The Crime Tsar

by Nichola McAuliffe

  While Lucy held Tom Shackleton’s thigh between her legs Robert MacIntyre had managed to rest the fingers of his left hand between the legs of Tom’s wife. Hidden by the tablecloth they stroked and probed through the heavy silk of Jenni’s designer trousers. With wine dulling her revulsion she squirmed appreciatively and crossed her legs lightly.

  At eleven o’clock MacIntyre’s driver had been waiting half an hour. But MacIntyre seemed in no hurry.

  ‘So tell me about you, Lucy?’

  ‘Well, I … there’s nothing to say really. I clean a bit –’

  She was astonished when Jenni interrupted.

  ‘Lucy is an incredibly talented artist. She makes stained glass. I’m going to ask her to make us a window. Don’t you think so, Tom?’

  Tom nodded, smiling at Jenni, for all the world as if they’d discussed this idea.

  Mrs Shackleton had surprised MacIntyre. He had her down as a twenty-four-carat bitch but now he suspected she was only gold-plated. Interesting … But he could see it would be easy to be magnanimous towards Lucy; she was lead, poor woman, striving to keep up with the glittering Shackletons.

  An intriguing evening.

  Sometime before midnight the Gnome said he really must go and stood up from the table. Jenni had prepared for them to move into the sitting room but the conversation had been too fluid to interrupt.

  Jenni, rising, was pleased. It had been a success.

  ‘Goodnight, Lucy.’ MacIntyre took her hand. ‘Here’s my card – I wonder if you’d give my secretary a ring, I’m sure my wife would love to commission a piece from you.’

  ‘But I don’t really do anything any more.’ Lucy took refuge in inadequacy.

  He pulled her down towards him and whispered, ‘Don’t let yourself disappear, Lucy.’

  At midnight the front door opened and the Home Secretary-in-waiting could be seen kissing his hostess goodnight. In the beam of the security light the driver saw him squeeze her breast. His host, standing the other side, didn’t.

  ‘Goodnight, Tom, and thanks again for this evening. Jenni? Terrific. And I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  She looked surprised.

  ‘We’ve got a bit of unfinished business.’

  Her mind was still a blank. The wine.

  ‘The interview.’

  It was as if her brain had stalled and now revved into motion again.

  ‘Of course, Robbie. I’m so sorry. What time?’

  ‘Oh, as early as you like, at my office.’

  The office, the House of Commons. My office, the flat off Russell Square.

  ‘I’m sure I’ve got plenty more to tell you,’ he said, getting into the car.

  ‘I’m sure you have,’ replied Jenni, blowing him a kiss.

  She’d get what she wanted tomorrow. And he knew he would too.

  When Tom and Jenni went back into the house Lucy was starting to clear up.

  ‘Leave that, Lucy, you can do it tomorrow. Have another drink. Look, there’s some champagne left.’

  ‘No thanks, Jenni. I’d better go home. See Gary’s all right. Thank you so much for tonight.’

  ‘I’ll see you across.’

  Tom walked to the front door abruptly and opened it, standing on the step.

  Lucy was confused and began to say her no it’s all rights when Jenni whispered to her, ‘He wants to go out so he can let off. You know … he always does it. Dreadful stink. I won’t allow it in the house.’

  ‘Oh … right.’

  Jenni laughed and gave Shackleton a sort of slap on the arm, rather as one would a smelly but loved old dog.

  Lucy didn’t know what else to say. She picked up her coat, air-kissed Jenni and went.

  Tom walked beside her with four feet of electric air between them:

  ‘I never thought flatulence would come in handy,’ he said.

  Lucy giggled.

  ‘Back door or front?’

  Lucy looked at him.

  ‘Oh, back, I think.’

  To get there they had to walk down a narrow alleyway lined with high bushes. It was lit by a single old-fashioned lamp-post. The wall of the next house was blind; no windows overlooked them. Now they were unobserved, both felt shy. He walked with his hands behind his back. They walked as slowly as possible without stopping.

  Lucy wished she had put some breath-fresheners in her bag. Her fingers searched through the debris in her pockets for an old mint. They came into contact with a tube of lip-conditioner, guaranteed to soften and add shine, but she could see no way of applying it without drawing attention to the action. Besides, if he did kiss her she didn’t think he’d appreciate being smothered in strawberry-flavoured Vaseline. She licked her lips. A bit dry. She licked them again. The conversation between them had ground to a halt. They were now awkward with each other.

  ‘Are your hands all right now, Tom?’

  It was the only thing Lucy could think of to say that didn’t include: Tom, please kiss me, take off all my clothes and do all those things I’ve been thinking about since …

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Smell the jasmine. It’s lovely, isn’t it?’

  Lucy could hear herself and wished she could just shut up and be silent and mysterious. Make him speak.

  Tom, on the other hand, was wishing he could speak. He started to tell her about the policing strategy he intended to implement in the deprived estates in his county. He knew Jenni would say, ‘Do stop droning on, Tom – Lucy doesn’t want to hear all that.’

  But he couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to be alone with this woman but not in this situation. Not in any situation that required talk. He looked at her to see if she’d glazed over with boredom. It was a look that haunted him from his adolescence.

  But she was gazing up at him as if he was speaking poetry. She looked soft and defenceless. She wasn’t threatening or judgemental. He stopped. She stopped, still looking at him trustingly, her mouth a little open.

  ‘I’m sorry about … what happened.’

  Lucy was confused. He should have kissed her by now.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘In the study … I’m sorry. It was … a mistake.’

  Lucy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The best, most exhilarating five minutes of her recent life dismissed as a mistake?

  ‘I didn’t think it was a mistake.’

  She sounded reasonable, as if she was talking about having the wrong newspaper delivered. She didn’t want to sound reasonable, she wanted to turn into some Mediterranean harpy, screaming at him that he couldn’t dismiss her as a mistake.

  ‘I’m very fond of you.’

  She offered him the words like a child offering a bunch of wilting daisies.

  ‘Me too.’

  Me too? What did that mean? Me too? Tom felt a fool. He winced, ready for the verbal onslaught. But there wasn’t one. Lucy was still looking up at him as if he was Gabriel come with glad tidings. Now he was completely at sea. He was prepared for the sharp clever rebuke but not for this adoration. Lucy hadn’t known what he meant by me too either but she was in a precious moment, not one for semantics.

  ‘I’d better go.’ Tom said it, but didn’t move.

  ‘Yes, Jenni will be wondering where you are.’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  There was a pause. It was the moment for him to kiss her, it was the violins moment when ‘The End’ comes up in a heart on the screen.

  ‘Goodnight then,’ Lucy said.

  She looked away, searching in her bag for her key.

  Had he been dismissed? He didn’t know what to do. He just stood there, confused.

  ‘Yes. Goodnight.’

  Lucy found her key but kept her eyes down because they were full of tears.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Lucy couldn’t reply. She was now rooting in her bag for a tissue that hadn’t been reduced to a rock-like ball by overuse. Her nose was running now and she daren’t look up
at him. She found the remains of a piece of kitchen roll and blew her nose.

  ‘Fine. I’m fine.’

  She looked up again, this time trying to smile through a mask of dimpled floral paper. Her eye make-up was smudged and wet. She looked about twelve. She put away the damp rag of paper.

  ‘It’s just … it wasn’t a mistake to me. I … wanted it … to happen.’

  And then he kissed her. He kissed her not because he was overcome with desire but because he didn’t know what else to do. It was a gentle kiss, careful. The first kiss since finding they shared affection. He loved the cosiness of her, the softness. The way she let him be in control. With Jenni he was clumsy. He had always felt she marked him out of ten and he never got past five. The kiss came to an end.

  ‘I’d like to try it again. What happened. In the study.’

  Lucy spoke with her face to his chest, his arms round her. She couldn’t look up at him in case he said no with that gently implacable tone she’d heard him use before. The tone that implied regret but no possibility of change.

  ‘Me too.’ Me too again. ‘Yes … Lucy, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. But I have to see you again. I don’t know how. But …’

  He’d run out of words. She saw him struggling, unsure.

  ‘It’s all right. I understand.’

  They stood close together for another couple of minutes. He stroked her hair and she held him with her arms around his waist, her hands flat on his back absorbing his warmth.

  ‘Right.’ He pulled away from her. ‘Goodnight. Take care.’

  ‘Take care … Tom.’

  He turned away and walked quickly back to the road. She watched him go, happier than she’d ever been in her life.

  Tom didn’t stop until he got to the gates of his house. He wasn’t thinking about Lucy. The gentle meandering daydreams of Lucy he’d been enjoying while he stood with her had been brutally replaced. Instead of her trusting gaze he was seeing the sewn-up eyes of the African woman. He opened his eyes but he could still see them. The fear he’d felt sitting with the three … what? What were they? The three weird council tenants?

  He saw the lights were off in the house. Jenni would have gone to bed. It took her an hour to take off her make-up and apply all the gels and creams that kept her so perfect. He was never welcome while she completed this ritual. He wanted to talk. But didn’t know how. He knew he could talk to Lucy but sex was in the way now. He couldn’t go back and ask for a cup of coffee.

  And Jenni never really listened. He hadn’t told her the details of his encounter with the women though he’d wanted to. His memory of it was patchy, like trying to recall a dream. He could see the sewn-up eyes again. He tried to look away but they were inside his own eyes, projected on to his lids when he closed them. Fear became anger as he opened the garage and got into the four-wheel drive. The spare keys were in their hiding place. He started it and drove, a little too fast, to the outskirts of the Flamborough Estate.

  He parked by the pub and turned off the lights. At first he thought the women weren’t there. Then he saw them. This time there were no candles, no deckchairs. The door was closed. He didn’t know why he was there arid was about to re-start the car when the door opened and the fat one stood there. She was lit from behind and he couldn’t see her face, but he heard her call.

  ‘Thomas. Welcome back. Come in, come in. We been expectin’ you.’

  Why didn’t he just pretend he didn’t hear? Why didn’t he go home? He opened the car door and went over. She was beaming, massively welcoming.

  ‘Come in! Come in!’

  He went into the flat, unable to stop himself. The hall was lit by a pink bulb hanging in the centre of a pink, tasselled shade. The walls were covered in calendars. Tom could see some with forties blondes, on tiptoe, smiling over bikinied shoulders, and others showing ladies in bustles. Some of flowers and several of dewy-eyed kittens. One, even older than the others, declared itself ‘A present from Norway’. But time had faded the year, making it look like 1400 and something.

  He was bundled into the front room before he could look closer. The other two women were sitting, either side of the coal-effect electric fire. The two bars were on, below them the black coal moulded and painted into a plastic orange cover, behind which glowed a 40-watt bulb over which a small propeller turned, supposedly giving the impression of a glowing, living fire. The flickering light moved across the two black faces, giving them expression where there was none.

  ‘See, Thomas has come back to visit us. Sit down, Thomas. Sit.’

  The chairs either side of the fire were elaborate armchairs of red-and-gold-fringed velvet. On the backs and arms were antimacassars of long-necked African heads. Tom sat on the matching settee. All around the room there were cheap souvenirs from all over the world. ‘A present from Kampala’, ‘Greetings from Beijing’, and ‘Hello from Dublin’. As his eyes got used to the gloom he saw the sewn-up eyes watching him. Again the fear. He looked away. It was oppressively hot. The thin one offered him a glass of sarsaparilla. He didn’t want to but he took it.

  ‘So what is it you want, Thomas?’

  He felt silly.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m here.’

  ‘Look into the fire, Thomas. Look …’

  He looked and saw the propeller move over the bulb. Nothing more.

  ‘Look, I don’t believe in all this fortune telling.’

  He stopped. In the fire he saw himself in uniform. But it wasn’t his force’s insignia on the hat or buttons. It was London’s. He saw his triumph, felt the satisfaction, saw the recognition, the admiration in people’s eyes. He felt happiness. It was better than anything he’d felt before.

  ‘Is that it, Thomas? Will you be content with that?’

  The blind shell eyes turned to him again. The hollow sockets of the thin one.

  ‘What else is there? It’s the top job.’

  ‘But, Thomas, if it wasn’t, would you still be content?’

  ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’

  ‘Careful what you wish for, Thomas. You’re not drinking your sarsaparilla.’

  Shackleton shook his head; he thought there may be some drug in it.

  The fat one shrugged, still smiling. She squatted down on a fancy camel saddle that had been home to a pile of Time magazines and copies of National Geographic. The faces of powerful men on the covers of the former and the natural disasters featured in the latter lay exposed on the red fake-fur rug.

  ‘Who are you? You’re like …’

  The fat one exploded with laughter, slapping his thigh in her enjoyment.

  ‘We’re like nothing on this earth. Are we, ladies? Nothing on this earth.’

  The three of them were now screeching with laughter. The noise seemed to push against him, to stop him from thinking. It got into his mouth and prevented him speaking. He wanted to leave but couldn’t get up.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ He could check them out on the electoral register, police computer, immigration …

  ‘Lord … how long? Let’s see now, well, I tell you this, we here not just for an age but for all time. Y’understand?’

  He didn’t.

  She put her hand on his thigh again.

  ‘Are you a good man, Thomas? A clean man?’

  Shackleton nodded, a little boy again.

  ‘You believe that? Good. Why you so mean then?’

  ‘I … I’m not mean.’

  As he spoke he heard his mother’s voice. Her litany of his faults, her dislike of her awkward ugly little boy.

  The great black hand tightened on his leg.

  ‘Put the past down, Thomas. Let it go.’

  ‘I can’t. It makes me what I am.’

  ‘Yes, Thomas. It makes you a bear on a chain. Back and forth, back and forth, over and over the same patch of earth. You coming to a cross-road, child. The place they buried suicides, you know. You will have to choose. You, Thomas, no one else. Come and see us agai
n, Thomas. We’re always here. But listen to me.’ She leaned close to him. There was no laughter in her now. ‘Examine your life.’

  Tom wanted to ask what she meant. But he knew. His protection was always to think in the concrete. The abstract with its dangerous cousin imagination were to be avoided. If he looked for his soul he found an aerial view of inland waterways. The central canal strong-flowing and clear. But on the lesser canals the locks were rusted, the water stagnant. And further still from that main highway were great pools of stagnant weed-choked water. Foul and opaque through decades of neglect. And that was Tom Shackleton’s inner life.

  ‘Make the water flow, Thomas.’ She grasped his arm hard. She was strong enough to hurt him. Her powerful fingers dug into the muscle.

  He winced.

  ‘And, listen to me. You can have everything you want but take care of the wood. Not the knives or bullets, Thomas, it’s the stake in your heart will bring you low. Keep away from the wood.’

  When he got home the street was quiet. It was 4 a.m. There was no sign of drama. He couldn’t sleep and so sat working on his papers until six when he stood under the shower, the radio turned up loud, closing the door on the night. He hadn’t thought of Lucy until the record ‘Bright Eyes’ was used to trail a news item about rabbits. That’s what she was, a small, trusting rabbit. He was comforted thinking about her.

  Lucy had waited until Tom was out of sight before she let herself in. She couldn’t stop little squeaks erupting like bubbles. She wanted to tell Gary all about it. Wanted to share with him the elation she felt. She did a little conga with herself while she found the bottle of Christmas brandy and poured herself a glass.

  She couldn’t go to bed. Not yet. She was too excited. She wanted to live and re-live every second with Tom. She could taste him, smell him, feel his arms round her. Quietly she opened the door of Gary’s room.

  At first she thought he was snoring, then she realised there was something odd about his breathing. As he took each breath he was trying to suppress a cough, then swallowing. Then he’d get a snatch of breath but the back of his throat would close and he was left with his ribcage pumping up and down trying to pull in the air. She turned on the light.