The Crime Tsar (41 page)

Tuesday morning. The paperboy's battle with the letterbox woke him. His mouth was lined with kapok, his head with drills. For a moment he was lost, then the layers of realisation formed. Today was judgement day. A shower, shave and a handful of painkillers.

He stood up carefully, swallowing to control the waves of nausea. The papers were on the mat. Bending to pick them up was agony. He staggered into the kitchen and switched on the kettle. The clock on the cooker said six-thirty. He opened the
Daily Telegraph
. The phone rang.

‘Geoffrey?'

Eleri's voice sounded small, more distant than miles would make it.

‘Eleri, it was Jenni. I'm sure of it. She had every opportunity …'

He realised he was shouting but he didn't care. He had to make her understand. She had to come home. He couldn't fight this without her help.

In the middle of his loud elation he suddenly broke. For the first time he just fell apart, whimpering and begging his wife to come home as he collapsed to the floor. She listened to his ranting in silence.

‘Can you prove it was Jenni?'

Her voice was cool, calm, far away.

‘I'm sure I can. I don't know how, but it must be possible.'

‘Can you prove it wasn't you?'

He couldn't understand why she was talking to him like a solicitor. He lost his temper, started shouting at her. When he stopped she'd hung up. He rang back. No answer. He tried again. She answered.

‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Look, I'm going to –'

‘Peter's told me what you did.'

Carter stopped.

‘Told you what?'

‘About your secret games. About what you did to him.'

‘Eleri – what are you talking about? This isn't you. Stop this. I haven't done anything.'

He heard her start to cry.

‘Please, believe me. I haven't –'

‘Geoffrey? It's Bryn here.'

Eleri's father. Carter was relieved, he was less ready to jump to the worst conclusion than her mother.

‘This is very serious, you know.'

His ponderous stating of the obvious almost made Carter laugh.

‘Young Peter's story is very disturbing –'

‘But –'

‘No, Geoffrey. No buts. We've talked this over, all night we've talked, and we think it would be better if you didn't see the boys again. Peter is very upset –'

‘Let me speak to him.' Carter was desperate, unwilling to believe the tightness of the noose round his neck. ‘This is ridiculous.'

‘And Eleri is in a very bad way. We're calling the doctor to her. We just hope this hasn't affected the baby. Oh Geoffrey … how could you do this wickedness?'

The voice offered pity for the fallen but no hope.

‘Let me speak to Eleri.'

‘No, Geoffrey. You don't understand. She doesn't want to talk to you any more. She called you to tell you she will be wanting a divorce and she will be having the boys examined –'

‘You can't do this. I love her –'

‘And I think she still loves you, but she'll get over it.' The old man paused. ‘I am sorry for you, Geoffrey, but I can never forgive you.'

The conversation was over.

Carter screamed, ‘No! No! Please God, no!'

He thrashed and kicked and smashed everything he could find, exhausting himself in a blizzard of despair. His paper lay open, serene in the chaos. Silence settled and he saw the small, discreet headline tucked away at the bottom of page three: ‘Police Chief “Dropped”.' He read the neat column inches as if they referred to someone else:

A Home Office source last night gave a clear indication Chief Constable Geoffrey Carter was out of the running for the job dubbed ‘Crime Tsar' of Britain. Sources close to Robert MacIntyre indicated that while the probe into ‘certain allegations' concerning Mr Carter's private life was still ongoing no decision could be made about his future.

An Association of Chief Police Officers source admitted there was concern over delays in the inquiry into the allegations against Mr Carter: ‘It is in the Home Secretary's power to accelerate this process but he has signally failed to do so. From this we can only
draw the conclusion that the government is having serious doubts about his suitability for advancement.'

And so, on a Tuesday, an innocuous day out of seven, he sat in his living room and laid out the facts as he had been taught so many years ago as a young detective constable, calm now being his only option.

The whispering campaign against Carter gathered momentum over the following weeks. The tabloid hyenas under the waiting eye of the broadsheet vultures closed in, certain of a feast.

Carter appeared little altered by events. He lost a stone in weight and was perhaps less ready to laugh than before but, said his staff, he seemed to be bearing up very well. Bearing up after the long sleepless nights when hope died at 4 a.m. and despair occupied him until he could get ready to join the world again.

His accusation of the Shackletons had met with polite assurances from the investigators that all avenues would be explored. Anyone who had visited the house would be traced and eliminated. They seemed very sure they would be eliminated. Through each night Carter wrote out lists, plans, ideas. Every tiny detail that might be relevant was scrawled in a notebook: somewhere was the key to his innocence. But the nightly search was taking him closer to the edge of insanity.

Every day he phoned Eleri and finally she agreed to speak to him. Her pregnancy continued uneventfully. Alexander was settling down but Peter was behaving in a very disturbed manner.

‘Of course he is – you've dragged him away from his home and made him feel like a criminal.'

Eleri remained calm. It was one of the most infuriating things about this stranger, his wife. She seemed insulated by some psychobabble cotton wool. Everything he said was met with the pitying implacability of a social worker.

‘Geoffrey, your aggressive attitude isn't helping.'

‘Let me speak to Peter.'

‘I don't think that would be a good idea. We've managed to get him seen by a child psychologist and' – she had the grace to falter in her born-again assurance – ‘and it seems he has some repressed memories which are only now being uncovered.'

She was talking like an automaton: there seemed no resemblance between this voice and his wife.

‘Eleri, I swear, I promise you, I have never touched Peter or Alexander like that. I couldn't.'

There was a hair's breadth pause.

‘Geoffrey, Peter has been examined by a paediatrician and we're taking Alex to the hospital tomorrow.'

He knew she wanted him to assume the rest, to make it easier for her. He knew what he was going to hear but wanted to feel the knife as it went in, not to find the handle between his shoulder blades later.

‘Well?'

‘Peter shows physical and psychological evidence of abuse.'

Carter had thought it would be a stab but it felt more like the smashing of his skull. What part of his denial would make her believe him? He had only one word.

‘No. Eleri. No. Those people have made mistakes before. Cleveland – what was that bloody woman's name …?' He went on, desperate, thrashing around for some sort of sense. ‘What about Romania, before they came here –?'

She had found a reservoir of courage and didn't falter.

‘My parents are advising me to have you prosecuted but I'm not sure I want to put Peter through that. Of course, you know Alex could never give evidence.' The way she said it implied she knew paedophiles often targeted the disabled knowing they could never legally accuse.

‘I've got to talk to them, Eleri. Peter would never say I hurt him. Never.'

‘No, you're right. Peter won't admit anything but he has nightmares, screams out, “No, Daddy, no, don't.”' Her anger got the better of her. ‘What the hell do you think that means, Geoffrey? You liar, you bloody filthy liar, what did you do to those boys –'

‘Eleri –'

She was screaming now, hysterical. He could hear her mother in the background trying to calm her.

And then Peter, he was shouting, shouting as loud as his desperation would allow him: ‘Dad … Daddy … I want to come home! Dad. I haven't told them anything. Dad, please. Come and get me!'

Eleri's voice drowned everything else out. There was no vestige of wife or lover left in her. No trust or love. She was a mother who had
betrayed her sons with a monster. She would never forgive him because she would never forgive herself.

‘You'll never see those boys again. Never. I'm divorcing you. And, Geoffrey, I'm changing my name back to Morgan. The baby will be a Morgan and if I could stop it ever knowing who you are I would. You're nothing to us. Do you understand? Nothing.'

Carter understood. Everything was clear and that clarity gave him peace. He would continue to work. He would give every impression of being a person. No one would know that he'd been hollowed out.

Days later, alone as he always was now, he sat in front of a television which provided noise but not company, and watched a horse fall into quicksand. For minutes it struggled, desperate to find a foothold, then, exhausted, it let its strength go, and gave in to the inevitable. The camera closed in on one of its eyes. There was no peace there, no wise acceptance of God's Will. All Carter saw was confusion, incomprehension and a desperate sadness to be leaving life.

He was looking into a mirror.

Jenni was pleased to be getting more invitations to political gatherings. But frustration woke her every day Carter wasn't officially finished. She knew the new interest in Tom was because Carter was under suspicion but the longer the matter remained unresolved the more she could see the possibility of their being implicated. While Carter paced his empty house in misery she spent every sleepless night going over and over her actions. She knew Tom wasn't sleeping either but his door was closed and the one time she went into his room he wouldn't look at her. She was on the edge of total exhaustion when Eleri rang.

‘Jenni?'

She sounded as if she was on the other side of the world.

‘Eleri? Where are you?'

‘Wales. Reception's terrible here, but I wanted to talk to you away from the house. How are you?'

They spent a few minutes in polite conversation before Eleri said, ‘I'm divorcing Geoffrey.'

‘Oh Eleri … no.' Jenni went on to automatic ‘Are you sure? I mean, nothing's proved. It's probably all a horrible mistake.'

‘One day I'll tell you everything, Jenni. One day. But I just wanted to thank you for what you've done for us. For the boys and me.'

‘Oh, I'm so sorry. Is it really too late?'

‘Jenni, believe me I don't want it to be but yes. I told him a month ago.' She paused, ambushed by an image of Carter as he'd been before all this, when she still worshipped him. ‘I just wanted you to know, it's official now. I think he's going to contest it so it'll drag on. For God's sake, how could he?'

Jenni thought this was good. The government was distancing itself from Carter and now his wife was too. It could only be a matter of time before Carter resigned. Surely he'd want to follow Eleri and try to re-claim his family.

‘Maybe you should give him a second chance.'

‘Jenni, you just don't understand.' Then, again, ‘One day I'll tell you everything. I promise.'

‘Oh, Eleri, I can't tell you how sorry I am. Tom will be so sad. After all, there's no evidence, is there? Don't be too hard on him, Eleri. Maybe if you just had time and space to yourselves you could work it out

‘Jenni. You don't know the facts. You don't know.' She stopped, unable to go on.

Jenni heard her but wasn't listening – she was anxious to speak to Shackleton.

‘No, well, whatever happens, stay in touch, won't you?'

‘Thanks, Jenni. I really appreciate that. I can't tell you what this has been like. It's like someone has picked us up and dropped us in a sewer.'

Jenni automatically made the right noises, said the right things, until she could end the call without seeming rude.

Once she'd put the phone down she called Tom. He was in a meeting. She wanted to scream at Janet. But she didn't.

‘Janet, this is important.'

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Shackleton, the Chief Constable said he wasn't to be disturbed under any circumstances.'

Jenni was vibrating with fury.

‘I am his wife. I am not any circumstances.'

There was a pause.

‘Hold the line, Mrs Shackleton.'

It was less than fifteen seconds before Shackleton came on the line.

‘Hello.'

Jenni was disproportionately irritated by the low-voiced sing-song way he said the word.

‘It's me. Eleri's divorcing Carter.'

She waited.

Tom, in his office with the Police Federation representatives, didn't know what to say.

‘I see,' was all he could think of.

She was sharp.

‘No, you don't see, Tom. He might cling on while he was just being investigated but… well, don't you see? He'll have to make a choice; if he wants his family he'll have to resign. She's gone. He'll have to go after them. I mean she's started proceedings but he's not going to accept it. He'll fight, and to do that properly he's got to follow her.'

Carefully, mindful of the others in the room, he said, ‘Well, thank you for letting me know.'

Jenni was exasperated.

‘God, you're a prat.'

‘Yes. Thank you. Goodbye.'

Shackleton put the phone down and turned back to the business of unhappiness and unrest among the rank and file.

While one of the representatives talked he looked sympathetic and let himself think.

He didn't know how long Carter'd been alone but he knew Jenni was right: Carter would fall apart without his family. Shackleton was relieved. While Carter clung on they were all in limbo and the weeks were dragging on. The signs were that Whitehall was turning its face towards the Shackletons but nothing had been said. Nothing was sure.