by Ian Mayfield
A muffled thump from outside made her turn her head to see a flash of orange going past the French windows. Shortly afterwards a distant querulous mewing started up. ‘Only Buster,’ Jeff smiled.
‘Buster?’
‘Cat. Better let him in.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘I was about to heat some soup.’
‘I don’t want to be trouble.’
‘No trouble. I hadn’t eaten. Not much of an appetite, last couple of days.’
She nodded to let him know she was in the same mood. ‘Then sure. Thanks.’
She smiled, settled deeper into the armchair with a contented wriggle and closed her eyes. With a last affectionate glance, Jeff left the room.
Buster was on the kitchen windowsill, his worried ginger face pressed against the glass. He jumped down when he saw Jeff, who walked over and opened the window. The cat jumped in and landed at his feet. Jeff shook his head wearily. All cats have their idiosyncrasies, and one of Buster’s was a disinclination to use the door for going in and out of the house.
He’d been a kitten when Jeff had met him two days after moving in. He’d shown up on the front porch, wearing an expression that said, ‘Own me.’ There was no collar and Jeff had gone door to door, put up posters, advertised on Craigslist and contacted the RSPCA and the Cats Protection League, all to no avail. Before long Buster was well established, and had been his lodger ever since.
Jeff shovelled cat food into a bowl, washed his hands and put the stock on the stove in a big aluminium pan. He stirred in water, the shredded remains of the chicken, rotelle, chopped vegetables, garlic powder, black pepper and an extra stock cube for body. Twenty-five minutes ought to do it. He turned the gas down and went back to the living room. Jasmin was dozing, but she stirred and looked up as he came in and sprawled out on the settee.
‘Comfy?’
‘Ja!’ She closed her eyes and tilted back her head. ‘I can’t remember last time I could relax in an armchair.’
‘How about house calls?’
‘That’s work,’ she said. ‘It’s not relaxing.’
‘True.’ He recalled the spartan furnishings of Jasmin’s bleak room. No armchair there, no curling up by the fireside on a cold, frosty night. Every waking moment was a quest for constant movement, every muscle coiled against the unrelenting chill. Hardly surprising she looked run down. He wondered when her last decent night’s sleep had been.
‘It’s warm here,’ she commented, as though reading his thoughts.
He looked around. ‘It’s OK, I suppose. Stays nice and cool in here on a hot summer’s day. Winter, that’s the sod. Trouble is the central heating’ - he pointed to an old iron radiator behind the door - ‘runs off a coal-fired boiler in the breakfast room, would you believe. There’s tons of anthracite in the cellar but it’s too much aggro carting enough of it up here. One and only time I ever actually managed to get the thing going it filled the entire house up with soot. So now I just rely on the fires and you should’ve seen my gas bill yesterday.’
She smiled. ‘How long do you live here now?’
‘Nearly seven years.’
‘How come you have such a big house?’
‘It’s my dad’s,’ Jeff said. ‘He inherited it from an aunt, had some vague idea about converting it into flats but never got round to it.’ He shifted his position. ‘I’d just transferred to the Met, so I moved in here as a sitting tenant, look after the place. Beats the section house.’
‘This is expensive, no?’
‘Would be if there was a mortgage,’ he nodded. ‘Auntie Mary’s insurance paid that off. I meet all the bills and send Dad rent each month.’ He made a face. ‘Guess I’m out of pocket a bit, but I can easily get by on what I’m earning.’
Silence fell, the stern knowledge they’d been avoiding for too long the subject at the front of both their minds.
‘I heard,’ Jeff said.
‘How?’ She was surprised and horrified. The promise of spontaneous comfort seemed to fade. ‘Lucky’s statement is passed round the goddamn office now, huh?’
He folded his arms and looked hurt. ‘That you’d done the interview, I meant. Is it true?’ She looked at him sharply. ‘This was two weeks ago?’
‘How much of it is out?’ Jasmin asked.
‘All I know is the bits of Prosser’s story I believe. He says two weeks.’
‘He admits it?’
‘Raping her?’ He scowled. ‘What do you think?’
‘What’s his story?’
‘D’you really want to hear this?’ he sighed. He met her gaze. ‘He was never in the house. They bumped into one another outside; she has a hysterical fit, decides he matches the description of the serial rapist and instead of nicking him, threatens to fit him up. He says.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘Oh, no,’ he said thickly.
She looked him in the eye. ‘You believe him?’
He thought, recognising a test. ‘No, I fucking don’t. We both saw Lucky’s face, and him smirking like it was some big joke. I think he raped her, and I’ll stand up in any court and say so.’
But you don’t know what I know, Jasmin thought. There’s no way it’s even going to get that far.
‘He knew she was a cop,’ she said. ‘He was waiting in her room. She has commendations on the walls, her uniform in her closet. I don’t get why he was not careful this time.’
‘Why he actually raped her instead of using a foreign object?’ Sam said. She nodded. ‘Beats me. Hopefully Zoltan or Summerfield can wear him down so he’ll tell us.’
‘Two weeks.’
‘Aye,’ Jeff said. ‘Explains a lot.’
She looked at him in surprise, but he didn’t seem inclined to elaborate. She felt a sudden, shameful pang of jealousy.
He said, ‘How is she?’
‘OK.’
‘Bearing up?’
‘She bears up for so long, believing that today was never going to happen. I think now that delayed shock is coming.’ She spotted his frown. ‘Juliet is spending the night with her.’
He looked blank. ‘Juliet?’
‘Her friend at the club the other night.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ he said, rubbing his eyes to cover the anguished look on his face. He realised what he’d said and paled. ‘I didn’t mean...’
‘No,’ she smiled. ‘I know.’
‘First Nina, now Lucky.’ He shook his head. ‘God almighty, what’s happening to this team?’
For a while neither of them spoke. Jasmin, tilting her head on one side and resting it on a cupped hand, was acutely aware of Jeff looking at her intently.
She said, ‘What are you thinking?’
It was her disconcerting habit to ask very direct questions out of the blue, and it nearly always caught him on the hop. Actually he’d been worrying whether her choice of an armchair, rather than the settee, had been deliberate. Under the circumstances, he was ashamed of himself for thinking it. But what ought he to say? He plumped for, ‘Just wondering how the soup’s doing.’
She grinned. ‘Go find out, huh?’
He went back to the kitchen and groaned. Buster’s idea of table manners was to leave lumps of Felix all over the floor, and he’d excelled himself tonight as a protest at being locked out. By the time Jeff had gathered them all up the soup was ready. He served it up into bowls and onto trays and carried it through. True to form, Buster had sat on their guest’s chest and was purring at her adoringly.
‘Hop it, you.’
Buster jumped down and went over to the fire.
‘He’s lovely,’ Jasmin said.
‘Happen his breath isn’t,’ Jeff grumbled, remembering the kitchen floor.
‘I don’t mind.’ She brushed ginger fur off her sweater.
Jeff looked admiringly at his cat. ‘You’re in there, mate.’
She giggled and tasted her soup.
‘OK?’
‘Great!’ She paused and qualified it. ‘Maybe less pepper.’
<
br /> ‘You’re probably right. It’s only ‘cause I like pepper.’
‘Your mom taught you to cook?’
‘Not really. It’s just I found, living on my own, a constant diet of fish and chips, Chinese takeaway and frozen bung in the oven stuff palls a bit after a while. So I started teaching myself.’
Jasmin said, ‘I cook a lot also. Where I live, often the kitchen with the stove on is the warmest place in the house.’
Further talk seemed unnecessary as they set to eating, and thinking. With the soup finished there was a short, awkward spell; then, as is the way of things, they both started at once.
She said, ‘Jeff, I have to - ’
He said, ‘I was wondering - ’ He stopped. ‘Go on,’ he said, anxious.
‘I have not forgotten the other night,’ Jasmin said.
‘Me neither.’
She gulped. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Jeff. It was... great. Beautiful, a beautiful thing. And now I don’t know the answer, what it means.’
‘You were lonely,’ Jeff said. ‘Why I was there, remember?’
‘I guess it seems kind of like I have been avoiding you since.’
He shrugged. ‘We’ve been flat out, with what’s been happening.’
‘It’s not that. Ach, maybe it is.’
‘Aye.’ He frowned. ‘I mean when you think Nina must’ve been lying there bleeding half to death while we were - ’
‘Falling in love?’
The words were out. She felt her face go warm.
‘What’s going on?’ he said.
She brushed a hand across her eyes. ‘I don’t know what is right or wrong. Maybe until I’ve figured that out...’
She stopped, peering at her lap. Jeff thought hard. She was alone in a foreign land, living on the breadline, a cold dank room for shelter, no respite in immediate view. Small wonder a thing so unexpected, unplanned, should throw her into a morass of uncertainty. He understood - he thought - her need for space. Yet as he saw it she was, by her words, leaving the door ajar. He could wait.
He said, ‘You want to cool it?’
She nodded gratefully. ‘You don’t mind?’
‘No,’ he said, hoping he meant it.
‘You are very special, Jeff.’ She looked up and smiled in a way that made his heart pole vault. ‘Let it be our secret, OK?’
‘Aye,’ he smiled, ‘OK.’
Surprisingly, the idea held great appeal.
He gathered up the dishes. ‘Get you owt else? Coffee, cocoa, Horlicks? First class ticket to the Bahamas?’
She yawned.
‘You don’t need Horlicks,’ he chuckled.
‘I am fine.’
‘Right.’ He snapped out of the catatonic trance he’d momentarily been in, realised he was standing there with the empty bowls, and took them out to the kitchen. When he came back she was asleep again, Buster tucked under one arm.
A yawn caught him and he looked at his watch. After half one. He reached out to Jasmin, then hesitated.
It was a quandary. She looked very peaceful. And he didn’t want her to go.
He reached a decision. He went upstairs and made up the bed in the second bedroom where his parents stayed on the rare occasions they came down for a visit. He fetched his spare winter duvet from the airing cupboard, took it downstairs and gently placed it over her. Then he wrote a note, downed the fire, turned on the standard lamp and put out the main light. As he was on his way out she stirred and made a noise, making him turn; but she was pulling the duvet higher over herself and the somniferous Buster. He grinned, and went to bed, sweet thoughts of Jasmin Winter filling his dreams.
When Mrs Stephenson, tearful, had left them alone, after the fifth time of asking, Juliet felt exhausted. Lucky was in for a hard time. Her mother plainly didn’t believe her story, wouldn’t even accept having left a window unfastened. Magda Stephenson came from a culture which attributed blame first to the woman, and the circumstances surrounding the rape weren’t going to change her mind easily. She was bewildered because she could not reconcile what those circumstances told her with her daughter’s obvious hurt. She hadn’t said as much, but Juliet was afraid she thought Larissa had prostituted herself, and would voice that allegation the first moment they were alone. But that, Juliet was determined, wouldn’t be tonight.
They slept as lovers might, cradled together spoonlike, Juliet’s arms linked round Lucky’s waist like a safety harness. Lucky had complained of being cold but now her body radiated heat like a furnace. Juliet sighed deep and long, trying to cool down but not daring to move away.
‘You asleep?’ Lucky’s voice made a ripple in the gloom, just a table lamp standing sentinel against the night.
‘No.’ She couldn’t see her friend’s face, just the back of her head, black hair bunched up against the nape of her neck like unwoven silk. Under her hands Juliet could feel the rise and fall of her breathing, uneven, disturbed.
‘Feels weird,’ Lucky said, ‘having somebody in bed with me.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Don’t be silly.’ She put a hand over Juliet’s and squeezed. ‘Reminds me of Guide camp, me and Julia sharing a sleeping bag.’
‘I never knew you were in the Guides.’
‘Must be where my uniform fetish comes from.’ Suddenly her shoulders shook. ‘Oh, fuck, I’m so confused.’
Juliet let her cry for a while, then spoke. ‘That’s why.’
Lucky twisted her head in a vain attempt to look at her. ‘What?’
‘Barkeley’s, you having a go at Nina’s husband, banging on about how men treat women. I thought you were talking about him and Nina but you weren’t, were you?’
‘No,’ Larissa said, sniffing.
‘The other night,’ Juliet said, ‘you know Kim? She was as bad as me at first, really freaked. You were the one who kept your head, got me to go for help, did CPR and all that. I think you saved Nina’s life. You were absolutely brilliant.’ She hugged her closer. ‘I told you so afterwards. I couldn’t figure out why at the time but you said, “I don’t know any more.” D’you remember?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you did. God, you must’ve felt so fucked up.’ She realised what she’d said and winced. ‘Everybody else in a flat spin and you just calmly take charge. Like you’ve been trained for. And then...’ She shook her head, feeling tears coming. ‘You poor cow. No wonder you’re confused.’
‘Don’t you start,’ Lucky said, hearing the tremor in her voice. She craned a hand back and patted Juliet’s hip, which was all she could reach.
She sighed.
‘I dunno.’
Juliet didn’t either.
Wednesday
This was the first night she hadn’t felt the need for something to help her sleep, so worn out was she from the physical and mental effort involved in keeping pain at bay. They kept insisting so she’d glared at Nurse Aziz until she relented and halved the dose. Now she was out, wandering somewhere in the endless, empty telescope corridors of the hospital. Everything was dark, apart from a few emergency lights casting blurry shadows that shifted and changed shape in the draught.
Something made her stop and turn. Suddenly, out of the black chasm of an unexpected doorway, two hideous monsters, devilish vampire demons so horrible that her eyes, though seeing every detail, failed to form an image her brain could interpret without sending itself mad. They lunged at her rooted to the spot, unable to escape: she could only watch, detached as, slavering fangs and teeth like jackknife blades, one of the creatures bit into her breast with a tearing of flesh, a cracking of bone, and came away with her pulsing, still living heart in its jaws, leaving a geyser of blood, cherry red, spewing from the wound.
An intense light. Hammers in her chest. Unhealed wounds screaming with the agony of the tormented. A strained, tired face, square, unshaven, hair receding, discoloured bruise around one eye, darkly visible against a plain white ceiling.
‘What?’
‘Don’t. Jus
t don’t say anything. Bad dreams. All over. Just rest. OK?’
‘OK.’
The grasp of clammy hands. A tablet in a small plastic cup. Rest. Silence.
From the doorway Magda Stephenson said, ‘It’s your boss.’
The moment the doorbell had rung Lucky had known who it was. It didn’t occur to her to prepare for the possibility that by ‘your boss’ her mother might mean Coleridge, or (ha!) the Commissioner, or still more likely Inspector Applewhite, the man Mrs Stephenson had known as her daughter’s boss up until a fortnight ago. She let slip a resigned sigh and said, ‘OK, Mum.’
The visitor came into the room.
‘Hello, guv,’ Lucky said.
‘Hello, Larissa,’ Sophia Beadle said. She turned a polite blue stare on Lucky’s mother, who was clutching the open door. ‘Mrs Stephenson, would it be possible for me to talk to Larissa alone for a little while?’
‘I’ll be all right, Mum.’
‘Sure,’ Magda said frostily, drawing herself up. ‘Since I am excluded from my own daughter’s life, why not?’
‘Mum!’
‘It’s all right,’ Sophia said. ‘If you’d rather stay...’
She waited. Magda softened. ‘Tea. Would you like tea, chief inspector?’
‘Thank you,’ Sophia smiled, with a wink at Lucky. It was a compromise. Tea would remove Mrs Stephenson for a vital few minutes, but not permanently. The DCI watched her go and accepted Lucky’s offer of a chair. She eased her bulk down, testing it for gauge. She said, ‘How are you?’
‘A friend stayed the night,’ Lucky said. ‘She’s gone now. Had to work.’
The non-answer didn’t seem to faze Sophia, who smiled wryly. ‘I’m not supposed to be here.’
‘Guv?’
‘Mr Summerfield’s the SIO, by order of the AC.’
‘Let me guess,’ Lucky said, ‘I haven’t seen you, right?’
Sophia smiled. ‘I’m here,’ she said, ‘but without my warrant card. Understand that. As far as I’m concerned my responsibility for my officers’ welfare extends beyond the office.’
‘I’m not sure,’ Lucky said.
‘Not sure?’
‘That I do understand.’