On the other side of the road a mechanic eyed them from over the bonnet of a truck, the unit next to him had a long shutter with a big silver sign saying Club Sound Logistics. ‘Come on, if you’re coming,’ said Gerard behind her.
He let them in through an anonymous door with frosted glass, not even a nameplate, she didn’t know how he had the key but it was probably by chucking his weight around. He went in ahead of her, pushed open a flimsy internal door.
Ali looked around. A cheap veneer table in a corner with a telephone on it, two of the usual padded office chairs, a bookcase with a couple of handbooks on building and design regulations and a well-thumbed paperback, some lads’ airport book about black ops, embossed lettering.
‘He was actually paying rent on it?’ Gerard shrugged, nodding, working up to something. ‘There’s nothing here,’ she said. Gerard’s grin told her he was pleased that Nathan Hall had got one over on the wife, lying to her, keeping her in the dark. ‘So it’s a … what?’ she said. ‘A front?’
He was looking at her. ‘You’re the smart one, DC Compton, you tell me.’
‘Drugs?’ said Ali, and he turned away from her and went to the window, one of those that only opened a crack, with dusty vertical blinds across it. He put a finger to one of the slats, pulling it open.
‘So your theory is?’ She was talking to his back. Silence, hands in pockets: it almost sounded like he was whistling.
‘Well,’ said Doug Gerard, eyeing her over his shoulder, half a smile on his face. ‘Working from home’s no life for a bloke, is it? He could have just wanted to get away from her and those snotty kids.’ Trying to wind her up; Ali just stared back. ‘Or there might be something out here he was interested in,’ he said then, the smile going cold. ‘Or someone.’
‘You think he was shagging the nice lady who runs the softplay centre?’ she said. She came up to the window, putting a foot at least between them, and looked through the slats, where he was looking. The mechanic was wiping his hands on a rag, staring across the road. ‘Or was he the kind that likes a bit of rough trade on the side? I thought it was her you had fingered for playing away.’
‘Getting warmer, DC Compton,’ he said, sarcastic.
Gets him going, she thought, the thought of other people shitting on each other. Is that because of the job? You see too much of it.
‘So what exactly did DC Watts find out?’ was all she said. ‘Sadie. I heard you had her on Fran Hall’s case, who she’s been seen with, what she’s been getting up to.’ He grinned, knowing. ‘If she’s been getting up to anything, that is,’ she said stiffly.
‘Ah, Sadie. Little Sadie. I’m looking forward to that debrief.’ She resisted the urge to knee him in the nuts. Undignified, that would be, but worth it. One day. She waited.
‘Seen with a man,’ he said, pursing his lips. ‘I told you.’
‘It’s not a crime to talk to a man in the street. It’s not like Sadie Watts has found hotel records or saw them up against a wall. She got nothing. Nothing.’
‘Come on,’ said Doug Gerard, ‘it’s written all over her, you know that as well as I do. We done here, then, DC Compton?’
She folded her arms. ‘After you,’ she said as he went for the door.
‘Shagging someone else,’ he said, turning around again just as she came after him. ‘I told you. You get a feel for that kind of thing.’
‘If I catch you feeling any kind of thing,’ Ali said, staring back at him, ‘between you and me, I’ll have you at a tribunal before you can check your bollocks are still where you left them.’
He was still laughing as he stood at the passenger door and held it open for her. She yanked it out of his hand. ‘Let’s just get back to protecting the public, shall we?’ he said, giving her that face.
‘If you can remember how to do that,’ she said, and slammed the door, missing his fingers by millimetres. At least she saw him jump.
‘Hello?’ Fran said into the phone, looking at Ed Carswell stonily until he turned, unabashed, and away. She watched him wander down the hall into their sitting room and she closed the door.
‘Mrs Hall? This is Julian Napier.’
The voice was immediately familiar, rich and gravelly, upper-class.
‘Julian,’ she said, and all at once implications were dumped back in her life: she was going to have to tell people. Tell this man.
‘Is, ah, is Nathan there?’ His cheeriness slightly forced. ‘Been trying to get him on the mobile phone.’
She had to tell Emme.
The bedside clock had said four when Fran left the bedroom to come downstairs, and outside the light was almost gone. Tuesday: a future stretched ahead, weekends alone with the children in the cold rooms. Sunday would be Valentine’s Day.
After hanging up she’d marched into the sitting room. Carswell had been loitering there in the gloom, flicking through a book on the side. ‘If you don’t mind staying in the kitchen,’ Fran heard herself say. He’d put his hands in his pockets and nodded, like a schoolboy.
‘You can wipe that, now,’ Carswell said as they stepped into the kitchen, pointing at the smear on the wall by the phone. ‘We’ve got a shot of it.’ She closed the door on him.
She’d stood in the shower for ten minutes, scrubbing at herself. She’d heard voices downstairs but stayed put.
The only time Fran was in this house without the children was when Nathan took them out, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, an hour, maybe two at some park or other. It seemed bigger up here, without them. She was aware of the small noises, birds, mice, spiders, aware of the big dark roof space above her head.
She’d give it half an hour then she’d call Karen.
All three of the police officers were in the kitchen, the men standing, Ali Compton at the table. Carswell avoided Fran’s eye when she came through the door.
She was wearing a big jumper of Nathan’s, old jeans, trainers. She’d stood in front of the wardrobe for a long time: grey, black, white, stuff stretched out of shape and faded. In the back, out of sight, was a new dress. She never wore dresses any more. She’d bought it a month ago.
She reached over to Nathan’s side and pulled things at random towards her face: the sleeve of a suit jacket, but all it smelled of was the dry cleaner’s. Out of the corner of her eye the dress appeared, in plain sight. Nathan must have spotted it, but he had said nothing.
Ali was sitting at the table: it had been cleared, a stack of papers neat on the dresser. There was another pot of tea. Fran didn’t sit down.
‘I didn’t dream it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t imagine it, I didn’t get the time wrong. It was after midnight when someone came in here, into the house, and if Nathan was killed at eleven at the latest…’ and she paused, to let them know she didn’t care if they knew she’d overheard them, ‘then it wasn’t Nathan.’
There was a long silence, and then Gerard spoke into it, and she heard triumph.
‘Right, now we’re getting somewhere.’
She’d thought the sex would get better. But it was too late by then. By then, Fran fancied him, and her judgement was skewed. And what had drawn her was that lightness in him, the refusal to be pinned down. Hard to get.
A week after that first time, they went to see a film together and Nathan invited Fran up to his place. Methodically he took off her clothes and led her into his bedroom. He didn’t get hard straight away, and she didn’t know why, it felt like a reproach straight off, even when he smiled, sat back on the pillows, when he said, ‘Why don’t you see what you can do,’ looking down at her, cool as you like. He had lain there, the light still on, and she had put her hand between his legs and touched him, she felt the soft weight of him. She leaned down and put his heavy cock in her mouth and then she knew it would work, at least, it did work, she had been obedient, and was rewarded. Of course, she couldn’t stop herself wondering, then, and later, what if it hadn’t, what then? Try harder.
She made sure she never went near the club, anywhere she migh
t see Nick, or think about him. And then she was pregnant.
Chapter Fifteen
Why don’t you see what you can do. She’d forgotten that, forgotten crouching on the bed between his legs and his hand guiding her head down. The light staying on, when she wanted it off. When she had resisted for just a second and looked up she had caught a look on his face that she’d forgotten too: a remote, curious look as if she was a game, an experiment. When he smiled that look was gone, as if it had never been, but it had been.
You work it out, don’t you? What marriage is all about.
Fran waited for them to ask – how would they phrase it? Did you have relations? – but they didn’t. The possibility sat in her head, it hummed like a great sinister engine hidden away, in a cellar, in a basement. She told them he’d come to bed, that was all – then backtracking, helpless, But I might have dreamed it, after all – she told them she’d gone back to sleep.
Gerard told her they’d send the team back in, in the morning, to check the bedroom. She didn’t tell them that the sheets she’d slept in were dry and folded and put away: it seemed too late to tell them that. She felt dog-tired, as if the adrenalin had drained her.
‘Ed said someone called,’ said Gerard, pacing now in the kitchen, like an animal. ‘Asking after your husband?’ It looked to her like he hadn’t shaved, his chin was dark with stubble.
‘That’s right,’ she said wearily, not even surprised that he already knew. ‘A business contact. Julian Napier, Napier Construction. He said he’d been trying Nathan’s mobile.’
The name stopped Gerard’s pacing. ‘Napier Construction,’ he repeated, interested. ‘Upmarket. Is that … you’ve met him?’
‘He was at our wedding,’ she said, shortly. ‘Look—’
‘It wasn’t Mr Webster, then?’ Probing. ‘On the phone.’
‘You mean Rob?’ There was an insinuation in his voice that she didn’t quite understand. Then she did.
‘Rob’s Nathan’s friend, not mine,’ she said, sharply, angry on his behalf, Rob. Rob, with a sob in his voice, mourning. ‘Have you spoken to him? You don’t know Rob.’
‘No,’ said Gerard, reasonably. ‘That’s true. In answer to your question, we did get him on the phone, yes.’ Dubious. ‘He’s updated us, too. A puncture in the Black Mountains that necessitated an overnight stay.’ She closed her eyes, picturing Rob’s worn-out little car, neglected because he cycled everywhere, and wishing suddenly that he would get here, nervous, stuttering, brave Rob. ‘Very … punctilious,’ Gerard said. ‘If that’s the word.’
‘Rob will be here,’ she said, and suddenly she felt sick with tiredness, with that nameless insistent throb at the back of her head, that there was someone. Someone. Someone in your bed. She wanted her children. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know you’re here to help, but…’
Gerard was on his feet, palms out. ‘Yes, of course, message received. But if you like, Ali can stick around. I mean, she can stay the night, all part of the service.’ Compton at the table nodded agreement.
‘No. I mean, thank you. But at the moment … not now. No thanks.’ There was a silence.
A door slammed somewhere in the road and she turned towards the sound with such a rush of relief she thought they’d all see it in her face, the sound of Emme’s voice, high-pitched, chattering. Then Ben, howling.
In her purple fur collar Karen pushed through the door with him in her arms, his face red with the exertion, eyes squeezed shut, cheeks wet, and suddenly all three of the police officers were on their feet and at the door behind her. Emme edged out of their way, standing at the side.
‘It’ll be around eight thirty,’ Gerard told her. Carswell was already outside, Fran could see his shoulders hunched against the cold.
‘Fine,’ she said and Gerard was out too, their heads together. Carswell was stamping his feet.
Fran took Ben from Karen and sat down with him at the table, pulling up her sweater. Hiccupping with sobs and grappling for the breast, abruptly he settled and was silent. Emme came up beside Fran, standing very quiet at her shoulder. A hand crept out and settled on the fine hair on Ben’s head.
‘Look, said Ali, lingering in the doorway, ‘are you sure – it’s part of the job, you know. If you’re not happy being on your own.’
Karen looked from one of them to the other, taking in the situation, and pulled out a chair. ‘She’s not on her own, is she,’ she said, plonking herself down, and reluctantly Ali Compton gave in. She reached into her breast pocket for a card and set it on the table in front of Fran.
‘Call if you need me,’ she said. And just like that, they were gone.
‘Had he been crying long?’ said Fran to Karen, in the sudden silence. She could feel Emme’s small hand tight on her upper arm, and turned her head slightly towards her. ‘You all right, lovely? Nice tea?’ she said and Emme whispered yes, but held on tighter.
‘Just started up when we got here, I swear,’ said Karen. ‘It was Emme wanted to come home. I’ll just get Harry out the car and—’
‘No,’ said Fran, sharper than she’d meant to sound. ‘I mean … thanks, Karen. This was a lifesaver.’ She leaned her cheek towards Emme’s. ‘Run upstairs a minute, Emme,’ she said quietly. ‘And turn the light on in Ben’s room for me? I don’t want to trip over.’
Fran waited till Emme was out of the room. ‘You know what they’re saying,’ she said. ‘Nathan told me he was going to the pub, once, twice a week, but the landlady never saw him. You hear that? Has she been talking about me?’
Karen was on her feet, the starry-lashed eyes fierce in her set, pale face. ‘Do you think I’m that kind of bitch? Pretend to be your friend so I can talk about you behind your back?’
Fran just shook her head, too weary for a fight, and Karen’s anger deflated abruptly. ‘I haven’t heard anything,’ she said. ‘And for the record, I am a cow, but I’m not that kind of cow. But they haven’t got him, have they? Useless sods.’ Nodding towards the door. ‘But you said it yourself, there’s someone still out there. It’s not safe for you to be on your own.’
‘You’re on your own too, aren’t you? At least I’ve got a panic button.’ Karen just stared, taken aback, and Fran said, ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Karen, honest. But I can’t live like this.’
And she flipped a hand up from where she held Ben, gesturing to the neat pile of papers on the dresser, the mugs, the footprints tracking in from the door. ‘People in and out of my house. I can’t think straight.’
Karen eyed her narrowly, then she nodded, just once, and stood up. ‘You know where I am. If you need me.’
And then they were on their own.
Fran knelt beside the bath, Emme sitting solemnly among the bubbles meticulously working at the rigging of a little wooden boat, and Fran soaped her small bowed shoulders. Ben had fed himself into such a stupor that he didn’t stir when she laid him down. Once he was asleep she had walked from room to room, Emme following her, quiet. She mopped the bootprints from the floor, and wiped the phone, quickly, although Emme didn’t seem to have seen the blood. She checked the window fastenings, the bolts on the kitchen door, the lights on the boiler. ‘It’s going to snow,’ she said to Emme. ‘Maybe at the weekend,’ and Emme nodded, unblinking.
In the bath Emme had got the rigging untangled: bent over it in concentration, her firm little chin not Fran’s. ‘Mummy,’ she said, not looking up, ‘Harry said sometimes daddies don’t come back.’
Fran thought about the long night ahead of them. ‘Your daddy and Harry’s aren’t the same,’ she said, eventually. Emme looked up then, holding the boat out. ‘He wouldn’t leave you on purpose,’ Fran told her, taking it from her and reaching for a towel. ‘Bedtime.’
She sat a long time beside Emme, waiting for her to sleep. She hadn’t even got up to go, only shifted herself in preparation, when Emme sat straight up in the bed, and babbled, her voice steady but rising. ‘The bad man came, bad man. In the roof. In the cupboard. Don�
��t.’ A nightmare, Fran told herself, her own heart racing though, for what would come out of Emme’s mouth next, scrabbling for where she’d heard that before, the bad man – and then as quickly as she had sat up Emme fell back on the pillow.
He wouldn’t leave you.
They’d been in the delivery room hours, it seemed, with nothing happening but the pain, when suddenly alarms started sounding, and lights went off, voices raised in the corridor and they poured in. Two midwives, a student nurse, a tanned consultant with a foreign accent, South Africa or maybe Zimbabwe, and then Fran couldn’t see Nathan from where she lay pinned on the bed, her knees raised and spread, at the centre of all the commotion. Then she did: he was at the wall, pale and blank, staring at the door.
At ten pounds and facing the wrong way, back to back, the baby had got stuck and something was happening to her heartbeat. Fran tried to understand but it was too technical, the consultant leaning down to her talking about recovery time didn’t make sense and she was distracted by his aftershave, the heavy gold link bracelet on his wrist. She tried to see over his shoulder to Nathan but he wasn’t there any more.
They cut her: she heard the sound and hoped Nathan was in the corridor. Emme was born in a hot gush of blood and the last Fran heard was someone talking about transfusions before she lost consciousness, or they sedated her, she didn’t ever know which. When she woke up she was on her own in a white room magically, blissfully quiet, a private room, and wondering who’d arranged it, or paid for it. Not exactly on her own, because there was Emme, bound in white by some expert hand, her crimped and folded red face visible through the Perspex cradle they’d put her in. Nathan didn’t appear until the evening. After they’d given her some lunch she had reached for her mobile to call him but didn’t, instead she let it fall back on the hospital cabinet out of lassitude, blood loss or hormones. He would come when he came. She remembered his white expressionless face turned away from her behind a student nurse’s shoulder in the delivery room, and then abruptly she was in no hurry.
The Loving Husband Page 14