by Janet Neel
‘What does he look like?’ Francesca, elbows on the table, watching her, was as rapt as a child being told a story.
‘He’s tall. He has dark straight hair and very blue eyes.’ She fumbled for a handkerchief, remembering how she had sat, the other side of a small table in San Lorenzo’s, entranced by the whole look of him, the vitality, the sheer beauty of the dark hair above the very blue eyes. He had taken his jacket off, asking her permission first as none of the students she knew at Bristol would have done. She had watched the line of his collar against his neck and wanted him as she had never wanted anyone before. He had seen it – well, of course he had – and had called for the bill after their main course and taken her back to his flat. She drew breath sharply, remembering how lovely it had been, totally unlike the brief encounters in cold student bedrooms with young men whose experience was as limited as hers. This was grown-up passion and although she had not then reached orgasm, she still felt the painfully intense physical pleasure from the memory of the long muscular body and the smell of his sweat. And of course, there had been a double bed and clean sheets and a grown-up’s kitchen, bathroom, and living-room in refreshing contrast to student hostel single beds and forced camaraderie in grubby kitchens. She came to herself and looked across at Francesca, prepared to storm out of the room, but the other woman’s expression was all right, absorbed and sympathetic.
‘He was engaged to someone else. He didn’t tell me that then, he just said he was going away for Christmas – it was December when we met, did I say? – to stay with his father and stepmother. They spend a lot of the winter in Spain. And when he came back he told me he’d been engaged and had broken it off because he’d met me.’ That had seemed to her the final proof that this wonderful good fortune was indeed hers, that things she had been taught to disbelieve as fairy tales did come true. It had struck her then that Cinderella might even really have got her Prince.
‘Very romantic,’ Francesca said, and Annabelle looked at her carefully to see if she was mocking, but she wasn’t, she was staring at her empty mug, seeing some vision of her own.
‘I sometimes think if we’d got married straightaway it would have been all right. But his father was very angry with him for ditching this other girl, and he didn’t – doesn’t like me much, and he didn’t want to offend him.’
Francesca cleared her throat. ‘How old were you both at this point?’
‘Antony was twenty-five,’ she said, defensively. ‘He was only just qualified, but his father was quite old, I mean fifty or so. And he is very well off, and Antony didn’t want to get cut out of his will, or well, not unnecessarily.’ She drew breath. ‘So we decided to wait.’
‘But you didn’t in fact marry.’
‘No.’ She considered, drearily, the five years between. ‘No. I went on wanting to but Antony – well, he changed.’
‘And started hitting you.’
‘Yes.’ She sat, unable to lift her eyes or look away from the small island of spilt tea in the middle of the faded, yellow plastic table top.
‘Why did you come here? I mean, rather than to parents or friends?’
‘My parents are in – well, they’re out of London. My father never liked Antony anyway, and liked him less after he decided to leave the NHS.’
‘Your father’s a doctor?’
‘How did you know?’ It was awful to have had to confess to anyone, but far worse to contemplate the prospect of her father knowing.
‘One half of all medical students have doctors for one or both parents. I read it somewhere.’
Annabelle was distracted. ‘So was his father. My grandfather.’
‘We are all of us,’ Francesca said, portentously, ‘more creatures of parental influence than we would be willing to acknowledge. Aaah.’
‘What?’ Annabelle shot alarmed to her feet.
‘A face. At the window. A man. I know we don’t let any of them in under any pretext. Mum told me.’
Annabelle, heart thumping, peered at the man who was now standing at some distance from the windows making gestures to indicate that he would come to the door. Antony could not know she was here, she reminded herself.
‘It’s all right.’ Francesca had got her breath back. ‘I can parley with him through the speaker-phone.’ She headed up the awkward stairs, Annabelle at her heels. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ she said intimidatingly into a box, switching on the outside light as she spoke.
‘I’m Matthew Sutherland. Your lawyer. You new here or what?’
Francesca, lips compressed, reminding Annabelle even more forcibly of her headmistress, consulted a list by the box. ‘What was your mother’s maiden name?’
‘Jean Macdonald. You want to let me in?’
‘Not enormously,’ Francesca muttered crossly, ‘but I suppose we have to.’ She undid three locks and a chain and opened the door cautiously to reveal a young man standing under the light, head tipped so they could see his face. He was dressed in a baseball cap, and several layers of clothes. Four sets of collars appeared to overlap each other at his neck, the whole shrouded in a long heavy overcoat reaching down almost to the top of his industrial-weight black boots.
‘I was out clubbing.’
‘I see.’ Francesca was sounding more like a headmistress by the minute.
‘I saw the light, so I thought I’d stop by, see if anything needs to go to court in the morning.’
‘You’re an Australian?’
‘A New Zealander. None of you Brits know the difference, but you’ll learn. You want to let me in, or are we going to hold a discussion on nationality on the step?’
‘I suppose so. Not, I think, that we have any new customers.’ She visibly recollected Annabelle, standing just behind her.
‘Have you had measles?’ Annabelle asked, adapting to the confrontational conversational style of the house.
‘Yes. And chickenpox and German measles, and mumps. And scarlet fever. And nits. Now can I come in?’
They opened the door for him and he shut it behind him, putting on all three locks and the chain. He took his coat and a jacket off and hung them over a chair. He was still wearing a black jacket, a waistcoat, an embroidered vest and two immaculate white shirts, in striking contrast to the brutally cut dark red hair revealed as he pulled off the baseball cap. ‘Who are you?’
Francesca, to whom the question was addressed, blinked at him. ‘I’m tonight’s duty officer.’
‘All right, let’s try it another way. Where do you come from?’
Annabelle leant against the banisters, meanly pleased to see the infinitely competent Francesca being kicked around.
‘I am substituting for my mother, Mary Wilson.’
‘Ah Mary. She’s OK.’
‘I’m sure she would be gratified by your opinion.’
‘Or rather she’s OK now we’ve stopped her doing that middleclass shit. Why is she not here?’
Annabelle decided to intervene. ‘She’s ill. Why are you here?’
‘Ambulance chasing – see if I can pick up any customers. You look like a potential to me, lady. Who’s been hitting you?’ He jerked his square chin towards her bruised right eye, silencing her.
‘Mr Sutherland, is there a legal service in New Zealand, or did you just come here for fun?’ Francesca had recovered herself.
‘There is, but I wanted to see the world. So I came here.’
‘And you could easily have gone somewhere else,’ Annabelle suggested, encouraged by Francesca’s return to action.
‘Not really. My people came from here, or rather from Edinburgh. My great-grandfather was transported to Australia, before you ask. My grandfather moved to New Zealand. We going to do this bit all night, or you got any real business? Where’s the log?’
They stared at him and he sighed and leaned over the hall table for a battered book. ‘Let’s have a look at this lot. OK. De Souza. She’s a client. What’s she doing back here? I got her an injunction.’ He held the book up to the l
ight. ‘Illegible bureaucratic handwriting. Her old man did what? Oh, rang up her employer. He’s in breach, stupid sod. I’ll get him. I’ll ring her in the morning.’ He went swiftly through the rest of the list, offering a running commentary and complaining intermittently about the handwriting.
Francesca, Annabelle was interested to see, did not protest but just watched him. And he was well worth watching, Annabelle conceded; sprawled over two chairs, totally at home. He was quick and authoritative, making notes on the names he knew on the evening’s list, and taking details of the ones he didn’t, who had expressed a desire to see a lawyer, or had been advised to do so. It was like watching a top consultant at work, one of the good ones. He was so concentrated he might as well have been alone in the room, so she was free to consider him: not good-looking, the eyebrows and eyelashes too pale, but an interesting face, with that dark red hair and pale skin patterned with brown freckles, a good square jaw with a deep cleft.
‘Get us a coffee, girl, will you?’ he said, returning to the world. ‘Long night.’
Annabelle rose to do his bidding, but Francesca waved her down and went off to the kitchen herself.
‘So what happened to you, kitty?’ Matthew Sutherland said, without lifting his eyes from his notes. ‘Who gave you that black eye? The boyfriend?’
‘Yes.’ It was easy to talk to someone who didn’t even have all his attention on you.
‘Been doing it for long?’
‘No. Yes. About a year. No. Two years.’
‘He throw you out?’
‘No. I ran.’
‘To here. Why not to friends?’
Because I don’t have any left to whom I could go, she had realised, bleakly. And if she had managed to stay in touch with Susie or Michaela, or Jennifer, in the teeth of Antony’s objection to all of them, how could she have brought herself to explain what seemed to be happening?
‘Stupid question. He objected to all your mates, right? Why not a hotel?’
‘He … I … I don’t have any money.’ That had been almost the worst shock, the discovery that Antony had drawn out every penny in the joint account.
Matthew Sutherland closed the log book with a snap and swung round to look at her. ‘All you middle-class girls have a bit somewhere. What happened to it?’
It was too much, but she told him between undignified sobs and gulps, and he listened, unmoved, asking the odd question to make sure he had all the details.
‘Right.’ She gazed at him, sodden with tears, and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her tracksuit. ‘You need some sugar. What’s Wonderwoman down there called?’ She told him, choking back a giggle that threatened to start her eyes running again, and he pulled the door open and enquired where the fuck the coffee was.
‘Coming!’ The distant voice sounded unoffended, and Francesca, appearing promptly with three cups, sat down in the teeth of Matthew Sutherland’s hostile stare.
‘You’re interrupting a client interview here, lady.’
‘Annabelle may have a real lawyer of her own. Have you asked her?’
‘He won’t be as good as I am. So how about it, lovely, am I your solicitor? Or rather the firm of Graebner and Lewis, since as Wonderwoman here almost pointed out I am not qualified for three months yet. It’ll be me doing the work though, whoever’s name’s on the case.’
‘Annabelle, you might want to decide in the morning?’
‘No. I mean, yes please, Mr Sutherland, I would like you to be my lawyer.’ Antony would hate him, she thought, with horrified pleasure.
‘Forget the Mr. Everyone calls me Matthew. Now, what do we call you?’
‘Annabelle. Annabelle Brewster.’
‘Dr Brewster.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, I’ll go away since you’re getting on so splendidly.’ Francesca finished her coffee in one gulp.
‘Don’t be like that,’ Matthew advised. ‘That’s what lawyers are for.’
Francesca considered him, her good jacket dragged on anyhow, white with tiredness. ‘How old are you, Matthew?’
‘Twenty-six. So what?’
‘So I just wondered.’
‘You mean why aren’t I doing all that deference crap you go in for over here?’
‘Something like that.’ Francesca, to Annabelle’s relief, was smiling, the tired lines lifting. ‘I need to go to bed – there’s a broom cupboard upstairs next to the emergency room, which is yours, Annabelle. Do you want to come too, or would you rather go on having a client interview with Matthew?’
‘I’m done. She can come and do the rest in the morning. What’s that noise?’
They all listened to the broken sound of a child with a very sore throat coughing and crying, and Annabelle was on her feet washing her hands at the little basin which seemed to be a feature of every room in the Refuge before the other two had moved.
‘I’ll stick around,’ Matthew said casually. ‘Who needs sleep? No, you get to bed, Francesca, can’t have you and your ma ill at once. Leave it to me and Dr Brewster here.’ He took the cup from Francesca, turned her round and to Annabelle’s stunned admiration dispatched her upstairs with a pat on the bottom. Then he rolled up his sleeves and followed her to receive Mrs O’Brien and the four-year-old Francis, brother to Patrick, who had woken panic-stricken, sweaty and covered from head to toe in spots.
2
Monday, 4 April
John McLeish showed his card to the man on the gate at New Scotland Yard and drove his car down the steep slope of the car-park, basking in the first tangible evidence of his new position. Detective Chief Superintendent not only sounded good, it carried the enormous privilege of a car-park space in Central London. That told you that he had the foreman’s job at last, he thought, locking the car automatically, though if it was not safe here underneath the detective headquarters of the country there was no security anywhere. He suppressed this wholly improper reaction to the honour that had been done him by this promotion and stopped to straighten his tie and tug at the waistband of his trousers. The suit was five years old but not much worn for the last three and a half while he had been back in uniform as one of two superintendents at Notting Dale. His wife had organised him into buying two new suits on promotion, but some residual superstition had prevented him putting one of them on before he had even seen his office or any of his colleagues. He had also been handicapped that morning; his treasured eighteen-month-old William had wailed and fussed and been feverish until four o’clock in the morning. He had then fallen into an uneasy sleep, waking his mother every hour on the hour. John McLeish had therefore to get himself out of the house to a new job without any assistance.
An hour later nothing much had happened. His designated secretary was held up by a delayed train. His immediate boss was not in, having been called to an emergency conference following the discovery over the weekend of the dismembered pieces of several bodies – the news so far indicated a number anywhere between three and eight – in a terraced house in North London. Two of his staff including his old friend Bruce Davidson, now a detective inspector, were also tied up with the case, so there was a marked shortage of people to talk to. He decided it would be self-indulgent to ring up his wife for a talk, just because he had no one to play with. Coffee and a bun seemed like a sensible option; the first thing any policeman learned was to eat and attend to any other bodily needs when opportunity offered. It was a pity that there was no one to have coffee with, but he was not going to sit in solitary state in the canteen, he would go out and find out if the cash machine he remembered from three years ago was still there, and locate the other necessities of life. He pulled on a raincoat and checked in the mirror to see his tie was straight, bending his knees to get a clear view; at 6’ 4” mirrors tended to be hung too low for him. He needed, he decided, to get some weight off; his jaw and neck had thickened, and his shirt was tight on the collar. The trouble with a youth spent in hard training was that muscle turned to fat, starting well under forty which he st
ill was. It was difficult to imagine when he was going to find time to fit in any consistent exercise. Unlike most of his colleagues he had a wife with her own career, who would not appreciate his disappearing to play games at weekends, leaving her to the house and their eighteen-month-old son.
He checked at the door; rain was coming down in sheets, and he stood irresolute, undecided as to whether to make a dash to the little Italian café, or wait for a few minutes.
‘John?’ He turned, assuming it to be one of the uniformed women on reception who had called him, and stopped, frozen in his tracks. ‘I didn’t realise you were here.’
‘I wasn’t. I mean I’ve just arrived. Catherine, how are you?’
She was as beautiful as ever, and looked no older than she had three years ago, the blonde curly hair expensively cut, setting off the pale skin, straight nose and wide blue eyes. Passers-by still checked to look, and no doubt men still sat in meetings with Catherine Crane, resting their eyes on her.
‘I’m well, thank you. How are you? How is your wife?’
‘Francesca,’ he said, just in case she didn’t know whom he had married.
‘Indeed, Francesca.’ She was amused and he felt foolish. ‘I heard that you were coming back to C Division, but not when. I’m in the Fraud Squad.’
Well, thank God it’s that rather than C, he thought, and realised he was standing gazing at her for the sheer pleasure of her looks. ‘Are you a DI now?’