Stick or Twist

by Diane Janes

  ‘And of course the cashier on duty takes absolutely no notice of him,’ Hannah said with a sigh as she read: ‘Cannot recall any kind of conversation apart from asking him if he wanted a VAT receipt, to which our man allegedly said, “no thanks”. Witness wouldn’t know the man again if he saw him and wouldn’t recognize his voice which was apparently “ordinary” – whatever that might mean.’

  ‘One slightly interesting thing emerged in a later statement,’ Peter said. ‘Here it is – the cashier thought that he didn’t take any particular notice of the man, because he might have seen him before.’

  ‘I don’t remember hearing about that. Was the cashier asked to look through mug shots and previous CCTV?’

  ‘Apparently not. What the garage guy seems to be saying is that he wouldn’t actually be able to recognize the man again, but he had a feeling that he’d seen him come into the garage before, which was why he didn’t take any particular notice of him.’

  ‘Gotcha. So in the unlikely event that our suspect ever pops in there to top up his tank on some future occasion, the cashier might instinctively recognize him – though probably not, if he was in the middle of some really exciting game of Call of Duty at the time?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Do you ever wonder why we do this job?’ Hannah asked, in a tone which Peter suspected was not entirely rhetorical. ‘Is it just so that we can amass the maximum amount of frustration that it’s possible to take in any one lifetime?’

  ‘I reckon we’ve had enough frustration for one day. Come on, it’s time to pack it in for the night.’

  ‘Home time.’ Hannah’s affected a cheery, School’s Out tone, then abruptly crumpled and started to sob.

  ‘McMahon? Hannah? Hannah? Come on now … what’s the matter?’ He stood awkwardly a foot or two from her desk, wondering what he should do.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled between tears. ‘Please, take no notice. You should go.’

  ‘If the case is getting to you …’

  ‘It’s not the case.’

  ‘Hannah … it’s not because …?’

  She turned her head away but he could see that she was frantically applying a tissue to her eyes and trying to regain control. ‘No, no, nothing to do with that. It was stupid of me anyway. I shouldn’t have embarrassed you or myself. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No harm in suggesting it.’ Magnanimity seemed to be the order of the day in the face of this unprecedented display of emotion. ‘I was flattered – honestly. But I don’t want to mix work and pleasure, and—’

  ‘Oh, forget about the sodding sex!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Then what? Why?’

  She took a deep breath, seeming to struggle with her better judgement, before she blurted out, ‘My sister’s terminally ill. It’s cancer. She’s only thirty-four. She has two little kids. I’m not dealing with it very well.’

  Half a step closed the gap between them. He put his arms around her and she sobbed into his shirt.

  ‘Why didn’t you say something before?’ he asked, after a decent interval had passed and Hannah was again applying a tissue to her face.

  ‘It seemed easier not to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘“How’s your sister doing, McMahon?” “Oh, not so well.” “Sorry to hear that.” This isn’t a story which is going to have a happy ending, you know? There isn’t ever going to come a day when I can say, “Yeah, my sister’s doing great today and she’s nearly all better.” The more people who know, the more people I’m going to have answer one day with the words, “Actually my sister died.” It’s bad enough with my family and I definitely can’t handle bringing it into work with me every day. Work is a Clare-free zone. Except that it isn’t, because when your sister is only thirty-four and approaching the end of the road, it’s very hard not to think about it all the time.’

  ‘What are you doing to cope?’

  ‘Mostly going home alone, and crying – or occasionally, by way of a variation, going home alone, getting drunk first and then crying.’ She gave a sad little laugh. ‘Pretty pathetic, eh?’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, assuming command, in a tone which he knew she would have resented in normal circumstances. ‘Dry your eyes and get your coat on, I’m taking you out for a drink.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  When Jude leaned over the back of the sofa to rumple Rob’s hair, he immediately lunged backwards and made a grab for her, but she had anticipated it, and a nimble movement took her out of his reach.

  ‘Amazing slice of luck,’ he said. ‘Bumping into that bloke again.’

  ‘And at last you’ve accepted what I’ve been telling you for weeks. The guy is loaded. I told you right from the off, that this was our man.’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘I showed you his father’s obituary and the piece in the paper, saying how much he’d left in his will, but you still had to go sniffing around.’

  ‘Trust you to claim all the credit. Anyway, you didn’t hit on him straight away.’ He laughed, as he picked up his glass for another slug of Bacardi. ‘You had that Dimitros bloke at the top of the list to start with.’

  ‘How was I supposed to know that he was on the verge of announcing his engagement? And it wasn’t Dimitros anyway – it was Dimchek. You’re getting mixed up with that tennis player.’

  ‘Well, who cares? We’ve got our man and we’ve almost made it.’

  She had to pass him on her way back from refilling her glass and this time he had no difficulty in catching hold of her, swinging her into his lap and giving her a lingering kiss.

  ‘You shouldn’t drink so much,’ she reproved, as they disengaged.

  ‘Look who’s talking!’

  ‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘I know it feels like we’re nearly home and dry, but tomorrow you have to drive down and make sure that everything at the cottage is ready. We can’t afford to make any slip-ups now.’

  ‘Have there been any slip-ups so far?’ He took another gulp of his drink, just to wind her up.

  ‘It’s all gone perfectly – so far. In fact I can’t believe how easy it was in the end, getting him to propose.’

  ‘Look at you.’ With his free hand, Rob reached out to stroke her cheek, letting his fingers continue downwards, progressing from her chin to her navel. ‘Who wouldn’t want to marry you?’

  ‘Flattery will get you absolutely everywhere.’

  ‘Is that the kind of corny line you employed on him?’

  ‘Never mind what kind of lines I employ on him.’

  She knew that he had drunk too much, which always had the potential for trouble. It took no more than a couple of large Bacardis to position him at the edge of a dangerous mood, but she was still surprised when he abruptly jerked her off his lap. ‘That’s the part I can’t stand,’ he said.

  ‘Hey,’ she protested. ‘Do you think I like making up to him all the time, or shagging him?’

  ‘Shut up about that. We agreed not to talk about it.’

  ‘Rob, please … You know I’m only doing it because—’

  ‘Shut up, I said,’ he shouted.

  She instantly switched her expression from pleading to anger. ‘Do you think any of it has been easy for me? What do you think has been my favourite part, Rob? Maybe keeping my hands tied behind my back for over twenty-four hours, to make sure the damage looked authentic by the time they got me to the hospital? Or maybe some of those other things you did to me, so that the police would be convinced?’

  He faced her out. ‘You know I didn’t do anything without you telling me to,’ he said angrily. ‘You know that I thought we were going too far.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She managed to sound genuinely contrite. ‘I know you hated doing that stuff.’

  His mood changed just as abruptly. ‘It wasn’t easy, you know. Beating up my wife.’

  ‘I know.’

  He put down his glass and took her back into his arms. ‘I wanted to stop. You had to make me keep going.’

  She held onto him,
saying nothing. It was true. When it had finally come to the point and he was still hesitating, she had yelled at him to get started, and when he had hit her so hard that she’d screamed, he had initially refused to go on. She remembered how she had sworn at him and instructed between sobs, that he had to get on and finish the job. Later on he’d had to release her hands long enough for her to inflict the burns herself. Not that there had been anything brave or stoical about it, she thought. She had merely done what they had agreed to do. The things which had been necessary to generate the right amount of proof. She told herself now that it had not been so very bad. It couldn’t possibly equate with being beaten up by a stranger, not knowing what was going to come next, thinking that you might be tortured or raped or killed. They had worked to a pre-ordained script. She had always been in control.

  ‘So you’re going with him to make the arrangements tomorrow and then you’ll call me. I wish now that we’d decided that you would get married without me being there. I don’t want to stand there and watch you marrying someone else.’

  ‘We stick with the agreed plan,’ she said, firmly. ‘No last-minute changes, because that’s how slip-ups are made. Comfort yourself with the thought that it isn’t really legal.’

  ‘That worries me as well.’

  ‘It needn’t. The only record of any wedding involving Judith Thackeray in this country will be to Mark Medlicott. There’s no record of our wedding in this country. There’s no way anyone is going to catch on.’

  ‘Come to bed.’

  ‘Not yet. Noooo … Pack it in, Rob.’

  ‘But you said flattery—’

  ‘Let go.’ Her tone was affectionate but firm. ‘We’ll do whatever you want, once we’ve gone through this once more, to make sure that we’re both absolutely up to speed on what happens next. Finishing with him is the most important part. We can’t afford to let anything go wrong. Don’t have any more to drink,’ she exhorted, as he released her and reached for the Bacardi bottle.

  ‘Finish with him,’ he said in a thoughtful voice, as he ignored her request and poured another generous measure. ‘That’s such a neat way of putting it.’

  He was drinking far too much, she thought. She would have to keep an eye on that.

  ‘That’s what you do with old unwanted boyfriends, isn’t it?’ he continued. ‘You finish with them.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Peter was uncertain whether or not Hannah had fallen asleep, but he continued to stroke her hair, which looked darker than usual, alongside the pale skin of his chest. (He was too blond and too busy to ever spend any significant amount of time lying out in the sun.) He knew that sleeping with her was probably a very bad idea in the long run, but at the pub he had encouraged her to unburden herself about her sister, and this had led to another slightly tearful interlude, during which he had found himself holding her hand in a way which felt perfectly natural and right.

  He had chosen a pub where neither of them were known and stuck to tonic water himself, while encouraging her to drink a couple of large glasses of Pinot Grigot, on a promise that he would drive her home later. It had gradually emerged that she felt unable to talk to her family about her feelings, because they were already weighed down with their own grief in the face of this cruellest of circumstances. As the hands on the fake Victorian pub clock had circled its oversize face, making a second round and then starting on a third, she had apologized several times for ‘going on’ and ‘getting upset’, but he kept on encouraging her to talk, offering a third drink, which she had declined. On their way out of the pub, she had apologized for propositioning him. ‘It was just that I was so desperately down. I needed something to distract me from it all.’

  She had stopped then, exclaiming, ‘Oh no! That sounds really bad – as if I don’t even fancy you. Now I’ve compounded the felony by insulting you as well.’

  ‘It’s OK. I’m not insulted.’

  At that moment she had caught sight of herself in the ornately framed mirror which hung on the wall, next to the main entrance. ‘God! What a mess I look. Eyes all red and face all blotchy.’

  ‘You look fine. Never lovelier, in fact.’ And that was when he had kissed her. After that he had driven her back to her house, where he had very competently distracted her for the next hour, without any lack of enthusiasm on either side, apart from the one moment when she had paused in the act of unbuttoning his shirt, to say, ‘You don’t have to do this, you know,’ to which his only reply had been to press his lips onto hers again.

  It was the most unusual – and enjoyable – favour he had ever done for a friend. Odd he thought, while continuing the gentle, repetitive motion of his hand across her head, how much more attractive he had found the semi-distraught, crumbling McMahon, to the competent, efficient McMahon. Did he prefer women who were needy? And was that OK? It probably made him some kind of Neanderthal, where sexual relationships were concerned. As far as he could guess (and who knew what really went on inside women’s heads) most women were looking for an equal partnership, not a protector. He had never consciously noticed this protective side of his nature before, but maybe that was what had attracted him to Jude Thackeray too? Someone he had first encountered as a victim, brutalized by the man who had made free with her affections, then hurt and robbed her?

  It was some weeks since anyone from the investigation had been in direct contact with her. After the assault she had gone to live elsewhere, being understandably less than enthusiastic about a return to Laurel Cottage. She was lucky like that, he supposed. Most people had nowhere else to go, and often no alternative but to return to a home where their confidence had been destroyed and their personal security violated, but the Thackerays enjoyed the luxury of several alternative addresses.

  Hannah stirred and half opened her eyes to look up at him. ‘You’re lovely,’ she whispered, in a voice slurred with satisfaction and drowsiness.

  But would she still think so in the morning? From where an outsider sat, he thought, it looked horribly like taking advantage of a colleague who’s drunk too much Pinot Grigot on an empty stomach. Not that he could exactly count himself as an outsider, while he was lying here under her lime green duvet (whoever would have imagined that McMahon had such outlandish taste in home furnishings?) He could see however, how it would look to a third party.

  To a copper who had professionally encountered his fair share of date rape allegations, the fact that McMahon had all but begged him earlier in the week, or acquiesced readily enough after an evening which began in the pub, was no guarantee that she would perceive him in the same rosy light, tomorrow morning.

  The thought of the morning brought up another big question. In the words immortalized by The Clash, ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ She had not invited him to stay. She had not even specifically invited him in, come to that. On the other hand, sliding out of bed and leaving while she slept seemed callous and more than a bit uncaring.

  He decided to stay – a decision which he assumed that McMahon was fully on board with, when they made love again, before rising for breakfast together.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘I promise it will feel more romantic on the day itself.’ Mark was doing his best to strike a note of optimism.

  To his relief, Jude smiled back at him, her crestfallen expression erased. ‘I know it will. I suppose I hadn’t expected anything so clinical. I mean, I understand that they needed to see ID and everything, but it felt a bit too much like trying to open a bank account.’

  Mark squeezed her hand. He felt in serious need of cheering up himself, because the news that the wedding could only take place after twenty-eight days had elapsed was a bit of a body blow. It meant more juggling with credit cards, more outstanding interest payments and another appeal for extra time via Chaz. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that the law required couples to wait that long. His original idea had been that they could get some sort of special licence and tie the knot the next day, but when he queried it with the registrar, sh
e had laughed and said that while it might have been the case in the past, these days the formalities gave you time to change your mind. She had said it like it was some kind of joke. Jesus! Jude hadn’t better change her mind or he was completely basted and barbequed, make no mistake.

  Fortunately Jude hadn’t appeared in the least surprised at the delay; merely a bit miffed because it was all so civil service and bland. He reminded himself that maxed-out credit cards or not, the day itself needed to be roses and champagne all the way, with a surprise vintage white Rolls Royce to collect them from the door. (There was low-key and low-key, after all.)

  ‘The other question is who to have as our second witness,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know who to ask. I thought one of the staff would be allowed to do it.’

  ‘Apparently not. Honestly, I can’t believe all these rules and regulations. Whatever happened to spontaneity and true romance?’

  ‘We still have that. It’s just that government bureaucrats enjoy making things more difficult.’

  ‘I could ask my eldest niece.’ He had a light-bulb moment. ‘Monty’s daughter, Katrina. She’s in her first year at University College. I bet she’d love to do it. She’s a nice kid too.’

  ‘Can she keep a secret?’

  ‘Of course.’ (He wasn’t altogether confident on the point, but he would have to bribe her. Every woman has her price, he thought, and it might be no more than enough for a new handbag or a fancy pair of shoes, in the case of a student.) ‘I bet she’d love to do it,’ he repeated. ‘It would make her feel grown up – she’s still only in her teens, so I bet she’s never been a witness at a wedding before.’

  ‘So it will be just you and me, Rob and your niece – what’s her name again?’