The Crime Tsar (33 page)

‘Yes, yes, of course. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. It's my neck. Sorry.'

‘Take a painkiller and go to bed.'

She said it without affection or tenderness. Take a meat cleaver and cut your head off.

‘Yes, I think you're right. I will go for a lie down.'

Tom had injured the bones in his neck during an armed robbery when he was twenty-five and the condition had deteriorated as he'd risen through the ranks and become more deskbound, causing intense, nauseating pain, not frequently but regularly.

It was his first big stake-out. He'd long since forgotten the laddish excitement of that night, replacing it with a sanitised memory of a job well done. He had been praised and decorated for his bravery in saving the life of a fellow officer, his neck injury proud proof of that bravery.

No one on his team had told the truth of that night and the only witness was a corpse without a face.

Officially Leroy Chandler had held a sawn-off shotgun to a young PC's head. Shackleton had tackled him using skills learned on the rugby field and in the scuffle the gun went off killing Leroy. Shackleton had injuries to his face and neck sustained during the fight. An inquiry was held and Shackleton was found to be not only blameless but a hero. Leroy's death caused little furore, possibly because he was a recidivist of some magnitude, but more probably because he was a single black man with no family
to challenge the police version of events, all those years before Stephen Lawrence and Michael Menson.

The truth was that Leroy, cornered by Shackleton, had given up the gun after being tackled. Shackleton, carried away by the heightened mood, turned the gun on the now gibbering robber. They were alone. Two young men awash with testosterone.

The rest of the squad had hared off after Leroy's accomplices. Shackleton had never thought about the events that followed until the night with Carter. Then he'd seen himself squeezing the trigger, not intending to shoot but unable to stop himself. Fascinated, hypnotised by how far that trigger would pull back and, as if in a dream state, convinced it would just click and the film would continue along familiar lines. But the slow-motion scene exploded in blood, bone and brains. Leroy's face disintegrated over Shackleton, and the gun, held in Shackleton's left hand, like a revolver, jumped on being fired, as any older, more experienced officer would have known it would. It jumped high and hard, smashing into Shackleton's nose and whipping his head back. When he came to his colleagues had surrounded him and a legend was created.

Maybe the painful bones in Shackleton's neck were a manifestation of guilt, as Carter's pain was over Percy. But he lived with it more comfortably than Carter lived with his. A damaged body was easier to deal with than a soul in turmoil.

No more macho heroics tackling armed thugs now though: a chief constable was simply a politically astute accountant. It wasn't the thing to be a policeman any more.

He turned on the stairs.

‘Jenni …? What did you mean about Carter?'

Jenni came to the bottom of the stairs and looked up at him.

‘Do you really want to know, Tom?'

He felt awkward, he wanted to say yes and to tell her he wanted nothing to do with it. Whatever it was. He wondered what she would do if he said he wanted to retire from the police at the end of his seven-year turn as Chief. That the scheming and climbing were over, that he just wanted to let go of it all and walk dogs on the South Coast. To give in gracefully within sight of the winning post if it meant treading on one more person, making one more enemy.

But someone had once said to him that he had no rival in making enemies. It was a talent. No one did it better. His face was always turned to the sun. To turn away now and look down the greasy pole at the desolation on which it rested, to see all the people they'd hurt and neglected on the way to this place. Was it worth it? But now, what else was there? It was too late to make friends – he's proved that in his inadequacy with Carter – he didn't have the vocabulary. There was no one in their lives who was for decoration, for pure aesthetic pleasure. Just for use. Use, abuse and rejection. It was easier that way. No commitment, no obligation.

‘What about Lucy?'

Jenni's voice was hard. Her eyes harder.

‘What?'

‘Lucy. You just said Lucy.'

Tom felt his face getting hot.

‘Did I?'

He was confused. Had he said her name out loud?

‘I … er … I thought she was coming in to clean today.'

Jenni relaxed into contempt.

‘Tom, you've just watched her walk out – the dumpy female in the baggy leggings. God, you're hopeless.'

He took refuge in humility.

‘Sorry.'

‘Shall I bring you up a cup of tea?'

Jenni never ceased to surprise him. He was expecting vitriol, not tea.

‘That would be nice. Thank you.'

In the bedroom he stripped off to his boxer shorts. Brown silk, expensive. He preferred ordinary pants, the ones he'd worn as a boy, snug, reassuring. But Jenni insisted on these. He remembered bending over to put a log on the fire shortly after they'd married. He was wearing his best trousers, pale-beige slacks, fashionable then, bought by Jenni. She had screamed at him for the visibility of the elastic of his underwear as the trousers tightened. How could he? Didn't he know how gross it looked? Visible panty line – what did he know about it? She had prescribed boxer shorts and he'd suffered in their insecurity ever since.

She came in with his tea and sat on the edge of the bed. He froze, lying on his back, embarrassed.

‘You're getting fat,' she said with no malice. ‘Do you ever think about sex?'

He didn't know what to say. They hadn't discussed sex for years.

‘No. I don't. I might get frustrated.'

He tried to make light of it, unsure what she wanted him to say. He dreaded the idea she might want him to perform. He knew he couldn't. Not with her. Not any more.

‘Good,' she said, as if he'd passed a test.

She put a slender finger on his reluctant penis.

‘I don't want you getting distracted.' She was watching his face.

‘Oh, I forgot to tell you –' The beady vigilance was replaced by a radiant smile. ‘Jason's coming home. Isn't that wonderful? I think he missed us.'

Shackleton was genuinely pleased but slightly thrown by the ‘us'. It was usually ‘me' in anything to do with the children. But his pleasure was genuine.

‘That's good. I'm glad. I've missed him.'

There was a rare moment between them of contented peace. They each in their own way savoured it.

He sipped his tea. The pain in his neck was so bad he was feeling sick; bending it to drink the tea was too much. He put the cup down. She was still sitting by him, watching him, but her look was gentle, almost sympathetic.

‘Saturday. We're dropping in on Geoffrey. In the afternoon. About three o'clock. Nice surprise for him. All right?'

Shackleton was struck by how sure she'd become since Vienna. Confident. More so than she'd been since before the breakdown but jagged now, like a sliver of glass. And translucently beautiful. Now, as she sat with the sunlight making a halo of her hair, he could see the delicate veins beneath her skin. She was like a fairy, a delicate figment of his imagination. He felt an almost forgotten desire to touch the perfect blonde hair.

‘Why?'

Again her manicured nail wandered along the shy outline of his genitals. Her voice was as sharp as the nail.

‘Because. He'll be alone in the house looking after the autistic child. Eleri's taking Peter, the normal one, to a film. Starts at two-forty, something about alien dinosaurs, apparently. So while you chatter away to Geoffrey about boys' things I'll take Alexander
upstairs to play. They've got Sky so you can watch the football, do some bonding, eh? What do you think?'

‘I think you're a witch. What are you going to do?'

Although his voice was as measured as always, she could feel, under her continually moving finger, the first stirrings of interest.

Shackleton was horrified at the twitching response she was getting. He wanted to push her away – he did not want to have any intimacy with her. Not now, with this pain, in daylight, with nowhere to hide himself …

‘Stop it, Jenni. Please. Stop.'

It was his penis he should have been speaking to. Jenni was thrilled. After all this time she could still give her husband an erection, even when he didn't want one. She looked down at the object of Lucy's fantasies as if it were a rather disappointing chop.

‘I remembered it bigger. Do you remember you used to say “make it hard”?'

He winced.

She held him in her hands as though praying.

‘Save it for me, Tom. I want you to pour all your gratitude into me when we're …' She paused, a predatory smile spreading from her perfect lips to her frosted eyes. ‘Just don't let me down on Saturday, my darling.'

She kissed the end of it. He winced at the touch of her soft mouth.

She got up, smiling.

‘God, you look like Moby Dick. You really have let yourself go.' As if this was a well-considered compliment. ‘Get some sleep. I'll see you later.'

And she was gone.

He lay looking at the ceiling longing for the clinging warmth of Lucy's flesh. And the cold release of loneliness. And Carter? He didn't want to hurt him. He didn't want to hurt anyone any more. But what was the alternative? Non-executive director of the local department store and a timeshare in Marbella. No. It had to be all or nothing. He winced. His erection had quickly subsided but his neck was still agony.

He found some relief in thinking about the new recruitment strategy. About the progress he was making with his community initiative. The dry stone walls of policy excluded imagination. Provided a screen against the chaos of feeling. Just as he fell asleep,
his neck numbed by the latest in painkillers, he saw the faces of the black women, laughing at him. He fell into a dream of them, defenceless against his own subconscious.

They showed him Geoffrey Carter's funeral, and himself speaking the eulogy. And he was good. So quietly sincere. The church littered with politicians, their faces shining with approval. He felt the women dressing him, placing his medals in order, QPM Jubilee, Long Service, others he couldn't see. Jenni in a hat. An investiture. Cameras and Buckingham Palace. The three black faces pushed against the railings, laughing. Telling him not to fall.

He walked towards them to hear them more clearly; he didn't see the hole, the black echoing nothingness into which he fell, his stomach churning over and over, sweating fear, and the faces looking down at him from the rim far above him. And this was hell. The wages of sin is death. No hope or suspicion of another chance. Blackness. Emptiness. As if they'd never been. He and Jenni. Obliterated from life and no one to speak a word for them. No flowers. No headstone. No memory of his achievements. Where was Lucy? She'd speak for him. Pray for him. Hope for his eternal life. The sewn-up eyes stared blindly at the dust that had been him. A breath blew the dust into a landscape of nothingness.

‘We were at an auction just down the road. We didn't buy anything but we thought we might pop round to see you.'

Jenni swept in, past Geoffrey, trailing Tom behind her. The two men hadn't seen each other since the night of the curry and, vaguely shamed by the memory, behaved as if it had never happened. Carter was surprised to see them but was warmly welcoming and showed them into the living room.

Alexander was pacing up and down, absorbed in the mysteries of his fingers. Shackleton watched him while Carter and Jenni chatted about Eleri. Those fingers, too long, too tapering, weak caricatures of Christ's praying hands. For Shackleton, as for Danny, there was something even less human about them than about the boy's too thick, low-growing hair and empty eyes. Looking at him he understood Carter's fear. But, unlike Danny, Shackleton felt no guilt at the discomfort the child caused him.

Carter offered coffee and Jenni insisted on making it. She brought
in the tray, the drinks alone, no cafetière, no milk, because of Alexander's obsession with liquids. While picking up the bowl of brown sugar she had looked at the bowl of white. It made her think of the tiny sniff of cocaine she'd promised herself after this visit was completed successfully. Having served the coffee Jenni suggested she take Alex up to his room so the men could talk. Alex could show her his collection of batteries.

Now they were alone there was the possibility of awkwardness, but Carter picked up his newspaper and handed it to Shackleton.

‘“Labour Mouthpiece Made a Fool by Educated Archie”.'

Shackleton laughed.

‘I thought Archie was a ventriloqist's dummy.'

‘I believe that's the point. As the government's anointed one it was assumed I'd be exactly that.'

Shackleton read the article.

‘Any feedback from Whitehall?'

‘I'm sure there will be. They've got an election coming up – they don't want any gaffes.'

The drugs debate that had been dragging on since New Labour's ascendancy had been enormously enlivened by Carter's complete devastation of a badly briefed junior spokesman the day before. The new strategy had been published but instead of it being a one-day wonder the media had decided, in the absence of a natural disaster or train crash, to whip up the controversy always surrounding the subject. Carter had in the past couple of weeks been a fixture on every news programme, becoming less and less on message as the days passed. But last night he'd surpassed himself.

Shackleton had watched, admiring and envious of Carter's ease and fluency.

The junior minister, flabby in body and mind, said, ‘Well, of course it would be ludicrous to legalise the whole gambit of drugs.'

Carter dismissed him so effortlessly Shackleton almost didn't register the sin he was committing.