Deception and Desire

by Janet Tanner

  Brendan considered. ‘I suppose I say what I think. Even if it is a bit outrageous. I like to tear down a few icons. People enjoy being shocked, don’t they? They say: ‘‘I like listening to Brendan Newman – you never know what the hell he’s going to come out with next.’’ ’

  She laughed, her pencil flicking busily.

  ‘Do you see yourself as sexually attractive – a sex symbol?’

  ‘Me?’ Brendan sat back, assuming an expression of false modesty. ‘Sure, what is there about me that’s attractive?’

  ‘A great deal, I’d say – and obviously I’m not the only one who thinks so. Don’t you consider yourself even a little bit good-looking?’

  ‘I never think about looks. Beauty is only skin-deep, my old mother used to say.’

  ‘Not everyone is as introspective. You must have had women telling you they found you attractive.’

  ‘Well, I suppose so. I could tell you a story or two …’ Brendan branched easily into some of his well-worn anecdotes. He was enjoying himself, his former ill humour forgotten as he relived the better moments of his glory days. So relaxed was he, he scarcely noticed when Sheena began to steer the conversation towards the real purpose of her visit.

  ‘It must have been difficult for your wife, having all these other women chasing after you.’

  ‘Ros, you mean? Sure, she took it in her stride.’

  ‘She didn’t mind, then?’

  ‘She reckoned it was confirmation of her own good taste. Which of course it was.’ He caught her eye and winked.

  ‘It wasn’t the reason, then, why your marriage broke up?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’ Momentarily the pain was back, encroaching on his feeling of well-being. ‘ We don’t have to talk about Ros, do we?’

  ‘I think our readers might be interested. After all, she was lucky enough to be your wife. An enviable position, many of them would think.’

  ‘Unfortunately she didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘Appreciate me,’ he said with what he hoped was endearing honesty. ‘That is why I’d rather not talk about her.’

  ‘But surely it shows a whole different side of your personality. And besides … I believe she is missing. How do you feel about that?’

  The warning bells began to ring in Brendan’s head.

  ‘I’ve told you – I don’t want to talk about Ros.’

  ‘You obviously care for her. Aren’t you concerned about what might have happened to her?’

  ‘Who says I care for her?’

  ‘Oh come on, Mr Newman. You were married to her. You can’t shut someone out of your life so easily. Especially if something terrible has happened to her.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Supposing,’ Sheena said evenly, ‘she has been murdered?’

  She was watching him closely; she saw his expression change, saw the panic come into his eyes, saw those first beads of sweat that seemed to form whenever Ros’s disappearance was mentioned break out on his forehead. For an instant it was all there in his face, then he turned away, reaching for a cigarette.

  ‘Who says she’s been murdered?’

  ‘Her sister seems to think so. And so does her boyfriend.’

  ‘Mike Bloody Thompson! Have you been talking to him?’

  ‘Well, yes, to be honest …’

  ‘Honest! You must be joking! That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not entirely. I …’

  ‘Oh yes it bloody is! You don’t want to do a feature on me at all, do you? Who the hell would? You wanted to talk about Ros – bloody Ros! I suppose you think I killed her, do you?’

  ‘Mr Newman … Brendan …’

  ‘She was a whore, a bloody whore!’ Brendan shouted. He was on his feet now, totally out of control. ‘Do you know what I’m talking about? Yes, of course you do. Well, that was Ros, for all her fancy ways. I tell you, she got what was coming to her. And now get out of here, before you end up the same way she did!’

  ‘All right, Brendan, there’s no need to be like this!’ Sheena was attempting to be conciliatory but every vestige of colour had drained from her face. She was scrabbling her notebook and pencils into her bag and as she did so Brendan grabbed the cassette recorder.

  ‘I’ll take that. Now – get out!’ He flung open the door.

  Trying to retain at least an outward appearance of calm, Sheena held out her hand. ‘My property, please!’

  ‘You’ll be lucky! Get out of here before I …’

  She went. She had faced ugly situations before but none uglier than this.

  ‘You’ll be hearing from our legal department,’ she called back up the stairs when she was safely out of his reach. ‘Don’t think you can get away with this!’

  ‘Bitch!’ he yelled after her. ‘Stupid interfering bitch! Why couldn’t you keep your nose out of it?’

  He heard the main door slam and the sound of a car being driven, very fast, out of the communal car park. He went back into the flat and hurled her cassette recorder at the wall. She’d never use that tape, damn her, and if she wrote anything about him, one fucking word, he’d sue the paper for libel …

  Brendan refilled his glass with neat whisky and drank it as though it were water. His head was aching again, his stomach felt sour.

  As the excesses of his temper receded the blackness began again, the all-pervading sick dread.

  So it wasn’t only the police who thought Ros was dead, the papers were on to it too. And what a field day they would have with it! Ros Newman, ex-wife of the broadcaster Brendan Newman – the failed broadcaster Brendan Newman. It would all be there, all the elements of a big news story. They would spare him nothing. Already he could see the headlines, the photographs, the whole bloody shooting match.

  Brendan refilled his glass yet again but the whisky did nothing to make him feel better now. It only deepened his depression, filling him with disgust and self-loathing.

  He was a failure, a worse than useless git. Wasn’t that what they had called him at the radio station when they sacked him? Now all the world would know about the mess he had made of his life – and they would brand him a murderer too. Brendan was not sure which was worse, but he did not think he could stand any of it any more.

  He carried his glass into the living room, opened a fresh bottle of whisky and sank down on to the low sofa, head in hands, thinking about his life. He’d had it all – money, a career, a beautiful wife – and he’d let it all slip through his fingers. The gods had given him so much, and what had he done? Wasted it, thrown it all away. His career was over and Ros was dead. And now the vultures were moving in.

  If only he could remember, Brendan thought. If only he could remember exactly what had happened that last time he had seen Ros. But he couldn’t remember. His fuddled brain cells wouldn’t let him. There was a murky cloud obscuring it. Perhaps it was because he didn’t want to remember. But perhaps soon he would be forced to, forced to face things he would rather forget.

  Afternoon slipped into evening, the light began to fade from the day. Night was coming to the city. Suddenly Brendan did not want to face the night alone. Not tonight – not ever again.

  He got up, his toe encountering the bottle and kicking it over. Whisky spilled out on to the carpet. Brendan did not even notice. He got his jacket and went out, not bothering to lock the door behind him. The sounds of the city carried softly, distantly, on the night air. He walked like a man in a dream, only it was not a dream he was experiencing but a nightmare, a nightmare closing in, a nightmare that would not go away.

  The suspension bridge loomed up before him, Brunel’s masterpiece of engineering, spanning the gorge where the tidal Avon flows out to the sea. The bridge was illuminated, making a great curving arc of brightness against the dark sky. Brendan went slowly across the walkway beside the traffic-carrying road until he was almost to the other side where Leigh Woods sweep down to meet the river. Then he walked back again towards the Clifton end and lea
ned over the parapet.

  To his right the floodlights were reflected in the water; immediately below him there was only inky blackness. The tide must be out, leaving only a narrow stream of water along the mud. It didn’t matter. He did not need the water to drown in. The fall, from this height, should be enough.

  Slowly, deliberately, Brendan climbed up on to the parapet. He felt quite calm now, filled only with a sense of purpose. It was going to be easy, so easy. One move, one slip, perhaps a moment’s fear as the air rushed past him, and it would all be over. No more failure, no more pain, no more guilt. The newspapers could write what they liked about him, it would no longer matter – to him at any rate. He stood, poised, gazing into the blackness below.

  A shout shattered his trance. He looked in the direction of the sound and saw a figure running towards him, calling something to him. Brendan could not make out the words but he knew he could not wait around to find out. No one was going to stop him now, no one was going to thwart him this time. He had made up his mind and for once he was not going to fail in his intention.

  Brendan braced himself.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ros,’ he said.

  Then he jumped.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mike heard the news as he grabbed a quick bowl of cornflakes before leaving for his school trip.

  A man had fallen from the suspension bridge the previous evening. Police had recovered a body. The man had not yet been named.

  Mike went on with his cornflakes, scarcely even registering what he had heard. It wasn’t that unusual. People jumped from the suspension bridge with monotonous regularity. Sometimes they travelled quite long distances to do it. Mike shook his head, an indication to himself of his total incomprehension of what could drive any man to take his own life, particularly that way. He had fallen once when rock climbing; he could still remember the sickening feeling inside him as the air rushed past and the jarring thud as he hit the ground, knocking all the breath out of his body. That had been a short fall compared with the one from the suspension bridge at low tide but he wouldn’t care to repeat it. Not that they all died, of course, the people who jumped. Sometimes their fall was broken by scrub on the river banks or by the bridge itself, sometimes they lay horribly injured on the mud flats for hours before anyone realised they were there, sometimes they drowned.

  If I was going to kill myself I’d get in my car and drive like hell at some very large immovable object, Mike thought. But he could not, in all honesty, imagine ever getting to such a state himself and he found it almost impossible to identify with anyone who had.

  Poor stupid fool, Mike thought. Money problems, woman trouble, whatever, none of it was worth taking your own life over. Things had a way of sorting themselves out. Insoluble as any problem seemed in the present, five years hence and it was hard to remember what all the fuss was about.

  He switched off the radio and went to pack his rucksack with crisps, Mars bars, a squashed-looking meat pie that he rather fancied might be past its sell-by date and a Thermos of coffee.

  A day in the company of a coachload of twelve-year-olds stretched before him uninvitingly. All part of the job, he knew, but today he resented it.

  What he really wanted to do was spend the day with Maggie.

  Maggie did not put the radio on that morning and consequently she did not hear about the man who had fallen from the suspension bridge. She slept late, was horrified to see the time when she did wake, and was about to leap out of bed when she remembered – there was nothing to get up for. Mike was away on a trip, she had nothing whatever planned and in all honesty there was not a thing she could do towards finding out what had happened to Ros.

  In any case, Ros seemed to have been relegated almost to the back of her mind. Ever since Mike had telephoned to say she was missing, Maggie had thought of little else and anxiety for her sister had obsessed her. Now, suddenly, it was as if that obsession had burnt itself out, exhausted by overkill, and instead her thoughts were almost exclusively of Mike whilst her body remembered with disturbing clarity just how she had felt last night when he had kissed her.

  The sense of guilt was still there, of course, reminding her that neither she nor Mike was free, but it didn’t stop the feelings of excitement and anticipation that tingled and teased somewhere in the depths of her, couldn’t prevent her from longing to see Mike again or blot out the image of his face that was there, tantalisingly, in front of her closed eyes. Maggie had forgotten in the months and years of desperately trying to make her marriage work what it felt like to fall in love. Now every nerve ending, every fibre of her being conspired together to make her remember. And in spite of knowing it was impossible, as well as wrong, she was ridiculously, soaringly happy.

  She lay quietly, savouring the happiness and trying not to think about the reality, that with Ros and Ari standing between them it would be impossible for things to turn out the way she knew her heart wanted them to. Ari seemed a million miles away, the long shadow of Ros had no power to touch her this morning. If Mike was here, if she was going to have to face him in a few hours, the choices would have to be made and she knew she would decide just as she had done last night to step away from the rubicon rather than cross it. But Mike was not here. For the moment, at any rate, she could allow herself the luxury of pretending, of allowing her dreams full rein.

  She closed her eyes, remembering the feel of his mouth on hers and the responses of her body, wrapped her arms around herself and pretended they were Mike’s. Soon, whether she had any plans for the day or not, she would have to get up and let go of the delicious illusion. Perhaps she would telephone Ari, or at least try to telephone him – being Sunday he would almost certainly be at home in Kassiopi. No woman, not even Melina, would be able to change the habits of a lifetime; not even the prospect of a day of illicit and steamy love would be compensation for his mother’s disapproval. But she was not ready to do it yet. Let the dream last just a little longer …

  Relaxed at last after the stress and strain of the previous week, Maggie began to drift once more into a light doze. When she did she dreamed of Mike. He was standing on a path that ran through a dense woodland. He was holding out his arms to her and smiling.

  ‘I’m coming, my darling,’ she said. But the branches of the trees were slapping at her and her feet seemed to be bogged down in quicksand. Try as she might she could not reach him.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful to have a really fine day at last? We’ll eat alfresco at lunchtime – in fact I think we might go the whole hog and have a barbeque,’ Dinah said. ‘ What do you think, Don?’

  Don Kennedy smiled indulgently. Personally he did not like eating outdoors at all. He preferred a proper meal, taken at a leisurely pace at a table inside, with fine wine in the best crystal and no sudden gust of breeze to make his cigar burn unevenly, but he did not want to put a damper on Dinah’s enthusiasm, which was at times almost childlike and which he always found utterly charming.

  ‘I’m sure either would be very pleasant,’ he said easily. ‘Do whatever you like, Dinah – as long as you don’t expect me to cook the barbeque, if that’s what you’re having. My efforts are always less than edible and no one really wants burnt sausages or undercooked chicken, do they?’

  ‘It won’t be sausages or chicken. It’ll be steak. And Steve has the knack of making them taste wonderful,’ Dinah said happily. ‘That’s settled then. I’ll ask Mrs Brunt to prepare them and some interesting salads. I really do think we should make the most of a fine day while we have the chance.’

  She went in search of the housekeeper, moving with that quick grace which never failed to please him. She was like a gazelle, he thought, a slim fair-haired gazelle, pretty to look at but much too easily hurt. If only he could protect her from the harsh realities of life! He would never hurt her as Van had done, never do anything to cause her pain. And he would kill, with his bare hands, anyone who did. But he was not in a position to look after her as he would have liked. She was fond of him, h
e knew, and since Van’s death she had come to depend on him more and more. But that was the extent of it. She had never encouraged him to come any closer and he was afraid to force the issue in case he overstepped some invisible boundary and destroyed the relationship that existed between them. It might not be as much or as close as he would have liked but it was very precious to him. Better to have Dinah as a loving friend than not at all.

  Tyres crunched on gravel outside the window. Don looked out to see Steve’s car pulling in and grimaced. He had been hoping for a little longer alone with Dinah before Steve returned – he had gone out to buy the Sunday papers, Dinah had said, but he had been gone some time and since he was obviously doing something more than simply popping into the nearest newsagent’s Don had thought – hoped – that he would be a good while longer.

  Don always found Steve’s presence a little annoying. Dinah gave him her full attention to the exclusion of everyone else and Don felt her slipping even further away from him. Don was not sure that he liked Steve very much but he was honest enough to suspect that feeling might be rooted in jealousy. If Steve had not turned up so soon after Van’s death Don might have been able to consolidate his position as Dinah’s supportive confidant. But even feeling as he did, Don knew it would have been churlish in the extreme to deny her the happiness that had come from finding her son again, and in any case such wishful thinking would be a pointless exercise. Steve was here, back in Dinah’s life on every level – business as well as personal. No amount of wishing would make him disappear again.

  His reflections on Steve’s role in Dinah’s recovery from mourning Van were vindicated when, a moment later, Dinah came hurrying in, her face rosy with pleasure, clutching a cellophane-wrapped bouquet.

  ‘Look, Don, aren’t they lovely? Steve got them for me at the garage down the road. Wasn’t that sweet of him?’

  ‘Very,’ Don said, thinking that Steve certainly knew how to give Dinah pleasure. The house was always full of flowers, most of them delivered ready-arranged by the most exclusive florist in a fifteen-mile radius, and it would not occur to most people, himself included, to buy a bunch of flowers costing less than five pounds along with the petrol. But Steve had, and Dinah, without a doubt, appreciated it.