Peter, as always, didn’t wake through the disturbance as Alexander was put to bed. Carter leaned over and kissed him, savouring the smell of warm sleeping child. Peter smiled and put his arm round Carter’s neck. He gently disentangled himself and tucked the child’s arm back under the duvet. He turned to go but was stopped by Peter’s sleepy voice.
‘Daddy … I love you best in all the world.’
‘I love you too, Peter. Best in all the world.’
It was their joke.
‘’Cept for Mummy and Alex and the Bump.’
‘Yeah, ‘cept for them. Night, Petey.’
Downstairs the night-time peace every parent craves settled on them as they sat in front of the fire. The room was long and thin, filled with books, toys, Peter’s violin music, magazines and, on one of the radiators, a pair of striped socks. The light from the table lamps made the mess look cosy. On the shelves, high enough to be out of Alexander’s way, expensive crystal shared space with Christmas cracker novelties and CDs parted from their covers.
‘So what did he say?’
‘MacIntyre? Nothing much. Nothing he didn’t say at lunch.’
Eleri was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her growing belly resting on her heels. She rubbed it for the fiftieth time, as she had every day since finding there was an occupant within. She sat back against his chair, tucking her shoulders under his legs.
‘Talk me through it.’
‘Well… he says they’re determined to make me change my mind. Apparently the Prime Minister’s decided there’s no one else for the job.’
‘What about Tom?’
‘No, they want him for the Met. They don’t think he’s got the …’ He paused – what was it MacIntyre had said? Clever but not an intellectual giant. ‘Mental capacity for the job.’
Eleri laughed. ‘Don’t let Jenni hear you say that. She thinks her husband is in direct line to the Almighty. You don’t think he’s dim, do you?’
Carter considered his drink. ‘Not dim, no … but… he’s not an independent thinker. And he’s not an innovator.’
‘What about the siege?’
Carter shook his head.
‘That was a stupid risk – I should never have gone along with it. Pure ego. But that’s the thing about Tom. He has an extraordinary instinct for self-promotion but basically’ – the killer blow – ‘it’s not a first-rate mind.’
And Carter’s was. Neither he nor Eleri had to say it. At university he had shone but in the police service he was a mental colossus and Tom was clever. For a policeman.
Eleri’s sympathy was genuine. It was never anything else.
‘Poor Jenni – I’m sure she’d rather be married to a Tsar than a commissioner.’
Carter smiled. He was quite sure she would but she could surely never imagine Tom would be considered for such a job.
He’d been surprised and not entirely comfortable with the new closeness that had grown up between Jenni and Eleri. His wife always saw the best in everybody. She was always getting hurt, bounding up to people like a Labrador puppy trailing loo paper and getting smacked on the snout for its trouble.
He knew his wife needed the company of another woman now, one that could make the pregnancy ordinary, natural, nothing to worry about. But Jenni Shackleton? She had never struck him as the earth-mother type.
‘Is she coming over tomorrow?’
‘Yes, she said she’d look after the boys every afternoon this week so I can get some rest and start getting the baby’s room ready, then she’s going to Vienna to interview Dieter Gerhardt, lucky thing.’ She paused, hating to do anything he didn’t approve of. ‘I know you don’t like her much but she’s been a good friend, Geoffrey. I don’t know what I’d have done without her these last few weeks. I think that breakdown she had changed her. She’s not nearly as brittle as she was.’
They talked about the Shackletons because neither of them really wanted to broach the subject of The Baby versus The Job. Carter had been quite determined to quit, but that was before he’d known exactly how big the government’s challenge was. MacIntyre had talked budgets and aims that were far beyond anything he’d envisaged. This was not to be another slice of gesture politics. This Tsar, unlike those for drugs, homelessness and various cancers, would have some real power.
Carter had become very excited – but he’d promised Eleri, so the chance to shape policing in the twenty-first century would have to pass him by. Every day he put the thing out of his mind and every night before sleep he couldn’t stop planning his team, forming his strategy, imagining the future. He ached to be the first anti-crime coordinator, not the billionth father.
Eleri broke the silence.
‘You’ve got to take it, you know.’
‘What?’
‘The Tsardom. Oh Geoffrey… you’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t. I can’t watch you torturing yourself over it any more.’
He was ashamed. Was his desire really so obvious? Defensively, Carter became entrenched in moral certainties. He was adamant: the baby came first. He owed it to Eleri, he owed it to the family. But even as he spoke he felt as if her words had released him from a prison of domestic duty. No man had ever wanted a child more than he wanted this one but it wasn’t his body it was growing in, and it wasn’t the focus of his every waking moment. But stubbornly he continued to argue logically, illogically and logistically until Eleri was exhausted.
The question hung unresolved between them.
Eleri, like a chastised but determined child, spoke quietly.
‘Geoffrey, I can’t tell you how much I want you to stay home with me. You know how frightened I am but … if you do give it all up I won’t be married to Geoffrey Carter any more. I’ll only have a bit of you. The little tiny bit that isn’t your job. And do you know what? It’s for me I want you to go for it. I don’t want to be grateful and guilty and married to a man who’ll always be thinking: What if … No matter what you say, somewhere, deep down, you’ll always resent me and the baby if you give it up.’
He knew she was right. He was nothing without his job, any more than Eleri was without her family. And, he realised, he didn’t want to be anything without her.
She watched him thinking it over. His face was serious, his eyes fixed on the dying fire. Yes, it would be enough of an upheaval making room for one stranger, let alone two, as there was no question of not having someone to help with the child. But if you took emotion and sentiment out of the argument it was obvious that he should become Crime Tsar; it was what he’d spent his life preparing for. Her face shone up at him as she realised she was winning. She spoke with the fervour of Saint Joan.
‘We’ll move down to London – I’ve found a school that will take Alex and a choir school I’m sure Peter could get into and I’ve registered with a place that supplies Norland Nannies. We can do it, Geoffrey. I know we can. There’s no rule that says you can’t have it all …’
That night they clung to each other so closely they could have slept on a razor blade. The future was the Promised Land and tonight they were on Egypt’s border.
Despite Geoffrey telling her not to say anything, Eleri greeted Jenni with the news as she arrived next day.
Eleri was overwhelmed with the warmth of her congratulations and assurances of support. The Shackletons would always be there.
Jenni was in her bathroom when there was a knock on the door. Dieter had gone soon after she had demonstrated her skills at fellatio: always keep a tune in your head, she’d been advised by a school-friend, something with a strong beat. She remembered they had sniggered over everything from the National Anthem to ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’. For Dieter she had chosen ‘Deutschland Über Alles’ speeding up towards the end, of course.
When he’d gone she fell asleep without help but woke with vague nagging fears and her nerves writhing like worms just under her skin.
Robert MacIntyre persisted, like drizzle, at the edge of her mind. She took a pill. Then another. Sh
e drank coffee. She showered and sat down to apply her make-up. This ritual always calmed her but still there were the jitters, the anxiety. She took a third pill and felt better. She knew it was stupid to take more than two but… just this once. Just this once.
Then there was the knock at the door. It made her jump. She opened it and was handed a package by a dumpy maid in an ill-fitting uniform. Or perhaps not, thought Jenni. Maybe it’s the body that doesn’t fit. She shoved a piece of paper at Jenni and a cheap blue biro. She signed without thinking. The maid said, ‘Danke,’ and waddled away down the corridor.
Jenni closed the door and opened the brown-wrapped box. Inside was a charming marcasite brooch. Perfect for Lucy, she thought. ‘From Dieter with thanks for an enjoyable interview.’ And beneath the unwearable brooch? A neat packet of cocaine.
Jenni smiled. It had been worth it. She could tell the world that Jenni was herself again. Oh, the glorious power of beauty. There was not a man born she couldn’t seduce or manipulate. How did plain women manage with just intelligence to carry them through? She laughed. That was not a question to which she’d ever have to discover the answer. She took a little powder, just a tiny buzz, finished her make-up and made her way to the nearest metro. At the deepest level modified but unchanged by experience.
When she was in Vienna before she had been shocked at the literature displayed openly at the news-stands at the mouths of the metro stations. On the ground were laid out pornographic magazines, and it had been a Sunday. A church-going day. Jenni smiled at how much she’d altered.
It was a glorious sunny morning and the walk past the old buildings made her feel clean and new. She recognised the feeling as happiness. She was getting what she wanted. Passing a fine old baker’s she decided to take back a Sachertorte for Lucy and Gary. After all, Lucy had long since given up watching her figure and the thought would count. Poor Lucy. She had neglected her since coming out of the clinic. Concentrating too hard on the two-faced Mrs Carter. She’d always disliked the Welsh. Her mother said they were like fog: they were dense and you couldn’t touch or trust them. And Eleri Carter had proved the rule. But she’d make it up to dear old loyal Lucy. Maybe she’d take her shopping when she got back, buy her some new clothes. That thing she’d worn to dinner must have looked nice on the hanger, she supposed. Ten years ago.
At the metro she found a spectacularly well-stocked pavement and searched the covers for one particular perversion, but what there was was too tame. She picked up a couple anyway and went to the shaggy individual in the booth. He took the note she offered without looking at her. His grimy mittened hand passed back her change.
‘Excuse me … do you speak English?’
There was no one else at the stall, just a few people scurrying down the escalator into the metro.
‘A little. Ja. I speak a little.’
Jenni didn’t waste any charm on him.
‘These magazines, do you have more? Different? More … serious?’
He looked at her for the first time.
‘You want young? More young?’
‘Yes,’ said Jenni.
‘More young. Girls? With adults, grown-ups. Anything.’ He looked at her again.
She applied a dimpled smile.
‘Yes. But boys, not girls. For my husband. You understand. It is not possible to get in England.’
He nodded, sucking the nicotined ends of his moustache.
‘English men like little boys.’
‘And girls sometimes,’ added Jenni, as if they were talking about a choice between pork and lamb.
‘Ja. Girls too. But not so much.’
He reached under the counter and produced a magazine.
It was hard-core homosexual paedophilia and sickeningly graphic. She looked at it briefly.
‘Only in German?’
He pulled at his nose.
‘Nein … Ich habe Dutch and … Wait …’
He rummaged under the counter.
‘American. But with American a little of dogs too.’
‘Oh good,’ said Jenni sweetly. ‘My husband loves animals.’
She took the two well-fingered magazines. They were horrifyingly explicit.
‘How much?’
The figure he named was ridiculous and she knew he was ripping her off but was in no position to haggle. They looked as if they’d been used as part of a lending library they were so soiled. But she gave the money for them and for three other equally disgusting publications then put them quickly in her bag.
‘Wait,’ the man in the booth said.
She stopped.
‘You like video? Not gay stuff. Men, women with little boys. One only three years.’
‘How much?’
He held his fingers up.
She did a quick calculation. Almost £80. He must have seen her coming. But she handed over the money and put the video in the carrier bag without looking at it.
As she turned to go she didn’t notice the leather-jacketed young man with the camera.
The confidence that had surged through her an hour before was gone as she packed to leave. She had never been stopped at customs but now snakes of fear made her shake. She wished she had some of that magical white powder to give her that glorious feeling of untouchability again. She decided to go back to the hotel for just a tiny bit more of the magic powder. Dieter had sent a bottle of vintage Krug up to her room, and a note: ‘One more night…’ Well, she could do with a little more time, a little more cocaine, and if that meant having to sleep with one of Europe’s most enigmatic sex symbols again, well, she’d manage.
There were two more jobs to do before she could relax. Jenni, for all the adrenalin and risk, regarded the destruction of Geoffrey Carter as something that had to be done, like removing the giblets from a chicken. It was a job. She didn’t dislike him – he caused her no more emotion than a car parked across her gates. It was the driver for whom she nursed her hatred. And that was Robert MacIntyre.
She was sure, beyond sure, that he had known Carter was to be Crime Tsar when she rolled over for the Met. She was not stupid, as she never tired of telling Tom. She knew, if challenged, MacIntyre would say she’d never mentioned the other job, that she had wanted London for her puppet of a husband, and he’d got it for her. She had made a payment. He wasn’t telepathic, after all. It was business, wasn’t it? A messy business and unfinished …
Jenni fingered her crystal amulet as she left the hotel room, placing the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door.
She was pretty sure where she was going; she’d seen it when visiting Vienna with Tom. He’d brought her for her birthday last year. But only because he was attending a symposium in the city. Another spoiled gesture of empty generosity, another shared bed undisturbed by their frigid bodies. People looked at them and saw enduring romance. But Tom and Jenni never looked at themselves, only at each other, and always with suspicion. Barcelona, where Tom was about to take her for another birthday, would be another such exercise, but this time she would shop. Her husband, she thought, was always the master of the inappropriate gesture.
As always, Jenni had seen everything and stored the images away like picture postcards. The one she pulled up now read Friedrich-strasse. The taxi dropped her at the end of the road and she walked up it, not quite sure what she was looking for.
There it was, exactly as she’d remembered it, a small dingy café, very old and very picturesque. She went down the steps holding on to the iron railing, her slim coltish legs and soft leather shoes, toned perfectly to the shade of her subtly gleaming legs, appearing first in the view of the men in the café. The door was heavy wood with small leaded glass panels. She pushed. A bell tinkled and the door opened into a splendid pre-war expanse of polished wood. Music played loudly from a system behind the bar. For a moment she thought she’d made a mistake, then she saw them. The computers, as grey as wood lice against the dark sheen of the panelling.
The three men who had watched her come down the steps mad
e no sign they’d noticed her come in, beyond a brief friendly nod from the barman. In the corner sat a dreadlocked Viennese whose blond braids were matted together at the roots and whose red neckerchief matched that of his dog. On the end of a piece of string it slumped in dejected neutral, staring at the wall. The second man was reading El Pais at the bar and was obviously a student of Spanish as he was discussing an item in the paper with the barman and doing grievous harm to that language with his Germanic accent. The three men, carefully indifferent, each glanced at her.
She liked the way their looks became appreciative as the full subtlety of her loveliness revealed itself to them. There was nothing obvious about her and men always had a feeling of private pride that they had spotted her. She somehow made men feel they had discovered her, like a rare flower. It was a skill she’d developed after marrying Tom.
Tom’s view of Jenni hadn’t changed since the night he’d seen her come home with – Jenni shook her head to dislodge the picture of Tom’s hurt eyes in those early days. The awkward virgin Tom thrusting at her like a rabbit. Unable to arouse her and embarrassed by her practised fingers.
Their marriage had been a glorious Gothic arch of disaster followed by years of mutual ambition punctuated by public triumph and private grief. One pregnancy had ended as it had begun, quickly and without joy. Tom had bought her a card. It was inappropriate: ‘In Sympathy’, the sort of card you’d send for someone’s granny’s funeral.
The death of her first child was her grief, her tragedy, and she always loved that barely formed unborn baby above all others. Jenni could only give love to something that didn’t exist.
If she had allowed herself to love Tom, not deliberately wreck her nascent feelings on the rocks of promiscuity, she would have laid herself open to fear. The fear of losing him, the fear of illusions shattered. Sometimes the thought of what might have been, if she’d been kinder, curled up like white smoke. But she always pulled away, blaming him for her anger. The anger that came out of a hurt he’d never inflicted.
Tom. Jenni had given up wishing for him to take charge in the house, in the bedroom, but couldn’t, even after decades of marriage, see that she was responsible for his impotence. He seemed to cease to exist as he walked through the front door. Like that dog down there, staring at the wall, no more than the table leg, a part of the floor.
The Crime Tsar Page 22
