Crossing the Lines

by Sulari Gentill

  Edward did not defend or excuse himself. After all, he couldn’t very well tell his lawyer that his actions had been at the urging of an imaginary crime-writer.

  Even so, he called Peter Blake the moment he’d finished with Denholm. He told him what he had seen.

  “So what are you saying, McGinnity? Kaufman uses steroids…so what?”

  “Don’t anabolic steroids make you more volatile? More likely to throw someone down a flight of stairs in a fit of pique?”

  “Perhaps…but it’s hardly a causal link. He’s still got to have reason to enter the stairwell with Vogel and to fall out with him. Kaufman, by virtue of the steroids, may be more likely to lose it than you, but that’s not to say you’re not capable of losing it. Do you get me?”

  “Yes…but I didn’t—”

  “And he says he didn’t. Look, McGinnity, it was a good try, but steroids don’t connect Kaufman to Vogel.”

  “Blast!” Edward murmured.

  Blake’s voice was amused. “Before this is all over, I’ll teach you to swear properly.”

  Madeleine’s head tilted as she pondered this last small exchange. Why didn’t Edward McGinnity swear? For a man his age it was odd.

  Edward seemed stricken when she asked. For a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer. And then.

  “I swore at my mother in the car,” he said quietly. “I can’t remember why…but I remember telling her to fuck off. I remember the look on her face in the rearview mirror, my father turning and then the bridge gave way. It turned out to be the last thing I said to her…to them. I can’t swear without thinking about that, so I don’t.”

  Madeleine put aside her laptop and reached out for him. “Oh, Ned, you were a child.”

  He flinched. Madeleine could see his memories now and she too blanched at the horror and confusion, the sudden onset of apocalypse, which seemed to have been ignited by a flash of teenage rebellion. And, as much as they both knew, there was no connection between the swearing and what followed, the incidents were there, forever seared together. There was nothing Madeleine could do and so she offered him her arms instead and when he fell into her embrace she rocked him like a child.

  ***

  “I’m a psychologist,” Leith said shaking her head. “Couldn’t you just tell Hugh you’re seeing me?”

  “I tried that. He said it would be unethical for you to treat me. I don’t know, Leith. It’s probably my fault.” Madeleine shrugged. “I have been more involved in my work than usual. Sometimes I wonder if making me see someone is Hugh’s way of dealing with his own feelings.”

  “He thinks he can be counselled vicariously?”

  Madeleine laughed. “It sounds silly when you say it like that.”

  “That’s because it is silly. Tell him to man-up and get his own therapist!”

  “It does seem to make him feel better,” Madeleine said still smiling. “We haven’t been fighting as much. It’s not such a big deal. If my talking to Dr. McCauley makes him happy…”

  Leith peered at her.

  “Forget Hugh. Are you happy, Maddie?”

  Madeleine had told McCauley that she was the happiest she’d ever been. At the time she’d said it defensively, but, on some level, it was true. Writing Edward McGinnity, spending her thoughts and her time with Edward McGinnity, was exhilarating. She had but to think of his touch and…Leith noted the blush, the distant brightness in her client’s eyes. “Oh, I see. The fox wear worked then.”

  “No! It wasn’t that!”

  Leith stirred her half-strength, soy milk decaf with her brow arched and her lips pursed. It was her triumphantly sceptical face. “Of course, it wasn’t. There was nothing foxy about that nightshirt thing. But clearly you succeeded, despite it.”

  Madeleine rolled her eyes. There didn’t seem any point in explaining, nor any way she could, really. How could she tell Leith about making love to Edward…about fantasies that made sex with her husband seem about as intimate and rudimentary as washing dishes?

  The agent laughed. “You’re being very coy! Still, I’m glad things are getting better for you and Hugh.” She dug into her briefcase. “I have some good news for you. I pitched your new novel to Mereton Harcourt Publishing. They loved the first chapters and are anxious to see the full manuscript.”

  “Mereton Harcourt…” Madeleine was startled. The publishing house was large, one of the few remaining multinational operations. The news should have elated her. “I’m nowhere near finished, Leith…and then I’ll have to redraft—”

  “Rubbish—you never rewrite. Anyway, they’ll understand it’s a first draft.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “This is not the time for a crisis of confidence. Just put your head down and write. I told them we’d have a working draft to them in a month.”

  “A month? Are you out of your—?”

  “You’ll be fine, Maddie. Mereton Harcourt would be a great move. They’re already talking about releasing simultaneously in the UK and U.S. This may just be your chance at the big-time.”

  “But I haven’t finished the manuscript.”

  “Just try. If it doesn’t work, I’ll think of something. But promise me you’ll try.”

  Madeleine sighed. How could she explain that she didn’t want to finish this manuscript, that she wasn’t ready to finish with Edward McGinnity? “Okay, I’ll try…but I can’t promise.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Leith said, relieved. “Hugh will just have to share you with young Edward for a while.”

  ***

  Madeleine climbed into the freshly made bed, enjoying the feeling of cool clean sheets against her bare legs. She made a note to praise Hugh for this small act of domestic kindness. As much as he did do an equitable share of the housework, Hugh seemed to need his efforts acknowledged, applauded. He’d announce that he’d done the dishes, or mopped the floor or vacuumed, and wait expectantly for commendation. In the beginning it had irritated Madeleine, but now she found it amusing…teased him for it. Even so, she had never known Hugh to attend to the bed. He appeared to believe the linen fairy visited once a week to change the sheets. Madeleine had only remade the bed herself with clean linen two days before. Perhaps Hugh, too, was making an effort.

  She gathered the pillows behind her and booted the laptop, smiling as the manuscript came up on the screen, enjoying the fluttering in her breast as she read his name. Just his name seemed to call out a secret intimacy from the page. Someday people would read what she’d written, but they would never know about her and Edward—never know him as she did, never feel him as she did. That belonged to her.

  Edward was prepared for Willow’s fury. What he was not ready for was her refusal to believe him. He had wrestled with whether to tell Willow about what he had seen. He had decided that she needed to know, needed to be warned, and some part of him suspected that Elliot Kaufman was more involved in events than they knew.

  “How dare you!” she shouted. “How dare you try to excuse your behaviour by making up something so stupid!”

  “Why is it stupid, Will? You say yourself that Elliot spends ridiculous amounts of time at the gym, he’s built like a Besser brick, he’s got a one-inch fuse and I saw him injecting.” He took her by the shoulders and looked into her face. “I just want you to be careful…I don’t think he’s safe…”

  She shook off his hands. “You’re a liar, Ned! You’re trying to turn me against my husband!”

  “Yes, I am. I’m trying to make you see sense.”

  “In your own interests, not mine! I thought we could be friends, Ned, but clearly you’re too immature, too selfish for that!” Willow’s eyes were bright and livid. “You may consider that Elliot’s AVO applies equally to me. Don’t come near me, Ned. We’re not friends anymore. I don’t trust you anymore!”

  He grabbed her arm as she turned to leave. �
�Will, please.”

  “Let go of me!” she shouted.

  “Not until you listen.”

  She struggled. The security alarm went off. Willow screamed. The door, which Edward had failed to lock after he’d admitted the artist, flew open and Elliot Kaufman charged in, swinging. Edward let go of Willow to defend himself. Somehow the kilned bowl was knocked off the coffee table and Matchbox cars flew in every direction. Elliot threw himself on Edward, yelling, “Let her go, you murdering bastard!”

  Kaufman’s fist caught Edward’s jaw almost accidentally, for the punch was thrown wildly. Edward fought back and Kaufman reacted like an enraged bull, charging unthinkingly with his head down. Both men ended up on the floor. With the alarm and Willow’s screams, it took Edward several moments to register that Kaufman too was screaming. Then he saw the blood.

  Edward rose to his knees trying to make sense of what was happening. The kilned bowl had broken, his notebooks and pens lay amongst the fragments of glass. Kaufman rolled onto his side, choking and gurgling. A fountain pen was embedded in his throat.

  “No!” Edward shouted as Kaufman grabbed the pen. Too late. Kaufman pulled the pen from his neck and with it came blood, spurting from his carotid with the pump of his heart. Moving quickly, Edward slammed his hand on the wound and pressed. Kaufman wheezed, flailing weakly.

  “Get away from him!” Willow screamed, striking out at Edward. He fended her off without taking his hand from Kaufman’s neck.

  She clawed at him, screaming, crying, desperate to protect her husband. If the police hadn’t arrived, she might have prevailed. As it was, the police pulled Edward McGinnity off anyway, but then there were at least paramedics on hand to take his place as a stauncher of blood. Willow was hysterical and Edward was dripping with Kaufman’s blood when they arrested him.

  Even as they took him away, he tried to reason with Willow. To explain. She would not hear him, clinging to the side of the gurney that bore Elliot Kaufman into the ambulance.

  Madeleine paused, unsure. The scene had taken a turn she had not expected. Some part of her wanted to help Edward, to rescue him. The other part was a writer. She pondered whether Elliot Kaufman would die. There had been so much blood.

  She decided to stop writing for a while so that the story had time to work itself out. Climbing out of bed, Madeleine smoothed the covers tautly back into place. The made bed gave her a ridiculous feeling of satisfaction. That Hugh had made it for her seemed such an intimate gesture. It made her feel warm, excited that perhaps everything was returning to normal.

  She wondered what her newly domestic husband had done with the sheets. They were not in the hamper. Perhaps he’d already put them in the washing machine. In a sudden need to reciprocate, Madeleine decided she should hang them out. There was something wonderfully normal about hanging washing on the line. And then she’d bake.

  “You’ll just have to wait, Ned,” she said, plugging the laptop in to recharge. “Until I figure things out a little.”

  Edward watched her thoughtfully. He was strangely touched by how small a thing it took for Hugh Lamond to call her back to him. How easy it was for her to believe in him.

  Madeleine found the old sheets in the washing machine, but sadly, the cycle had stalled. The appliance automatically shut off when the load was too large. Madeleine opened the machine’s door to remove some of the contents, wondering what the good citizens of Ashwood would think if they knew that the successful operation of a washing machine was beyond their revered doctor. She pulled out the sheets which had been bundled in without emptying the previous load. The stain was impossible not to notice. Large, still bright red, though it had started to brown a little at the edges. Blood. Madeleine gasped, dropping the sheet in horror.

  For several minutes she could not touch it, and then, steeling herself she checked it again. Surely it was blood. Partially dried now but thick. The top sheet and pillow cases were also smeared with the dark red stain. What had happened? Hugh must have cut himself somehow-rather badly. This was more than a shaving nick. But he couldn’t be too badly injured. He had stopped to strip and make the bed. She was confused…worried, bewildered, and in the pit of her stomach a cold knot of suspicion. About what, she wasn’t sure.

  It occurred to her that the blood might not be Hugh’s. No! That was absurd. This was not a story. There would be some mundane explanation. Still, Madeleine baulked at washing the sheets.

  She gathered the soiled linen and sealed it in a garbage bag. For a while she paced, and then she went out to her car and shoved the bag into the spare tyre cavity of the boot.

  Edward handed over his bloody clothes. They gave him a set of overalls to wear instead. Prison-issue, possibly. And they took photographs of the blood on his hands, his chest, his face, dozens of photographs. Edward wondered if Elliot Kaufman had died. He was having trouble concentrating on what was happening. Jumbled flashes of blood and screaming…the accident. He retreated to Madeleine’s story only to come back to blood. And he felt sick.

  Ian Denholm arrived. He shouted at Bourke about shock and appropriate medical care and then there were doctors. “I’m not hurt,” Edward said vaguely, as they examined him. He told himself that the pain was a memory. Ian Denholm sat beside him in the interrogation room. Edward asked about Elliot Kaufman. Was he dead? Bourke would tell him nothing at first, and then O’Neil came in and took his partner aside.

  “Mr. Kaufman is in surgery,” he said. He spoke to Denholm. “We’re going to hold your client until we’ve spoken to the victim and Ms. Meriwether.”

  “Why?” Denholm asked.

  “Your client was involved in an altercation in which Mr. Kaufman was critically injured, Mr. Denholm,” Bourke replied. “Surely why is self-evident.”

  “I’d like to talk to my client, Detectives,” Denholm said brusquely. “And then we will discuss how long you may detain him.”

  Bourke shook his head but he got up to leave. O’Neil followed suit.

  “Okay, what happened?” Denholm asked when they were alone.

  Edward told him as best he could. “Will and I were arguing, Kaufman came charging in throwing punches, the alarm went off…”

  “So Kaufman attacked you?”

  “Not very competently, but yes.”

  “And you stabbed him in self-defence.”

  “I didn’t stab him at all—he fell on the coffee table…my fountain pen was on it. It must have embedded in his neck. The fool pulled it out. I was trying to stop him from bleeding to death when the police arrived.”

  “Well, what the hell are they holding you for then?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Denholm paced about the room for a while. Finally he stopped and sat down.

  “Edward, I’m going to see what I can find out. Will you be all right for a few minutes?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Don’t speak to anyone until I return. If anyone tries to question you while I’m gone, demand your lawyer and say nothing else.”

  Edward nodded slowly. “I need to speak to Willow.”

  “Even if that were possible, I don’t want you to speak to anyone until I return. Is that understood?”

  “Yes. Fine. I’ll just sit here.”

  “Good man, I won’t be too long.”

  Madeleine sat on the table as Ian Denholm left the interview room. She rested her feet on a chair, her elbows on her knees and gazed at Edward with that mixture of curiosity and compassion.

  He smiled faintly. “I’m not supposed to speak to anyone.”

  “I don’t count.” She offered him her hand almost shyly. “Are you okay, Ned?”

  “I wasn’t hurt.” He pressed her hand to his cheek.

  “You saved his life.”

  “So he’ll live?”

  Madeleine stopped. “I don’t know.”

  “Wh
at are you doing, Maddie?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “The blood…”

  “You did what you could, Ned.”

  “You’re a crime-writer, Maddie. You can’t ignore the blood.”

  She swallowed. “You’re not a crime-writer.”

  He closed his eyes but the blood was still there, and the screaming he remembered wasn’t Kaufman’s. “I wish I could ignore it. I wish I could forget it.”

  “I’m so sorry, Ned.” Madeleine’s throat was tight. Her art was to torture this man, her instinct to protect him.

  He tried to reach her, to give her the courage to see what she’d hidden in the boot of her car. “It’s not the worst thing, Maddie—to be alone.”

  “You’re not alone, Ned. Not now. I’m here. I won’t leave.”

  Edward kissed the palm of her hand. He was strangely elated, comforted, by the idea. Madeleine d’Leon couldn’t be taken away.

  ***

  Madeleine got dressed before Hugh returned home. She wasn’t entirely sure why she did, nor why she remade the bed, removing any sign that she’d spent the afternoon in it with Edward McGinnity. And she made shortbread because Hugh loved shortbread and it was one of the few things she could make well.

  “Something smells nice,” he said, dropping his jacket over a chair. He looked at the tray of freshly baked biscuits. “Can I have one?”

  “Of course. I made them for you.”

  He smiled. His old smile. The one she knew. “What’s the occasion? I didn’t forget an anniversary, did I?”

  “The fact that you were brave enough to ask means you know you didn’t,” Madeleine replied. “No, I thought that since you were going all domestic god on me, I should try to do the homemaker bit too.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You made the bed.”

  “Oh, that. Jeeves isn’t doing beds anymore. Something about the butler’s award. Bloody unionised servants.” He grabbed two shortbread biscuits and headed out to the laundry.