Singled Out (13 page)

‘Would you like coffee or tea?'

‘Coffee would be very nice, thank you.' This formality, still couched in public school vowels, came incongruously from his shabbiness.

Laura went through into the kitchen to make the coffee. She kept half a nervous eye on the sitting room, where Michael paced uneasily. He made her feel she would have to count the silver after he had gone.

While she ground the beans and filled the cafetière, Laura scoured her mind for the last she had heard of her former husband. There had been some professional falling out soon after their divorce, and Michael had left the family firm to start his own estate agency. That had presumably suffered in the property collapse of the late eighties. She remembered hearing from a mutual acquaintance that Michael had financial problems.

He had also remarried, she had heard, but something had gone wrong there too. Michael had suffered the fate of many who thought the world owed them a living and found out too late that the world wasn't aware of any such obligation. So Laura had expected him to be in reduced circumstances, but she was nevertheless shocked at how reduced those circumstances were.

When she came back in with the coffee tray, he was looking at the photographs on her mantelpiece. They formed a little gallery of Tom's development, from blond toddler to self-effacing adolescent. For the past six years he had refused to be photographed.

‘So this is the “love child”, is it?' Michael sneered.

‘That's Tom. You saw him this morning,' Laura replied crisply, and sat down to pour the coffee. ‘Why have you come here, Michael? What do you want?'

‘Just to see you.' He gave an ingenuous shrug. ‘Does there have to be a reason? Isn't it better that we should remain good friends?'

‘We never were particularly good friends, Michael. And, in reply to your question, I would say there does have to be a reason for you to come to visit me so suddenly. It's over fifteen years since we last saw each other.'

An unnerving smugness came into his face. ‘It's over fifteen years since
you
last saw
me
.'

‘What do you mean by that?'

‘I've seen you a good few times, Laura.'

‘Where?'

‘Here … there … and everywhere … as the Beatles so inimitably put it.' He gave a little self-congratulatory chuckle. ‘I've kept an eye on you, Laura. I'll always keep an eye on you.'

‘I don't believe it.' But even as she dismissed the idea, she did believe it. The feeling that Michael was spying on her had never quite gone away. She had argued with herself that it was ridiculous, that she hadn't really seen him turning away from her gaze in a crowd from time to time, but his words now refuelled the old anxiety.

He didn't elaborate, but sat looking at her, a complacent smile on his face. He was behaving as though he had some kind of control over her, though Laura could not imagine what it might be.

‘I go back to my question, Michael. Why have you come here?'

‘I need some help. I thought you could help me.'

‘What kind of help?'

‘Financial help.'

‘Hm. Well, putting aside for one moment the issue of whether I would want to give you any financial help, I must also tell you you've come at a bad time. I've put all my savings into equipping my own studios. Not a lot of cash-flow around at the moment.'

‘I only need five hundred. Just to tide me over.'

‘I haven't got five hundred to spare. And if I did have, I could think of more deserving causes.'

He was sullenly aggrieved by this response. ‘Don't be hasty, Laura. You might come to regret a hasty decision.'

‘In what way would I regret it?'

‘I have certain information about your past, which you might not wish to reach the ears of … certain people.'

‘Are you threatening me?'

‘Yes.'

She didn't feel threatened. Michael didn't know the identity of Tom's father, so the only information he had which he might think damaging was the fact that Richard Fisher had murdered his wife. And, though Laura didn't regularly volunteer that in conversation, she never denied it if someone else raised the subject.

Also, who on earth did Michael mean by ‘certain people'? Laura ran her own business and was answerable to no one. The idea that he could blackmail her by snitching to an employer showed how hopelessly out of touch he was with the real world.' That was actually much more worrying than the content of his threats. He seemed increasingly unhinged. In his eye was the wildness that would make people hurry away from him in the streets. Once again she was glad that Tom was still in the house.

‘I don't know what you're talking about, Michael,' she said in a level tone. ‘There's nothing you can tell anyone about me that could do any harm.'

‘I could tell them about what happened on our wedding night.'

This was unbelievable. His mind had clearly gone. ‘Tell who, Michael? Who might possibly be interested in what happened on our wedding night? If one of us was a soap star or minor royal, maybe … Anyway, I would have thought what happened on our wedding night reflected badly on you rather than on me.'

‘Yes, but … There are other things I could tell …' His eyes went dreamy as he lost concentration and it was with a struggle that he brought himself back to the subject. When he did, he was almost incoherent. Laura wondered whether he was on drugs.

‘Lots of things I could tell, Laura … Things about violence … murder … There are things in your past that could destroy you, Laura … I could destroy you, Laura. I could still destroy you. After the way you behaved to me … there's a debt to be paid …'

If this was another threat, it was not delivered in a manner that was at all threatening. Michael seemed preoccupied, his words dragged out of some deep reverie.

Laura decided it was time to get rid of him. ‘I'm sorry, I should be working. I must ask you to leave, Michael.' Against her better judgement, she took out her cheque book and gave him a hundred pounds. ‘And that's more than I can afford. So take it and don't come back. There won't be any more, I promise you that.'

‘Aren't you going to ask me where I'm living, what I'm doing with my life?' he asked, in a manner that was perhaps meant to be boyishly appealing.

‘No, Michael. I'm not interested.'

He stood up, and once again looked round her sitting room. There was something she didn't like about his proprietorial manner. Her possessions seemed tarnished by his stare.

‘I'd appreciate it if you'd leave, Michael.'

‘All right, all right. I'm going. No need to be offensive.' He folded her cheque and shoved it into his jacket pocket, but made no move towards the door.

‘Please,' Laura said firmly. ‘I don't want to have to call anyone to get rid of you.'

‘Call anyone? Call the police, do you mean? Call brother Kent? Still see him, do you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Still protecting you like the faithful Rottweiler, is he? Live down here, does he?'

‘Kent's now a Detective Inspector based in Bristol.'

‘Oh, I see. Still can't keep away from you, can he? Joined at the bloody hip, you two, aren't you? Joined by the violence that your –'

‘Shut up, Michael!' It wasn't that his words hurt; she just wanted him to go. Laura moved into the hall and opened the front door. Behind her she heard movement on the stairs. Tom, drawn by her shouting, peered curiously down into the hall. He carried his college bag.

Michael looked up at the boy and smiled sardonically. ‘We meet again.'

‘Yes.'

‘You look after your mother, do you, Tom?'

The boy gave a non-committal shrug.

‘Very well protected, aren't you, Laura? Tom on the spot, Kent here in Bristol too. I suppose you think you've got enough protection, don't you?'

‘Goodbye, Michael,' said Laura pointedly, her hand on the door handle.

‘Well, you're going to need all the bloody protection you can get!' With sudden savagery, Michael strode across the hall and left, shutting the front door behind him. The house shuddered with the impact. Laura nursed her wrist, wrenched by the slamming door.

There was an enigmatic half-smile on Tom's face. ‘So … that was Michael Rowntree, your former husband?'

‘Yes.'

‘But not my father.'

‘No. Tom, if ever you do want to talk about –'

‘Must go. Got to get to the library. Research, research, research, that's what busy little journalism students do.' He bustled past her, blowing a parodic kiss. ‘See you later, “Mummy”.' And he was gone.

When he called her ‘Mummy', Tom was always being ironic. Once again Laura wondered how interested he really was in his father's identity. For nineteen years Tom had shown a studied lack of curiosity on the subject, and yet he would not be human if he didn't wonder about it from time to time. Occasionally he would hint at the mystery, as he just had done with his words, ‘But not my father.' Once it had been aired, though, he would always move swiftly on, as he had just demonstrated.

Laura herself had tried to raise the subject on numerous occasions. She didn't have a crusading conviction that Tom ought to know the truth; she just felt he should have the option of knowing it if he wanted to. So far, except for the odd teasing reference like the one he'd just made, the boy had shown no sign of wanting to.

And Laura couldn't help admitting that his lack of curiosity suited her very well. The man, when she had picked him up in the bar, had been irrelevant, merely a means to an end. And in Laura Fisher's mind, he was still irrelevant.

‘Michael came round today.'

‘Oh?' Kent's voice at the other end of the line was instantly alert. ‘Was he all right? He didn't give you any trouble?'

‘Not exactly. He was very strange. He doesn't seem quite right in the head.'

‘No. He isn't.'

‘How do you know?'

‘He's been in trouble with the police more than once over the last few years. Been in prison twice.'

‘Really? What kind of trouble was it? What was he in for?'

‘He beat up a couple of women.'

Laura felt a little chill at these words. How would the afternoon's scene have ended if Tom had not been there?

‘Don't worry,' Kent went on, solid and reassuring as ever. ‘I'll keep an eye on him.'

‘Just like you keep an eye on me …?'

‘Yes,' he replied in a voice totally without emotion. ‘Are you still on for this evening?'

‘Sure,' she said, ‘… if it's all right with Viv.'

‘It's all right with Viv,' Kent replied.

Laura had been very surprised when Kent announced he was getting married. Surprised, but relieved. It had been soon after he was transferred to Bristol, which had been within a year of her moving down there. Initially she had been worried that he had sought the relocation because of her, to continue the protection which he had always provided. But he had later told her he had moved because of Viv. She was a WPC he had met in London, and when she got a job in Bristol he had followed.

The idea of her brother marrying had always seemed so remote that Laura supposed Viv was no less likely a bride for him than anyone else. She was a few years older, forty to his thirty-six when they married. It was second time around for her; she had a twenty-year-old daughter, Denise, from her marriage to a man she habitually referred to as ‘the piece of piss'.

Viv was always raucous and vulgar. Laura could not suppress the knowledge that her murdered mother would have classified her as ‘common'. A tall, spare woman with short black hair now streaked with grey, Viv uttered her customary string of obscenities in a voice which had the incisive rasp of a chain-smoker. She fitted well into the blokish world of the police force, giving as good as she got in coarse exchanges with her male colleagues. Her conversation was scatological and she was always talking about sex.

Laura assumed that sex was the basis of her relationship with Kent. On the comparatively rare occasions when they were seen in company they did not appear to have a lot in common, he stiff and taciturn as ever, Viv noisy and extrovert. But perhaps her crude lack of sentimentality struck a chord with Kent's deep cynicism. Perhaps he got turned on by her talking dirty.

It wasn't entirely a traditional marriage. Their shift patterns meant at times they saw little of each other. Kent early on had expressed a dislike of foreign holidays, so Viv and Denise would go off abroad on their own while he booked in for courses in such vigorous pursuits as rock climbing or scuba diving.

There had never been any thought of their having children. Viv began many sentences with the words, ‘If you think I'm going through all that bloody business again …' ‘No,' she would go on, ‘I love Denise very much, but she's the only one I want, thank you very much.'

And whenever her mother said this, Denise would giggle as at some private joke. She was a colourless girl, almost white-blond hair and pale blue eyes with lashes like wood-shavings. Whenever anyone commented on her lack of likeness to her mother, Viv would say, ‘No, takes after the piece of piss, poor little brat,' before bursting into raucous laughter.

A little titter from Denise would echo this. The girl was meek and self-effacing, as quiet as Viv was noisy. She worked at a supermarket checkout and apparently had no ambition to move out of the three-bedroomed semi in Hotwells that her mother shared with her new husband. Denise seemed to have no identity of her own, content to be swept along by the wave of her mother's forceful personality.

Laura occasionally worried about the parallels between Kent's step-daughter and her own son. Was Rob right? Was Tom's passivity the natural corollary to her fierce will-power? But she comforted herself with the thought that Tom had nowhere near as pallid a personality as Denise. With him, Laura felt confident that the current apathy was only a stage, the tail-end of adolescence. Soon he would recapture the charm and energy of his earlier years and begin to assert his own identity.