‘You’ve been impossible and bloody selfish all evening,’ she shouted. ‘Carrying on as though you’re the only one who’s miserable about what’s happening to you. Indulging yourself in the most abysmal miseries, paddling in self-pity, turning yourself into a snivelling heap of –’
‘Hey, hey!’ Mike cried, coming forward to stand on Gus’s other side. ‘Dr B., will you stop that! You’ve no right to speak to the Guv so!’
George was startled now, taken aback by this opposition from someone she had actually been trying to protect; but she was not startled for long. ‘I’ve got every right when he’s behaving like a spoiled child who’s lost his little kiddy-cart,’ she blazed. ‘I’m sick of walking on eggshells because the poor little darling can’t cope with a teensy-weensy bit of pain, sick of…’
Mike shouted back, but she didn’t give him a chance; she just roared above his attempts to make her listen, letting out all her frustration and disappointment and confusion in a great wave of noise, and Mike gave her as good as he got.
They clearly would have gone on and on, neither paying any attention at all to the other, if it hadn’t been for Gus. He sat and looked up at the two of them, one on each side, turning his head as they spoke – or rather shouted – at each other like a spectator at a tennis match, and suddenly he started to laugh. It was real laughter, not the forced sound of someone trying to put a good face on a bad scene, and the laughter grew loud enough almost to rival the roars that Mike and George were producing, and went on for some time. Then he leaned forwards, his head in his arms, his shoulders shaking as he rested on the table in front of him.
Mike stopped yelling first and leaned over to shake Gus’s shoulder, alarmed. Slowly Gus sat up, to face George, who was red in the face and had a trickle of sweat finding its way down one cheek, and began to start laughing again.
She couldn’t help it. She had never been violent, never had felt the need to hit anyone, but this was more than she could bear. Rage lifted in her, like the fury of a frustrated, bewildered child, and she had to give it expression. Almost before she realized it was happening she brought her right arm back and delivered a slap to his face so loud that all three of them were shocked into silence. Her hand tingled and she stared in horror at Gus as he stood with one hand across his cheek staring back at her in blank amazement.
‘Wow,’ he said after a long moment. ‘That was – wow!’
‘Oh, shit!’ George cried. She turned and, slamming the living-room door behind her, hurtled into her bedroom slamming the door there too before she leaned against it in a flood of tears that made her shake and feel sick.
Eventually the tears eased, slowed, and began to dry up. She crept across her room to lie on her bed, curled up and miserable. She could hear the soft buzz of voices from the living room and tried not to listen, but she couldn’t stop herself. She lay there with her head turned so that both her ears were free to pick up the sounds, and registered that they were talking, not shouting, and once even they laughed.
At that her rage was huge again; she actually sat up and stared at the door, almost ready to go rushing out to pummel them into silence. How dare they sit in her living room and laugh when she felt so godawful lousy? When she had actually hit out physically like some sort of half-witted, half-mad –
Even in her thoughts the words failed her. She lay down again on her damp pillow and snivelled a little to herself, enjoying the self-pity. Outside she heard footsteps as the pair of them walked along her minuscule hallway to the front door, heard it open, more speech and then a click as the door closed.
She knew only one of them had gone out: Mike. She buried her head in the pillow now, carefully covering both her ears this time. She wouldn’t listen, she wouldn’t, no matter what.
She felt him come in and sit down on the bed beside her and became rigid, her back tightening against his touch. He hadn’t tried to touch her yet, but heaven help him when he did.
‘I’m so sorry, George,’ he said. His voice came to her muffled because of the pillows and she moved a little, so slightly that he wouldn’t notice, in order to listen more easily.
There was a silence and then he said more loudly, ‘George, I’m truly so sorry. I behaved disgustingly and I do beg your pardon. I’ve apologised to Mike and he’s forgiven me. Please will you do the same?’
‘Oh, you bastard,’ she howled, banging her head under the pillow. ‘Not even giving me the chance to tell you what I –Oh, you’re a bastard’.
‘So you said.’ He spoke with an air of humility but she could hear the hint of laughter in him. ‘Honestly, I am sorry, George, and you can say anything you like and I’ll listen to every sodding word, I promise. Everything you say, for always. I won’t just listen, I’ll take it in and I’ll agree with you, and –’
She whirled on the bed and stared at him from hot red-rimmed eyes above damp flushed cheeks, her hair tumbled over the pillow. ‘What good is that, for God’s sake? I don’t want a man who sits there and just takes what I say, any more than I want one who expects me to do it! I just want someone who’ll – who’ll –’
‘Stop being so selfish and stupid and who’ll make an effort not to take out his miseries on other people. To be honest, George …’ He hesitated and peered down at her in the half-dark of the unlit room, illuminated only by the spill of light coming in from the hallway. ‘To be honest you’ve shown me what I thought I wanted. I thought I knew, but I didn’t. Please, George, isn’t it time we got married?’
‘Such a ridiculous way to plan your life,’ she said dreamily, and stirred against his shoulder. ‘Stupid, really stupid. Dumb. Crazy. Stupid.’
‘Who’s planning?’ he said drowsily. ‘I’m not.’
‘Hmm,’ she said and then took a deep breath. ‘It’s not even as though we – well, did we?’
‘Did we what?’
‘You know perfectly well.’
‘Made love?’ asked Gus.
‘Silly word. British word.’
‘Beats “fooling around”. Isn’t that what your lot say?’
George tried to sound dignified. ‘But it’s not as though we did. Did we?’
‘No,’ he said gravely. ‘We didn’t.’ His hand was warm on her shoulder and she fitted her head into the curve of his neck. ‘Does that matter?’
‘No,’ she said and yawned. ‘Not in the least. Who’s got the energy? Fighting takes it out of you. In fact it makes it –’
‘I know. Better. More, well, serious.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Anyway …’ He snickered softly in the darkness.
‘Mmm,’ she said again and thought for a while. ‘I always thought if and when I got the proposal I wanted to accept –well, I thought it’d be different’.
‘How different?’
‘Not after a fight,’ she said. ‘Never after a fight.’
‘It takes a fight to show you what you couldn’t see, sometimes.’
‘Mmm,’ she said.
There was a long silence. When she spoke again he moved beneath her head so she knew he’d been on the verge of falling asleep. ‘Gus, if you have to give up the job, will you be –’
‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘I’ll be impossible. For at least a week. Then we’ll be like we are tonight and there’ll be no nookie, but I’ll love you to bits, and feel better. Can’t be bad, hmm?’
‘Seriously for a moment, please. Will you be happy?’
He was silent for a long time and then said, ‘Honestly, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter as much as it did. There’s you now, and – well, it just doesn’t matter so much. But whether I can be properly happy all over, you know? I can’t say. I love you but –’
‘It’s all right, you fool,’ she said softly, ‘I’ll be going on with work, so why shouldn’t you? I love you too, but I do need other things as well.’
‘I’ve got the business,’ he said. ‘All that fish to fry. You won’t have to –’
‘If you say I don’t have to wor
k I’ll take my word back and you can go and marry a doormat somewhere else,’ she said.
‘Shut up. I was going to say you won’t have to worry about taking any job you don’t like. You can be choosier; leave Old East if you want to.’
She contemplated that. ‘But I like it there.’
‘Then stay there.’
There was another silence. ‘But the best bits are doing cases with you. Maybe I won’t like it if you’re not at Ratcliffe Street nick any more.’
‘Then go somewhere else.’
Again she was silent for a while and then said softly, ‘I’ve got a better idea. We’ll sort out this stupid business and get you back to work. At Ratcliffe Street. How does that sound?’
‘Almost as good as getting hitched to you. Shall we have a fancy job or a little send-off? Cockney do with jellied eels and “Knees Up Mother Brown”, or posh affair with champagne and crooked pinkie fingers?’
‘I’ll let you know.’ She sat up. ‘First we’ve got to get you back to work.’
‘I was just coming round to the idea that I don’t give a damn about work,’ he said and then wrinkled his face and threw up his hands as she reached across him and switched on the bedside light. ‘Ouch. Turn that off! It’s blinding me.’
‘You look a mess,’ she said dispassionately, looking down at his rumpled shirt and hair and general air of dishevelment.
‘Take a gander at yourself, lady. You’re like the Witch of Endor.’ He squinted up at her. ‘It’s a good thing I’m marrying you. No one else’d have you for fourpence in a jumble sale.’
‘Phooey.’ She got off the bed. ‘Come on. I’m hungry and so are you. I’ll make some coffee and we’ll see where we go from there. I’ve got some work I’ve done I want to show you and I want to hear what Mike had to say.’
He sat up and passed both hands over his untidy head before swinging his legs to the floor. ‘He told me who the copper was who framed me,’ he said after a moment. She sat down beside him, her knees giving way beneath her. He sounded suddenly grim again and she found herself thinking, to her own amazement, Roop. Don’t let it be Roop. That’d break his heart.
‘Salmon,’ he said. ‘Bob Salmon, it seems. Says he’s got a lead from someone else and watched me and saw the handover. He must have misunderstood. He can’t have been deliberately – I mean, can he? He might have thought – I should have explained to him, but I never thought – Well, it’s my own fault if he did. He must have, mustn’t he?’
She put her arms across his shoulders and hugged him gently. ‘Honey, I don’t know. We’ll have to find out.’
‘I suppose so. It’s not true, George, really it –’
‘Say that again and I’ll have to hit you again,’ she said softly. ‘Of course it isn’t true. I know that perfectly well. So where do we go from here?’
He lifted his head and looked at her. ‘Oh, George,’ he said. ‘You really –’
‘Shut up. Or rather, don’t. Tell me where we go from here.’
‘Mike’s gone to Brighton,’ he said and she lifted her chin in amazement at that.
‘What did you say? Brighton? But I thought you didn’t believe Monty when he –’
‘I didn’t want to believe it,’ he said, standing up. ‘I was just so – I’ve known Lenny all my life, nearly. It just didn’t seem –Well, anyway, Mike’s gone to look around. He knows him by sight as well as I do, so he’ll see what he can see. He’s a good fella, Mike. It’s his day off tomorrow and he’s doing this for me. A good fella.’
‘A lot of people are,’ she said. She put up her hands to hold his shoulders. ‘I’m a good fella too. Come on and see what I did this afternoon. I’ve been doing some thinking, and we can go through the evidence of it together. When we’ve had some supper.’ And she took him out to the kitchen.
29
It was as though they’d already been married for years. They woke when her alarm clock called them at eight and shared the bathroom, dodging each other carefully, communicating only in monosyllables as he shaved (using her silly little Ladyshave) and she scrubbed her teeth. It was the same when they had breakfast; she gave him cereal and coffee and he wolfed it in silence and then went and pulled on his jacket and made for the front door.
‘I’ll try and call you some time,’ he muttered and she nodded.
‘OK. I’ll leave the answerphone on. I might go out. I’ve a couple of ideas that could be worth looking into.’
‘Like what?’ He looked at her sharply and she shook her head at him.
‘I don’t know yet! I’ve got things to think about. I’ll look again at that chart I worked out. It might lead me somewhere. I’m certainly not going to sit here and just wait till –’
‘No,’ he said a little more peaceably. ‘Nor am I. I’ll see if I can find out when the hearing will be and then get some sort of defence notes written out.’ He stopped when he reached the door and came back. ‘I’m not being very – Well, I’m never at my best in the morning. Sorry.’
She managed a faint grin. ‘I’ve noticed. Not to worry. Me too. It takes time to get your head together.’
‘I’m not sorry, though.’
‘Sorry about what?’
‘That we’re getting married. In fact, I’m – I’m …’
The grin widened. ‘Yes?’
‘I don’t know!’ He shook his head. ‘I think I’m just trying to say I’m happy. It mightn’t look like it at the moment, but I’ve a lot to think about and I won’t be able to concentrate on anything else till all the mess is sorted out. Does that make sense?’
‘It makes total sense,’ she said. She went over, kissed him and smoothed her hand over his hair to tidy it, because he’d rubbed it into peaks as he tried to explain. ‘All the sense I need, anyway. Go on, be about your business. I’ll see you when I see you.’
‘Yes,’ he said gratefully and went.
She finished her own breakfast then, sitting and staring out of the kitchen window at what was clearly going to be another scorching day. Shouldn’t she feel different? Excited, pleased, different? The last time she’d accepted an offer of marriage –Ian, she thought, Ian in Scotland, and couldn’t even remember his face – the last time she’d been full of tearing excitement, cock-a-hoop, really. She’d bounced around the day after he’d proposed – all proper and pretty over dinner, an actual candlelit dinner in the most expensive hotel in Inverness – as though she’d had rubber feet. Now, there was no bounce, no sense of achievement, just a comfortable certainty that this was as right as it could possibly be and what was there to be excited about? It was almost as though any actual wedding would be an irrelevance. They were as much a pair as they could be, she and Gus. Certainly more than she had ever been with Ian; and again she tried to remember his face and failed. Interesting, that, considering the sort of memory she had that rarely let her down.
She shook herself back into action as she caught sight of her wrist-watch and got purposefully to her feet. Nine o’clock. Quite what she was to do today she hadn’t in fact decided, but she certainly wasn’t going to spend it slopping about like this, and she went to work purposefully, cleaning her little kitchen and then making the bed, tidying the bathroom, making space in the bathroom cupboard for his gear, as well as in her wardrobe, for surely he’d be bringing some of his stuff over here now, and then setting to work on the living room. There were a few dead flowers to dispose of and last night’s detritus to clear up.
She picked up the plastic folder Gus had dropped on the sofa and which had migrated behind a cushion and frowned. Would he want it this morning? He’d said he was going to organize his defence for the hearing; maybe there were things in here he’d need? He’d been very dispirited about his attempts to track down the people who had taken over Lenny’s shop. Maybe there was in fact nothing here that mattered. But before she got worried about his forgetting it, it would make sense to look at it. And, anyway, it might add something to her own information bank. There was always a chance.
The folder contained several sheets of paper on which he had scribbled in his familiar spiky handwriting, using his own special shorthand. As long as she’d known him she’d failed to follow the thought processes that led him to make the notes he did. She’d often looked at pages like these, covered with cryptic comments, question marks set against names and dates, and been lost within moments. Even where she could read the words he’d written they made little sense.
These pages were the same; there were amongst them, however, photocopied pages from some sort of register, and she looked at them first. They might give her some sense of what was on the handwritten sheets.
They were lists, no more. Names of companies and the directors of the Boards which ran them, together with columns of figures which made no sense to her at all. She ran her eye down them, one after the other – there were about twelve of the pages in the folder – and shook her head. Incomprehensible. What did Franklin Holdings plc and Jennings P. J. Ltd Iron Factors and Ludlow and Sons Ltd Import/Export mean to her or to their investigation? Nothing at all. She flipped over to another page and then another. They all looked the same and she sighed as she let the names slide past her eyes. Olaf Jensen Timber Importers; N. H. Blasi Spice Dealers Ltd, L. E. T. Hakim and Sons (Metals) plc; M. R. H. Market Traders Ltd, Ashgar and Mamouli Fabrics Ltd, David Gellings plc.
She stopped and looked back, aware that her attention had been caught by something and not sure what it was. There had been something in that list, surely, that meant something to her? And she looked down more carefully, observing addresses as well this time.
Olaf Jensen Timber Importers, in Ipswich. N. H. Blasi, the spice firm, in Shadwell. Not far away at all, she thought. Was that what I noticed? Their address? It seemed a bit tenuous, so she looked on. L. E. T. Hakim and Sons (Metals) Ltd were at Tilbury, well down the river. M. R. H. Market Traders had an address in Bond Street. A bit fashionable for a market trader, she thought, and went on. Ashgar and Mamouli… And realized all at once what it was she had noticed and went back to stare at it.
Third Degree Page 29