The Loving Husband

by Christobel Kent

  Not alone and thinking about a woman who climbed out of a taxi in front of her house in high-heeled shoes, a woman who disappeared one night and never came back. Jilly-Ann Martin. Where had she gone? Was she here somewhere, still, was there evidence of her? As she lay in the dark with Ben’s soft regular breath in her ear she saw again, or dreamed, DS Doug Gerard bending over a frosted furrow. He straightened up with his policeman’s pen held out, a pair of knotted tights, American tan, dangling from it and that expression as he turned his face towards her of amusement, or something like it. And in that half waking, half imagining state the figure on the field’s edge was John Martin, standing among the poplars, the keys to a house that had once been his, jingling in his pocket.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Saturday

  On the back doorstep Karen held the flowers out to her stiffly, Harry in her other hand in the cold yard.

  She’d come to sit with Emme, so Fran could go to the police station.

  ‘It’s no problem,’ Karen had said gently when Fran rang her, and down the line Fran could hear the hush in her tidy bungalow. ‘I can stay as long as you like. Harry’s got football this afternoon and she can come and watch.’ A normal Saturday afternoon, kids on the sidelines in the frost. She had agreed, overwhelmed with gratitude.

  Now Fran stared down at the cellophaned bunch, confused. ‘They were on the step,’ said Karen, peering past her into the kitchen. ‘All right if we come in?’

  Roses. Cheap, already limp. Emme darted over and took them.

  They were waiting for her outside the police station, a reception committee, and the first thing she did was to thrust the dripping bunch into Gerard’s hands. ‘I want them analysed,’ she said, red-faced, stiff, and taken by surprise he laughed. ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘And that box of chocolates. Someone’s doing this.’ Impassive, he handed the wet cellophane to Carswell.

  Ali Compton was the first one to step forward, taking hold of the baby seat, flashing a look at Gerard. ‘You don’t need to worry about this meeting, Fran,’ she said, ‘just keeping you up to date.’ She had shadows under her eyes.

  Surrendering Ben, she unslung a bag from her shoulder, she’d packed it before they left. A change of clothes, rattle, nappies.

  ‘I can be in there with you too again, if you like,’ said Ali, taking the bag in her spare hand. ‘I just thought you might like … the concentration. The headspace, you know.’

  She looked so weighed down now, like the plastic horse that flings stuff off if you pile on one thing too many. Fran realised that must be how she looked. Buckaroo.

  ‘No need to worry, like Ali says.’ Gerard’s hand was on her shoulder and she stiffened. Coming from him, it didn’t sound like reassurance. ‘We just need to go over a few things.’ He flicked a quick look at Ali, but not so quick she didn’t see the hostility in it.

  It was raw and cold and the wind blew steadily between the cars. Carswell had the collar on a too-thin jacket turned up to his ears, his shoulders hunched, his face peaked and cold.

  ‘Maybe we should get on with it,’ she said, stepping out from under Gerard’s hand.

  The room wasn’t what she’d expected, not the one they’d been in before. Two steps inside and she stopped, looking, the men coming to a halt behind her. It was painted cream, with a floral border at waist height, a coffee table with tissues, some low, padded seating. Maybe this time they wanted to soften her up.

  She’d woken early, from a dream where everything was bathed in a golden light and she’d been listening to a man in a shower, she could see his outline through a glass door, she knew who he was but the name wouldn’t come to her. The light she woke to had been thin and grey, and the room had been cold. When she went downstairs the boiler had showed a red light.

  ‘A couple of things, then,’ said Gerard, one arm up on the back of the low seating, at ease. Carswell sat with his knees apart and his elbows on them, still jiggling, like a schoolboy footballer. His notebook was on the table. She set her mobile down beside it.

  She’d knelt to explain to Emme, gazing into her face. ‘I’ve got to go and talk to the … policemen. About Daddy’s accident.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to Karen’s house,’ she said.

  ‘Karen is going to bring Harry over,’ she said quickly. ‘I know it’s not much fun to stay inside but…’ She stopped, remembering Emme’s Saturdays with Nathan. ‘And we’ll talk about what happens next week. About school.’

  ‘I’ll be OK, Mummy,’ she said, pale. ‘Daddy never came with me to school, did he?’

  Fran had knelt beside her. ‘It’s all right if it hurts, Emme. It’s all right to want to be at home with me and Ben.’

  Emme shook her head stiffly. ‘He won’t come back, will he?’ she said, frowning.

  ‘Who?’ said Fran, her breath constricted.

  ‘Daddy won’t come back.’ Emme’s small face was pinched and serious. ‘He was mean to you sometimes,’ she said, and Fran sat back, shaking her head.

  ‘No, he—’ she began, but Emme stared into her face as if it was a blinking contest.

  ‘He was,’ she said, her lips pressed firmly together. ‘You never had a go in the car, it was always Daddy.’ And she tugged. ‘I want to go now, Mummy.’

  Karen had had the number of a plumber on her phone. Perhaps something about Fran’s frown as she entered it on hers prompted her to say, ‘You need me to have him too? The little one.’ With a crooked smile. ‘Wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘No,’ she’d said, ‘it’s OK. Save you for emergencies.’ Then it came out, in a rush, her back to the door so Harry and Emme wouldn’t hear, playing in the sitting room. ‘First it was chocolates, then flowers.’ She held the rest of it in, all the fear, the moments of darting panic.

  Karen shrugged. ‘It’ll be one of them from the playground,’ she said. ‘Sue, you ask me. Drop ’em round on the excuse for a nosy, like I said.’ She sniffed. ‘I’ll ask her if you want. Snotty cow.’

  On the way to the interview room they’d stopped beside a glazed partition down the corridor and Ali Compton had said, heaving Ben to one side, ‘I’ll be in there.’ A big room full of desks, half empty, three or four officers in uniform beside a water cooler at the far side. Fran caught her own reflection in the wide glazed panel: she didn’t properly recognise herself at first.

  ‘If he gets noisy I’ll be in the canteen,’ said Compton to Gerard, who just shrugged.

  ‘Before we get started,’ said Gerard, with a frown, ‘did you say your computer – laptop, right? – had gone in for repair? You husband took it in, you said. I assumed you meant that guy in the little unit by the railway station?’

  ‘That’s the place,’ said Fran. ‘Nathan had used him before.’ A man with long hair either side of a bald patch, and colourful shirts, operating out of a portakabin.

  ‘That’s right, he did know your husband,’ said Gerard. ‘I showed him the picture and he said he’d sold him a second-hand keyboard a while back.’ She wondered where this was going. ‘Only, he said he hadn’t been in with any laptop. He was quite definite about it.’

  ‘Really?’ said Fran, thinking that Jo and Carine had been right, saying he’d confiscated her laptop. No intention of giving it back. He wanted her isolated.

  ‘I don’t know what you … what that means. Is there somewhere else he might have taken it?’ Only then did it occur to her, with a prickle of apprehension, that Gerard might think it was her that had been lying. The laptop in a crusher somewhere.

  ‘That’s possible.’ Gerard hesitated, tapping his teeth with his pen. Eyeing her legs in the jeans hanging too low now. She pushed her body back into the sofa.

  ‘Why, if I might ask, didn’t you just take the computer in yourself? Or at least pick it up?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’ It sounded pathetic, if you didn’t know Nathan, the arch of his eyebrow, as if she was being stupid, that little snort under his breath, the sigh. ‘I could have. Nathan just … he was doing me
a favour. He said he’d take care of it.’ Gerard’s face was impassive.

  ‘I hope you find it. I can’t afford another one, not now.’ Carswell murmured something under his breath. ‘You said you had a good response to the press conference,’ said Fran. ‘It’s been four days.’

  ‘Ah well,’ said Gerard, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘No doubt there’s an explanation.’ Sighed. ‘Well. We’ve found out a number of things. First: we know where your husband was, the night he died. Where he went.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Did he own a briefcase, one of those nylon things? With some brand name on it?’

  He wasn’t answering her. ‘Briefcases. Yes,’ she said. ‘A couple at least. He used to get them when he went away on conferences.’ She thought she heard a sound from Carswell, but when she turned sharply he was just staring down between his knees at the carpet.

  ‘Where did he go?’ she said and Gerard flipped a hand up.

  ‘All in due course,’ he said. ‘A hard drive,’ he said, ‘is about this big,’ and he held his hands up, six inches apart. ‘We’re talking about a briefcase that could take one of those?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Easily.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Gerard, ‘the only prints on your husband’s computer are his, as far as we can see.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You didn’t see your husband leave, you didn’t see what he was wearing, or carrying.’

  ‘No,’ she said, her voice cracking. If she could go back. If she could change that.

  If she could change that, what? And then the thought of having Nathan back made her blink, made her sit up straight. What would she ask him? It made her feel afraid.

  But Gerard was leaning to one side, extracting something from a folder. ‘Before I forget,’ he said, ‘we found this, among his things.’ She took it. Nathan’s handwriting. A will is deposited with … The name of a solicitor’s firm, the address. She had thought, up to this point, that she didn’t know any solicitors, if she needed one, say. Now she knew one. Karen, it occurred to her, might know a better one.

  ‘Have you talked to the solicitor?’ she asked. ‘Do you know what’s in the will?’

  Gerard looked up. ‘I’ve had a word, yes. She’s assuming she’ll hear from you.’

  He was extracting something else from his folder. As he held it out to her she registered an inch of clean shirt cuff, broad, square hands. Capable: was that what he was? Strong. ‘This is the death certificate. You’ll need that too. Though probate … in cases like this. Murder, I mean. It’s not straightforward.’

  Numb, she nodded, staring down at the brown envelope. Was this a strategy? But the faces turned towards her just said, This is our job. We’re helping.

  ‘And the kids,’ said Carswell earnestly. His suit jacket was shiny at the elbows. ‘You got any back-up there? I mean, emergency, say we need to … call you in, like? Relatives? Because—’

  ‘No relatives,’ said Fran quickly. ‘Mine are all dead, his are—’

  ‘There’s the sister—’ Carswell was eager but Gerard cut him off.

  ‘We can talk about that later,’ he said and he leaned forward, looking into her face. He looked kind, suddenly, he looked soft, he looked as if he was worried about her. Her hands shook as she slid the papers into her bag.

  ‘There’s a couple of things we’re finding … problematic,’ said Gerard. ‘The response to the press conference has highlighted them. Your husband’s work is one: the office out there on the Sandpiper estate. Where he spent the evening of his death is another – and why he told you he was in the local pub when in fact he was here, in town.’

  ‘He was here? In Oakenham?’

  ‘The fact that there was practically nothing in that office.’ Gerard’s voice soft and sympathetic but not answering her question, spreading his hands as if at a loss. ‘The other business people with units on the estate,’ and Carswell shifted in his seat, Gerard went on quickly, ‘those we’ve been able to talk to, say that he’d come in now and again, just for a visit. Wandering around. That he’d come in the evenings sometimes and stand out the front smoking. Watching them come and go.’

  ‘Smoking?’ Fran shook her head. ‘He didn’t…’ but she supposed she had smelt it on him. Now and again, she’d thought, the pub. Except people didn’t smoke in pubs any more.

  ‘Are you saying…’ She felt hunched on the low seating, the rough textile upholstery struck her as something out of an old people’s home, or a funeral service, it was horrible. She made herself speak calmly. ‘Are you saying he was … I don’t know. Depressed? One of those men who’s lost his job but he leaves the house every morning with his suit and his briefcase?’ Gerard grimaced, but he said nothing. ‘That he pretended he was going to the pub but he didn’t?’

  ‘Oh, there was a pub that he did go to,’ Carswell said, cheerful, and Gerard shot him a warning look.

  ‘He was obviously concealing quite a lot from you, by the sound of it,’ he said, gentle. ‘You don’t need to feel ashamed about that. Plenty of men do it.’

  ‘“Ashamed”?’

  ‘Did he have affairs, too? Was yours an open relationship?’ She stared at him, but his voice was still gentle, still concerned. His eyes almost seemed full of pain, on her behalf.

  ‘I wasn’t having an affair,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘I haven’t ever had an affair.’ Beside Gerard, Carswell jiggled, rubbing his palms together. ‘Why do you keep saying that? I…’ Confess, confess, a little drumbeat in her head. ‘Something happened at an office party, years ago. As far as I know Nathan never knew about it, I never saw the man again.’

  High in the corner of the room the little eye of the camera gleamed down at her and she looked at the carpet, guilty.

  ‘I did think…’ Fran swallowed. ‘It was crazy, because how would he even know how to find me, I…’ I covered my tracks, she thought, but that made her sound guilty too. ‘I wondered, just, you know, crazy thinking, if it was that guy, if he’d come after me, if he’d – Nathan – I mean, you hear about men stalking women,’ and she flushed. ‘Not that I’m all that, but you know,’ and it was as though her tongue was thick in her mouth, she wished for Ali Compton. ‘That’s not what it’s about, is it? Stalking?’ The two men were looking at her patiently, without understanding.

  She swallowed. ‘Anyway, I saw a friend in London yesterday and she said he’d gone to work abroad, months back, almost a year ago. The guy from the office party.’

  ‘You went to London looking for him?’ Gerard leaned back, regarding her.

  She froze, in the presence of enemies. ‘I wanted to be sure it wasn’t him. That was one reason I went. I wanted to be sure … I didn’t know anything about him,’ she said, faltering. ‘Not until yesterday.’

  ‘OK.’ Gerard nodded, reasonable, leaning forward. ‘Your husband, though? Affairs.’

  Answer the question. She made herself breathe, order her thoughts. ‘No,’ she said, only what Jo had said drummed in her head, Nathan exchanging cigarettes with a man on the Heath, under the eye of passing cars. She realised she was conflating what they had told her with Jo’s story, cigarettes and sex. ‘At least, I never would have thought so. Not that I ever suspected, or saw evidence – but he was away a lot. Conferences.’ She looked into the policeman’s broad, impassive face. ‘Where was he spending those evenings?’ she asked, quietly.

  Carswell and Gerard exchanged glances. ‘There’s a pub,’ said Gerard. ‘The Angel in the Fields, in a backstreet by the river.’ He sighed. ‘They call it the Angel.’

  ‘Them in the know,’ said Carswell.

  ‘In the know?’

  ‘Drag nights Fridays, but otherwise you wouldn’t really know, to look at it,’ said Gerard, earnest, open-minded, a man who’d been on gender awareness courses. ‘I mean it’s possible that you might not know, it looks like a cosy little place, old-fashioned almost. Of course, there are the zumba classes, the salsa night, the drag night.’ A pause. ‘The lock-ins.’

 
; ‘Sounds livelier than the Queen’s,’ said Fran, but it sounded hollow, unfunny.

  Gerard went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘One visit, maybe by mistake, that’s one thing, but it looks like your husband was a regular.’

  ‘It’s a gay pub,’ said Fran, and she saw their eyebrows raised, in unison.

  ‘You’re not surprised by that,’ said Gerard. Beside him Carswell had taken up his notebook again.

  ‘My friend, Jo, the woman I went to see yesterday. She said she saw Nathan at a place … a place where … a gay meeting place. On the Heath.’ She could say it, she found, without any feeling at all. ‘She thought he was gay.’ Carswell’s writing was laborious, his nails grubby.

  ‘That’s Hampstead Heath,’ she said, and something glinted in the look he gave her, before he bent back over the notebook.

  ‘And do you think he could have been gay?’ asked Gerard.

  ‘Of course, you’ve spoken to her, haven’t you?’ she said, keeping her voice level. ‘Jo Sinclair. She told you about the … what you keep calling the affair.’

  ‘Miss Sinclair. Yes, I spoke to Miss Sinclair. She didn’t tell us anything about your … anything of that nature. In fact, I did wonder if she was withholding information from us.’

  ‘Perhaps she thought it wasn’t relevant. Perhaps she thought it was my business. Private.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with violent death. Privacy goes out the window when people are murdered.’ She said nothing. ‘She didn’t like him much, though, did she?’ said Gerard mildly. ‘Your husband.’

  Fran just shook her head, mutinous. ‘We – she and I – were very close before I … got married. He … maybe she thought he took me away from her. I don’t know. No, she didn’t like him.’

  Non-committal, Gerard nodded, but he nudged Carswell back to his notebook. He’d been staring.