The Loving Husband (42 page)

Got to be him, hasn’t it?

Along the top of frozen ruts where the snow lay lighter Fran ran, dodging. The ditch appeared but by then she had worked out where she could cross it and she turned, gauging her angle and unhesitating because there wasn’t time for it. All this time she had thought the threat was outside, watching her, and all the time it was inside. Karen holding Emme’s hand, standing at Fran’s sink. Karen taking her chance, how many months ago, to run her eye down the numbers on the wall by the phone and take Nathan’s. The last one to talk to him.

The house moved into line, behind the barn; she could see through the barn to its oblique elevation, a bedroom window as she went on running. It blocked her view and she was there on the barn’s edge, a girder beside her and the empty space looming. And then she stopped: then she found she couldn’t move.

It didn’t fit, though. Karen had been in her kitchen … but in her bedroom? Flowers, chocolates, a Valentine’s card. She hadn’t imagined those things. A man’s hand on her from behind, in the bed. A man pushing himself inside her. Had that been in her head? She hadn’t imagined the condom.

There was something there. She stood very still, she held her breath and she heard it before she saw anything, something ragged, stifled. Then she looked, she turned her head very slowly. Something insubstantial hung in the dusty darkness, it dangled, drifting, she couldn’t make it out, and then she could. A length of empty rope, a box below it, on its side and as she tried to understand it he stepped out beside her, a ghost, brought up from underwater. ‘You,’ she said. ‘Rob.’ He was all angles and shadows, no flesh on him, his skin raw. He gazed at her, his eyes in the gaunt face huge and liquid.

‘We meant to do it together,’ he told her.

‘Who?’ she whispered. ‘Do what?’ But she knew: the reservoir swam behind her eyes, the dark water, and a body trapped in the depths.

‘Me and Bez,’ he said, gasping. ‘He came out there last night, late. I’d told him where I’d be if he wanted me and I waited for him there.’

‘The police were searching the woods,’ she said, numbly, and he just looked at her blank.

‘Were they?’ he said, lost. ‘I saw no one.’ He was shivering, and she thought of a leather jacket, left behind in someone’s shed. ‘I couldn’t go home,’ he said, as if reading her mind. ‘I watched him go in the water, he was so tired, he said someone gave him a lift half the way then he’d walked. He was pissed and he just lay back, he put his arms out and let himself go down. But then I couldn’t do it. I had to come back for you.’ A sound came out of him, low down, and he swayed as if it had hurt him.

‘It was you,’ she said, and her hands went out, almost without her volition, to hold him. ‘You killed Nathan.’ His head went down towards her, as if to nuzzle, she could smell his skin, a tainted chemical smell. She held firm, keeping him where he was.

‘He had said he’d go with me, to Wales.’ His voice eddied, welled, a child about to cry. ‘Way back he promised and then he blew me out, last minute. That’s when I told him, the reason I wanted him to come was I had information. I told him Nick Jason knew all about it, I told him you knew too, you were planning to take it to the newspapers, the two of you. I told him he’d better find a safe place for his hard drive.’

‘Nick didn’t know,’ she whispered.

He stroked her hair. ‘He wouldn’t give it to Napier, I knew that,’ he said.

And a hardness crept in. ‘Nathan would never let Napier think he’d screwed up. So I told him,’ and his voice lowered, confidential, ‘I won’t go to Wales, we’ll meet in Oakenham instead. Just give it to me, I’ve got a place for it. He trusted me, you see. Because I was always there, waiting to be told, he thought I was his, I would always be his.’

‘His hard drive,’ she said and her heart jumped, she had to see it. What he had said about her. ‘His mobile.’

He stilled, focused. ‘I kept them for you,’ he said and in a jerky imitation of his old self, his shy, methodical self, he turned, searched, patted low down in the darkness. ‘There.’ Something was mounded at the foot of the nearest girder, where he must have been waiting. His mountain-biker’s backpack and the bike itself resting against it, lying on its side. And then he was so close she could almost feel the stubble on his chin, the tears on his cheeks.

‘I was at the Angel, that night,’ he said, his breath on her neck. ‘I was waiting outside, I followed him to where I told him to meet me, I watched. I’m good at watching.’ She gasped, a sob of terror, and swallowed it. ‘I can wait as long as you like,’ he said, his lips moving against the soft place under her ear.

‘I can’t, Rob, I can’t…’ but he didn’t seem to hear.

He pulled away, looking down at her. His cheekbones sharp, the eyes just wells of shadow. ‘He came out, he was on his phone. I heard him talking to a woman. “You bitch,” he said. Walking up and down in the car park.’

‘Karen,’ she said.

‘She was making him angry,’ Rob muttered into her neck. ‘I knew it wasn’t you. You never got angry, no matter what he did.’ And he held her tighter, tighter, till it hurt. ‘You’re like me. He looked for people like us.’

There was a name for people like Nathan. She’d read somewhere, a psychopath knows you from behind, the way you walk. He can see your weakness, your need. She tried not to struggle, to save her strength.

‘What did he do to you?’ she said. ‘What did they do, him and Napier? At Black Barn?’ Rob’s head went up and his eyes looked into hers, they seemed filmed over, opaque and dead. ‘Nathan?’ he said, wondering. ‘At Black Barn he said, just let them do what they want to you. He said, take the money. Take the dope. He said, it doesn’t mean anything.’ His head swung away, she saw his eyes roaming, empty, across the dark flat land. The sound broke from him again. ‘I tried. Worse for Bez, because he loved Nathan, and I hated him, I was just waiting … waiting…’ The words seemed to choke him, he gasped for air. ‘I tried. I sat there at the table with them, him and Napier, when you got married. I tried. To pretend it didn’t mean anything.’ He couldn’t even say it: sex. She thought, unwillingly, of sex with Nathan, of his fastidious movements, his disdain.

‘It was you I needed,’ he said, and his hands were on her cheeks.

‘You were in my bed,’ Fran said. She could see his face wet in the distant gleam from the house, and hoped he couldn’t hear the uncontrollable thing that climbed up inside her. She wondered if they would come. If they would be in time. Somewhere she found her voice. ‘You can’t do that,’ she said, loud, wanting them to hear. All of them. ‘You raped me.’ He flinched.

He pulled his head back, to avoid her eye,
No, I … no, I…
but she held him there. ‘He had you, you see?’ he said. ‘Do you see?’ What she saw were his eyes on her in that Italian restaurant after the wedding, as Nathan’s hand clapped him on the shoulder. Stiffly, she nodded. ‘I wanted you.’ Now his voice was different, not lost, sad Rob but an angry child, an angry boy who would do what he wanted. Would take what he wanted, and smash it.

‘He told me, “We’re nearly there.” He’d nearly nailed you both. “She’s fucking him again. She’s just like all the rest.”’
Rob’s voice was choked with something, rage or misery. ‘Nick Jason. Your drug-dealer boyfriend.’ But when he spoke again it was flat. ‘You were so kind. You were so gentle. I saw the way you looked at Nathan, more and more, trying to understand why he’d married you. I could have told you why.’

‘He married me to get to Nick,’ she said dully. ‘Five years, on the offchance.’

‘You were part of it,’ said Rob. ‘You were a gamble, a side-bet. They were conducting a big undercover operation to get to – to him, that had nothing to do with you. You were Nathan’s little private game.’ His voice was thin, reedy with misery. He couldn’t even bring himself to say Nick’s name.

‘It’s not true,’ she said. ‘What he said about me and Nick Jason. It’s not true,’ but Rob didn’t seem to hear. ‘What was he going to do next,’ she said, insistent, ‘if I had been sleeping with Nick?’

‘He was going to have his fun,’ said Rob, turning his head slightly, not to look into her face. ‘He said, she’ll feel so guilty, I know her inside out, she’ll torture herself. I’ll wait till she’s ready to top herself then I’ll show her how she can make it better. She can get information on Nick Jason for me.’ Then Rob turned back and his face was so close to hers again she could feel the brush of stubble. ‘He owned us. If he wanted to nail us to the floor there would be nothing we could do about it, we could twist and turn but we’d only hurt ourselves. Me and you. I couldn’t let him.’ In the dark she put her hands on his shoulders. ‘He called you a stupid cow,’ he said, his voice wondering, rising to anger again.

‘I met him at his office, on the Sandpiper. I took his hard drive. I said goodbye. Then I drove back here, to wait.’ He turned his head to the line of poplars. ‘I didn’t know what for, not then. He didn’t come back and didn’t come back and then I couldn’t stop myself. I went to your kitchen door and it was open, I came inside, in your house.’ A long ragged breath escaped him. ‘I had to be so quiet. I just wanted to be in there, in the house with you. I wouldn’t have come up, I wouldn’t have touched you. And then I saw the knife.’ She thought of it, in her jar among the spatulas and wooden spoons, innocent things. ‘And I took it. I didn’t even know what…’ he sobbed. ‘Then I heard the car and I ran out, I hid here in the barn.’ His breath came in gulps. ‘I didn’t know if I’d do it. I didn’t know if I’d have the guts.’

‘It wasn’t the first time you’d waited out there,’ she said, quiet, and he nodded.

‘Every time I came to watch, he’d do it. I sometimes wondered if he knew I was there, if he was pissing on his land just to show me. One day, I would say to myself. One day.’ And his voice wandered, frightened.

She thought of him standing there, a terrified kid with a condom in his pocket and Nathan, bold as brass, invincible. And then the kid had a knife in his hand. Now Rob was talking, his voice going lower and lower. ‘And then after. After. After. I just wanted to be … I needed to be close to you. I thought that would make it all right. I wanted to know, what it was like. To be in your bed. With you. To be touching you.’

The words broke from her, desperate. ‘It’s all right, Rob.’ Hopeless. ‘It’s all right.’

‘No,’ he said and his voice was raw, dangerous. ‘It isn’t.’ And he pulled away from her and ran, deeper into the barn, to where the rope hung. He was too quick for her: the darkness drew him in and raised him up over her head but she lunged, she caught him. The box overturned, she felt a jerk and thought, no, but then something slithered, came undone and he went slack in her arms, they lay entwined on the filthy floor with the stink of the chicken barn on them.

When they came she was still holding him. He lay in her arms like something dead, something run over and left by the side of the road, but he was alive, and she held on. Ali Compton held her from behind and she said it too, ‘It’s all right, Fran.’

All she could do was shake her head.

The big kitchen was full of light. It had a wide bay window where Ali was standing, looking at the grey-green sea, wave-tops whipped up in the wind. A row of mugs hung along the dresser and Fran was at the table behind a computer: the back of the screen facing Ali was plastered with smiley stickers.

Somewhere down there Karen and Miranda were sitting on the beach with three children, throwing chips into the air for the seagulls. You couldn’t just see the sea, you could smell it, salty and clean. Ali wondered what it would be like to live here. If Mum would like it. She turned back into the room. ‘Nice place,’ she said.

There’d been another kitchen, a room full of crap and chaos when Ali had burst in out of the darkness, bringing mud and snow with her and had seen Karen and Miranda on either side of the table. They’d both looked at her, and all three of them had known, in that instant, that Fran was in trouble.

It had been from the window of her bedroom that they’d seen it, though they didn’t know at that stage what it was. Movement in the blackness, the plane of a face catching the light.

And without waiting to be sure Ali had been so fast on the steep stairwell and out of there it was like being back on the track, hundred-metre sprint.

Gerard and Carswell had turned up an hour later, with Nick Jason shivering in the back seat of the vehicle. Gerard’s face telling her everything she needed to know: blank, shit-scared and knackered. She might have felt sorry for him if he’d been a whole entire human being, instead of just the arsehole.

Now Fran looked up at Ali from what she was writing, thoughtful. ‘Yeah,’ she said, absently, ‘it’s another world, isn’t it?’ She still had nightmares, Ali knew that. But when she looked like this, she wondered if she’d even have recognised Fran Hall as the same woman.

‘So what’s she say?’ Ali asked, coming back to the table. The email Fran had just opened was from the woman who’d been sitting in the front row of the press conference, glaring at Gerard. An ambitious local journalist who had nonetheless left it a respectful three days after the trial – at which Rob had pleaded guilty to Nathan’s murder – before asking Fran for her story.

‘She says,’ and Fran leaned back in the chair, pushing the computer away, ‘she says, she’ll take it on, even if the police refuse to release the hard drive of Nathan’s computer. Rob’s said he’ll talk to her.’ Her face pale. ‘Karen’s going to talk to her too.’

Karen Humphries, Johns as was. She’d admitted she’d called Nathan Hall the night he died. Tough as old boots, Karen Johns. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she’d said, more than once since. ‘Once I was sure it was him, once I got his number off your kitchen wall. He told me to fuck off. He was so sure he could keep me quiet. If he hadn’t died I’d have had him.’

Now Fran wasn’t crowing, not even smiling, she was too focused, thought Ali, she was going to make it work. ‘Miranda’s not going anywhere either, so Emme and Ben know they’ve got a family, even if they never really had a dad.’

And then there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and a key in the lock and before Ali could even turn her head Fran was out of her seat, she was running, she was flying across the big bright room. They came through the door all talking at once and bringing fresh air with them, but Fran was meeting them low down, she was kneeling to her daughter and Ali saw the girl’s arms, little Emme’s arms, snaking around her mother’s back to hold her, tight.