Life Sentence

by Judith Cutler

  ‘With the A303, Hazel, one doesn’t need excuses.’

  ‘Well, start out earlier then. Come on, Fran, with Pa in hospital, you can’t look for excuses to mess around.’

  ‘I don’t think a possible murder enquiry is a mere excuse. But what’s this about Pa?’

  ‘A fall. I emailed you. Nothing serious, and the doctor was actually at the bungalow when it happened.’

  ‘A fall when you’re his age is always serious.’

  ‘Have you booked us a hotel as we asked?’ Hazel continued as if she hadn’t heard.

  ‘I understood you were to sleep at the bungalow.’ Why was she always on the back foot with Hazel? ‘In any case, I’ve had no time to—’

  ‘Do you spend your entire life finding reasons not to fulfil perfectly reasonable requests? I asked you to book us into an hotel, on account of Grant’s allergy to household dust.’

  Even to her own ears, she sounded stupid. Or mulish. ‘I don’t know any hotels.’

  ‘You must do. You’ve been down there often enough.’ She made it sound as if it were by choice, somehow to escape the real world.

  At last Fran responded hotly. ‘Indeed. But, I assure you, not to check out hotels.’ But her voice was suddenly less forceful than she meant: if she went down, would Mark come too? After all those months, years, now, of doing just that, she couldn’t bear to go alone. She needed his quiet presence, the warmth of his body in the middle of the night. She changed the subject. ‘Why was the doctor there?’

  ‘Oh, another of Ma’s little aches and pains.’

  Fran had her mouth open to demand how Hazel knew they were little, but shut it again.

  ‘See you at the airport!’

  The phone went dead.

  ‘Of course I shall come with you. Where else would I want to be?’ Mark interrupted her hesitant enquiry over supper, which they’d picked up at a take-away and were eating at his house. ‘In fact, we’ll take the afternoon off to be sure of being there in time. You’ve more than earned it, Fran. And in a case this old half a day isn’t going to matter.’

  ‘Two and a half,’ she said pettishly.

  ‘Come on, even a few days won’t really matter.’

  ‘And I don’t see why I should go at all since Hazel’s going to be there. I’d be much better employed—’

  ‘If Hazel’s going to be there, you’ll have time to show me round Teignmouth and environs,’ he overrode her.

  ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to see the Marstons?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The Marstons – that was the name of your boating friends, wasn’t it?’

  He grimaced, and then appeared to make some sort of decision. ‘I do have some friends called Marston, but not in Devon. The only reason I said they’d invited me down was so that I could spend some time with you. I’d have told you once I’d got you in my clutches,’ he said, with an agreeable leer. ‘As for your sister, you need a chance to discuss your parents’ future care with her.’ He lifted a hand to stop her interrupting. ‘If your pa’s had a fall, your mother may not be able to manage on her own.’

  She stared at him in horror. ‘But I can’t take time off now! Not when I’m this far from Elise’s murderer!’

  ‘Of course you can’t. And as your senior officer I should make that point officially. Unless,’ he added, tenderly, taking her hand, ‘you really want to leave Kent at this particular juncture. In which case, I’d have to move heaven and earth to make it happen. But you don’t, Fran, do you?’

  She bit her lip, shaking her head. ‘And not just because of the case, Mark. It’s us – I want to… I want to see what happens next.’ It was strange to use the phrase out loud.

  ‘Between us? That may take a long time to unfold. A very long time. Come on, let’s go and turn the next page now. And then we’d better go to your place.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘So you can pack for tomorrow. And I fancy your bed’s more comfortable than mine.’

  If Fran had hoped to get back to the Elise case the following morning, she was disappointed. The officers questioning Alan Pitt wanted her to talk through all her meetings with him, to make sure all he alleged was verified. She also had notes of her own to write up, and she wanted to discuss with Tom their line of enquiry for the following week. He seemed as pleased as she that they’d be working full-time together again, with no pressure from Henson.

  ‘What I really want you to teach me, guv, is how to get these intuitions of yours.’

  She smiled sadly. ‘If only I could teach that, I’d be the richest women in the world. Sorry, Tom, it’s something that you have to grow for yourself. I’ll tell you this, though: when you get it, it’ll never let you down. Not unless you stop acting on it. Come on: if I’m taking a few hours off, I don’t see why you shouldn’t, either.’

  His face lit up: Fran could see the projects unfolding behind his eyes. ‘Thanks, guv. Have a good weekend, like.’

  She’d do her best. But somehow she doubted it would be the unalloyed pleasure she hoped Tom’s would be.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ‘That’s Pa’s chair,’ the old lady said sharply. She was so small and bent that Mark couldn’t imagine that his tall, straight Fran could ever have emerged from her womb, but her voice, though cracked and reedy, was strong as a drill sergeant’s.

  ‘He won’t be needing it this evening, Ma,’ Fran shouted appeasingly. Was that an oxymoron? And why was the old woman’s hearing aid on the table, not in her ear? ‘So Mark can sit in it for a while.’ He’d swear Fran had shrunk three inches since she’d stepped through the door. ‘Pa’s in hospital, remember. After his fall.’ She slipped off her jacket and took Mark’s, hugging the garments to her.

  ‘Careless old fool. He never looks where he’s going. Shuffles his feet – never picks them up properly. And then what happens to him? He goes and leaves me high and dry here.’

  Mark, still trying not to breathe through his nose in what must be a hermetically sealed room, looked round for another chair. There was a huge pile of cushions on one of the unoccupied ones, and a sewing box and set of what must be corsets on the other. Two sets.

  ‘Before you sit down, Fran, you can just mend those for me. He can make the tea.’ She nodded vaguely in Mark’s direction.

  ‘Mark doesn’t know where the kitchen is, let alone the tea, Ma. I’ll—’

  ‘I told you, you’ll have to mend those. I can’t see to do them, not in this light. He never puts decent bulbs in. And you’ll have to go to the shops first thing tomorrow – I need some more stockings. That Sylvia – she’s so rough putting them on me in a morning she keeps laddering them. You’ll have to tell her. And she’s taken my dentures and left someone else’s. Look,’ she said, turning to Mark and extracting her lower set, ready to plop them into his hand, ‘you can see they aren’t mine.’

  Fran stepped swiftly forward, ‘Well, just put them back for now. Poor Mark hasn’t had a cup of tea yet – you can’t expect him to look for your teeth.’

  ‘Where are you going? You’ve only been here five minutes!’

  ‘To make the tea, Ma. I’ll do the mending when you’re in bed.’ She gathered up the corsets and hurried out with them.

  Mark looked on, his stomach heaving with the smell of damp and urine and unwashed feet. Old people smell. He’d come across it often enough when he was on the beat, visiting pensioners when there was a sudden death. In those days he’d have found something easy to say to the old woman; now he stood opening and shutting his mouth before turning tail and following Fran, whom he found quickly enough, standing at the sink running water and tipping liquid detergent into the sink. She was humming something under her breath, over and over, as if trying to wear the tune out. After a moment he placed it. Für Elise.

  ‘Sometimes I think she might be right about Sylvia,’ she said, rubbing vigorously. ‘These were – they weren’t clean. In fact, I’ll leave them to soak while I make our tea.’

  And her open, co
nfident face, brave in the face of hideous crimes, was crumpled as tight as a child’s expecting punishment. He wanted to gather her up and throw her across whatever passed for a saddle-bow these days and gallop away – at very least cuddle her better. As she busied herself with tea things, washing one cup, throwing another away, he looked about him. The work-tops and the table were passably clean, thanks, presumably, to Sylvia, but the walls and ceiling hadn’t seen fresh paint for years, and he would swear mould or mildew was growing in the corners.

  She might have read his mind, or, more mundanely, simply followed the line of his eyes. ‘Every time I arranged for a decorator, they’d quarrel with him over the price—’

  ‘Which you were paying?’

  ‘Well, yes. Or they’d refuse to let him in. And when I’ve bought paint to do it myself, they’ve – God, it’s horrible, isn’t it? But every single wall I’ve washed with bleach. Oh, Mark – why did I ever bring you here?’ Her voice cracked.

  Her hands still dripping, he took her in his arms, burying his face in her hair, the only sweet-smelling thing in the bungalow. ‘How do you manage, week after week? By yourself?’

  ‘As Pa always used to say, needs must when the Devil drives. And he’d always follow it up with, what can’t be cured, must be endured.’ She blotted her eyes, and turned from him, almost guiltily.

  There was a strange double-thump, double-thump, as if a very large, very slow rabbit were lolloping inexorably towards them.

  ‘I thought you were making some tea and here you are standing gossiping.’

  He heard the woman’s voice before he saw her. Finally she appeared in the doorway, leaning on a Zimmer.

  ‘I can’t find the kettle, Ma.’

  It should have sounded like a statement of fact: even he heard it as more of a whining excuse.

  ‘There it is. In front of your nose.’

  There was indeed a kettle, bright and shiny, on the top of the stove.

  Fran stared. ‘What happened to the electric one?’

  ‘The old fool put it on the red-ring to boil. We nearly had the fire-engine. But Sylvia smelt it before it got very bad. You know what, I think we should leave him in the hospital. He won’t wear his incontinence pads, either.’ She turned slowly on her heel and double-thumped away.

  Fran was doubled up with laughter. ‘Perhaps it’s a good job you didn’t sit in that chair!’ But she was weeping when she straightened. ‘Mark – what am I going to do?’

  She was almost ready for the answer, wasn’t she? But he’d rather she heard it from anyone but him. Tamely, he made the tea and put the plain biscuits she passed him on to a plate. Looking more carefully, he tipped them off again and washed the plate, the water dripping a pit into the foam on top of the corsets. As he dried the plate, Fran rolled up her sleeves again, pummelling the offending garments as if fighting off an assailant. The double-thump returned.

  ‘That’s right. Give them a good rub. It’ll do your arms good. Get rid of the fat. We make her cook cottage pie, Mike.’ Neither of them tried to correct her. ‘Not because we like it, because we don’t, not specially, though Pa finds it easy to chew, but because it’s good for her arms. Mashing the potatoes. Look at all that fat.’

  Fat? They were strong and beautifully shaped! But even as he tried to say so, the old voice ran on, ‘It’s because she used to play sport. The muscle’s run to fat. Like those great ugly football managers you see on the telly, with their beerbellies over their knickers. I’ll say that for you, you’re a skinny-rib. And you’ve still got your hair. You know she dyes hers, don’t you? In my day only tarts did that. And she wears trousers. I never wore trousers.’

  Over the old woman’s head, he could see Fran opening her mouth to speak. He caught her eye, shaking his head infinitesimally.

  ‘Her bottom’s too big for trousers. Well, she’s too big all over for a girl. I did my best with her, but she was never pretty. Not like Hazel. You come with me, young man, and I’ll show you a picture of our Hazel. Come on. She can bring the tray.’ She turned to Fran. ‘And try not to break anything. I heard you smash that plate. No good your pretending you didn’t – I heard you put it in the bin. Come on, young man. Leave her to it.’

  Seething, he looked back to Fran. She nodded, making a quick shooing movement with her suds-white hands. On impulse, he darted back, seized one and blew the bubbles into the air, kissing her nose as one landed on the tip. Somehow, the kiss tried to say, he would sort out all this.

  Did she get its message? She was staring at her hands, wrinkled by the water: ‘Everyone remarked on Elise’s hands being work-worn. Living down here – I could become another Elise.’

  He nodded. ‘So desperate to escape you sell or give away everything that reminds you of your past life, tuck all the cash into your bag, grab a sexy motor – and get robbed of everything. Including the new life.’

  ‘I have to find that murderer, Mark.’

  ‘And,’ he added, ‘all her loot.’

  ‘And see if anyone really has used all her papers to assume her ID. The Chief wanted me to get on to that especially, didn’t he? And I haven’t!’

  He took her by the shoulders. ‘Hang on, hang on: you worked every minute of last weekend on another case. You’ve hardly drawn breath since. You’ve run the abductor to earth and saved a child’s life. Don’t dare start beating yourself up because you’ve not done something no one else managed over two years of trying!’ Was he speaking as her lover or as her senior officer? If it was hard for him to tell, what about Fran? Perhaps tenderness would push her into tears, which he suspected she wouldn’t be able to deal with. ‘Tell you what: could you do me a favour? Phone up and see the kid’s still making good progress. It’d be good if she was back home.’

  He could see how much it hurt her to swallow, but she took the phone he fished from his belt and dialled. Meanwhile, her mother was yelling for him.

  Obediently, standing beside the old woman – he ought to call her something, but Mrs Harman seemed rather formal and Ma too intimate – he looked at a studio portrait of Fran’s sister. Even with the contrived lighting, he thought he sensed a determined jaw and lips that would snap shut. But she was pretty, very pretty, and looked as if the academic world, as symbolised by the degree scroll in her hand, was her oyster. There was an out-of-focus snap of Fran too, looking absurd and ugly in the awful passing out stance no one ever used once they were in the Force. He took a risk. ‘But Fran has a degree, too. A BSc. And a PhD. Don’t you have a photo of her in her doctor’s gown?’

  ‘Doctor? She’s not a real doctor. In any case, it wasn’t a proper university, not like Hazel. The Open University.’

  ‘People say that’s the hardest way to get a degree – tougher than going away—’

  ‘That’s rubbish. They write all their essays at home, so they can look up the answers. Not proper exams.’

  Mark looked to Fran, who was now standing at the door with the tea things, for support. He shrugged helplessly. His attempts to balance the equation between the daughters had only given the old woman with her half-knowledge and twisted logic the chance to humiliate her further. Fran smiled, though whether love or gratitude or irony predominated he couldn’t tell. Perhaps she didn’t know herself. He stepped swiftly over, taking the tray and kissing her on the lips.

  ‘Rebecca’s safe at home,’ she murmured. ‘And the Rohypnol or whatever did its job. She can’t remember anything that happened, beyond a vague grasp of the rules of chess. However, I gather she’s doing a sort of cold turkey – he gave her enough over a long enough period to get her hooked. I wonder what the jury will make of it all.’

  ‘Come on: I can’t wait all day, young man.’

  He put the tray on the cluttered table beside Ma’s chair and started to pour.

  ‘Look at this tea, half-stewed. And no strainer, either.’

  ‘It’s made with tea-bags, Ma. You don’t need a strainer.’

  ‘I’ve got my standards! God knows how you’ll g
et on when you try to look after us properly. A real butterfly she is, Mike, always flitting from one job to the next and never finishing anything properly. Look at this room, Mike – did you ever see such a mess. And yet she won’t put things away tidily when I ask.’

  ‘We only arrived ten minutes ago,’ he said dryly. ‘Give her half a chance!’

  ‘Where did you put your cases? I don’t want to go falling over them and ending up in hospital like your father.’

  ‘They’re still safely in the car,’ he said. A look from Fran prevented him saying anything more. And he acquiesced. There was no point in getting on to his high horse and announcing the bungalow was too filthy for human habitation and that he’d booked them into the best hotel he could find. It wasn’t only Grant who was allergic to dust, he’d lied to Fran. And since he’d packed both lots of clothes into one case, she’d better come with him. How she was going to tell the old lady he couldn’t imagine. But he had a fair idea what the response might be.

  In the event, he had to admit Fran’s tactics were masterly. She announced that when they’d collected Hazel and Grant, they were going to see Pa, and then would need some supper, so they would be back later than Ma’s self-imposed bedtime. So if they didn’t think they could get back in without disturbing her, they, like Hazel and Grant, would stay the night down the road. ‘In one of the guest-houses,’ she gestured vaguely.

  The old lady whipped round. ‘But Hazel and Grant are married. Do you two share a bed?’

  ‘It’s much cheaper that way,’ Fran explained.

  And to his amazement got away with it – perhaps because on the instant Fran returned to the kitchen and started preparing her mother’s supper, he took a quite spurious interest in photos of children he was sure were only Hazel’s by marriage but which Ma assured him had the full benefit of her genes.

  He wished that holding Fran to comfort her hadn’t reminded him of Tina. Physical contact, naked body against naked body, had been all she’d wanted as her illness had progressed. What would she make of this friendship, which had blossomed so swiftly, so triumphantly against all the odds of Fran’s life? He hoped it had her blessing. He mustn’t give a hint of his thoughts and memories to Fran, however: she was so swift to pick up nuances. So he continued to hold her in his arms, smoothing her hair and kissing her forehead. All he’d meant was to comfort her. So he was taken by surprise when she initiated love-making so frantic it left them both gasping.