Murder... Now and Then (3 page)

She found herself being propelled back along the corridor to reception, his hand clamped around her wrist like a handcuff. His fingers dug into her as he took another deep breath, and pushed his way back into the room through the gathering, his grip on her growing even tighter as Victor Holyoak's speech began.

‘I had a very special reason for wanting to move not only back to Britain, where I belong, but to Stansfield …'

The voice came to her in waves of nausea and giddiness; fading away, coming back.

‘… already had a toehold with the admirable operation set up by Jimmy Driver and carried on so ably by his widow, in which I had the foresight to buy shares …'

Blackness gathered at the corners of her vision, and she seemed to float away from it all.

‘… may come as news to some of you that my new general manager's wife Catherine is in fact my stepdaughter who has sadly been estranged from her family, but now …'

Catherine heard the startled applause; she saw the stunned look on Zelda's face. Her body weight tore her hand from Max's grasp as she fell to the floor.

Holyoak's eyes had been on his stepdaughter as he spoke; he broke off as she slipped to the ground, then walked over, pushing through the crowd that had immediately gathered round her.

‘Get out of the way!' he shouted. ‘ How do you expect her to breathe?'

Geraldine Rule was pushing through from the other side; Holyoak watched as she knelt down. Catherine hadn't looked well – he'd noticed that when he came in, before she'd had to rush out of the room. And her cheeks were flushed; she had probably been sick. She had always been highly strung, and she was bound to be nervous.

‘It's all right,' said Geraldine, helping her into a sitting position, and pushing her head down. ‘She's only fainted.'

Holyoak nodded. He had known that it would be an ordeal for her, and hadn't expected her to come to the opening, but Scott had presumably insisted.

Geraldine helped her to her feet. There was a brief hiatus while everyone expected Scott to come to her, but he didn't. He just stood tight lipped and unmoving, and watched while Charles Rule went to help.

‘Here,' Holyoak said, digging in his pocket for his keys. ‘Take her up to my apartment.'

He wanted to go with her, but he couldn't; the minister would be here at any moment. Perhaps he shouldn't have put the extra pressure on her that he had; he might have misjudged that. But she had to accept her responsibilities, and if that was the only way to make her understand, then so be it. She knew that there was no need to put herself through all of this.

He looked across to where Scott stood, and frowned. He had deliberately avoided meeting him before today, but he had promoted him in the face of fierce opposition from Zelda Driver. He was virtually running the place anyway, so it was a reasonable move, from a business standpoint and no skin off his nose. He had told Catherine what her husband was doing behind her back; that had made very little impression on her. He hadn't understood that at the time, but he did now. He watched as the two doctors Rule helped the semiconscious Catherine out of the room, and still her husband took no notice of her. Matters had clearly come to a head.

He knew why, and so did Catherine.

Charles, his arm around Catherine's waist, pressed the button with P on it. Presumably that was the penthouse. Catherine hadn't meant to attend at all, according to Zelda. And she had been seeing Gerry about menstruation problems; it might be that time of the month. Or perhaps she was pregnant again, he thought, still brooding about what Zelda had said. He looked at the angry red marks on Catherine's face, frowning a little, as the lift rose, and the doors opened on to a small landing. He and Gerry stepped out, with Catherine more or less walking under her own steam. But Charles still had to hold on to her as Gerry unlocked the flat door, which admitted them directly to the sitting room of the large flat; high-tech, shiny, tastefully furnished, with a low ceiling and no visible lighting.

He helped her to take off her coat as Gerry briskly opened the bedroom door, and ushered their patient in. Charles waited in the sitting room as the door closed.

She had been pregnant when she came to Stansfield. Max had always sworn that he had not been having an affair with Catherine when they were in London, whatever Valerie had thought. Charles had believed him, had honestly thought that seducing seventeen-year-old girls was something at which even Max would have drawn the line. But the police had been very anxious to find the other woman about whom Valerie had been so upset and whose existence Max had strenuously and uselessly denied; Catherine's turning up had confirmed it as far as they were concerned. Max had got Zelda to put her up, and had continued to deny any involvement with the girl, practically until the day he married her.

Charles had known that there had been rather more to it than a simple working relationship, but he had believed that Max had for once kept his baser instincts in check, and that avoiding the temptation had been a factor in his decision to move away from London. But Max had been running away from a problem, and it had run after him. In the end, he had married it if only to put an end to the gossip. But angry though he was about what he had learned, Charles knew that Max genuinely loved Catherine; he couldn't believe that he had hit her, but that was what those marks looked like, and it was hard to see what else could have caused them.

It had happened, if it had happened, after Holyoak had appeared, but before he made his startling announcement, upon which Catherine had fainted. And Max, who treated all women with something approaching reverence, hadn't made a move towards her. It was hard to imagine what in the world Catherine could have done or said to him to produce a violent reaction, but Charles supposed it had something to do with another woman, as Zelda had heavily hinted.

Charles admired Max's success with women; he always had. There was nothing obvious about it; no heavy chat-up lines, no quiet dinners for two with wine being ladled into the targeted female. Max was always just the way he came, and the way Max came was something that a great many people found very attractive, including Charles. But of course Max was always at ease with women, unlike Charles, who had never really understood what made them tick. ‘The same things that make you and me tick,' Max used to tell him, but Charles had never found that, and Max had tempted more than one girl away from him as a result.

‘The trick,' he had told Charles once, ‘is not to make a pass. Make her feel entirely comfortable with you, and chances are she'll make the first move. Then all you have to do is make sure she's glad she did.'

Charles supposed that that was how it happened with him and Gerry, but there had been nothing calculated about it. They had known one another since their first year in medical school, and he hadn't felt shy with her as he had with other girls. And it was true to say that she had felt comfortable with him, and that she had made the first move. She had married him, so presumably she had been glad that she had, but he didn't suppose that Max had been referring to the long term when he had said that.

Gerry came out again, and crossed the room. ‘Water,' she said, opening another door to reveal the even more high-tech kitchen.

Charles followed Gerry in, watching as she got a glass from one of the cupboards and filled it. They weren't ordinary taps that you turned and the water came out; Charles wouldn't have had a clue how to make them work. ‘Is she all right?' he asked.

‘Yes, of course,' said Gerry.

He hesitated before he asked his next question, because he didn't want confirmation of what he suspected. ‘Did you see those marks on her face?' he asked.

Gerry indicated by a movement of her head that she had, and looked at him, concerned. ‘ Surely Max didn't hit her,' she said, but it was obvious that she too thought that he must have done.

Charles shrugged. He had never known Max to get angry with a woman, never mind to the extent of physical violence. But the marks were there, and he had practically dragged Catherine back into the reception. Gerry walked past him with the glass of water, and the bedroom door closed again.

She had asked him about other women, and his reply had been wholly and unequivocally true. Women had never been that important to Charles; his physical relationship with Gerry was, he supposed, satisfactory, but from the moment they had sanctioned it by marriage it had taken place with a view to procreation, and all too soon had become technical and intense as Gerry tried desperately to conceive.

How like Max to have fathered a child without even trying. Charles had always had to work at everything; at his studies, at the practice, at his marriage, at making the right contacts and building up the private patient lists, at attempting to impregnate his wife.

It was his fault, if blame came into it. A low sperm count. Some men got very upset if they were told that; they felt it reflected on their manhood. Charles didn't. His manhood wasn't something to which he ever gave much thought. And, if truth were told, he wished they had been told that it was simply impossible for him to father a child, because then that would have been that. As it was, the possibility was there, if just one of the little buggers made it through when Gerry was at her most receptively fertile. For years now they had made love according to temperature charts and ovulation periods, with Gerry, lying flat on her back without moving as soon as the act was completed so as not to lose whatever meagre sperm he had managed to produce. It had become a clinical exercise; almost a chore. Just a means to an end.

It was par for the course that Charles had had to work hard for everything that he had achieved or hoped to achieve, doing whatever was necessary to keep things going, to ensure that the Jag stayed in the garage and the detached farmhouse and the private clinic remained out of the building society's reach, and that no hint of scandal or even disapproval ever touched him. And Max, who had never given a toss about personal advancement or what anyone thought of him, always seemed to have had it all handed to him on a plate; and usually didn't want it.

Charles himself had handed Max his original job at Driver's on a plate, all these years ago. He hadn't wanted it. And now it would appear that he was the stepson-in-law of one of the richest men in Europe, and from his totally uncharacteristic behaviour towards Catherine, Charles presumed that he didn't want that either. And he hadn't wanted the baby that his seventeen-year-old mistress had been carrying.

Charles sighed. Max was a difficult man to defend.

In a flat in a London tower-block, Dave Bannister opened another can of beer and switched on the TV for the schools programmes. Some of them were quite interesting. In the afternoon, it would be the racing. He didn't have a bet on; he didn't get his Giro until tomorrow.

His wife was working in the supermarket, and would be until eight o'clock. They opened from eight till eight every day except Sunday, when they opened from ten till five, and she worked all the overtime she could get. The kids went to their gran's after school; he was alone all day and didn't even get fed until after nine. So all he could do was watch the racing, and see whether he would have won or lost. He had never been a big betting man; just a couple of quid now and then. Her money got paid straight into the bank, so he had to rely on subs from her, and she'd run out too, or so she said.

Relying on a woman. If only he could have stayed in the force, of course, they would have been all right and it had been his own fault he supposed, that he had finally had to give it up. But he had only got in fifteen of his thirty years, and that had made money more than scarce, with the mortgage to pay.

He had had a job with a security firm, but that went bust; he had set up a private detective agency, and that had been worse than being on the dole. Then various other ex-copper jobs, none paying much and all, one way or another, crumbling to dust.

He had done a few labouring jobs and even a temporary clerical post but that hadn't brought in enough to make it worth his while. He was better off getting benefit, though God knew it didn't exactly let you live the life of Riley.

They had had to give up the house, and it had been so long since he had paid rent on this place that they were threatening eviction. He and Jackie had constant rows – always about money. They tried not to, but cooped up in this midair flat with three kids was hardly a way of staying cool. And now there was nothing in the way of work. Every night Jackie would bring home the evening paper, and he would see the vacancies section shrink from the night before. People didn't even bother to reply.

One of his contacts from the old days had offered him a job as a minder; at first Bannister had told him where to stick it, and Jackie had begged him not to change his mind. It would be crooked for a start. And could he take being ordered around by scum like that? Being treated no better than a pit-bull? Besides, he wasn't that far off forty, and the problem which had caused his resignation from the job would hardly stand up to the sort of punishment minders sometimes received. She was right; he knew she was right. But he had an obligation to her and the kids, and he was failing in it.

He knew how to keep out of trouble, as long as it wasn't out of his league. And this job was small time. So now he was considering it. One step further down the career ladder. Story of his life, that was.

It was the scar Lloyd remembered, not the man. A scar, running from just under the left ear almost to the corner of his mouth. An irregular pale line through the grey, formally trimmed beard. Lloyd had seen it before. The beard hadn't been grey then. He looked away quickly as Holyoak's eyes met his across the room. Even that was familiar; he had done that before.

‘The minister's here,' said Anna Worthing, as the official car pulled up outside, and she moved slightly closer to Lloyd, almost as if for protection. Lloyd checked the impulse to put his arm round her, and brought his thoughts firmly back to the here and now, the tangible and real. A moment's
déjà vu
, that was all.