The Crime Tsar

by Nichola McAuliffe

  Jason thumped down the stairs in boots heavy enough to tackle the Matterhorn. Jenni’s seventeen-year-old son, her favoured child, was a negative picture of his father. Where Tom Shackleton was dark-haired and dark-eyed, Jason was blond with pale blue-green eyes. The sensuality of the father’s face was a pretty softness in the son’s, but the power in the body was the same.

  Jason watched his mother, weighing up her mood. He decided it was good and the wariness dropped from his face. He smiled. It was the same shy smile accompanied by a little dip of the head his father had. He saw Lucy watching him and he gave her a stroke with a piece of that smile.

  Jenni picked up keys, bag and sunglasses, although it was overcast with rain forecast.

  ‘Lucy, I’ve got to dash, I’m taking Jason to school. It’ll be Thursday – does that suit? Good. About seven-thirty, all right?’

  They were gone. A faint odour of Allure by Chanel settled around Lucy. Thursday. Six days. Six days to lose half a stone, get the tone back in her inner thighs, have laser treatment on her frown lines and find something to wear.

  She knelt on the carpet picking up tiny slivers of glass with marigold fingers and couldn’t conjure up the indignation she had felt about Jenni’s infidelity. She had forgotten she could feel this excited.

  Jenni stopped the car outside Jason’s exclusive academy. He kissed his mother briefly on the cheek. She never returned these kisses, but he knew what trouble there would be if he stopped.

  He was always aware of his size around her, or rather he was aware of how fragile she seemed. Exquisite was a word that seemed to suit her and, even though she was technically middle-aged, her skin was almost perfect, rarely exposed to the sun. His hand on her shoulder was clumsy on her tiny bones.

  ‘Mind my hair, Jason.’ The rebuke was mild, habitual.

  ‘Sorry, Mem.’ As the children grew up ‘Mum’ was too ageing, ‘Mummy’ too precious, so when one of Tom’s admiring colleagues called her the Memsahib, ‘Mem’ was accepted as a sweet alternative. ‘See you later.’ He unfolded himself from the car and lolloped off.

  The image of predator as attentive mother was uncannily apt for Jenni. Her treatment of her brood was practical, unsentimental. She never lavished them with overt signs of affection and had always shunned their sticky, childish embraces.

  Her physical treatment of them had always been brusque but never rough. There was no room for softness in love – the world was too harsh a place for that. Love, to Jenni, was possession. ‘My family’, ‘my husband’. ‘Mine’ was the first word she ever spoke. And she would brook no criticism of her children; even Tom’s mild observation that one of them might be less than perfect earned a bitter rebuke and several days of icy silence. Especially Jason, who, during Shackleton’s long periods away from home, had become her little man. The repository of her bitterness against her husband’s neglect. Jason had grown up believing his father treated her cruelly. It was only now he was beginning to see cracks in the flawless portait of his mother.

  Jenni watched her son go, proud of his good looks. He was as handsome as his father but the strength of Shackleton’s face and body were filtered through the delicacy of Jenni’s features. The resulting pure beauty delighted her.

  She stretched slightly and eased the Volvo into the traffic. At the traffic lights she absently reached down for her sunglasses, not noticing the appreciative glances from her neighbouring driver.

  Her delicacy and femininity were palpable even through side impact bars.

  Jenni enjoyed, relished, being the Chief Constable’s wife; the position, the perks, the recognition and subtle respect almost as much as being beautiful.

  While Tom had been inching his way up the pole she had worked her way up the Social Services system, developing a quiet, sly inflexibility indispensable when parting children from unfit parents. It was a career for which she was singularly unsuited, having no interest in or sympathy for those whose lives were lived in a confusion of ignorance, poverty and cruelty. But with limited qualifications, becoming a social worker had seemed preferable to sitting behind a till. Determined to escape the daily contact with the squalor she found, she worked to get an office-based job, supervising others. She was so successful so quickly she was offered an award, but she declined it. Her determination to stay out of the spotlight was interpreted as modesty; Shackleton knew it was mistrust. In Jenni’s experience nothing was given without obligation.

  She encouraged Tom to take centre stage, to excel, while she smiled and nodded and watched everything with her disconcerting green eyes. To become Chief Constable or Commissioner of one of the forty-three forces of England and Wales a candidate must leave their region in order to return. So when Tom was offered Assistant Chief Constable on the other side of the country she knew he would be in the ideal position to return, triumphant, as Chief when the present incumbent, a nice old boy who had only thirty-five years’ policing experience but no degree, retired.

  She had no hesitation in giving up her job to follow him, to make sure he met the right people and was seen in the right places. One of the right people she met and charmed was a local-paper editor, keen to ease her loneliness while Tom worked long hours and neglected his exquisite wife. His infatuation with her led him to invite her to write a personal-view piece about a news story concerning runaway foster children. He re-wrote her words, and her career as freelance conscience and broadsheet agony aunt took off.

  Her name was now known around the dinner tables that counted and, though she rarely wrote her own copy for tabloid or broadsheet, she became known as ‘the Glory of the Guardian’. Jenni was not stupid, she knew she couldn’t write without help, and, having outgrown the provincial editor, made sure the best features writers (male) were always available to her for lunch.

  Jenni had that invaluable ability to make them feel unique, important, attractive, indispensable. She would look up, invariably up, with that slight, sly, intimate smile and say, ‘I know I’m hopeless … would you mind?’ And they would re-write her columns, features, occasionally pages, and feel grateful for her attention.

  She sat in her car. Now aware of the stare from the man next to her, automatically she raised her chin, not that there was any hint of sag there. Even as she did it he was forgotten.

  Her mind was scurrying around the problem of her husband and his rival for the job of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. She thought of their conversation after the TV interview. If Tom didn’t get it what would be left? The ashes of ambition and a job advising on security for some merchant bank. God forbid he should be reduced to advertising anti-theft devices on television.

  But Jenni was, above all, a woman capable of anticipating defeat. Always envying the possibility of another’s achievement. If Geoffrey Carter was a hurdle to her husband’s advancement then he would have to be overcome.

  Jenni’s smile was a lovely display of the dental hygienist’s skill as she greeted her hairdresser. The parking of the car, the bore of driving into London, the paralysing tedium of conversation with the awkward adolescent washing her hair, were all to be endured for the honeyed cloud of softness cutter Clyde and colourist Tiny created. Jenni watched herself in the mirror as Clyde worked on her. She added just a touch more amusement to her expression as he chattered.

  She automatically absorbed the condition of the other women in the salon. Nice face, bad ankles. Cheap facelift. With satisfaction she noted the shortcomings of the other clients. But then arrived a girl. Eighteen, maybe twenty. Obviously a model. Five foot eleven, racehorse limbs and flawless facial beauty.

  The girl looked at, and dismissed, the other clients. They were all over thirty-five, some over forty. She opened a magazine for the irritatingly vacuous and looked at the pictures. Jenni was not an exception to this dismissal and felt a surge of anger. She was not like these other women – she was in direct competition with this leggy girl.

  She knew she had been put in the middle-aged compartment by this vapid child. Jenni s
aw her careful perfection was nothing against this girl’s real youth and untrammelled firmness of flesh.

  Clyde watched Jenni’s tightly controlled smile set. Under the noise of the dryers he murmured, ‘Anorexic. And coked up to her eyes. Get closer, she never washes.’

  He made a little face of disgust.

  Jenni’s smile unfroze.

  Clyde added a little oil to the massage.

  ‘Only does catalogue work now. On the skids at her age. Sad …’ He left the rest unsaid.

  Jenni relaxed.

  The manicurist, a suitably plain and subservient girl, started work on her right hand and another prepared for her pedicure. Her mind was now on her prospective lover. Although she had no intention of sleeping with him for quite a while, if ever, all this preparation was for him.

  In the next government he was certain to be very highly placed, in recognition of his loyal work certainly, but more for his quiet unreported power-broking. There were few people who mattered internationally who were out when he called. His wealth and influence were immense and his persona acceptable to a sceptical public. High office beckoned.

  Jenni thought dispassionately about him, the smallness of the man, the ugliness of him. The extraordinarily sweet smile. His reputation for generosity and tireless work for the disabled, the underprivileged and the impoverished elderly. He was a Victorian giant in a world of shallow, media-obsessed midgets.

  But none of this made him an attractive prospect sexually. And he knew it.

  She had, while he kissed her with all the subtle sensuality of a drain clearer, unbuttoned his shirt and slipped her long, slim fingers under the double yoke. Her revulsion at what they encountered was covered by her giggling.

  ‘Oh … bouclé shoulders … how extraordinary.’

  He was immediately powerless, embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t you like hairy backs? Some women don’t.’

  She saw her husband’s future as clearly marked as an airport runway.

  ‘I love them. Confucius says the bird will not nest in tree with no leaves.’

  She snuggled down to kiss his neck. The loose skin moved under her lips. Satisfied with her answer he let his hands move over her. His attempts at caresses set her teeth on edge and she squirmed under his touch. He mistook her movements for enjoyment.

  Jenni didn’t think of Tom or the way he touched her. Briefly, efficiently. She was one of those rare creatures who thinks only of what is happening in that moment. Jenni never examined her life. If things were bad it was the fault of circumstances or people who were against her and her family. If good, the fulfilment of her plans.

  Like a great beautiful fish she swam through life living by instinct, never intellect. What she learned that didn’t concur with what she knew was instantly dismissed. The world related to Jenni but Jenni could relate to no one. When she was young she had tried but found herself frighteningly at sea with the demands people made of her. But now she had created her own world, everyone in it a supporting actor. She had finally found some security in control.

  The model girl raised her arm to move her hair in a gesture used by young actresses to signify their seriousness. Jenni saw the ugly unshaven tangle in her armpit. Clyde saw it at the same moment. They both laughed. The girl glanced over, oblivious.

  ‘Ooh … Mrs Shackleton … I went to the most fantastic medium last week. Incredible. I didn’t tell her anything about me, not a word, but …’ Clyde took a breath and leaned close. ‘She knew all about Jerry and gave me a message from him.’

  Jenni was wide-eyed, hooked. Jerry’s death from AIDS six years before had left Clyde ricocheting from seance to Ouija board.

  ‘No!’ breathed Jenni. ‘Tell me.’

  Clyde, his voice an embroidery of excitement, told her about his wonderful discovery, a Danish medium living in a council house near Tower Bridge. Before Jenni left the salon she had the woman’s phone number.

  Lucy set the alarms and locked up the house. When she got back to Gary he was sitting by the back door in his wheelchair watching the squirrels eat the remains of his breakfast. As she came in he tried to turn the chair but his arms failed him. She tried not to let him see she’d noticed. He had refused for so long to have an electric wheelchair, arguing the manual would keep him fit. But, fight though he did, they both knew he couldn’t manage any more. Each week saw an erosion of his abilities. One less thing he could do for himself.

  Radio One gibbered out of the portable on the draining board. The unspeakable sadness of his fading had made it impossible to listen to Radio Three any more.

  One afternoon they’d been ambushed by a piece of Elgar and the dignity of its English melancholy had defeated them. It was the only time they had cried together. Cried at the inevitability of their future. So they had re-tuned to Radio Four and shortly after sat through a documentary on the last days of an MS sufferer. Now they just listened to Radio One, certain that they would hear nothing but aural Anaglypta.

  ‘Guess what?’

  Gary looked at Lucy, pleased at her happy mood, her positive air.

  ‘What? Jenni’s taken up DIY.’

  Lucy laughed. ‘No … nearly as unlikely.’

  ‘Tom’s turned down a chance to be on television.’

  Lucy winced. Gary’s name for Tom was John Lewis. Never Knowingly Under-exposed.

  ‘No,’ said Lucy, putting the kettle on. ‘An invitation to dinner at the Shackletons’. On Thursday. How about that?’

  Gary looked gratifyingly impressed.

  ‘We’ll have to get the nurses to come late. I’m sure Denise won’t mind. And we’d better give this wheelchair a polish – don’t want to spoil the look of Jenni’s dining room.’

  Despite himself, Gary was excited. ‘Going out’ had been reduced to feeding the ducks in the park. A dinner party would be a wonderful opportunity to pretend he was still normal. He was already calculating how long it would take to get ready and how long he would be able to stay before tiredness, pain and the arrival of the nurses to put him to bed would bring him back to the prison of his downstairs room.

  The thought of Gary being invited hadn’t occurred to Lucy. She didn’t know what to say. But the look on her face told Gary more than a polite ‘Oh, I don’t think you’re invited.’ They were both mortified.

  ‘Sorry. My mistake,’ said Gary. ‘You must go, of course. Do you good to get out for an evening.’

  Lucy knew it was too late to backtrack or say anything that would help. She also knew she was so desperate to go martyrdom wasn’t an option.

  ‘Only if you don’t mind being abandoned for the evening.’

  Lucy said it lightly, not allowing herself to think about his hopes lying on the carpet between them. She knew he hated the long evenings after he had been put to bed. Incapable of moving until he was heaved out in the morning. She turned away to make the tea, afraid he’d see in her face her need to be close to Tom Shackleton. Her guilt at her crush on him was worsened by Gary’s contempt for the man.

  ‘Thursday?’ said Gary. ‘Actually, that’s great because Jeremy’s coming over to talk electric wheelchairs … yes … all right … you’re right, it’s time to get one. I’d forgotten all about it. You see, I couldn’t have come anyway. And no … you don’t have to be here. I promise no furry dice or go-faster stripes.’

  ‘OK then. If you’re sure.’

  She knew she’d said it too quickly. Ashamed, she kept her face turned away from him. Her love, like the widow’s mite, was all his. There wasn’t much of it but it was all for Gary. What she felt for Tom was simply a burning, an excitement, a physical sickness with alternating depression and elation.

  ‘Shall we have a biscuit?’ Gary was already struggling to open the tin.

  ‘No.’ Lucy took it from him and lifted the lid: ‘Think of my bottom. I’ll never get into my black dress.’

  Gary smiled and took a biscuit. Lucy would never know how much he wanted to hate her for taking the biscuit-tin lid off for him. Or
that he was close to tears at not being included in the dinner invitation, at not being a part of life any more. As quickly as the cloud of depression formed he pushed it away, his anger now for allowing it to take shape. Self-pity and resentment had been anathema to Gary the well man and were enemies to be avoided daily by him now.

  He shared himself with a God Lucy could only imagine. To her a cruel dictator, to Gary a giver of lessons, joy and sorrow, as opportunities for improvement. His rapid deterioration was his cross, borne with strength and almost gratitude – his suffering meant someone else would be free of it. As if there was a world rationing of pain.

  Lucy went upstairs to the bedroom, still burning with her insensitivity to Gary. The room, in quiet need of fresh wallpaper, no longer theirs, now hers, still housed the wardrobe where Gary’s work suits hung limply. Unworn for three years and now too big.

  She knew she would one day be folding them into black plastic sacks, ready for charity or bin. But not yet, not yet.

  She laid out on the bed her evening outfits: a little black number, a dowdy trouser suit, and a silk dress she’d bought on impulse years ago in a designer sale.

  Quickly she undressed and looked at herself. Her body was one you’d see in any shop changing room. Politely called pear-shaped. The Great British Figure. It was, in fact, badly proportioned, with a long body and short legs. The bottom heavier than the top. Lucy was resigned to what she saw: mumsy, well-upholstered, nothing special. A practical model, built for comfort rather than speed or luxury.

  She thought of Jenni with her corvette lines and felt ugly, ungainly. Her excitement at going out, being close to Tom, dressing up, withered in the fierceness of reality.

  She picked up the little black number and stepped into it. She couldn’t pull it up past her thighs. She didn’t bother to re-hang it in the wardrobe, just put it in the waste bin by the bed. The trouser suit had that sad look of clothes bought in charity shops. She sat holding the silk dress for several minutes before she tried it on, unwilling to see herself again so plain and unattractive.