‘Going home now?’ Very casual.
‘Yes. Thank you for …’
‘You’re very welcome.’ They were, strangely, smilingly, well-mannered.
‘Again?’ he said uncertainly.
‘But of course, my pet. I hope so. Could you come and help me in the garden tomorrow evening? I could do with it, you know. It’s getting out of hand. You know it is.’
The look of pleasure was starlike, the nod this time so vigorous his hair stayed on end, although she had been allowed to comb it without protest.
‘By the front door, do you think?’
‘No. Wall.’
‘Whatever suits you best. Goodbye then.’
From immediately below Helen watched him, shinning to the top of the wall as agile as the cat on a good day. Up to the brink, he paused and waved, and only then was she reminded of where she had seen him before. After the wave of hand, he pointed to his chest, looking down at her smile, granting in his happiness a sudden accolade of trust.
‘Peter,’ he said, ‘is me.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘Hallo Clive, Sissy Malton here. Do you have a sec?’
‘Sissy! For you, all the time in the world.’ She still had that rich chuckle.
‘Good. I don’t actually need much of it, but I do need some. Hasn’t anyone told you I’ve been pursuing you for days? Blank negatives from your clerk – Mr Barrow’s out, Miss Malton – the world’s best travelled man, found anywhere from Knightsbridge to Snaresbrook with every Crown Court on the south-eastern circuit in between. How’s your learned leader Mr Carey?’
‘Lusting after you. I’ve told him you’re consumed with desire for his perfectly formed body.’
‘Don’t. I’ve forgotten all I ever knew about lust, and it would take more than Carey to make me remember. Quinn might, but Carey never.’
Clive did not believe it.
‘Do I take it from this you’ve only phoned to discuss the drudgery of the Cartwright case? I mean, is that really all? I thought you might be offering me alcohol. Or something.’ He smiled at his own hands, remembering how Sissy had been such a frightening lady.
‘Can be arranged, I suppose, but I was thinking you might like to haul your papers across here, or invite me to you. We’ve got to sort out which witnesses you want and we need. You know what Quinn’s like, swanning off to Hong Kong to earn more in three weeks than I could in a year, leaving me with all the spadework. Now he’s back, and nothing’s altered, three weeks to go before trial. Your nice instructing solicitor keeps badgering mine, who is absolutely cretinous, for a list of witnesses. You need to know who to warn, after all. I thought it would be quicker if we sorted it out between ourselves. Has Carey decided?’
‘Sort of. I suppose you’ll also want to pick my brains over recent developments?’
‘But of course. Are you coming over or not?’
He had never been able to resist Sissy’s will, her cut-glass voice, or her handsome size. Few could: most ran to her bidding with the same speed as himself, arriving in her chambers a few minutes later.
‘You bully,’ he greeted, grinning at the sight of her.
‘Handsome as ever,’ said Sissy, businesslike as ever. ‘Witnesses first, gossip later. The tea’s filthy.’
Junior counsel for the crown against Cartwright bent his greying head towards Sissy’s carefully preserved golden one across her large desk. The familiar Temple shuffle had begun outside. Junior counsel for the defence was brisk: the long list of witnesses was soon noted and decided with few surprises.
‘Why are you calling forensic stuff? No, don’t tell me, Carey’s idea, I can guess why. How do you think your man Jaskowski’s going to perform?’ Sissy sat back. Late motherhood, the expansion of an already large frame, early middle age and the slight fraying of her once immaculate edges, suited her well.
‘Oh, he’ll do fine. he knows his lines.’ An unconvincing confidence in his voice, guessing she was fishing. Barrow had loved Sissy once in the distant irresponsible days of pupillage when she could outdrink them all. He had once woken up in Sissy’s bed, long before marriage intervened for them both, and since she could still penetrate his caution if not quite overthrow it, that was all he was going to say about Jaskowski.
‘Why are you calling Bernard?’ he countered.
‘No secret there. I don’t mind telling you, but use your discretion about what you tell Carey.’ The sudden confidentiality was alarming: there would have to be a quid pro quo. Sissy never gave something for nothing unless she was slipping. Come to think of it, she did look tired.
‘Quinn wants to make some mileage with Bernard. That bloody man obviously gave our Eileen some encouragement, and if the jury see that, they might have some sympathy to spare. You know, poor widow, led along by rich lawyer, you can imagine the kind of thing.’
‘Bit far-fetched, isn’t it?’ Clive would certainly tell Carey.
‘Could be, I don’t know. Quinn’s sometimes too clever for his own good.’
‘And a bit hard on Bernard, if you see what I mean. The man might have flirted a bit, but he didn’t deserve to get his wife murdered.’
‘But my client is innocent,’ said Sissy with a wink.
‘Sissy, all your clients are innocent, unless you happen to be prosecuting: prisons are full of your innocent clients.’
‘OK. My client tells me she’s innocent, and that’s all I need to know. All Quinn knows is that she’s going to need all the help she can get. You haven’t met her yet, have you, but you’ll see what I mean: she’s hardly a cuddly woman, doesn’t exude warmth, especially not in my direction, and she hasn’t been to charm school either. In fact, it’s fair to say that what with her and her solicitor, who is a creep of the first order, I’ve been run off my feet, and I’ll be glad to see the back of this one. It’s so much easier when they’re approachable, and she isn’t.’
‘Sissy, you aren’t asking me to sympathise, surely?’
‘Yes, as it happens. And warning you to wait for fireworks. Quinn has a thing about Carey. He won’t pull his punches.’
‘You don’t need to tell me. The feeling’s mutual. I can’t guarantee the behaviour of either of them, but I still don’t see there’s much Quinn can do with this evidence.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Sissy, ‘but he’ll have to try, won’t he?’
‘And if you’re good, he’ll let you go out and buy his sandwiches. Or let you read a statement from time to time, so that the jury can see you exist.’ Quinn was renowned for ensuring that his juniors received no share of the limelight.
Silence fell. Sissy eyed Barrow from beneath her still long lashes and recognised a touch of the depression this damned case always inspired, feeling old despite the boisterous children at home. Perhaps she could give up being calculating for once, perhaps not.
‘Now, how about that drink I was supposed to suggest? El Vino’s?’
‘No. I’ll stumble across Carey.’
‘Somewhere else, then? Or are you expected at home?’
She made it sound like a challenge, subtly recognisable as such, politely put. Remember me? Look at me if you dare. And with equal understatement, he rose to it.
‘Anywhere you like, Sissy. Are you better at choosing wine than you used to be?’ Then, attempting to even the dangerous keel but not trying too hard, he added, ‘You can tell me about the children: how old are they now?’
Sissy’s handsome hips filled his vision as she bent to retrieve her bag. He caught a breath of far more expensive perfume than she ever used to wear. ‘I’m looking forward to hearing all about yours,’ she said sweetly. ‘And all the gossip. And yes. I’m far more discriminating than I used to be. About wine, I mean.’
Woken by another woman’s snoring and dreaming of women, Eileen did not know why she had thought of women so rarely until now. Women were the real enemy: she should never have bothered with punishing the men, killed all the women instead. Tossing asleep, half confident Edward would do as h
e was told. Something there was with that woman who gave her orders, the one who wanted Michael. Hunting for Michael she was, buying pretty things to please him: Eileen had known it as soon as she saw her that second time. Setting a trap for him: she had those kind of clothes, that shape, like his wife, but not fair in skin like that diseased thing, not so small, but even so, the same woman. Pretty enemy. Women it was who had ruined it for her all along. Edward will see to her. The legs or face, she had told him. Mark her at least. Edward was the only one she did not doubt, a good boy. Hurry, darling Edward: let me sleep better.
‘Women!’
‘What about women?’
Bailey found Ryan crashing the phone into its cradle, a modern phone not proof against such treatment or sufficiently satisfying an object to hurl across the room, no weight to it, no potential injury. He was forced to sit instead with his fists clenched, tongue hissing on words like a curse.
‘They’re bloody impossible, that’s what. Bloody impossible,’ and no, he did not want to explain it, but wanted to shout rather than cry, could manage neither. ‘Excuse me, sir, I’m going out for some air.’
‘Sit down.’ Bailey’s calming hand was on his shoulder, not restraining but not to be brushed aside. Ryan sat, the rage expelled all in one breath leaving him white and shaking.
‘You don’t have to tell me, but there’s just a possibility it might help. You’ve been like a bear with a sore head for weeks. You’re a first-rate copper, Ryan, finest kind. I can’t be seeing you miserable – even if I didn’t have so much time for you. Now what’s the matter?’
Confiding had no place in Ryan’s life: he would never analyse whatever pained him, he would pick himself up, run headlong at the next brick wall, fall with a wounded skull, recover after a fashion, look for another brick wall, and run at that. Hurting at the moment, smarting with worry, unable to take the lid off his emotions, incapable of keeping it on. Cherchez la femme, Bailey had decided, familiar with all the symptoms. The poor bastard’s in love. That makes two of us, and I doubt if he’ll confide in me any more than I could in him, but I wish I suffered from his lack of caution, and I’d like to help.
For once, Ryan was ready to look for help. As masters went, he was as contemptuous of Bailey’s idiosyncrasies and status as he would have been of any, par for the course, a mere habit of rank, and not inconsistent with the enormous respect and grudging affection he had come to bear for the man. Bailey did not claim credit for success; he let Ryan take it with the lion’s share of interesting enquiries, made him learn, never once told him to do what he himself was not prepared to do, and always thanked him. Ryan had taken more from this enquiry than any other in his career, and, whilst not admitting it, was as grateful as he could be, bearing in mind the sad state of his conscience, without which he might have stripped the bones of his not uncommon dilemma immediately, with the guvnor as audience, believing he would listen. As it was, he hesitated.
‘Problems at home, sir,’ he mumbled. ‘The wife says she’s leaving me.’
‘Why? Because of the other woman you’ve been seeing?’
‘How d’you know that?’ Rudely and abruptly said. He might as well have asked him to mind his own business, but that was not what Ryan wanted; he wanted Bailey to pry into his affairs although he was the last to be able to ask.
‘It didn’t take much to guess,’ Bailey was saying. ‘You come in one day as high as a kite, the next looking as if you’ve been hit by a bus. I know your duty states, and I have a rough idea from what you wear whether you’ve been home or not. Obviously not as often as your wife expects. The rest I can only guess from the fact you’ve been tearing yourself apart. How many kids do you’ have?’
‘Two.’
‘And that girl? Married?’
‘No.’
‘Decent girl? Forgive me, but I can’t see you getting yourself into such a state about someone who wasn’t.’
‘Sir, she’s marvellous, bloody marvellous: she’s a great kid. Shit, I can’t describe her, but she’s no side to her, none at all. She didn’t know, you see, about me being married, she wouldn’t have … she’s not that kind of girl. Now she does. Know, I mean. I had to tell her when the wife found out: she’s been crying for a week, it makes her thin … I can’t bear it, she’s been so good to me, says she loves me anyway. The wife stopped even thinking that a long time ago: it’s not like going home when I go home, no one comes near me; I may as well not have bothered.’
Scenes crowded into his mind and into his mouth, the worst week of his life, all because of that bloody anorak. He’d kept two, a nice division not entirely dictated by prudence, something more to do with fixing a barrier between the two lives to stop them touching, one coat to go home and go to work, another separate coat for seeing Annie, who would take it from him and hang it up as if its condition mattered. In the pockets of that coat would remain all the detritus which revealed her existence, silly cards with kisses added, tickets for a film, lately a packet of Durex and a lipstick from a spilt handbag, Access vouchers for places of which Mrs Ryan knew nothing, receipts for admittedly modest gifts, but still not gifts for Mrs Ryan. And, dummy he was, he had walked into his own house with all that incrimination on his person, and left the wrong coat for her to pick its pockets when she was looking for cash for the milkman who was never paid that day after all. On the way to work he had realised, knew what would happen, nothing he could do, what could he have done, telephoned home and said, ‘Whatever you do today, don’t look in that coat, you won’t like it and neither will l’? Half of him had been relieved. Only half: not enough for anyone to have called his carelessness Freudian. Although he knew the inevitable, he had still sped home as early as possible (Bailey was more than reasonable on the subject of hours) in the hope of forestalling it, aware as he stopped and started down the Lea Bridge Road that his appearance two nights in a row would be suspicious in itself even if she had not discovered any other cause. Any lingering hope was dispelled when he let himself into an empty house. ‘Gone out,’ announced a note in the kitchen. ‘Back later, in case you needed to know.’ On their neatly made bed in a room so devoid of frills it stood in stark contrast with all Annie’s glorious feminine clutter, lay all the evidence. She had even kept sweet-wrappings from the pockets, distinguished for their innocence, since sweets were not one of Annie’s vices. No bluffing this away as the Commissioner’s jacket.
By the time she came home, he was slightly drunk, not much, enough to turn a summit conference into a battlefield and the living-room into a scene of carnage long before he was consigned to sleep in it after every insult, especially those unfit or unjust for the flinging, had been exhausted.
After several nights on the grimy floors of friends who were not recommendations for divorce, Ryan cracked, told Annie the full particulars of his double life, and then his die was cast. Darling Annie, looking at the face of him which had aged a century in less than a week, had at least cried in his arms and refused to send him away even when he offered to go. Impossible then to make his wife the one statement for peace, namely that he would never see Annie again. Long term deceiver though he was, he could not adapt his conscience to that, could never fly in the face of forgiveness, and if only Mrs Ryan had known, was bound to stick with the one of them who offered it.
Now he camped with the beloved, uncomfortably, forced out early, leaving himself with a couple of hours to kill in lonely streets before presenting his harassed face at work. He accumulated six new shirts, underpants, socks, in as many days, and desperately wondered what he was going to do with his laundry as he sat in early morning cafés, drinking coffee he did not want and smoking cigarettes he did not like, suddenly aware of the fringes of life which coloured such places alongside him. A strange dawn breed sits in cafés at seven o’clock, men who breathed in a twilight zone, cleaned offices, swept roads, delivered papers, towels or petrol after a hidden fashion, leaving a world which only turned into colour after they had disappeared. Creepy monochrome me
n.
Ryan learned from rubbing their shoulders what it was like not to have a home, and saw a chasm before his feet, the vision only suppressed in Annie’s arms and alive in the red-rimmed eyes which faced Bailey. The question of his laundry, stuffed in his locker with increasing difficulty, to say nothing of the cost of buying a shirt a day, loomed large in his mind, symbol of all the other necessities. Today’s shirt was revolting, all he could find in the High Street at 9 a.m.; blue and red stripes, a foil for his blotched complexion. He had never been so tired.
‘Don’t seem to have anywhere to go, sir.’ Ryan straightened up stiffly to remove the impression of self-pity from his tone, aware it was there, ashamed of it, rubbing his forehead in the relief of the telling, almost tempted to make a bad joke of it, not expecting sympathy, hoping for a measure of understanding, preferably without judgements.
‘You look horrible,’ was Bailey’s contribution. ‘Seedy. You’re no good to man or beast in that condition. You’re a bloody fool who needs twelve hours’ sleep.’ He fished in his pocket. For an awful minute, Ryan thought he was going to offer him money like a beggar being given a tip to go away.
‘Here,’ the extended hand offered him keys, car keys and house keys, instead. ‘You know where my flat is? You’ve given me a lift once or twice.’ Ryan nodded. ‘Well, go there. Clean up, eat, whatever, but for God’s sake, go to sleep. Ten hours minimum before you can make a decision of any kind. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about it. Use the bedroom, then I won’t disturb you when I come back. Oh, and phone the women first, will you? In case they think you’ve opted to go under a train. Why they should bother is beyond me, but they will.’
‘No need, sir,’ Ryan mumbled. ‘They’re neither of them expecting me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sir.’
‘Go on then. There’s food in the fridge, and the washing-machine’s in the kitchen.’
The man was uncanny.
‘Thanks.’ Ryan felt the prospect of untroubled sleep make him buckle at the knees; but hesitated, aware he should confess and refuse.
A Question of Guilt Page 19
