The Loving Husband (23 page)

‘Everything all right?’ Rob had said, leaning down to the table with his hands on the glasses, looking up. And Nathan had nodded just once, brisk, then turned to her. She’d seen it then, a filament glinting in the dusty air between them, friends, brothers. It had shown her a Nathan she could trust.

‘Have you spoken to the police?’ she said.

Rob was staring down at the stack of papers in her arms, then he was on his knees gathering the junk that had spilled from the drawer and putting it back in. Setting the pile down she put her hand on his shoulder and felt him take a deep shuddering breath, then he stood up, carefully set the drawer back on its runners and slid it in.

‘They got hold of me this morning.’ Rob leaned back against the closed drawer. ‘I was driving, I told them I’d call them back but they said to just come in when I got here.’ He put a hand to his head. ‘Tomorrow, I guess.’

He’d always been skinny but he looked like he’d lost weight, his jeans hung off him.

‘Who do they think did it?’ he said, staring, haunted. ‘I asked on the phone, but the man didn’t really seem to want to tell me anything.’

‘DS Gerard?’ said Fran and he shrugged, helpless.

‘Was that his name? He said something about burglary. A break-in gone wrong.’ Rob looked around the room, confused, and she followed his gaze, registering how much order she’d restored. Rob looked back at her. ‘I didn’t like him. The man I talked to. He asked me about your marriage.’ He looked into her face, she saw he was on the edge of tears, or worse. Pleading. ‘Why would he ask about that?’

‘I suppose they have to eliminate me as a suspect.’ It came out rougher than she planned and she knelt to the car seat so as not to have him stare at her. Ben was shifting, arching his back as if uncomfortable, and gently she reached her hands in and under him, felt the damp under him and the nappy’s weight, smelled the hot reek.

‘Who is Julian Napier, Rob?’ she said from where she knelt, not looking up. She reached for the wipes she kept in the pocket on the back of the car seat, groped for the clean nappy there. Ben’s eyes were still closed but he drew his knees up, ready, his face clenched.

‘Julian?’ She heard him step back, wary. She focused on the task, down here in the dirt the sweetish smell in her nostrils: no matter what, this had to be done. Ben was her shield against the past, her future.
They
were, him and Emme. She opened the nappy, raised his legs quickly, wiped, pulled the dirty nappy out and slid the clean one under him. Saw something, in the nappy. Little scrap of blue, before she folded it on itself.

‘He’s a guy … Julian?’ Stuttering. ‘He’s the guy Nathan works for. He gave Nathan his first job.’

Quick
. On her knees still, she got it done: strip open the tabs, secure the nappy, off with the sodden babygro, vest underneath would have to stay, back and up holding Ben up under his arms, he raised his knees, face screwed up, his mouth opening. She turned him, sat, set him on her knee, pushed up the sweatshirt and he latched on. Then she looked from where she sat, suddenly calm, up into Rob’s face.

‘I want to help you,’ he said, almost a sob in his voice. ‘I want…’ but he was at the door, as if he wanted to run out.

‘So just a regular guy.’

‘I don’t know anything about Nathan’s work,’ said Rob, rubbing at his wrists, an anxious movement.

‘Then who does?’ she asked. ‘You’re the only one who knew Nathan, really knew him.’ The dirty nappy still on the floor. ‘It wasn’t a burglary. It wasn’t some random…’ She felt something contract in her chest, fear. ‘You’re all I’ve got, don’t you see? On my side.’

He began to shake his head, ‘I don’t know what…’ he said, and she saw his raw, sore hands. ‘I don’t know what I can do.’ Fran put out her free hand, from where she sat she could just touch his sleeve. He looked lost, he gazed at her as if she might save him.

‘Nathan told me he was going to the pub twice a week,’ she said, focusing on Ben’s small hot head against her, the steady pull of his feeding. He kept the fear down, shrunk to a hard knot. Don’t think about that. Keep talking. ‘Only the landlady told the police she’d barely seen him since the week we arrived.’ Rob just stared. ‘Do you know where he was going, Rob?’ Fran didn’t wait for him to answer, she went on, talking and talking, like she’d been set free.

‘You know something, don’t you?’ she said, and she saw him flinch. ‘What was it, going through your head while you were walking back down from that mountain? What was Nathan into? All those conferences…’ She was ranting. Of course he’d been to the conferences. They had all the freebies – the mugs and the nylon laptop covers – but she couldn’t afford to stop now. ‘Was it something criminal?’ She found she needed to take a breath. ‘Who did he come back here for? He was never happy here. Why did he come back?’

Stiffly upright, Rob set his hands by his side, against the drawer behind him. ‘Criminal? Who…’ and his eyes flickered, afraid. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Who was he afraid of? Nathan? Afraid of that darkening look in Nathan’s eyes? Nathan was dead. She would have liked to get up, to stand and shake him, but there was Ben. She steadied her voice. ‘There was another friend, he talked about it. A man who ran a scaffolding business; Nathan said he was going to track the guy down. What was he called? Jeb, Jez, something like that?’ For a moment she thought he was going to faint, to slide sideways and crash to the floor, but she had hold of his sleeve, she wasn’t going to let up. He said something, so quiet she hardly heard it.

‘Bez,’ he said, then again, louder. ‘His name was Bez. Is Bez.’

‘A friend of yours.’ Barely perceptibly, he nodded.

‘Nathan told you, didn’t he,’ said Rob, ‘about the house.’

‘What house?’ Ben had stopped, but he wasn’t asleep. He pulled away, she could feel his eyes on her, waiting, but she didn’t look down, she tugged her sweatshirt to cover herself. She felt dirty, suddenly, sweat in her armpits, grey in the folds of her body.

‘We were just kids,’ said Rob and suddenly he seemed to be about to cry. ‘We were going to live there for ever. Nathan hated it at home, he said. Me and him and … Bez. We thought it would last for ever but it only lasted a summer, in the end. Nathan went to London, it all broke up.’ He was staring, his voice had become a monotone.

‘The place you squatted,’ said Fran. She could feel Ben’s eyes intent on her and she allowed herself a quick glance down. ‘What was it called again?’

‘Black Barn,’ he said, staring through her to somewhere far off. ‘Do you think it was something to do with that?’

‘Rob, are you all right? Are you … are you on something? You need to tell the police, you know that, you need to go and tell them everything, tomorrow.’

‘The police.’ Rob’s eyes came into focus. ‘Right.’

‘Where’s Bez now?’ Her hand still on his sleeve and he pulled away in sudden fright.

‘Don’t go after Bez,’ he said. ‘Bez is bad news.’ He focused with an effort.

‘Are you on something, Rob?’ she asked again, but he just shook his head.

‘Bad news, always was, when it all broke up, when Nathan went…’ He took a breath. ‘He lost the scaffolding business a year or two ago, because of the drinking. Then it wasn’t just drink. It was drugs. Serious drugs. He went AWOL, off the radar. No fixed abode.’

‘Could he…’

Karen had said it, when you come back, the people you left behind don’t always like it, but it stuck in her throat. The man in her bedroom: the heavy tread.
No, no, no.
‘You’ve got to tell the police about him.’

‘No!,’ said Rob, and his eyes were all over the place. ‘No, you don’t understand, he wouldn’t – Bez would never…’

And from upstairs it came, a sudden shout, from Emme’s room. Not a whimper but a loud, fierce noise,
NO
, as if there was someone in there with her, and Emme, brave Emme was facing him down, she was fighting. Fran was on her feet, Ben against her shoulder.

She had got to the bottom of the stairs when she felt the icy air and turned, but Rob was gone and the door was swinging open behind him.

Fran made herself cross the room and close it – lock it, bolt it – top and bottom, before she went upstairs.

When she heard the police car and the voices below the window from where she lay, Fran’s first thought was that harm had come to Rob. Somewhere in the black fields, driving along an unlit road. She was on Emme’s bed, squeezed between them, Ben asleep and snuffling in her armpit. She must have been asleep herself because she was stiff and disorientated at the sounds outside.

Struggling up, she tried not to wake Ben. She crept down the corridor and laid him in his cot. She covered him. The house was locked, they’d ring the bell, they’d knock, they’d wake him. But she didn’t hurry. While they were outside and the door was locked it was her house.

They were knocking, softly, as Fran came into the kitchen where the lights were still on, but she paused to kneel and retrieve the nappy from under the table, she pulled a plastic bag from the holder, flipped the bin and set it on top, under the lid. She looked at the clock as she reached up for the bolt. It was almost nine o’clock.

‘Sorry to come so late,’ said Gerard and for a second she had a flashback to an old life, a parallel world, Nick turning up on her doorstep looking pumped, ready to go, and his low dark car blinking in the street behind him.
Hey, Frankie, I knew you’d be pleased to see me
. Gerard didn’t look sorry, like Nick he looked energised, alive, as if late nights agreed with him. Carswell was behind him, his narrow little face bobbing to see her over his boss’s shoulder. There was no sign of Ali Compton.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

The first thing Fran did when they left was to cross back to the fliptop bin and open it. She took out the plastic bag holding Ben’s dirty nappy. It was true, really, they hardly smelled bad when the baby was so small but she wouldn’t have noticed it anyway.

‘Did you see Rob?’ she had asked and Gerard had frowned, impatient. ‘Rob?’

‘He was here. He said … the friend, Bez, their friend from years back—’

‘That’s not what we came about,’ said Gerard and she heard a warning in his voice.

‘Where’s Ali?’

‘Ali will be back tomorrow,’ he said, patiently. ‘If you want her.’

Fran stared a second – Of course I want her – then hurried on.

‘Bez, he ran a scaffolding business, you should be able to find him from that? He started drinking, Rob said, so maybe he’s got a record, a police record.’ They looked back at her, Gerard impassive, just waiting for her to finish, and Carswell curious. It felt as if she’d been waiting so long to say her piece, to give them a shove, Fran wasn’t going to stop now.

‘They shared a squat in Oakenham, Black Barn it was called. Years back. Fifteen, twenty years? Something happened there.’

And then she came to a halt because she hadn’t known that was what she was going to say, and because of the way they were looking at her.

‘We’ve heard something,’ said Gerard, and beside him Carswell was raised on the balls of his feet, bouncing with anticipation. ‘About you.’

After they’d gone Fran had locked the door again behind them and then she’d sat on her haunches with her back set against it a moment, waiting for the sound of the police car’s engine. Now she stood over the bin and she opened up the nappy carefully, delicately.

She’d seen the way Gerard had looked around her tidy kitchen, momentarily distracted by its cleanness, briefly approving, like Nathan.

They had been watching her. She could see it now, as if from high above, they thought she wasn’t behaving as a bereaved woman should, never mind she had children, and what was she supposed to do, was she supposed to go to pieces so they could swoop, get inside her house and tear it all apart? They had been waiting for her to make a false move. Who jumps first? And now they’d jumped.

‘You came here to make a fresh start with your husband.’ That had been Carswell, earnest and wide-eyed but sly all the time, and uncertainly Fran had nodded.

‘Yes.’

‘You came here because you’d had an affair.’ And that had been Gerard. Fran had stared at him, overwhelmingly aware that these men were not her friends, not even her allies. Who told you?

Was one night an affair?

A man climbing out of a taxi in the rain, walking up some stairs in front of her, letting her in to a dim untidy room. A man who went over to a drawer and got something out of a packet before she had even located the unmade bed, the tiny sound in her ears as she had sat on an unmade bed and concentrated on thinking nothing, feeling nothing.

What did they think they knew?

The nappy lay open in the bin and she saw it, the tiny scrap of blue packaging that had been under her bed when she’d left Ben there and he’d rolled on to his belly. He must have reached for it, inquisitive, sharp-eyed. Would she have recognised it even without the telltale letters the
–ex
that was all that was left of the brand name? The man in her bed the night Nathan died had used a condom.

Inside her that tiny scrap of information seeded, it grew. And then she smelled it, then she felt it coming up inside her like acid: it had been in Ben’s mouth, in her baby’s mouth, passing through his small perfect system. She ran blindly into the hall and blundered through the toilet door, head down in the dark. They’re gone, it’s all right, they’re gone, they can’t hear. Or were they out there in the night, listening?