Black Widow (16 page)

They struck me as a brother and sister who had a close bond but who nonetheless would rather not be in each other's company. I got my first hint as to why when Peter went to the toilet and we were left alone together.

‘Peter is very taken with you.'

She wore that thin-lipped smile again, a flimsy mask of politeness. I knew that whatever was coming next, she meant business.

‘I'm happy for him. But I'm concerned too. There have been women before you. They've taken advantage of his nature and he's been hurt. He's more fragile than he'd ever let you see. He's open with people and he assumes they're being open with him. He wants to believe you're perfect, that you won't suddenly decide he's not what you're looking for and dump him like they did. So if you're not in it for the long haul, get out now, and let him down gently. Because if you lead him on and then break his heart…'

She stopped herself there. I thought she was letting it hang unspoken as a threat, but as I searched, flabbergasted, for a response, she recanted slightly.

‘I'm sorry, that was inappropriate. I don't know you and all I've heard about you are good things. But I've only heard them from him, and let's just say it's not the first time I've heard good things from Peter about a girlfriend. I'm only saying … I don't know. He's my little brother. I can't stop myself looking out for him.'

Before I had a chance to assure her of my intentions, or maybe tell her she had no right to be demanding such assurances, I saw Peter coming back from the bathroom. I put on a polite smile, both Lucy and I pretending nothing contentious had been said.

Ali sat behind the wheel, her fingers resting on the ignition switch, but she didn't turn it. She stared back towards the cottage, her lips pursed in what her mum always called her thinking frown. She'd been doing it since she was about four.

‘Something up?' Rodriguez asked.

‘Not sure. Just a feeling, you know?'

‘Regarding the good Doctor Jager?'

‘Yes. I generally like my grieving widows to have a bit more grief on them.'

‘Strictly speaking, we don't know for sure yet that she's a widow.'

‘Quite, but I can't help getting the notion that maybe she does.'

Rodriguez cast a glance towards Jager's house. It seemed almost incredible how a building remained unaltered when an emotional bombshell had been dropped upon it, offering no clue to the outside world of the damage that had been inflicted. In this instance, there had been scant evidence inside either.

‘Playing doctor's advocate, if there was more to this than meets the eye, wouldn't she be hamming up her response to the news, chewing the scenery a bit?'

‘True,' Ali conceded. ‘Something just feels off, though. Her eye, for one thing: she didn't want us noticing that. Her explanation was odd too. Not the substance of it, the way she said it. It seemed rehearsed, as though she'd run through it in her head and then delivered the lines on cue.'

‘I got that too. It could have happened like she said, though. If she was worried about what people might assume when they saw it, it's possible she'd think through how she would tell them.'

‘Yeah, fair enough if she was talking to work colleagues on a normal day, but we had just told her that her husband is most probably dead. It seemed bizarre to give us a story about opening a parcel. People elaborate when they're lying, because they're never sure they've given enough detail to convince you.'

‘Or when they're reeling and flustered,' he countered. ‘Like if you've just been told your husband is missing and realise that an accidental mark on your face might suddenly look rather suspicious.'

‘True. But we haven't even touched on the two things that bothered me most.'

‘I'm guessing the fact that she couldn't get us out of there fast enough piqued your curiosity. The words “unseemly haste” come to mind.'

‘Damn right. That's one. The other was the odour. You might not have picked it up, though: I've always had a super-sensitive nose. Used to freak my mum that I could tell which of her friends had been round while I was out because I could identify their perfume hours later.'

‘I'm recovering from a cold. I got nothing. What did you smell?'

Ali turned the ignition and the engine growled into life.

‘Bleach.'

If I was inclined to be generous (which it goes without saying I'm not), I would have to credit Lucy with her part in turning Peter's project into a viable business vehicle, and thus indirectly laying the grounds for him proposing to me. It was the one instance in which her preferred role of interfering busybody had an unintended benefit.

I met her again a couple of times after our chance encounter in Edinburgh – both times when she was passing through Inverness – and on each occasion we seemed to instantly resume the tension of that moment. Peter was oddly restless around her too, which always made me fear what poison she might have been dripping in his ear down the phone.

‘I know so little about Lucy,' I said to him, the second time he told me she would be in town. ‘You never talk about her.'

We were driving back from Cromarty, where we had gone for a wander and some lunch one Sunday.

‘What do you want to know?'

His tone wasn't exactly encouraging. I could tell by this stage when he was trying hard to be patient.

‘The usual things. What does she do, what's her story, is she in a relationship.'

‘You mean girl things?'

‘As opposed to what music and TV shows she likes, yes.'

‘I don't think she's seeing anybody these days. That's not the kind of subject we talk about, to be honest. She's a big sister, so she sees her younger brother as too trivial to want to confide in about her love life. Which suits me, to be honest.'

‘So what do you talk about?'

‘Music and TV shows.'

‘You must know what she does for a living, at least.'

‘Vaguely. She works in finance: these days at any rate. She's had as much of a chequered career as me, though the chequers include greater instances of dynamism mixed in with the rudderless drifting. She worked for an art dealership for a long time, and she worked in a museum too. Scaring children away from priceless exhibits, mostly. She did a degree in art history.'

Peter changed the subject after that, as he always did when the conversation threatened to open a route towards my asking about his parents. He seemed no closer to telling me about them, and I had learned it was counter-productive to ask. I appreciated that he indulged me in letting off steam about my parents, but his remained a complete blank. I didn't know what they did for a living or even where they lived, more specific than ‘a place in the middle of nowhere out in Perthshire'.

Peter gave the impression that he and his sister seldom talked about anything substantial, but clearly he had gone to her for advice and assistance in setting up his company, perhaps in the same way she might have come to him if her computer was on the fritz. Due to her multifarious connections, Lucy was able to introduce Peter to potential investors, though introductions were the extent of her involvement. I didn't need to worry about becoming jealous that she was party to more information than me, as Peter complained that she had limited comprehension of the mechanics of his plan. The only data she understood was that pertaining to development budgets and potential returns, but her command of that proved sufficient to attract solid investment from people who did grasp what Peter was hoping to pull off. As a result, he was able to form a company and give up his job with Cobalt, allowing him to work full-time on developing his breakthrough software.

He was nervous as a kitten throughout all of the contractual red-tape stuff, terrified of the real and constant possibility that the opportunity opening in front of him could suddenly vanish due to any number of uncontrollable variables. So when the documents were signed and the venture became an official, listed reality, honestly, I watched him grow a foot before my eyes. It seemed like a landmark moment in his life, one for which he was keen to heap credit upon me as the person who had ‘inspired him to get serious'.

The only down side, ironically, was that a mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement insisted upon by the investors meant that he still couldn't give me any specifics regarding what the software was ultimately for. There were people I had never met who knew more about this than I did, which I will admit annoyed me, but I wasn't so precious as to miss what the bigger picture was here. These people believed in Peter's idea and in his ability to make it happen, which was why they were backing him with hard cash.

‘You have to give me some kind of vague hint,' I pleaded, as he was showing me the sheaves of paperwork that would make the venture official. They were covering all the worktops in his flat's tiny kitchen.

‘It's only fair,' he conceded. ‘You've put up with me being preoccupied over all this recently, and there's only so many leaps of faith I can ask from one woman.'

He slipped a thick document into a plastic wallet and turned to face me.

‘Have you ever thought it would be handy to be able to pay for small purchases, like under a pound, without clicking through Paypal or entering your credit card?'

‘All the time.'

‘Well, it's a way of doing that. Loose change for the internet. And it wouldn't only be convenient for customers – it could change subscription models. For instance, you might want to see one edition of a newspaper or magazine online, and instead of paying for a month's sub, you could pay fifty pence for one day or ten pence for a single article, but without filling in details forms and signing yourself up for spam.'

‘God, that could be huge.'

‘Exactly. But only if I'm first. Hence…'

He mimed locking his lips. I kissed them.

When the company was launched, Peter took me away for a surprise weekend to celebrate. At least, I thought that's what we were celebrating. On the Thursday night he told me to pack a bag for the following day. Unbeknown to me, he had spoken to the clinical director for surgery and got me swapped from a full-day list on the Friday to a morning only, meaning we could make a late-afternoon flight to Bristol.

‘It's not a weekend in Paris,' he said, ‘but when it comes to flights from Inverness, you take what you can get.'

The destination didn't matter. I was so moved that he had quietly gone to this trouble when he had so much else to deal with in the chaotic early days of setting up the firm. I had been resigned to an ordinary weekend at home, probably seeing less of Peter than I could normally look forward to due to his new commitments, and instead he had delivered this lovely escape.

He had booked us into a suite at the Hotel du Vin. It was a converted sugar warehouse: all bare redbrick and black metal pillars. Our room was about twice the size of the flat I lived in when I was working in London, with a private roof terrace, a luxuriantly vast bathroom and the most sprawling bed I have ever slept in.

He seemed a little distracted on the Saturday. We took a train to Bath and wandered around the place. Peter could often be quiet that way, lost in his thoughts, but I sensed his mind was drifting somewhere specific: whirring away with the details of his great opportunity and equally great responsibility. I was completely, magnificently wrong.

We were having a bath together late afternoon. The taps were in the middle – a deal-breaker for such things – and we had a bottle of champagne open. I made a crack about finally having his full attention.

‘I'm sorry. I guess you noticed my thoughts have been elsewhere.'

‘It wasn't a dig. I'm trying to acknowledge how much I appreciate you doing this, taking so much time for me, for us, right now.'

‘Except, I have to confess that my distractedness was nothing to do with the project. I've been anxious about something else.'

‘What?'

‘Remember when I said I wanted to kiss you, but I was afraid of breaking the spell?'

‘How could I forget?'

‘Well, that feeling has never quite gone away. I can't believe everything that has happened for me since I met you, where I am now compared to only a few months ago. So here I am again, worried that I'm about to make a misstep and lose it all.'

‘Peter, what kind of misstep could change how I feel about you?'

As I said it, I was conscious that he looked vulnerable and sincere: very much like he had when he first asked me out to the Ironworks. Suddenly I had my answer, and I knew why he had been talking about my making a leap of faith.

I don't know whether he noticed, but my eyes were already filling up before he spoke.

‘The kind where I ask you to marry me.'

We were lying in the afterglow, his proposal in the bath having led to us chucking towels down on the bed so that we didn't get the sheets too damp in our impatience to have sex. Neither of us had said anything for an unusually long time, certainly enough for us both to be aware the other was feeling the gravity of the moment.

‘They say it ought to be the easiest question you ever get asked,' Peter said, ‘because you should already know the answer.'

‘I didn't need to write down my working.'

‘But they also say that the question shouldn't come as a surprise. I realise I sprung this on you, which put you under pressure, especially after me saying how worried I was about the possible consequences of asking it.'

‘As I was lying there just now, I will confess my thoughts had turned to whether this is all too fast, too soon. That's how my mind works: as a surgeon, my life has been dominated by risk-averse judgement. And yet, the moment you asked the question, I had no doubts whatsoever. None.'