Malcolm’s grasp of the criminal code was so complete he could envisage the trial and all which would follow. Sarah Fortune, pilloried as a greedy whore tormenting a man and suitably punished by falling over a mirror. And, to support the persecution of the witness, no doubt the names and lives of all the lovers, so carefully purloined by the defendant, would be revealed. Malcolm did not know this for sure, but his instincts, and the faithful repetition of Charles’s words to Sarah, made him understand the possible extent of his research into her life. Sarah had expected Malcolm to be shocked, but saw no point in hiding anything. He was, after all, both rescuer and criminal lawyer. Malcolm had not been shocked. A life was a life; you did as you could. He did not care what Sarah had done with her body and did not regard it as dishonest. His tolerance was dangerous: a prosecutor was supposed to feel some moral outrage and show at least some sort of belief in his own society’s rules, while Malcolm’s attitudes, to say nothing of his affections, were going to get him the sack. He had reached that dangerous age when law and punishment mattered less than individuals. In the face of Ryan’s fury, he was silent.
‘It’s all down to you,’ Ryan said. ‘You and your bloody father, and that woman. And too many secrets. All the secrets you lawyers keep. You aren’t normal.’
‘Not quite,’ Malcolm murmured apologetically. ‘And there are other things to consider.’
‘Like what?’ Ryan shouted. ‘Your precious confidentiality rules, OK? And fuck the rest of us? The fact that you tell me that it would kill your father to step into the witness box and tell on oath what bloody Tysall told him about disfiguring his wife? Or the fact of the reputations of a few other lawyers in the club who’ve had the privilege with our Sarah? Sorry, guv, your Sarah. What the hell does all of that matter when we’ve got the chance of nailing a psychopath and a thief?’
‘It matters plenty. We’re supposed to protect, as well as prosecute, you and I.’
‘Leave it out. You might. Protect? At whose expense? Shit. I’m sorry, Mr Cook, I don’t get it, and I’ve had it up to here.’ Ryan sketched a line across his own forehead. Malcolm thought of the stitches in Sarah’s brow and shuddered slightly, silent against the other’s indignation. Ryan tried another tack, the last resort of anger.
‘I thought we were friends, Mr Cook, I really did.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Malcolm formally.
There was nothing more to say. Ryan left.
Malcolm wished he did not understand it all too well, the anger and the frustration. Wished he had not, unwittingly, confirmed the policeman’s view that all lawyers were either charlatans or fools. You’re committed to failure, his father had said. Get out of this game, Malcolm; it’s bad for the soul. Another hospital bedside, another revealing interview, made brief for Ryan’s benefit. And what has your legal game done for you, Father? Sold you a client who has used you as he would a psychoanalyst, abusing you by seeing if he could rely upon you to keep untenable secrets, blackmailing you? Ernest had had the grace to laugh, a short, despairing sound. Well, Son, we who dabble in human lives must take the consequences.
And then there was Sarah, sitting as still as a plant, hiding her wounds in Malcolm’s flat, less elegant than her own, more austere, but warm and complete nevertheless. She had not asked to stay, the ambulance had returned her there at his request, and she had not argued, simply demurred. At Malcolm’s feet sat Dog, recovering from a fretwork of stitches, stable by his side, although in the time of Sarah’s constant presence, the loyalties had become divided. Not divided as such, said Sarah, simply multiplied. After all, she saved me; she can’t be stand-offish now, although she should bite me if she had any sense, since I got her those stitches. But for all the ease, Sarah was watchful like a cat, residing in the home of another because of a need, a weakness in herself she resented all the time. He wished she would simply accept the need, possibly with the same calmness with which she had accepted the serious injury, the permanently scarred forehead, still clear headed, obstinate to the end.
‘Why won’t you talk to the police?’ he had asked, to establish an answer he knew full well after her clear account to him of the evening of her attack and all the two years which had preceded it.
‘Because it would do more harm than good in the long run. And because I know the limitations of evidence. I don’t object to the ruining of my unimportant reputation, or falling from respectability, but I won’t risk the same for anyone else. I might not be an innocent, but the lovers were, in their own way. So is your father. Charles Tysall knows very well I wouldn’t risk exposing them. I don’t believe anything as clumsy as the due process of law could catch him anyway.’
He accepted that as he accepted all she had done with her life in the meantime between that single encounter of two years before which had been etched on his mind ever since. It no longer occurred to him to judge, condemn, or even wonder whether a thing was illegal or immoral: he could only see whether it was well-intended, harmful or not, quite different distinctions. Malcolm believed in nothing, but he knew that he loved her. He knew and wanted the heart of what he loved. Whatever had been done with the body did not matter. Pasts did not matter, only futures. There would be a long wait, but he had time. It crossed his mind what they would do for money once he had survived his forthcoming interview with the Chief Crown Prosecutor, to explain his harbouring of a refugee, as well as explaining his own refusal to contribute to the evidence, but that too was irrelevant.
Charles Tysall had sat for many hours in a dim interview room with a faceless Superintendent, a note-taking Sergeant, and his own, newly recruited solicitor, a man with a face like a weasel. Horses for courses: one solicitor to whom one confesses; another, eminently corruptible, in whose presence one says nothing of any importance at all. Whilst voluble Ryan had acquainted the interrogators with the reasons for the bandages on the hands of the suspect, the marks to his face and the slight stiffness to the walk, it was not their mandate to question him on the basis of hearsay evidence, or any evidence at all of events so recent. They had been removed from the confines of Norfolk to ask their suspect about older history than that. There was a sharp demarcation zone in their inquiries: what the man had done in London was London’s concern, while the discoveries of Norfolk, confirmed by a Knightsbridge dentist, were theirs. As a concession to other inquiries, Ryan was allowed as inside observer, and as the greatest concession of all, Superintendent Bailey was allowed to ask some of the questions.
‘When did you last see your wife, Mr Tysall?’
‘Two and a half years ago. We quarrelled, and she left me. She had had an accident.’
‘What kind of accident?’
‘Domestic.’
‘I see. Were you involved in that accident?’
‘My client does not have to answer that question,’ interrupted the weasel.
‘The choice is his,’ said Bailey, well used to the interference of legal representatives, while the Norfolk officers shuffled with indignation. In their own county, lawyers were more co-operative. ‘I’ll ask again. Were you involved, sir?’ It was an automatic reflex to call Charles sir. In Norfolk, anyone not actually on a charge was not called otherwise. They were not fools, but they were invariably courteous. Charles was immobile, urbane and alert. Wearing that look the Superintendent recognised, and which told him a man would tell him nothing.
‘If you don’t mind, I shall take my solicitor’s advice and not answer that question. Except to say I was aware of her accident, and how much it distressed her, as did our relationship, which was not happy. She sought treatment for her injuries; no doubt you will find evidence of that, but she made no complaint. It was not a criminal matter. Then she left. She told me she was going back to America. From whence she came. I did not pursue her.’
‘What about money? What was she going to do about that? I presume she was financially dependent on you?’
‘You presume correctly. Who knows what she planned?’ He spread his hands, still expressive,
even in bandages. ‘If she had wanted money she would have asked, but she had the deeds of our house in Norfolk, in her name, a valuable property. I regarded that as her settlement.’
‘Minor, for a man of your means.’
‘Surely. But had she asked more, I would have complied.’
No you would not, Bailey had concluded, you would have fought tooth and nail to deny her a penny, because she had abandoned you. But he allowed the polite flow to continue.
‘In any event, she had credit cards. I closed and paid off the accounts six months after she left.’
‘And you made no effort to find her?’
‘No. I find it preferable to sustain defection in silence, Superintendent. What would I have achieved by looking?’
‘Peace of mind, perhaps?’
‘My mind was not troubled. Besides, it is constantly engaged. I am a very busy man.’
No trace of her in the man’s flat (‘Will you look at this place, look at all this stuff? He must be loaded . . .’), scene of crime specialists beginning their task in hope, ending in frustration. Not an inch of carpet older than a year, nothing more than sanitised cleanliness everywhere, some long, dark hairs beneath the bed, that was all. Charles’s address book and all his confidential correspondence locked in a safe in the weasel’s office. The letter from his dead wife, informing him of her intentions and announcing the incriminating letters she would leave on her person explaining quite clearly the reasons for a self-inflicted death, had long since perished on a Norfolk bonfire.
There was nothing then, apart from a drowned body discovered in a sand-bank. And a placid man, with an alibi for all possible days eighteen months before, when he could show he had not left London for a single day, who knew he would not be charged with murder or anything like.
Disposal by hired help, the interrogator thought. Contracted death, hopeless, but not as cruel as the total absence of grief which stung the questioner most.
‘Did you love your wife, Mr Tysall?’ An announcement of a question, designed to shock, if only a little.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I said. Love her, the way normal human beings do. Did you?’ The colour drained from a pale face, leaving the bruises livid. There was a twitching of the limbs, a brief contortion of the features into a peculiar mask of anger and grief. The weasel stirred to restrain his client.
‘Love her?’ said the face loudly. ‘Love her? Of course I loved her. Better than anything else in the world.’
Silence had fallen. Only the slight scratch of the pen on lined paper as the note-taker, unperturbed, wrote, ‘better than anything in the world’, finished with a slight flourish before the pen dropped.
‘I think,’ said the weasel, ‘my client has had enough for now. Anything else I regard as oppressive.’
‘Oppressive?’ said Sarah, ‘Is that what Superintendent Bailey told you?’
‘Yes,’ said Malcolm. ‘He’s the only one left who’ll speak to me.’
‘Oh, Malcolm.’ She pulled Dog towards her in a gesture of affectionate despair. It’s me who’s oppressive. I seem to have isolated you. Nothing good has come to you ever since we met. Your job is at risk. You don’t see friends. I’ve been a sort of curse on your life.’
Over the weeks, their conversation had assumed an easy, joking banter, hiding nothing.
‘What do you mean, no good has come from you? Look at my slender figure.’ He pirouetted in the room, grinning, a touch of the old Malcolm, ready to joke as a more dignified buffoon. ‘That was you, though you may not know it. Then there’s Dog, an indirect credit to you. What more could man owe woman? Friends I don’t miss, except for the few I hope either to acquire or keep: Bailey, Helen West. And you.’
‘Friends? Friends have to be equal, and whatever you say the balance between us is all in your favour. I owe you everything, including wanting to stay alive. And I’m hardly suitable material for a friend. Not even an acquaintance or relative to give me ballast. And, as an extra credential, two years behind the mask of respectable prostitution.’
‘Do you regret that?’
She hesitated. ‘No. I was always on the outside; being what I was didn’t seem different. I would only regret if I had hurt anyone, so no, I don’t regret it.’
‘Good, I should respect you less if you did. Is there anything you do regret?’
‘Of course. Like not having the comfort of moral beliefs. Making such an obsession of love, and such a cynical matter of its absence. Not knowing you a long time ago. Not having a baby. Or a dog.’
He was standing by the window watching the park settling for the evening. Dying sunlight played on his features, turning the thick hair blue-black, making his eyes deeper set and his profile sharper. Malcolm was long and lean, strangely authoritative and utterly relaxed in his own home with this company. Sarah regarded him with covert affection and respect, tinged with a vague longing she was frightened to show. The man deserved far better than this.
‘It’s time I left you in peace, Malcolm. Summer’s turned autumn. I’ve been here six weeks. Too long.’
He continued to look into the park, examined the view, shrugged his shoulders.
‘You must do exactly as you wish. Leave me in peace? If you must. But if you leave, I should not be in peace.’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘Nor would I.’
He spoke as much to himself as to her. ‘Outsiders, both of us. We arrived at the outside by different routes, as unlikely a pair of lawyers as you could hope to find. Quite indifferent to the status quo we are paid to preserve. We may as well be on a different planet from the rest.’
‘We are.’
‘Well,’ he said diffidently, ‘it might not be a bad idea to circulate earth in company. I’ve always wanted a garden.’
‘And I the dog.’
‘Ah, if you had had either dog or child, you might not have had the lovers.’ He was laughing now, and he turned back towards her, squatted by her chair and took her hand. ‘So you may stay a little longer?’
‘Please. Although I don’t see why you ask.’
‘Let’s see how we go.’
She stroked the blue-black hair, feeling strength, new blood in her veins after a ritual bloodletting, she thought. A strange sensation after three years of caring for nothing, like the bends in the blood of a diver coming up from the very deep in search of air.
He sat beside her and kissed her lightly, a first time kiss.
‘What shall we do?’ she asked, smiling.
‘Well, by degrees, we could shorten the distance between your room and mine. After that, travel hopefully. Far better than arriving.’
She leant into him, conscious of the warmth of him, the care he took with her, wondering why he should, but grateful.
‘And if Tysall should come back, not here but elsewhere? Charles is on my conscience. Not him, but the harm he can do and I have not prevented.’
‘We shall have to see,’ said Malcolm. ‘He may be beyond the law, but not beyond his own demons. He may destroy himself.’
‘In rage, do you think?’
‘Oh no. In cold blood or arrogance. What he may do cannot be helped. We have to fight our own battles.’
‘Is that what outsiders do?’
‘It is.’
‘I do not want him to suffer. I don’t want anyone to suffer, I want to believe people can change the course of their lives.’
‘We shall prove that they can.’
Silence fell. Dog moved, and slept again.
‘Malcolm, I have never trusted anyone before. Or not for so long that I can’t remember what it is like.’
‘Nor I. But we shall learn, you and I.’
‘Shall we? Am I, at least, not beyond hope?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t believe, now, that anyone is.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘But we have to try. We have our responsibilities, you know. There’s a dog to bring up . . .’
She looked back at him, echoing the old mischief.
Never trust a lawyer, or a copper, and trust the court least of all. Ryan was pushing his maverick trail out for battle rather than solutions, back on the course of unfinished business. Dead Mrs Tysall and the vision of Annie freshened by his own impotence and a fair degree of new guilt. I hate you, you bastard. If I do not have you, I do not sleep and cannot get on with my life. And I am angry in my bones for turning away, when I, more than anyone, should have kept on watching.
‘It’s Mr Tysall, isn’t it?’
Charles looked up. The bruises had disappeared, the face was cold and distant, and although the level of sublime self-assurance was less, the responses were as controlled as they had always been.
‘You don’t need to ask, Mr Ryan. You know perfectly well.’
‘May I sit down for a minute?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t, but I can’t stop you.’
Ryan sat, pretending a nonchalance he did not feel in this airy coffee shop where he had followed Charles and watched him eat a frugal breakfast. One small croissant, three dark coffees.
‘I was looking for Ted Plumb, Mr Tysall.’
Shadows on the Mirror Page 18