor was going more slowly than she’d thought: she’d had plenty of time all along. It was huge this close up, its thick clogged tyres taller than her. In a thundering rush it swung out past her, scattering clods of black earth, into the road. She leaned on the post, feeling the pounding of her heart, and then she saw the red lights blink on: no more than twenty yards past her, the tractor had stopped. She saw the man’s silhouette in the cab, his hat, she took a step back and something in the hedge dug into her painfully.

  He was climbing down.

  In the end it wasn’t until she got round the side of the house, past the empty police car and to the bins behind their screen in the yard that Fran stopped. The light was ebbing, it was almost dark: she estimated four o’clock. Four thirty. She set her back against the wall, leaning down with her hands on her knees, getting her breath back.

  He had walked slowly, lopsided with a dodgy hip or a bad leg. She just watched him come: she could out-run him if she had to. Dearborn.

  She straightened, feeling the sweat cool on her. ‘I heard,’ he said. ‘I heard what happened.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her throat felt clogged, she coughed.

  He took a step nearer. ‘You all right? With them kiddies.’ He began to shake his head, almost bewildered. ‘I never knew. Never knew it were him.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Your husband. Went to school with him, I did, well he were a good couple years younger and it were just the prim’ry but…’ His head was still shaking slowly, side to side. ‘Never recognised him, and then he … well, he called hisself something else in those days.’ For a second she froze, she thought, this is it … but he was still talking. ‘He were Alan Hall, them days,’ and she understood, she nodded with relief.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, remembering the registry office, Alan Nathan Hall. ‘He didn’t like it, he … well…’ and for some reason she felt that she needed to apologise, to explain. ‘People do that, don’t they, when they start again, new life, new town.’

  ‘Do they?’ said Dearborn slowly, pulling off a glove and rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a streak. ‘You staying put, then?’ Frowning. He looked around a moment as if trying to understand. ‘They got any ideas, who it was?’

  ‘I … they’re following things up.’

  ‘Pikeys,’ said Dearborn, but he didn’t seem convinced. ‘Or them foreigners. They’ll round someone up.’

  ‘I’m staying,’ she said, not knowing where it came from. ‘It’s … our place.’ And we’ve got nowhere else to go, but she didn’t say that, she could sense the offer already, on his lips.

  ‘I’ll talk to the wife,’ he said, on cue. ‘You’ll need something. For the kiddies, casserole, she does a casserole.’ She began to shake her head. ‘Dog,’ he said, and the thought cheered him, ‘That’s what you need.’ And he straightened, thinking. ‘I’ll look out for one for you. Lab’d be nice for the kiddies, not much of a guard dog but…’

  Nathan doesn’t like dogs, she thought. ‘That’s kind.’

  ‘I did wonder…’ Dearborn began, then broke off.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like the place,’ he said. ‘Just got that feeling. Old Martin … well.’

  John Martin, with his dyed hair. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Nothing. Places get a reputation, just kids scaring thesselves talking about ghosts and graves, all that. Men what end up on their own, he did let the place go. Is why you got the place so cheap, I suppose, silver lining for you, in’t it?’ She stared. ‘Nothing,’ he said, uneasy.

  ‘Silver lining, not really.’ But he was backing away from her now, turning in that lopsided way.

  ‘Dog,’ he said, pausing, ‘that’ll do it.’ And he was hurrying away.

  He swung himself up into the cab with a surprising strong-armed grace, she saw how his upper body compensated, and realised she was cross-checking against her memory, the silhouette in the field. Too top-heavy, too short, shoulders too broad. The tractor roared into life. She waited until he was round the bend before setting off again, fast this time, to clean it out of her, to shake it up. Ghost stories. Graves. Still moving fast she swerved in past the house, into the yard and down. Head down between her knees, thinking.

  Opposite her the tall plastic bins with their coloured lids – green, blue, black – were ranged against the wooden screen. You could tell when a fox had got into them but none had been overturned, nothing had been disturbed. So close to the house. With the knife in his hand, pushing it under the soil in the pot.

  Her head felt miraculously clear. The red lights on the radio alarm clock blinked at her from that darkness, two nights ago, crystallising into a shape. The first digit had been a zero. After midnight: it had been after midnight when he came in. After midnight.

  Fran closed her eyes: she was a blank, no children, no husband. This was easy. Don’t think about the implications: concentrate on the facts.

  She couldn’t prove it. She could have dreamed it all, or imagined it. But she was sure. Her cheeks were burning with the exertion and the cold felt good. From beyond the screen she heard footsteps, someone clearing his throat. Then voices but she stayed where she was, eyes closed, relaxed but listening.

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Gerard was saying. ‘Latest would be eleven, really.’

  ‘Why would she make it up?’ Ali Compton was insisting. Fran heard Gerard sigh.

  ‘You know the drill,’ he said. ‘And you know what we know, about her. This isn’t your straightforward happy family now, is it?’

  Compton snorted. ‘When are they ever, DS Gerard? I’d be more interested in what he’d been up to, wouldn’t you? I’d like a look at that Sandpiper place.’

  Fran heard him make a surly sound, and he said something she didn’t catch. Then, ‘I want to be back here in half an hour.’

  She heard a car door slam, the igniti
on fire, wheels beginning to reverse over the gravel. Her own car was sitting on the drive, no longer blocked in, she could climb in and drive. Half an hour, to escape. But there was Emme, there was Ben, they were hers, she was theirs, two days in a row she’d given them to Karen and she needed to get them back. She squinted at the sky to gauge the time: the sun was dipping again. Time to start again, dealing with it.

  Inside the house the landline began to ring.

  Fran straightened, her legs already starting to stiffen. She came out from behind the fence in a hurry but before she got to the door she could hear that the phone had stopped ringing. As she tried the door, registering that it was still unlocked, there was DC Ed Carswell standing by the phone she’d used to call the ambulance, with the smear of blood still on the wall beside his head.

  She saw him take her in, his eyes moving up and down, checking her out in the running gear, the tight leggings – and with her anger the world rearranged itself around her, it parted for her. She walked straight up to him and held out her hand for the phone. Carswell gave it to her.

  ‘Nice legs,’ he said, smiling. He didn’t bother to lower his voice. There was no one to hear, after all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gerard screeched up on the forecourt of one of the light industrial units of the Sandpiper estate, coming to a halt so suddenly Ali was thrown forward in the seat. He turned to look at her, lairy, hoping for her to have a go. ‘I’m too old, DS Gerard,’ she said, ‘to be impressed by a boy racer.’

  ‘You’re too old for all sorts of things,’ he said, and shouldered his door open. ‘Not my idea of a hot date, this.’

  Ali remembered the Sandpiper being built. It had been nothing more than a collection of ramshackle sheds and lock-ups for years, dodgy as you like but almost part of the landscape, tucked in the lee of a field and a lay-by. Then the land-grab craziness drifted out from Cambridge and it was all retail units and get rich quick, a mish-mash of cut-and-shut cowboys, storage and office units.