The Crime Tsar

by Nichola McAuliffe

  ‘He left a letter. For me,’ he said, lamely trailing off.

  ‘Really?’

  Few people could invest that word with such honest interest as the Gnome.

  ‘Perhaps you might let me read it?’

  Danny had it in his pocket. He handed it over like an illicit comic to the science master.

  ‘I’ve marked the relevant passage.’

  ‘I’m sure you have,’ murmured the Gnome. ‘Well, goodnight, Mr Marshall. And be assured. The dead will always find a voice. But we can only speak for ourselves. I shall take good care of this and … I’m sure we’d all like to surf the net in future without risking our shins on rocks in the shallows.’ He tucked the letter into his inside pocket. ‘Goodbye, Mr Marshall. I look forward to our meeting again and giving some thought to your future …’

  With that he slid into his car and was gone.

  Danny stood looking at the place the car had been, disgusted with himself but unable to quiet the voice in his head that said: Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. After all he’d done all he could to clear Carter’s name but he was dead. Danny Marshall had a whole life ahead of him.

  Tom put Jenni to bed at about three o’clock in the morning. She had been so strange he’d thought it better to get her home than risk another night at the university, where the walls were none too thick or soundproof. She was barely able to keep awake in the car but too agitated to sleep. She seemed frightened of what was waiting for her if she slept.

  When they reached the house it was deserted. Jason, hating being alone there, had gone off to stay with friends in the country for the week. He was learning quickly that his good looks and public-school manners made him an ideal house guest and were the passport to a life away from the tensions of life at home.

  Shackleton laid Jenni on the bed and went to her bathroom cabinet. The shock of what he saw was so great he didn’t react at all. He simply stood and looked at the instantly recognisable array of tranquillisers and drugs undisguised in front of him. Small packets of cocaine and wraps of heroin. He didn’t know how long he’d stood there before he heard the chink of bottle on glass. He turned – Jenni was pouring vodka into her bedside water glass.

  ‘Bring me one of the little yellow ones. Come on. Bring it now!’

  She was so far gone she didn’t even know who it was she was commanding. He looked for the yellow ones. They were tranquillisers in massive doses. He knew she couldn’t have got these from their doctor, and the rest of the powders, crystals, and tablets owed more to a chemistry set than the prescription pad.

  As Shackleton stood there, almost unable to move, he felt the beginnings of a deep cold anger. The anger and bitterness that he’d suppressed so completely since the night he saw Jenni with another man in a nameless car under a whorehouse-red street light. The feelings he’d turned in on himself so completely they’d fuelled his career now threatened to run out of control. And then, just as suddenly, he shut them down, frightened of what such unleashed emotion might do. Not to her. To himself. To all he had made of his life.

  He closed his fist over the bottle of pills and took them to her. She was sweating now and clutching her stomach, mumbling she couldn’t sleep and that she was hurting. He sat on the edge of the bed and almost tenderly pulled a strand of hair from her face, laying it across the pillow. He had always liked her hair, its smell had reminded him of … what? Tenderness? Kindness? No, those were just imagination.

  Except with Lucy.

  Lucy seemed in all this like a dream of what might have been. Jenni reached for the pills. He took off the top and gave her the bottle. Greedily, like a child with Smarties, she emptied them on to her hand. Then, delicately, she selected one and washed it down with the watered vodka. The effect was instantaneous.

  Knowing relief was coming she relaxed and smiled at him.

  ‘Thank you. Don’t leave me.’

  So he sat there holding her hand, watching her drift off to sleep, not wanting to stay and not wanting to go. Thinking of what might have been if they hadn’t both been so damaged and determined not to let that damage go. He didn’t know how long he’d been there when he heard a ‘tink’. The smallest press of the doorbell. He looked at his watch. Four o’clock. Automatically he went downstairs and opened the door.

  Lucy, frightened and wrapped in an old jacket, looked up at him.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Tom. I saw the light. I didn’t think you were coming home tonight… And Jason said he was … I didn’t want to call the police before I’d made sure … I’m so sorry.’

  She turned to go.

  ‘It’s all right, Lucy. Come in.’

  She protested for a moment then stepped into the hall. He closed the door.

  ‘Jenni’s not well,’ he said.

  There was an awkward moment, then Lucy said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  And at that moment he thought there was nothing he’d like more than a normal cup of tea with a normal woman in a normal home. He nodded, pursing his lips.

  Lucy bustled about the kitchen in a comforting, mumsy way while Shackleton sat at the table watching her. She put his tea down in front of him with a few biscuits on a plate. And that was too much. That was the image that broke into him. Her ordinary, unmanicured hand putting down a plate of digestives.

  ‘You can dunk them if you want, I won’t tell,’ she said.

  He put his face against her soft, untoned belly and tried to cry but his sobs were dry, the comfort of tears denied him. And she, who’d dreamed of him one day doing this, held him in silence. Afraid of losing the moment.

  She held him close and whispered in the same voice she’d used to comfort Carter, ‘I love you, Tom, don’t cry. Don’t cry. Sweetheart, don’t cry.’

  And she rocked him, like a child, until they were both silent and still.

  With his face against her, he said, ‘Don’t love me, Lucy. There’s nothing to love. There’s nothing in me, nothing. You’re warm. Alive. And I’m dead.’

  She squatted down beside him and stroked his face so gently it hurt.

  ‘Don’t, Lucy. Don’t. Please …’

  But his words had no force and his eyes looked to her like the eyes of a child. She was where Lucy had been born to be, mother and lover, the only one for whom he’d ever been the best.

  He offered no resistance when she led him up to his room. He stood by the bed making no move to lie down or undress, lost in his unhappiness.

  Lucy, always mindful of duty, went along the corridor and looked in on Jenni. The light was still on and Jenni lay asleep, like a waxwork breathing gently, sound asleep. Quietly Lucy went over to her and turned off the bedside light. Jenni muttered and found her way back into her dreams.

  Lucy went out and closed the door.

  Tom was still standing by the bed when Lucy reached up and kissed him. As if returning from a great depth he responded then held her to him as if his life depended on it. He wasn’t gentle with her that night. He struggled to get inside her, trying to escape the demons in his head. Not trying to fuck her brains out but his own. And still she said she loved him.

  After, he was reluctant to withdraw and lay on top of her, holding her for comfort. He was breathing fast, his heart beating through her own chest. She held him and soothed him, kissing him, comforting him. Knowing she’d betrayed Gary and not caring.

  Stroking his hair she said, ‘You’re not dead, Tom. Hold on to me, my love. You’re not dead. We’re alive. We are, we’re alive …’

  Eventually he fell asleep, her chin resting on his head as she held him, his right hand holding on to her left shoulder, his right leg across her. She held him as if carrying him.

  Lucy dozed but knew she had to go. The birds were starting their day and Gary would be waking soon. Softly she tried to move away from him. He let her go immediately. She wanted him to stop her, to say something, but she knew that wasn’t part of the deal. She had something of what she wanted; it had to be enough.

  ‘L
ucy?’

  He held her wrist lightly.

  ‘If I could love you, I would. Only you.’

  And that was it. Lucy had the heart, the inarticulate, unformed love of Tom Shackleton. She knew those words would be with her for the rest of her life. Nothing he could do or say, nothing that parted them, would be able to take those words away from her. As she went across the road to her house and her husband, she knew, for the first time in her life, what unqualified happiness was. And all because a man had said he couldn’t love her.

  Tom woke after three hours of dreamless sleep, the first since Carter’s death. For a minute his mind was clear, undisturbed, then he saw his clothes scattered on the bed and floor. The sight of his underwear crumpled on the bedside table, with his tie, depressed him, and opened the door to the greyness that had dogged him for so long. It was as if fog had settled in his bones. On the bedside table was a folded piece of paper, his name written on it. He picked it up. Inside was a small Russian wedding ring, the one Lucy wore on the third finger of her right hand.

  He read the note: ‘If you’re going to be a Tsar then this will bring you luck. I give it with my love and hopes you will give it back one day in different circumstances.’

  He was embarrassed by the gesture, knowing how little he deserved it. He picked it up, its three rings lay in the palm of his hand, then put it back on the table. It fell into interlinked solidity. A wedding ring.

  He got up and put on a dressing gown. Coffee, shave, shower, dress, the reassuringly mundane. He was cleaning his shoes, putting off the moment of waking Jenni. The small, circular, particular rubbing in of the black polish was soothing.

  He allowed himself to think about Lucy. Life would be so easy with her, so ordinary. What if? What if? He tried to imagine what it would be like to be married to Lucy and saw only his life with Jenni. It would only be a matter of time before Lucy turned into her. It would be inevitable, it was what he did to people. Women. They always wanted more than he had to offer and their disappointment at his inability to respond made him withdraw into himself, made them hate him. There was no point. No point in thinking about Lucy.

  He had the family. Maybe he could start again with the next generation, the uncritical love of grandchildren.

  He put on his shoes and tied the laces. He watched his hands, strong and quick, to his eyes ugly. Square, so unlike the priest’s hands of Geoffrey Carter. Abruptly, to dislodge the thought, he stood up and poured a cup of coffee. Carefully, so as not to spill a drop into the saucer – she couldn’t stand that – he took it up to Jenni. He stopped at her door. What if?

  What if she’d forgotten the pill he gave her and had taken one more. Two more. The whole bottle. What if he opened the door and she was dead. Why had he left those little yellow tablets so close to her? Because he hoped she would take them. Because he hoped he’d be free this morning. Free to start his life again. In less than seconds she was buried and he’d moved to London, away from the memory of his wife and from the body of his lover. If he could open that door and find her life had ended … what could he offer to the devil in exchange for that? His soul was already gone: there was nothing left to bargain with. He opened the door.

  The bed was empty and the bathroom door shut. He could hear water running. The disappointment was tempered with surprise.

  ‘Jenni? … Jenni? I’ve brought you some coffee.’

  He put it down on her dressing table and turned to go. The bathroom door opened and Jenni slumped against the jamb. She stared at him.

  ‘I had a dream last night.’

  Shackleton didn’t want to hear about it, he had enough of his own, the vivid repetitive images of Carter pleading for mercy.

  ‘No. Not about … that. About you.’

  She pushed herself upright and walked towards him.

  ‘I dreamed Lucy came in here. She woke me up. But I couldn’t speak to her, I wanted to ask her about something … what? I don’t know. Making pastry, I think. Stupid. So I got up, I was going to follow her. I went down the hall and your door was open. Just a crack. I pushed it. I couldn’t see anything, it was dark. Pitch dark. But I heard you. Listened to you humping Lucy. She made silly gurgling noises, like a blocked drain.’

  He felt he’d stopped breathing. What did his face look like?

  ‘And?’ was all he could say.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing else. I went back to bed. Strange dream. But it was a dream. Must have been. She said she loved you and you said, “Oh, that’s lovely.” What a stupid thing to say. “Oh, that’s lovely.” Why would I dream that, Tom?’

  He looked as blank as he could.

  ‘No idea, Jenni. Look, I must go, Gordon’ll be here in a minute. Will you be all right? Do you want me to phone Lucy and ask her to come over?’

  Jenni snorted.

  ‘Not after last night. I couldn’t look her in the eye.’

  ‘It was only a dream, Jenni.’

  She was angry.

  ‘I know that. But the dreams I have are more real than life. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? It must be so nice to have no subconscious. Even dogs dream! But not you. Not Tom Shackleton, oh no, he’s superhuman. No weakness there.’

  Her voice was rising, the sound of nails on a blackboard.

  ‘No way in to the great Tom Shackleton. Don’t look at me like that. Stop it. I did it for you … and now I’m being punished for it. Not you, no. You just go on. Tom …’

  Her tone shifted suddenly, to pleading.

  ‘Help me, please. Don’t shut me out. Tom …’

  To his horror she sank to her knees, crying, and wrapped her arms round his legs.

  ‘I only did it for you. It wasn’t meant to be like that. I didn’t know he’d die. It was an accident. Tom. Talk to me, Tom. Tell me it’s all right. Take it away. Please, Tom, please.’

  She dissolved on to the floor. He stepped away from her, repulsed.

  ‘Don’t go. Please don’t go. I can’t stand being alone. Help me, I can’t take any more …’

  He walked to the door. To him she was being histrionic: her suffering was too operatic to be real.

  ‘I’ll call Jacinta, tell her to come over.’

  Her reply was instant. ‘No, don’t.’

  There was a pause then she sat up. The drama dropped away and she said quite simply and coldly, ‘I slept with Robert MacIntyre.’

  He stopped and turned to look at her.

  Now she had his full attention, she was triumphant, back in control.

  ‘To get you the Met, but do you know what? I was so good he made you Crime Tsar. Don’t you turn your back on me! Tom Shackleton, Crime Tsar – made between his wife’s legs. Watch my lips – Robert MacIntyre gave it to you because I let him fuck me. Couldn’t have done it without me, could you? I put you where you are by letting him put his cock up my arse.’

  She waited, sure of bitter victory.

  When he spoke, it was quietly, with no emotion.

  ‘Thank you. I hope it was worth it.’

  He bowed his head briefly and left the room, closing the door behind him. Jenni stayed on the floor, unable to move, her eyes fixed on nothing.

  Tom arrived at police headquarters to a barrage of press enquiries. Would he do the news on One, Two, ITV, Four, Sky, radio, broadsheets, tabloids? Instant stardom insulated him from thought and feeling. The day was cleared to make way for camera crews and interviews. The PM’s spokesman was on the phone. The Home Secretary wanted him to return his call. The Home Secretary, the Gnome. Shackleton pushed the pictures of him with Jenni to the farthest, most stagnant unexamined backwater of his mind and joined the circus.

  All day he spoke fluently, convincingly, modestly, of the need for a national database of criminal intelligence. The necessity in the twenty-first century of facing major international crime in a less parochial way. The importance of DNA and scientific advances. The world was a global village plagued with crime that respected no local boundaries. His responsibility was to coo
rdinate the national response to national and international crime.

  It was four-thirty in the afternoon before he had a moment alone. He instructed Janet to get the Home Secretary on the phone. He sat back and waited, his hands on the desk. Those expressive, capable hands. And on the third finger of his left hand a thin gold ring. Bought with money borrowed from his mother because Jenni had insisted they both wore rings.

  ‘I want everyone to know you’re married. I don’t trust men who won’t wear them. I always wonder why.’

  She’d looked so beautiful as she concentrated on putting it on his finger. When he’d still been in awe of her. Grateful to her for rescuing him from ridicule and loneliness. He took hold of it in his right thumb and forefinger. He’d never taken it off since that Saturday morning, in his hired suit and squeaky shoes. He moved it up to his knuckle, resistance for a second, then it was free.

  There was a knock on the door. Before he could say anything his secretary came in. She was sheet white and seemed to have tears streaming down her face.

  ‘What’s the matter, Janet?’

  He stood up, aware that the woman lived with her elderly mother. It was going to be inconvenient organising all this media interest if she wanted time off to care for her or bury her. The old lady’s timing had always been immaculate – she’d had a stroke the day Shackleton had needed Janet to work on a report he was preparing for the standing committee on prostitution. But he was all solicitude; Janet was too good to lose. He wondered, if the old lady had finally gone, if she’d consider coming to London with him.

  ‘Your wife … Mr Shackleton … she’s dead.’

  Gary had been due to go to hospital to be assessed for cannabis pain-control trials at one o’clock, so Lucy had him ready in his wheelchair by a quarter to, ready for the ambulance. As it had had to collect two motor neurones and a Parkinson’s it didn’t arrive until two-fifteen, by which time Gary was tetchy and in pain, physical and mental. If he was accepted on to the trial he would have hope again but the thought of hope being refused him was agony. Lucy was kind and sweet but Gary wanted to lash out at her, to hurt someone as much as he was hurting. He told her he didn’t want her with him, that he could manage, to stop treating him like a bloody cripple. He hadn’t told her about the trial, though she’d nagged for months about getting on to it. He just told her he had to go in for a routine checkup. The thought of disappointing her again stopped him saying more, and he covered his fears with anger. If he was rejected by the cannabis trials she may finally, all hope lost, reject him too. He poured more anger on his doubt and shook her off.