Dying on Principle (32 page)

‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry—' he began.

But then the button was undone, and the next, and he was kissing my breasts, tipping me backwards and sideways and grabbing at my zip. And then he pushed himself from me, the effort visible in his face. He turned away quickly, gripping the back of a chair. ‘I'm sorry, I – I'm losing control.'

I put my hands on his shoulders, rested my face against his back. ‘Chris, don't you think that's the best thing you could possibly do? Come on, love.' I moved round so I could lead him upstairs or wherever.

His knuckles whitened.

‘Come on, love.' I reached up and kissed him.

At first he was wooden under my lips, but at last I could feel him relax. Hand in hand like children we went upstairs.

I'd rather expected he'd be overcome by passion again, but he sat solemnly beside me and, without speaking, started to undress, hanging his trousers over the back of a chair. So I grabbed him and rolled him backwards, kissing him everywhere I could find and willing him to respond. There were lots of little delays: my skirt button flying off; the bedside drawer sticking as he groped for condoms; the wretched foil refusing to tear; one of his pubic hairs getting stuck on the adhesive of a dressing on my hand. And then my undies. I'd forgotten the bra had a strange front fastening. This couldn't have been the destiny Fairfax had intended for his gift. I wanted to laugh, but couldn't risk upsetting Chris. In any case I could hardly explain the joke. I wanted, after all, to boost his ego, not destroy it.

I don't know that at any point he let himself go. And when it was time for him to enter me, he drew back, gazing at me with an expression that frightened me in its intensity. Then he came almost at once. I held him there, comforting him, stroking the sweat from his face, wishing what I'd done would help him feel happier.

At last I had to move. He watched me as I padded off to the loo. Another way of cheering him up occurred to me, and I retrieved a couple of glasses and a bottle of Penfold's red from the cupboard under the stairs. Pity I had to go back for a corkscrew.

The condom had discreetly disappeared when I got back.

‘You could have had my dressing gown,' he said, sounding almost aggrieved.

‘What for?'

He looked embarrassed.

‘Chris, love, why should I want to cover myself up? After what we've just been enjoying?' I kissed the nearest bit I could find – his left shoulder – and slipped in beside him in bed.

‘All the same.' He carefully kept the sheet in place.

I poured and, reaching across him, set the bottle on the bedside table on his side. My breasts touched him as they passed. The nipples promptly stood to attention. He took no notice. It wasn't the rejection that worried me so much as the expression on his face. If this was merely postcoital
tristesse
, he had it in a big way. But I was sickeningly sure it was something worse.

‘Chris? Chris, love?'

‘Hmm?'

‘Problem?' I took his hand, shaking it gently from side to side. The gesture was meant to be ambiguous – either friendly or amorous, whichever way he needed to see it. I hoped at very least he would turn his hand over to clasp mine. But he didn't. He turned his face from me.

This was something I hadn't been prepared for, and I simply didn't know what to do. Sex with my long-term partner Kenji had always been brilliant, even when the relationship itself was dwindling into a battle between my marking and his research, and a couple of more casual affairs hadn't entailed anything like this. I shook his hand again.

No response.

‘Chris? What's wrong?'

He muttered something.

‘Guilt? Why guilt?'

Again no response.

‘Chris, we're adults. Unattached. Came here of our own free will, both of us. Where's the guilt in that?'

For answer he shook his head; and all I could do was speculate on what his upbringing had done to him. Surely the modern Catholic view of sex wouldn't be screwing him up like this?

What I wanted to do was fire him up again so he could simply smother guilt with lust; what I did was simply rest my spare hand on his shoulder, the nearest I could manage to a cuddle without appearing seductive. We lay like that long enough for our skin to chill and for the room to drift into darkness. Still he said nothing.

Eventually, of course, my stomach got the better of me.

‘Ready to eat?'

‘Good idea.' He reached for his pants.

I reached for my bra, which had, coincidentally, tangled with his socks.

At last he started to thaw. ‘Very nice,' he said, his fingers exploring the silk. ‘I'd no idea you were a sexy-underwear woman.'

‘I'm a Marks and Sparks white cotton-rich person,' I said without thinking.

He looked alarmed. ‘You mean you wanted – I mean, did you plan …'

He wouldn't have wanted to be seduced, would he? He'd be the sort of man who preferred all the effort to come from him. He misunderstood my hesitation. ‘Or was this effort for …' I don't think he trusted himself to continue.

The truth might be safest. He might just believe it.

‘Chris, listen to me. The reason I went to Fairfax's tonight was, you'll recall, two-fold. I truly did want to give him the puddings. All the meals I've seen him at –' and that was hardly the most sensitive thing to say – ‘I've never seen him eat. You can see how thin he is, what a dreadful colour he's going. So maybe the puds will help. The other reason I went, one which I knew you wouldn't approve, was to get my mitts on those files. Which, by the way, are so important that even when he's almost too ill to stand, he locks them in a wall safe so I can't. And then he gives me these, asks me to try them on—'

‘Jesus Christ, woman!'

‘In the privacy of a locked bathroom. Then I call you and while I wait we talk gardens. That's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.'

He took a couple of steps away from me. I couldn't see his face, but I could almost feel the tension in his body. And I knew from his voice there was something terribly wrong.

‘And where are your own bra and pants?'

‘My God, I've only gone and left them there! Never mind, I'm sure his housekeeper—'

I didn't finish. Chris's hands were on my shoulders and he was shaking me, shaking me so hard my teeth hurt and my ears rang. At last, with extreme deliberation, he released his hands.

‘You'll have to tell me what's the matter!'

‘There are some men,' he said, his voice tight with anger, ‘who get their kicks by smelling women's underwear. There's a whole brisk trade in it. And that's what he'll be doing.'

‘Don't be ridiculous!' Tenderness had failed, so I'd trust honest anger. ‘He's not some sleazy erotica merchant making money from my pants! One rotten pair of Marks and Sparks cotton-rich? You're off your head! Or are you worried about something else? Do you think he's lying there now, wanking himself off with his nose in my bra? Because I'm telling you, Chris, Richard Fairfax is too ill for any of that. The man's dying – can't you get that into your thick policeman's skull? And if he is, what of it? We've just had the real, proper thing – and you'd deny a dying man a bit of pleasure!'

Maybe yelling is a good prelude to sex. This time at least it seemed to work.

Afterwards we lay for a long time in each other's arms, tender fingers dabbing away the remains of tears on both our faces. I kept a hand across his mouth in case he should try to apologise yet again.

At last, pulling on his dressing gown, I slipped downstairs to reheat our pasta. I stacked one tray on the other, put the plates of pasta side by side. We'd have to share the bowl of salad. He was still in bed when I got up, spread luxuriously across both pillows, the sheet fully back. The condom still lay at the side of the bed, half concealed in a tissue.

I'd have liked to pop choice morsels into his mouth as he lay there, or to lick his fingers as he fed me. But spoons and forks were the order of the day, and when we had finished we did not make love again.

Chris's office, eightish in the morning. His calendar told us it was Thursday, but I felt so punch-drunk after the week's events, I wouldn't have taken any bets on it. His percolator was burping, perhaps with pleasure at the sight and smell of fresh croissants from Safeway. We'd been home long enough for me to change from top to toe, and to put a new tape in the answering machine. We would play the messages on the old one in safety.

Most were routine or social: Aberlene reminding me about a meal – but she made no mention of Chris or Tobias; the dentist's receptionist telling me I was due for a check-up; two to sell me double-glazing – Chris jotted down the numbers. And one from Luke, the admin. marvel of William Murdock. Why hadn't I responded to his messages at Muntz? If I didn't call him by teatime on Wednesday, there was no point for a couple of days since he was off to Exeter for a conference on information technology for college administrators. But he had some interesting news concerning our friend.

‘Sophie? Sophie? What's the matter?'

I felt very sick. I walked to the window and peered down at the safe streets. Turning back to Chris, I caught the concern on his face. ‘Someone's left a message at work. If he's been circumspect, it might be OK. But if he hasn't – how d'you get an outside line?'

He passed me the phone without comment, pressed a button and held the handset for me. William Murdock: fingers crossed that the switchboard would be awake this early. And that a familiar voice would answer.

Yes and no. ‘Hello? This is Sophie Rivers – from the fifteenth floor,' I tried.

‘How can I help you?' came a voice with no matching friendliness.

‘I need to contact Luke Schneider at home. It's really urgent. And I don't have his number.'

‘The Personnel section opens at nine. If you contact them, they will phone Luke and ask him to phone you back.'

‘It's too urgent to wait till then.'

‘You know the rules, Ms – er. They're there for the staff's protection.'

I nodded, I'd been staff representative at the meeting where that decision had been made. ‘Thanks, anyway.' I put down the phone and looked at Chris, his face now professional again. ‘There's a man somewhere between here and Exeter who's just blabbed something I suspect someone else will be interested in, and I can't tell him to watch his back.'

‘Sit down and tell me.'

‘There's no time! Chris, don't you have some sort of computer he'd be on?'

‘Only if he has a criminal record.'

I gestured: impossible.

‘The phone book?' he said mockingly.

I shook my head. ‘His name and ethnicity offended some of the Muslim mafia. First of all they tipped his daughter into the Chamberlain Square fountain, then they started posting him excrement. He moved and he's ex-directory.'

‘You wouldn't have his address anywhere? An old diary?'

‘We don't have that sort of relationship. He spends all his spare time, and I mean all of it since Naomi went off to uni, looking after his mother. Alzheimer's. And he doesn't want her to go into a home. Chris, what shall we—?'

‘What's this all about?' came Dave Clarke's voice. He swanned in and sat down. ‘Hi, sweetheart.'

‘There's a rumour,' said Chris, fully the DCI again, ‘that one of the college staff – Curtis, the assistant principal in charge of financial services, to give him his title – may be claiming to have accountancy qualifications he doesn't in fact possess.'

‘If it's public money he's dealing with, he'd be CIPFA – Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accounts,' Dave said. ‘Maybe FCA, too.'

‘That's what it's got on the letter heading,' said Chris, producing a sheet of college paper from a file but not otherwise acknowledging Dave.

‘But Peggy—' I began.

‘The receptionist,' Chris glossed.

‘She says her predecessor, now dead, reckons a relative knew he got no further than an ONC. So I asked one of my William Murdock contacts, Luke Schneider, to check if there was anything in our files. You see, William Murdock was
the
centre for local-government students in the bonny far-off days of day release for all. They came from all over the Midlands. And though he's shed most of his accent, I reckon Curtis is a Brummie. OK, it's just a shot in the dark. But that was a message from my colleague Luke on the tape, saying he'd left messages at work. So I may have hit something.'

‘Which you haven't received?' asked Dave.

‘No. But with Mrs Cavendish away, the system's probably breaking down completely.'

Chris's laugh was perfunctory. ‘You're afraid that whoever's been trying to shut you up may try and shut up this Luke character too?'

I nodded. ‘Chris, I—'

‘Calm down. The West Midlands Police Service has one or two resources left.'

‘Even if we do have to charge them to the appropriate cost centre,' added Dave, getting up and helping us all to coffee.

‘I'll go and get Tom on to this lot. You never know, he may have a conviction for something. Otherwise it's working through the electoral roll for some poor sod. And the conference – Exeter, did you say?' He was on his feet already, eager for some action, I suppose, since he could just as easily have reached for the phone.

‘I'm afraid he'll have driven down. He's got this penchant for bright yellow cars – dead easy to follow.'

‘New ones? Not many manufacturers make yellow ones.'

‘Fiat do. Or Peugeot? Didn't they do a special edition in yellow?' I'd been rather tempted myself.

‘OK. I'll get them moving.' He ducked out of the room.

Dave leaned confidentially towards me. ‘Tell me, sweetheart, did he buy the story as we told it?'