The Crime Tsar (28 page)

Then, ‘Take me now!'

In all her sexual encounters Jenni had never heard anyone actually say that. It set her laughing again as he yelled it like Henry V on the eve of Agincourt.

Spent, he was apologetic she hadn't come. He insisted on manipulating her until she did. How could he know in all her life Jenni Shackleton had never had an orgasm. After a decent interval she shuddered and moaned and sighed convincingly enough for a man who'd already been there. She knew it was with some relief he kissed her and sighed into sleep with her head on his chest, his arm under her. She got up carefully and looked at him, naked and spreadeagled in the foam of sheets. He really was stunning. Every hair on his body a fine uniform gold. She appreciated how much work that must have taken. Looking down at him she thought there was nothing more satisfying than having something coveted by others.

She went to the bathroom, showered and felt fine. She still couldn't face the idea of a bath but it hadn't been so bad getting back on to that bicycle after all. The poppers lay unused on the table. She put them in her bag. They might come in useful. A little more magic to help her through the mire of life. There was a little white powder left, scattered. She fingered it up and rubbed it on her gums. Nice. Very, very nice.

Lucy had waited as long as she could for Tom to come home. Her excuse was Jenni's request that she should look after him. But he didn't come so she went across the road to give Gary his hot milk and biscuits before the nurses came to put him to bed.

Since leaving hospital he hadn't been strong enough to use his chair. Going to bed was no change of scene for him. Lucy knew he was depressed but couldn't find the words to help him. The feelings she'd allowed to grow for Tom as a defence against what seemed the inevitable early death of Gary had got out of control. Now more real than her love for Gary.

‘Did you see Tom?'

Lucy felt guilty at his question. An urge to defensiveness.

‘I came back as quickly as I could. Jenni's away – she wanted me to make sure he was OK.'

Gary's eyes, the only part of him that still seemed fully alive, followed her movements as she fussed around tidying. Keeping her back to him. Avoiding him. He knew something had happened while he was in hospital but wanted to avoid the truth. He didn't want to hear how often she talked about Tom. How difficult she found it to say ‘Tom' in front of him. The way she called him the Chief, or His Nibs, or him over there, because the word ‘Tom' had become sacred, too powerful to speak aloud.

Gary had never felt so lonely and for the first time wanted to die. He had once been water skiing and although the ride, being dragged across the water by grimly holding on to a rope attached to a speed boat, was exhilarating, the most pleasurable part was letting go and sinking into the sea. It had been warm and welcoming, a Greek sea full of dolphins and sparkling light.

Lucy handed him his baby cup of warm milk.

He wanted to let go now.

Since the ambulance had brought Gary back Shackleton had avoided Lucy. He knew she wanted to talk, women always wanted to talk, to analyse, but his instinct was to walk away. As if it had never happened. His brief addiction to Lucy's willingness had woken in him a vicious self-dislike. For his weakness and his betrayal of Gary. He had never had friends, but in his mind Gary became a friend betrayed. Tom saw himself hanging in the ruined garden of his own pleasure. Pleasure was bad. The threat of happiness undermining. Lucy the serpent of temptation. He desperately wanted to be free again, not to feel, just to be. Not to be scalded by her gentleness or burned by his need for her.

He came home that night to an empty house, grateful for the silence. He felt her watching from across the road as Gordon said goodnight and he unlocked the front door. He went into the kitchen. On the table was a salad and a note from Lucy. A small chocolate egg beside the plate. He put the lot into the bin. The note unread.

He poured himself a drink and took his briefcase into the living room. It was filled with papers that would occupy him until the early hours. An evening of their uncomplicated intimacy would be a relief. The curtains were open; he went to draw them and saw Lucy in the window opposite. He didn't hesitate to shut her out.

Gary saw and said nothing. There wasn't anything to say. He
turned his face to the wall and prayed like a man trusting to a note in a cracked bottle.

A few days before Jenni straddled Dieter and Tom rejected Lucy, Geoffrey and Eleri were returning home from a reception in London. A charity bash with a discreetly A-list donor core. And at the centre of that core? Robert and Lizie MacIntyre. They had been more than friendly to the Carters. The two men had discovered they had something in common when they lunched together, though Carter had for years been at pains to hide it: they were both intellectual snobs.

Mrs Ismay from next door had looked after the boys for them. She didn't cause Alexander to panic so was one of the few people they could leave him with without risking the Wedgwood. When they arrived back she was sitting in the living room knitting; Alexander was curled up on the rug in front of the fire chewing a piece of coal. It was a warm night but Alex was obsessed by fires as well as liquids so, to guarantee a quiet evening, a fire had been laid and lit.

While Eleri said goodnight to the old lady after listening to every detail of the evening's events, including who had read the news and what the weather forecast had in store for her agapanthus, Carter carried the boy up to bed. The child was floppy and unresponsive though wide awake. Carter was glad – better this than hyperactive and the rest of the night spent following him from room to room trying to protect him from the hardness and sharpness of the furniture. He didn't try to take the coal out of his hand: that would only bring on a screaming fit and guarantee nobody in the street would sleep.

Peter, as always, didn't wake through the disturbance as Alexander was put to bed. Carter leaned over and kissed him, savouring the smell of warm sleeping child. Peter smiled and put his arm round Carter's neck. He gently disentangled himself and tucked the child's arm back under the duvet. He turned to go but was stopped by Peter's sleepy voice.

‘Daddy … I love you best in all the world.'

‘I love you too, Peter. Best in all the world.'

It was their joke.

‘'Cept for Mummy and Alex and the Bump.'

‘Yeah, ‘cept for them. Night, Petey.'

Downstairs the night-time peace every parent craves settled on them as they sat in front of the fire. The room was long and thin, filled with books, toys, Peter's violin music, magazines and, on one of the radiators, a pair of striped socks. The light from the table lamps made the mess look cosy. On the shelves, high enough to be out of Alexander's way, expensive crystal shared space with Christmas cracker novelties and CDs parted from their covers.

‘So what did he say?'

‘MacIntyre? Nothing much. Nothing he didn't say at lunch.'

Eleri was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her growing belly resting on her heels. She rubbed it for the fiftieth time, as she had every day since finding there was an occupant within. She sat back against his chair, tucking her shoulders under his legs.

‘Talk me through it.'

‘Well… he says they're determined to make me change my mind. Apparently the Prime Minister's decided there's no one else for the job.'

‘What about Tom?'

‘No, they want him for the Met. They don't think he's got the …' He paused – what was it MacIntyre had said? Clever but not an intellectual giant. ‘Mental capacity for the job.'

Eleri laughed. ‘Don't let Jenni hear you say that. She thinks her husband is in direct line to the Almighty. You don't think he's dim, do you?'

Carter considered his drink. ‘Not dim, no … but… he's not an independent thinker. And he's not an innovator.'

‘What about the siege?'

Carter shook his head.

‘That was a stupid risk – I should never have gone along with it. Pure ego. But that's the thing about Tom. He has an extraordinary instinct for self-promotion but basically' – the killer blow – ‘it's not a first-rate mind.'

And Carter's was. Neither he nor Eleri had to say it. At university he had shone but in the police service he was a mental colossus and Tom was clever. For a policeman.

Eleri's sympathy was genuine. It was never anything else.

‘Poor Jenni – I'm sure she'd rather be married to a Tsar than a commissioner.'

Carter smiled. He was quite sure she would but she could surely never imagine Tom would be considered for such a job.

He'd been surprised and not entirely comfortable with the new closeness that had grown up between Jenni and Eleri. His wife always saw the best in everybody. She was always getting hurt, bounding up to people like a Labrador puppy trailing loo paper and getting smacked on the snout for its trouble.

He knew his wife needed the company of another woman now, one that could make the pregnancy ordinary, natural, nothing to worry about. But Jenni Shackleton? She had never struck him as the earth-mother type.

‘Is she coming over tomorrow?'

‘Yes, she said she'd look after the boys every afternoon this week so I can get some rest and start getting the baby's room ready, then she's going to Vienna to interview Dieter Gerhardt, lucky thing.' She paused, hating to do anything he didn't approve of. ‘I know you don't like her much but she's been a good friend, Geoffrey. I don't know what I'd have done without her these last few weeks. I think that breakdown she had changed her. She's not nearly as brittle as she was.'

They talked about the Shackletons because neither of them really wanted to broach the subject of The Baby versus The Job. Carter had been quite determined to quit, but that was before he'd known exactly how big the government's challenge was. MacIntyre had talked budgets and aims that were far beyond anything he'd envisaged. This was not to be another slice of gesture politics. This Tsar, unlike those for drugs, homelessness and various cancers, would have some real power.

Carter had become very excited – but he'd promised Eleri, so the chance to shape policing in the twenty-first century would have to pass him by. Every day he put the thing out of his mind and every night before sleep he couldn't stop planning his team, forming his strategy, imagining the future. He ached to be the first anti-crime coordinator, not the billionth father.

Eleri broke the silence.

‘You've got to take it, you know.'

‘What?'

‘The Tsardom. Oh Geoffrey… you'll never forgive yourself if you don't. I can't watch you torturing yourself over it any more.'

He was ashamed. Was his desire really so obvious? Defensively, Carter became entrenched in moral certainties. He was adamant: the
baby came first. He owed it to Eleri, he owed it to the family. But even as he spoke he felt as if her words had released him from a prison of domestic duty. No man had ever wanted a child more than he wanted this one but it wasn't his body it was growing in, and it wasn't the focus of his every waking moment. But stubbornly he continued to argue logically, illogically and logistically until Eleri was exhausted.

The question hung unresolved between them.

Eleri, like a chastised but determined child, spoke quietly.

‘Geoffrey, I can't tell you how much I want you to stay home with me. You know how frightened I am but … if you do give it all up I won't be married to Geoffrey Carter any more. I'll only have a bit of you. The little tiny bit that isn't your job. And do you know what? It's for me I want you to go for it. I don't want to be grateful and guilty and married to a man who'll always be thinking: What if … No matter what you say, somewhere, deep down, you'll always resent me and the baby if you give it up.'

He knew she was right. He was nothing without his job, any more than Eleri was without her family. And, he realised, he didn't want to be anything without her.

She watched him thinking it over. His face was serious, his eyes fixed on the dying fire. Yes, it would be enough of an upheaval making room for one stranger, let alone two, as there was no question of not having someone to help with the child. But if you took emotion and sentiment out of the argument it was obvious that he should become Crime Tsar; it was what he'd spent his life preparing for. Her face shone up at him as she realised she was winning. She spoke with the fervour of Saint Joan.

‘We'll move down to London – I've found a school that will take Alex and a choir school I'm sure Peter could get into and I've registered with a place that supplies Norland Nannies. We can do it, Geoffrey. I know we can. There's no rule that says you can't have it all …'

That night they clung to each other so closely they could have slept on a razor blade. The future was the Promised Land and tonight they were on Egypt's border.

Despite Geoffrey telling her not to say anything, Eleri greeted Jenni with the news as she arrived next day.

Eleri was overwhelmed with the warmth of her congratulations and assurances of support. The Shackletons would always be there.

Jenni was in her bathroom when there was a knock on the door. Dieter had gone soon after she had demonstrated her skills at fellatio: always keep a tune in your head, she'd been advised by a school-friend, something with a strong beat. She remembered they had sniggered over everything from the National Anthem to ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee'. For Dieter she had chosen ‘
Deutschland Über Alles
' speeding up towards the end, of course.

When he'd gone she fell asleep without help but woke with vague nagging fears and her nerves writhing like worms just under her skin.

Robert MacIntyre persisted, like drizzle, at the edge of her mind. She took a pill. Then another. She drank coffee. She showered and sat down to apply her make-up. This ritual always calmed her but still there were the jitters, the anxiety. She took a third pill and felt better. She knew it was stupid to take more than two but… just this once. Just this once.