China Roses

by Jo Bannister

  Hazel was almost angry enough to let him think so. ‘Bloody Cathy! You’ve always thought everything revolved around Cathy, even after what she did to you. You’re still letting her jerk your strings. No wonder you kept putting off the divorce – you’re still secretly hoping that sometime you’ll get together again!’

  Ash was appalled that she might think so. ‘Hazel – the only reason I allowed her in the house was to get her consent to the divorce. You were right, until I had that formalised I couldn’t guarantee the boys’ safety. Now I can. I told you that.’

  ‘You didn’t! You made some gnomic remark that seemed like an explanation but was actually designed to shut me up and shut me out. I accepted it because I trusted you. It never occurred to me that Cathy of all people had got you dancing to her tune again!’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he muttered. But perhaps it was. Cathy had never told him why she’d risked returning to Norbold. He’d guessed – it had taken no great leap of imagination – that she was involved in something illegal, and he’d known he should have alerted the police. If he’d done that right away, she’d have been in custody before David Sperrin went to Coventry to confront his ghosts. It might have made a difference. He said quietly, ‘Have you arrested her?’

  ‘Of course we haven’t arrested her,’ snapped Hazel, ‘we didn’t know she was here until she was gone, and we don’t know where she is now.’

  ‘But you said …’ But had she? Or had he invested her words with meanings they had never been meant to convey? They’d been at cross-purposes so often, making assumptions instead of opening their minds and sharing their thoughts. He supposed that was his fault too, although perhaps not wholly. ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed …?’

  ‘That wasn’t Cathy,’ exploded Hazel. ‘That was Mrs Kiang the florist. It was her van David saw. She and her husband were both involved. That was what David scratched on his knee – a bunch of flowers.’

  ‘Not Cathy?’ Ash swayed again, relief sapping his strength almost as much as fear had done. ‘Thank God. I’ve been so worried. I know she’s done some dreadful things before, but this …’

  ‘So that’s all right, is it? My friend is still dead, and Rose Doe is still dead, and there are Chinese and Korean and Vietnamese kids working in slave conditions all over the Midlands, and Dave Gorman’s out looking for them now but Lord knows how many we’ll be able to find and rescue. But we can all breathe a sigh of relief because Cathy Ash is in the clear this time!’

  ‘That isn’t what I meant …’

  ‘Gabriel, that’s exactly what you meant! When it comes right down to it, your first priority is the boys, which is fine, and after that – and not far after that – it’s Cathy. You have no business filing for a divorce. You don’t want a divorce. No matter what she did, no matter what’s happened since, you want her back. If you don’t know that, you’re not being honest with yourself.’

  ‘I never wanted to hurt you …’ he whispered.

  ‘Well, thank Christ for that,’ she snarled. ‘I hate to think what you’d have done if you’d been trying!

  ‘Do you know what really hurts? You had a straight choice. That morning when David was missing – when I knew he was in danger and I thought there might still be time to find him – you had a straight choice between helping me and helping her. And there was never a moment, was there, that Cathy wasn’t going to win.’

  Her stare was a direct challenge. He had no answer for her. With all the misunderstandings there had been, all the confusion, he knew exactly what they’d both said that morning. It would be engraved on his conscience for ever.

  It did nothing to assuage Hazel’s anger, or salve her pain, that he didn’t even try to deny it. She wouldn’t have believed his denials, but she was obscurely certain that he owed her the attempt. For old times’ sake. For what they’d meant to one another. Unless that too had been a conceit: a fantasy she’d conjured to please herself, and he’d been either too polite to disabuse her or too wrapped up in his own concerns to notice.

  His eyes dropped. His voice was low. ‘Hazel – please …’

  She stepped back abruptly, as if he’d reached for her. ‘Please? You really think you have the right to ask me for something? Anything? Then let me say this clearly, for the avoidance of all doubt. It’s over. Whatever there was between us, it’s history. I’ve wasted two years on something that I thought was real, and important, and it turns out I was wrong. Well, it’s not the first mistake I’ve made and it won’t be the last. But I’m damned if I’m playing second fiddle to a murderess! I’ve always thought that a dead wife was the only rival you couldn’t compete with. It turns out I was wrong about that, too.

  ‘I don’t want to see you again, Gabriel. I don’t want to hear from you again. If you phone me, I shan’t answer. If you come to the door, I won’t open it. Run back to Cathy or don’t, whatever takes your fancy. It’s no concern of mine any more.’

  Tears were running down the seams of Ash’s face, dripping off his chin onto his shoes. He made no attempt to stem them, or hide them. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Please, Hazel, can’t we talk? In a day or two, when this isn’t so … raw? I’ll call you.’

  ‘Don’t waste your time.’

  ‘Then will you call me?’ he begged.

  The look she gave him killed every last hope in his breast. It was cold, and aloof, and final. ‘Not for help if I was dying.’ She turned and left the shop, and didn’t even slam the door behind her.

  A dot appeared in the white northern sky. It grew quickly to an insect, then to a bird, finally to a light aircraft, a high-wing monoplane that circled the airstrip once before coming in to land.

  The man was waiting, leaning against his car as the aircraft taxied to a halt. He shrugged up the collar of his coat against the icy slipstream. Normandy has a certain robust charm for much of the year; not so much in December.

  The woman unfolded herself from the passenger seat and hurried across the tarmac, the chill breeze tugging at her hair. ‘Have you been waiting long? I had to come the scenic route.’

  ‘I heard. Things became … difficult. Did you achieve what you went there for?’ They were speaking French, the woman with an English accent.

  ‘Not really,’ she said, rolling her eyes in weary exasperation. ‘It wasn’t a total waste of time – I saw my sons, which was important to me.’

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘He broke my phone.’ She laughed. ‘I had the devil’s job whistling up my ride. Even then I had to come a roundabout way, via Ireland. I went to earth in Cork for a few days, in case the police were watching the Channel coast.’

  ‘He could have done a lot worse than break your phone,’ said the man severely. ‘It was a foolish, unnecessary risk. Foolish and unnecessary.’

  ‘It was my risk to take,’ she pointed out sharply; and then, smiling, ‘And look, here I am, safe and sound. I know him, you see. He was never going to betray me. He doesn’t have it in him.’

  ‘A weak man, yes?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she conceded. ‘In some ways.’

  The man made a gesture, half disparaging, half dismissive, wholly French. ‘But the main reason for your trip was less successful.’

  A look of annoyance crossed the woman’s face. ‘I was too late. A week earlier I might have been able to salvage something. I’m afraid we’ll have to start again. Fortunately, neither the supply nor the demand is likely to run out any time soon. All we need are some rather more reliable partners.’

  ‘Partners!’ The man snorted derisively.

  ‘What word would you prefer? Representatives – agents? It doesn’t matter what we call them. We need someone to do the bits we’d rather not do ourselves, the bits that can get you locked up. Do you want to drive a lorry through Customs twice a month? Then we need someone who will. Preferably, someone a bit smarter than the Kings.’

  ‘They were unlucky.’

  ‘Incompetent
people always think they’ve been unlucky. She was smart enough, and careful enough. Bill’s just a thug. He always thought with his muscles; when he started thinking with his gun, we were on a countdown to disaster. Maybe I’ll make our associates pass an intelligence test in future!’ From her expression, the man wasn’t sure she was joking.

  He watched her curiously. ‘You’re not concerned they could betray us?’

  ‘The Kings?’ The woman shook her head negligently. ‘They don’t know enough to. They couldn’t pick either of us out at an ID parade. I could wear my second-best pearls and pretend to be a prison visitor, and neither of them would be any the wiser.’

  They were in the car by now. The man turned up the heating.

  ‘No,’ the woman said then, slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Weak isn’t the right word.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You asked if my husband is a weak man. I think mostly he’s … unrealistic. He expects too much, especially of himself. So he’s always being disappointed.’

  ‘More fool him.’

  ‘No, he was never a fool. He’s a highly intelligent man: what he lacks is a bit of low cunning. I wonder now what I saw in him.’ She laughed again. ‘Good earning potential, I think. I was very young. The prospect of living well in London appealed to me.’ She cast the man a sidelong look. ‘Unrealistic he may be, but he had me sign the divorce papers before he’d drive me to the airstrip.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Now you’ve severed all legal ties to him, you’re a free agent.’ He gave a meaningful chuckle. ‘Not that you allowed him to cramp your style very much, even before.’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t think I was cut out to be anyone’s wife.’

  ‘And now you’re done with him, yes? Finally and for good. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cathy Ash. ‘Yes. Well, maybe …’