Hilary Bonner

by Braven

  He forced himself to smile at her properly and gave her hand a reciprocal squeeze before taking his gently away and rising out of his seat. He forced himself also to make the kind of response he knew she was waiting for.

  “Never, darling,” he said. “Never. But it’s nothing, honestly. And I can’t talk to you now, anyway. I’m late already.” He glanced at his watch. “In fact, I’m going to be seriously late if I don’t go this instant.”

  Her puzzled look turned into simple anxiety then.

  “You give too much sometimes, Phil,” she said. “Nobody can work the sort of hours you do without something breaking. I mean, whatever time did you come in last night, for a start?”

  He turned away because he couldn’t bear to look her in the eye. Sarah was a heavy sleeper and she invariably went to bed well before midnight. She was a woman who needed her sleep and, after all, she was up every morning not long after six in order to be ready to get the children off to school and then to go to work herself. Sarah was a primary school teacher. Their joint incomes, although neither was that great alone, meant that they enjoyed a good lifestyle. They owned their own four-bedroomed house in Paignton. They each drove a car. They holidayed abroad. Earlier that year they had taken the girls to Disney World in Florida. They’d had a ball, too. Phil and Sarah still enjoyed each other’s company hugely. And that had been a big component in the success of their marriage so far. Phil, although he was disinclined to admit it at the nick or on the sports field, had always enjoyed being with the woman he married more than with anyone else in the world.

  It did not come naturally to him to deceive her. Thanks to Sarah’s sleeping habits he had been able to creep in at 3.30 that morning without disturbing her, and it was far from the first time that he had arrived home in the middle of the night that way. Indeed it was something of a habit. His was one of those sorts of jobs. It was not, however, his habit to arrive home in the middle of the night having climbed out of another woman’s bed.

  Already he felt consumed with guilt. A guilt made all the worse because, in spite of Sarah’s concern about his out-of-character behaviour, he was well aware that the last thing on her mind was the remotest suspicion that he may have been unfaithful to her. He had known he would be able to get away with it. He knew he would almost certainly be able to get away with it for some time to come, should he choose to follow that path. And that made things even worse, really. The kind of trust that there was between him and Sarah would take a lot of shaking. But he dreaded even the thought of what might happen to either of them if it was shaken.

  He reached for his car keys which, upon his eventual arrival home the previous night, he had deposited on the shelf above the fridge where he always kept them. Funny how the same habits of everyday life continue even when you are rocking the core of it to the very foundations, he reflected obliquely. Even the thought of that made him feel quite nauseous.

  He struggled to make his voice sound normal when he finally replied to her question. He didn’t think he could manage a specific lie, and thanked God that he would almost certainly not have to produce one. Sarah would not push the point. It wouldn’t occur to her that she had any reason to do so.

  “Not a clue,” he said, feeling like a complete rat. “Best not to think about time sometimes, particularly when all it does is make you realize how little sleep you’re going to get. You were blotto, though. As usual.”

  He grinned at her. He was trying desperately to behave normally, not to give a hint that anything out of the ordinary had happened at all. He leaned forward and pecked his wife on the cheek, affectionately ruffling her curly red hair as he did so.

  “Oh, Phil, why do you always mess up my hair?” she asked, and she pulled away just as she always did. She smiled, though. It was part of the routine of their life together. He played with her hair. She grumbled about it even though he knew she rather liked it. And somehow it cut right through him to the quick.

  “If I stopped messing up your hair, would you miss it?” he asked suddenly, and he could feel tears pricking.

  Her eyes softened. As usual he could see the love in them. “You know I would, you big softy,” she said.

  His grin came more naturally then, but it still hurt. He touched her hand one last time before heading for the door.

  “See you tonight, love,” he called over his shoulder.

  “And try not to be so late,” she responded. “Tell the miserable sods that if you don’t get a decent night’s sleep you won’t be able to work at all.”

  He laughed as he shut the door behind him, knowing that she would expect him to. There was always plenty of laughter between the pair of them. But as soon as the door was closed he stopped laughing and an expression of almost physical pain wiped the smile off his usually genial face, giving him a grim and haunted look.

  He couldn’t do this, he thought to himself. He really couldn’t. Most of the men he knew seemed able to sleep around and have affairs without a second’s thought. It just wasn’t in Cooper’s nature.

  He climbed into his car and slammed the door swiftly and noisily behind him, as if trying to shut off the worries of the world outside. For a few seconds he slumped back in the seat reflecting on the troubled path he had set out on. Then he made a resolution. The only possible one.

  “Right, that’s it,” he muttered to himself as he started the engine. “I’m sorry, Karen Meadows, I really am. But last night will have to be not only the first time, but also the last.”

  Karen’s alarm woke her at 6.45 A. M. as usual. And she woke with a smile on her face. It was not, however, long-lived. The memories of last night’s glorious lovemaking, that wonderful instant closeness to a man she really liked and cared about was one thing. The reality of the situation, of embarking on any kind of relationship with a married, much younger junior officer, was quite another.

  Plus, her head ached and her mouth felt like a dirty ashtray again. Good sex does not stop you suffering the effects of a hangover, she reflected wryly.

  With a great effort of will she dragged herself out of bed and into the bathroom. “Oh, shit,” she muttered to herself as the entire flat seemed to wobble before her eyes.

  The condition of her head was still distinctly poor and her mood remained mixed as she drove to the station. Her body felt absolutely great. But she didn’t like to think about any of the possible consequences of the previous night’s activities. It had, however, been special. Very special. She had no doubt about that.

  It was another cold grey January day, but one good thing about winter in a holiday resort was that there were few tourists about and without them Torquay’s traffic usually ran reasonably smoothly. Her journey to the police station took a scant five minutes in a minicab that she had ordered after this time remembering that she had abandoned her car. As the cab pulled into the station yard, while she was still trying to make some sort of sense of the way she was feeling, she caught a glimpse of Phil Cooper arriving. Swiftly she climbed out of the cab, paid the driver, and waited for Phil to park.

  He did not seem to see her. Clapping his arms around himself as if they would protect him from the wintry chill of the morning, he walked straight towards the back door of the station. She called out. She couldn’t help herself.

  “Phil,” she shouted.

  His stride faltered, he seemed to hesitate, then he turned to look directly at her.

  “Uh, good morning,” he said flatly.

  She did a double take. This was not the Phil Cooper of yesterday. She feared at once that he was already regretting their brief liaison. His face was flushed. There was a look in his eyes that she could not quite recognize but she was pretty sure that it involved panic. The wide face-splitting grin she found so attractive was conspicuous by its absence. Indeed, he did not smile at her at all.

  “Good morning,” she responded uncertainly. And after that she didn’t know what to say at all. Phil Cooper simply squared his big shoulders and turned away. She nearly called after
him again. She wanted desperately to say something about the previous night. Just to mention it, just to acknowledge what had happened between them—indeed, to acknowledge that anything at all had happened between them, would have been, at that moment, enough.

  She did not do so, however. Instead, filled with foreboding at the prospect of the day ahead, she followed the detective sergeant slowly into the building. She worked closely with Phil Cooper all the time, and she wasn’t at all sure how she was going to be able to cope. Although so well fulfilled physically, she had felt uncertain and anxious about what she had allowed to happen, or rather what she had actively encouraged to happen, from the moment she had awoken. However, the grim reality of meeting Cooper for the first time after their sex session, which it now seemed to her must be all he regarded it as, had been far worse than anything she had imagined.

  She had anticipated a certain awkwardness, she had been well aware that this rash escalation of an excellent professional relationship into one which was both physical and, for her at least, emotional too, was likely to present both of them with a daily quandary. But suddenly, and with devastating clarity, she realized what she had seen in Phil Cooper’s eyes just seconds earlier. It had been hostility.

  Karen’s heart sank. She felt ice forming in the very pit of her belly. She recognized that feeling, too. She was in the process of getting hurt again. She clenched her fists, forced herself to hold her head high and walk briskly. Had she not built an emotional wall around herself all these years? Did she not know how to deal with letdowns like this?

  It seemed pretty darned certain that their liaison had not been at all special for Phil Cooper. She cursed herself for behaving like a fool yet again. Just because he was not known in the station as a womanizer did not mean that Cooper didn’t have a lively private life which he had somehow contrived to keep exactly that. More than likely she had been just another conquest for him. He had shagged the boss and that was that. The look he had given her, the way he had turned away from her, left Karen in little doubt that he wanted no more to do with her.

  She sighed. Would she never learn? Phil Cooper was a married man. A bit on the side was one thing, but no fleeting episode of extramarital sex would be allowed in any way to threaten his domestic tranquility. Phil had already, with his body language alone, made that perfectly clear.

  Karen felt a tear or two rising. She reminded herself that she was a senior police officer, a top detective. It made no difference to the way she felt. Inside the brittle wall of professionalism she had created around herself, she remained a woman. Inside, she was a human being. She longed for love and affection. She longed for a relationship with someone which made life worth all its battles, made every minute of work, worry and pain, one hundred percent worthwhile because of this one person you would do anything for.

  Karen had seen a film once, starring Helen Mirren, a film about the IRA, the kind of movie she usually disliked intensely. There had been one line in it, uttered by the then-young Jon Lynch, which had moved her intensely.

  “Would you die for me?” he asked.

  That’s what she had wanted all her life. She wanted somebody she would die for. Somebody so close that there was really no point whatsoever in living without them. Somebody who would die for her, too. Maybe it was what everybody wanted. Karen didn’t know.

  She bit her lip and clenched her fists, so tightly that she dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands. She did it deliberately. She much preferred physical pain to the dull ache she was beginning to get in her heart. Particularly when she was about to start a day’s work amid a load of chauvinistic policemen, the vast majority of whom, she was sure, regardless of their surface camaraderie, would like nothing better than to detect signs of weakness in her.

  For most of her life she had kidded herself that she neither needed nor wanted a long-term relationship, that one-night stands and occasional romps with past lovers were quite sufficient. It was, of course, a lie. A lie to herself. None of that had ever been, nor would ever be, enough.

  She was, however, Detective Superintendent Karen Meadows. Successful, popular, competent, in charge of herself and others. She forced a bounce into her stride as she marched into the building, slamming the door behind her, and called a cheery greeting to the two uniformed constables standing by the custody suite.

  “This is it,” she told herself. “This is all there is, and all there’s ever going to be for you, Karen Meadows. So you may as well make the best of it.”

  By the time she reached her office no casual observer would have suspected that there was anything wrong with her at all, nor suspected for one moment that she was anything but utterly content with the life she had built for herself. Nobody would ever have guessed the misery which that day lay like a lump of ice-cold stone somewhere in the depths of her belly. Nor would they ever have guessed just how easily this tall, tough, together woman could be hurt.

  She had, after all, spent very many years cultivating her own personality, building it into a pretty darned impressive act. And she remained absolutely terrified of what might happen if she ever let that act drop.

  Chapter Twelve

  The bombshell dropped just after midday. Karen no longer had to put on an act. All thoughts of anything except the crisis she was suddenly presented with were completely wiped out of her head.

  Phil Cooper, usually in and out of her office all the time, had somehow avoided coming near her all morning. It was Tompkins, his somewhat morose appearance most appropriate on this occasion, who gave her the news which was to add the final absolutely disastrous touch to an already grim day.

  “Marshall’s bird is in the front office asking for you, boss,” he said. “She won’t talk to anyone else, won’t even say what it’s about.”

  “Jennifer Roth?” Karen queried, unnecessarily perhaps, but she was almost hoping it might be somebody else, maybe an old girlfriend. There was something about Jennifer Roth and her blind faith in Richard Marshall that had made Karen uneasy from the moment she first met the young woman, and she was immediately anxious about what had brought Jennifer to the police station.

  “The same, boss,” said Tompkins.

  “Well, you’d better show her up then, hadn’t you?” Karen spoke in a level voice and hoped that she appeared cool and in control. As seemed to be her wont, Karen was desperately trying not to display her true feelings.

  But the moment the veteran detective constable had left the room Karen rose from her desk and began to pace around, like a wild animal in its cage. Logic told her that there was nothing Jennifer Roth could say or do which could change the events of the last few days at Exeter Crown Court which had led to Marshall finally being brought to justice for the murder of his wife and sentenced to life imprisonment. But she couldn’t help worrying. And although less than five minutes passed before Tompkins led Jennifer Roth into her office, it seemed far longer.

  Karen looked her up and down. Jennifer’s long hair was no longer held back in a ponytail, but instead hung in greasy unkempt strands. She was wearing grubby denim jeans, stained trainers and a sweater with holes in the sleeves. She had certainly made no effort with her appearance, and her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. She looked rather as if she had not stopped crying since the court case had ended the previous day.

  Her face was still very pale. There were dark smudges below her eyes, partly shadows etched in her rather fine skin and partly the remains of yesterday’s eye make-up, Karen thought.

  She let Jennifer stand uncertainly just inside the door for a few seconds before ushering her to a chair. She then sat in her own big black-leather job behind the desk. Under normal circumstances Karen would have taken one of the low chairs on the other side of her desk, right next to Jennifer. But these were not normal circumstances. Until minutes earlier the detective superintendent had believed that the Richard Marshall case was, at last, over. The man was never now likely to stand trial for the murder of his children, but he had at least finall
y been brought to justice for killing his wife, and the end result would in any case be just the same. With a bit of luck Marshall would spend the rest of his life in jail, and he only had one life, however many murders he was convicted of. But now, suddenly, Karen was no longer sure it was over after all. So she preferred to sit behind her big mahogany-finished desk and on a chair which was slightly higher than the one she had offered the other woman. If she had thought it would have done any good, she would have refused to see Jennifer Roth at all. But that course of action could only ever have resulted in more trouble. And trouble, she was somehow quite certain, was going to be the only outcome of this visit.

  “Well, Miss Roth, what can I do for you this morning?” Karen began briskly.

  “I came to tell you that Ricky didn’t murder his wife and children,” Jennifer Roth began.

  For just a split second Karen almost relaxed. This was, after all, what Jennifer Roth had been saying, over and over again, ever since Marshall was arrested.

  “You are entitled to your opinion, but as a court of law and a jury of his peers have decided otherwise, your opinion is irrelevant,” said the detective superintendent sternly. She was determined not to give an inch on this one, whatever Marshall’s girlfriend threw at her.

  “It’s not an opinion, it’s a matter of fact.” Jennifer Roth glowered at Karen. She had about her that stubbornness which Cooper had remarked on right at the beginning. She was extremely determined. Like Marshall she had an arrogance in her. And she had a temper. Cooper had seen that, too, and made a note of it in his reports.

  Karen leaned back in her chair and, putting on a performance which belied her true feelings, as she so often did, adopted a nonchalant unconcerned manner. “And what exactly is this matter of fact?” she enquired, sarcasm heavy in her voice.

  “Ricky could not have done it. I know he didn’t do it. And that is a fact,” said Jennifer Roth.