The Crime Tsar (11 page)

‘I've called the doctor. There are hundreds of messages on the machine and the fax is having a nervous breakdown,' said Jacinta, a sensible girl of nineteen, who had an unfortunately large bottom and thick ankles and was studying to be a stage manager at a drama college Jenni could boast about.

She thumped down on the bed next to her father. Capable and unflappable, she started to wash his hands in the bowl of cold water held by Tamsin but she soon saw the only way the ointment would come off was with the flesh beneath. The water was quickly red with blood. She stopped. She felt sick.

Jason saw what was going on.

‘Leave it, Jacinta. Wait for the doctor.'

The children felt awkward. Their mother was, not unusually, wrapped in an internal conflict of emotions and unreachable. Tamsin, having put Kit to bed, was free to cry and carry on like a Greek widow. Jacinta and Jason simply sat either side of their father trying to calm him and cool him.

These two had no difficulty loving Tom Shackleton. There was no complication, no qualification. The room was quiet but for the muffled sobs from Tamsin, each person in their own thoughts.

Jenni knew the messages and faxes would be radio, television and newspapers wanting interviews with her husband. She had deliberately not answered the phone since speaking to Eleri. She would sift them through the night. Come the morning he'd be a hero or a joke.

Jenni thought back over her brief conversation with Gordon. Hadn't he said Carter was taken to hospital? In a bad way. Good. He wouldn't be out tomorrow, Tom would do all the interviews, Tom would have the spotlight. Bandaged and frail, he'd be perfect. Jenni knew she would have to phone the Gnome in the morning to make sure the right people were aware of him and to get the Party machine working for her. Them.

The doctor arrived and she was free to check the messages. They were gratifyingly numerous and heavyweight. The last was a television producer saying the crew that had gone into the siege with him had got some incredible footage. Amazing. They were going to stay up all night editing it.

Jenni sat back, pleased but not complacent. It would be good if he was well enough to speak briefly by phone to the early morning radio news. Serious radio only and no breakfast television except news. No sitting on garish sofas looking silly. Then possibly an appearance on the lunchtime bulletins.

She had a thought that bandages would look good; perhaps she ought to go back upstairs and make sure the doctor was applying them. But she was pleased the whole thing was on video; as long as her husband had been his usual charming persuasive self, it would speak volumes for him. He would be, she knew, irresistible. But to tell him she was proud would be weakness. Her approval must stay always out of reach.

More than a day's worth of soundbites and interviews. She stood up, tidied the faxes, checked her appearance automatically in the mirror, and went back upstairs.

The doctor was still examining the inert body in the bed.

‘He seems fine. Just in a deep sleep. As if he'd been drugged.'

‘Not drunk then?' Jenni said it as if her husband were a teetotaller. ‘Oh doctor, I was only joking.'

‘Er … Mrs Shackleton, did you put this stuff on his hands?'

The doctor was obviously disapproving of whatever it was but too young to say it: just a locum, not his place.

‘No, doctor, I didn't. They were like that when he came home.'

The man was relieved, but slightly worried.

‘It's just… well, I don't know what it is and I can't seem to get it off without causing more damage, so I'm going to bandage up his hands for now and keep an eye on them for infection. I'll give him an injection too. He's not allergic to antibiotics, is he?'

Jenni couldn't see the point of the fuss over a couple of minor burns.

‘No, no, of course not. Doctor, look, will my husband be all right in the morning, only …' She finished off with her prettiest smile. ‘There is rather a lot of media interest.'

‘Oh yes, he should be fine once he wakes up. Whatever it is he's
taken seems to have knocked him out pretty well. But that's good – he'd be in quite a lot of pain if he were awake.'

The doctor left leaving a selection of painkillers and a prescription. He was seen out by Jacinta. Tamsin had expended too much emotion on the whole event and had retired to bed, exhausted by her devotion to her father. She had cried real tears and worked herself up to a high pitch of emotion. To her, it wasn't a performance.

Jacinta waited until all was quiet then discreetly went home to the small flat in Earls Court she shared with another student. Her sister was asleep and her mother prowling the house planning her assault on the morning. Jason sat beside his father, not really thinking, just being with him and too tired to go to sleep.

Jacinta looked across the bed at him before she left. They smiled at each other, two whole people in a family of parts. She wanted to but didn't kiss her father. He was shy of intimacy when awake; it would seem an intrusion when he was asleep.

Carter's driver had phoned Eleri immediately after the ambulance left. She sounded calm but he knew she wasn't. As always she asked after him, was concerned no one had been hurt and seemed in no hurry to get him off the line. He wanted to pick her up and take her to the hospital but she was adamant his day had been long enough and that he should go home. She'd make her own way.

The elderly widow next door was only too glad to be of use as a babysitter and Eleri drove herself to the hospital.

Carter had been sedated and his burns dressed. Eleri stood over him stroking his hair and crying quietly. She didn't just love him, she worshipped him.

‘He's a very brave man, your husband.'

The nurse was taking his blood pressure and vital signs as he would throughout the night.

‘Some might say foolish,' Eleri replied. ‘I don't know whether to hug him or slap him.'

The nurse, grey with tiredness and reeking of coffee and cigarettes, looked at Eleri from under outrageous eyelashes, suddenly a drag queen.

‘Well, daughter, I know which I'd do.'

A fit of dry-mouthed coughing woke Gary early. Too early. The day would be longer than usual. He turned his head on the built-up pillows to see where his drink was. Behind the pills on top of the Scrabble box. Good. He could reach it, he wouldn't have to wake Lucy. He looked at it for a while. It was to his left. If he used his left arm he could reach it easily but would he be able to turn his hand at the right angle to grasp it?

The cup was slightly behind him so it would mean getting hold of it in a back-hand grip. No. He was sure that would be too risky; the water might end up on the floor, giving Lucy two jobs. But if he reached out and found the cup with the back of his hand then tried to raise his hand above and then behind the cup, like those miniature cranes in fairground arcades, he was sure the bedhead would prevent his arm completing the manoeuvre. Also the cup had a lid fitted out of which stuck a red-and-white bendy straw – they had run out of blue-and-white, his team's colours, on Monday. So the height of the straw would make such a move impossible.

Start again.

He looked at the cup. His mouth was tacky, dry, and there was a crust of mucus and probably blood on his front teeth. His gums were always bleeding – brushing and flossing had become too difficult to do properly. He ran his tongue over them. He was now obsessed with the water, the cup, the straw.

‘Oh, it's just a symptom of the illness,' said the specialist.

Just a symptom. Obsession. Included in the catalogue with loss of sight and bodily functions.

If he used his right arm he would have to reach much further. The
width of his body more but it would mean he could grasp the cup face on, so to speak.

He put his left hand on the edge of the bed. He could feel the rubber sheet, slippery under the cotton one. He gathered his strength for a couple of minutes. This would be a one-chance mission. To grab the side of the mattress with his left hand and pull himself on to his side while throwing his right arm across with precision-aim to get his fingers wrapped round the cup.

Then he'd pause and worry about how to get it back. The whispering in his head started: What if he missed? What if he fell out of bed? What if? What if? He grabbed and pulled. His right hand landed on the bedside table only a couple of inches from the cup.

Good. Gary lay panting for a few seconds then, like a seal coming up the beach, flopped his hand on to the cup. It moved. Just a bit. Like a girl playing hard to get. Gently. Gently. He willed his sluggish fingers to stroke it, tickle it back into his palm. He grunted through a rictus of effort as he made contact with the handle.

Now what? He was stuck. His left arm was caught under his body and he hadn't the strength to get on to his back and control the position of the cup. He lay there for another few minutes. By now he was sweating. He thought of
Lawrence of Arabia
and the scene when they ride out of the Anvil of the Sun. The thirst. And those little goatskin bottles of water. Even Peter O'Toole couldn't get out of this one, he thought.

‘Bollocks, I wish I had a camel.'

He said it out loud and found his voice quieter than his thoughts. He started to giggle. Just another symptom. Laughing helplessly at finding oneself unable to perform simple tasks. Come on, man, think.

Right.

If I grab my pyjama arm in my teeth then heave my right arm back while at the same time moving my head, which is, after all, one third of my body weight, firmly and decisively to the right, I should, with a following wind and the intervention of several saints, arrive on my back with the water, unspilt, in my hand. Well, go on then, don't just lie there. Five, four, three, two, one …

Gary bit his pyjama arm and heaved. The plan was good. So effective was it the only thing stopping him falling out the other side of the bed was the wall. As his right arm described an arc across his body he found himself unable to control it and watched the lid of the
cup with its barber-pole straw lift off and land in his slipper. The water beneath didn't want to go so far and slapped on to his chest in a reverse belly flop.

‘Oh … fuck … fuck, shit, balls, bollocks.' Gary lay in the cold wetness. ‘Oh Christ… I've got fucking Tourette's syndrome now.'

It was seven o'clock. He had been trying to get the water for forty-seven minutes. Now he had it.

The television at the foot of his bed snapped on. It should have been the radio alarm but Lucy had messed up the setting and they hadn't been bothered to change it. It took him a moment to recognise what was happening. He had not seen the drama unfold the night before and this was shaky, hand-held footage of the inside of a community centre, but he had heard the name Shackleton.

‘… where two chief constables were last night held hostage. We will be speaking to one of them later in the programme. The other is being held in hospital with severe burns. Now over to Dodie with the weather.'

Gary was surprised at the strength of his hope that it would be Tom Shackleton with the severe burns. But then, no. No, Lucy mooning over an injured Shackleton would be worse. Her maternal instincts always went on the rampage with wounded puppies.

Gary had never plumbed the depths of Shackleton's shallowness and assumed Lucy's passion for him was because of his good looks and air of reserve. Gary thought he'd be bloody reserved if he was married to a piece of work like Jenni. He smiled. Poor Lucy, she went to such lengths to hide her passion for the man.

If only she could have chosen someone else. Someone with a mind relieved by the occasional flash of poetry. Someone with a soul. Gary wasn't sure if Shackleton had sold it or if he'd just never had one in the first place. Was it jealousy? Gary lay in his wet pyjamas, unable to move, tasting the rottenness of his body in the scum that coated his tongue and thought: Yes. Jealous as fuck.

That bastard has everything I wanted. Including my wife. He turned his head sharply, trying to shift the picture of them making love. He couldn't have loved Lucy more, but wondered why Tom Shackleton would want to have her. Because he could. Same reason as a dog licks its balls.

The mind that had so enjoyed grappling with Proust now wrestled with images of sex between his wife and his neighbour. He was
disgusted with himself. With living. Lucy didn't know but he'd managed to save up enough painkillers and anti-depressants to kill himself.

Six weeks before, while Lucy was out polishing Jenni's ego, he'd taken the lot. It took the best part of half an hour. Then he'd sat waiting for death. What he got was diarrhoea. Vast crop-spraying quantities of it. Because of the diarrhoea his body didn't absorb the drugs and instead of a romantically dead body, posed like Marat in his bath over the edge of his wheelchair, she came home to a carpet pebble-dashed in shades of brown and an odour it would take months to shift.

Gary had laughed until he was almost sick. Giving up was not an option. He had a vision of his God, like a cigar-chewing boxing coach, shoving him back into the ring unable to stand with eyes bruised shut to go another round with an undefeated world champion. He smiled. Everyone loved a loser.

And there was one good thing about Lucy's infatuation: she was starting to take a pride in her appearance again. If Tom Shackleton restored her then Gary could and would forgive them both. No, he'd forgive them anyway. That would be his new life challenge. Take his mind off the paralysing boredom of disability. Paralysing. Disability. Ha ha. He enjoyed chasing the thought round that it was the dull repetitive boredom of disability that paralysed, not the illness itself. He toyed with a letter to the
Lancet
, the
BMJ, New Scientist
…

On the television they were trailing the live phone link with hero policeman Tom Shackleton. Gary could hear Lucy moving around upstairs. His mind started running down those paths that led to the debate of whether she was better off with him or without him.