The Crime Tsar

by Nichola McAuliffe

  Good manners satisfied and Danny gone, he presented Carter with his armful of offerings while Alexander screeched and fought with Eleri in the kitchen. Egg cartons as dinosaurs, paintings on grey cartridge paper and a washing-up-liquid-bottle moon rocket.

  Danny, getting back into the car, was still thinking about the family, the two boys who bore no resemblance to their parents. The sons the doctors told Eleri she couldn’t have because faulty ovaries had robbed her of her fertility.

  She and Carter had met at university, she a fresher as he was leaving. She had fallen in love with his humanity and delicate beauty and he with her capable serenity.

  They married quickly and for years they’d fostered children of all colours and abilities then, some time after Ceauşescu when things should have improved, Eleri had gone to Romania and found two lice-ridden abandoned Roma boys. Illegitimate and gypsy, they had no hope. Sharing a rusting cot, tied to the bars and atrophying physically and mentally into some state less than human. Eleri, desperate for kids, and Geoffrey, desperate for her happiness, brought the boys home after two years of fighting domestic bureaucracy. Two beautiful smiling cherubs on whom they lavished love and food in the belief that would be enough to stop the nightmares, stop the rocking and the endless staring at their hands.

  Peter responded quickly, miraculously finding himself at the top of his class at age ten and certain to find a place in a good academic senior school. But Alexander, a year younger, stopped smiling at eighteen months and had never spoken. Just noises, noises that sounded to Danny like the screaming of a chimpanzee. Terrified and terrifying screeches.

  He had no idea what he would have done if one of his own children had turned out like that. Yes he did. He would have walked out rather than live with that level of damage. He wished he could be a better person but knew himself too well to think he might ever change.

  Back in the house Carter was wondering how he’d ever thought they were happy without these two gorgeous monsters. He was the only person who could contact Alexander. Eleri tried, as she tried daily to love him, but she found his lack of response to her devastating. She’d never been hugged by him, never had a kiss or even felt his head asleep on her shoulder; it was like caring for an aggressive un-housetrained dog. But she would never give up trying.

  Later that evening the two boys were asleep, tucked into the armchair either side of their father. Alexander, when exhausted, would always find a shelter by his father. Eleri was sitting on the floor sipping a cup of hot chocolate. She was no longer jealous of Alexander’s attachment to her husband, but she’d never stop hoping it would be her he curled up next to one day.

  She was very quiet. Carter’s attempts at conversation had met with monosyllabic replies since tea. He’d asked her what was wrong but received short shrift.

  This wasn’t what he’d imagined for his homecoming. A bit of hero worship would have been nice. A bit of tender loving care. She’d been an angel up till now, during the aftermath of the siege and in the hospital.

  But nevertheless the security of domesticity had settled Carter’s doubt and turmoil like a strong painkiller.

  He was dozing with his cheek against Alexander’s hair when Eleri said, ‘Come on. Bedtime. All three of you boys. Upstairs. Now.’

  With great protests at Mummy’s bullying Peter took his brother up to start the task of cleaning teeth and climbing into their pyjamas. Eleri got Carter to his feet, turned out the lights and checked the front door was locked. They stood together in the hall. Carter put his arms around her, full of quiet love, and content.

  Carter breathed in deeply, feeling clean for the first time since the siege. Since being so close to Shackleton. It was as if something in the man had infected him. Ridiculous. He held the soft body of his wife tightly.

  ‘Oh Eleri. I do love you.’

  Her response was automatic. But although physically close he could feel her distance.

  ‘And I love you. Did you see the plant?’

  ‘Couldn’t miss it. What do you want to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know, Geoff… but we can’t get rid of it, they might come round and you know what Jenni’s like, she’s bound to want to see it.’ Guilty at being a little less than generous she added, ‘But it was a kind thought and she sent me a hundredweight of lilies.’ She looked at the triffid. ‘We’d better leave it where it is, I suppose. I don’t like it though, do you? Looks like something out of a Grimm’s fairy-tale.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  He wasn’t listening but kissing her, burrowing into her generous welcoming flesh. Suddenly she pushed him off. Her face was contorted, trying to stop herself crying. She failed. She was sobbing and shouting and almost laughing.

  Carter was completely taken aback.

  ‘Eleri … what is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘What’s the matter? You … you. I hate you … I really hate you. No, I don’t mean it … but how could you? You could have been killed. They wanted to kill you. Look at you. Look at what they’ve done to you. It wasn’t your job … you should never have gone in there. You didn’t think about us … we’re your family. But your job, your bloody job always has to come first. It wasn’t worth it. Was it? Look at you. How could you? Why? Why? …’

  She exhausted herself and slumped against him howling. Peter’s worried face appeared over the banisters. Alexander started to moan and rock. Carter reassured them.

  ‘It’s all right. Mummy’s just a bit upset, she’ll be all right in the morning. She’s just tired.’

  ‘No she’s not,’ came the muffled voice from his chest. ‘She’s pregnant.’

  Time went into slow motion. And into the spaces between the previously close-packed seconds poured peace, love and warmth. A miracle had happened and there were no words, no whoops of joy or shouts of happiness that could encompass what he felt. It was as if they were suddenly alone in a snow-filled landscape, not a breath of wind, not a cloud to obscure the serenity of the star-filled sky. Muffled silence and absolute perfection. Carter went blank, didn’t know what to say. Then he remembered.

  ‘Are you sure? How long?’

  ‘Twelve weeks on the day of the siege. I’d put the champagne in the fridge. I couldn’t tell you before. In case. But they say three months is a milestone, don’t they?’

  Carter couldn’t speak. Nothing in his life compared to this. Commissioner, Tsar, nothing. Just that little frog on a string growing inside the woman he was holding far too tightly in his arms. His own child. Their own baby.

  He knew it was a girl. A girl whose grazed knees he’d already kissed better, a girl who’d want to tell her dad all her secrets. A girl he’d walk down the aisle on her wedding day. This was the only dream he’d had left and it had seemed as likely as scoring the winning goal for England in the World Cup Final. He beamed up at the two worried little faces squeezed through the banisters. Relieved that everything was all right Peter grinned back and quietened Alexander.

  They went upstairs with not a word spoken. Eleri remembered the Virgin Mary had held the news in her heart. It had always puzzled her but now it made perfect sense.

  Peter shyly cuddled his mum. Carter pulled Alexander towards him and his embrace encompassed them all. It was the moment he would remember as the happiest of their lives.

  Reality would wait till tomorrow. He knew the future was now anything but a foregone conclusion. But tonight …

  Carter couldn’t bear to let go of his family and reached across them to turn out the landing light. He looked down at the plant.

  It looked beautiful.

  By six o’clock Lucy was plucked and trussed like an oven-ready turkey. She had bought a new shade of eye shadow and kept checking in the mirror that it was all right.

  Jenni’s flowers were arranged and she had made cups of tea for the caterer who was to prepare the meal.

  ‘Why don’t you take your frock off. It’ll crease sitting here.’

  Gary broke the silence that had settled on them.
In Lucy’s head there was no silence, though. She was deafened with contradictory thoughts. Wishes. Hopes. And the one word, Tom, repeating over and over.

  ‘Yes. You’re right. I’m ready much too early.’

  She went upstairs and put on a shapeless dress she’d bought years before when she thought she was pregnant. She could put it on now without even a moment’s thought of those few weeks. Was this really the most excited she’d been since then? She tried to think of other times as she re-hung the silk on its cushioned lilac hanger.

  Suddenly her life looked poor and mean. An existence on the periphery of experience. In less than a minute she had gone from the intoxication of anticipation to the flat recognition of futility. What hopes did she hold for tonight? Whatever they were they shrivelled as she summoned them up for scrutiny.

  Lucy, you are ordinary. You are an ordinary woman, neither plain nor pretty, married to a pleasant man with a progressive disease. Don’t make a fool of yourself. Why not? If it’s all so written, if there’s really no hope of slipping the chain of inevitability, you might as well delude yourself into happiness as much as possible. Yes. Well, why not just take drugs and be done with it.

  And of course she knew Jenni didn’t really want her there – she was just a cover for Jenni and her politician. Jenni probably didn’t know any other women who could come to dinner alone and not be competition. Lucky for Jenni she had someone quite sad and unlikely to upstage even the soup.

  Her thoughts were speeding again but now in a downwards spiral. If she didn’t stop them she knew she would think herself into the fuck-off, Big Ears position.

  She sat on the bed, picked up the stuffed pink elephant Gary had given her for their first Christmas and plaited the ridiculous tuft of nylon hair on its head.

  ‘You see, Noddy wants to borrow Big Ears’ lawn mower.’ Talking pushed her thoughts away. ‘So he leaves his house full of optimism, but by the time he reaches Big Ears’ front gate he’s thought of a thousand reasons why he’ll refuse him and humiliate him so when Big Ears answers the door Noddy says, “Fuck off, Big Ears.”’

  The pink elephant’s expression didn’t change but Lucy lay back and laughed out loud at the idea of belligerently banging on Jenni’s door and shouting, ‘Fuck off, Jenni,’ when it was opened. She said it again and it made her laugh more. She said it again and laughed until she ached, clutching the pink elephant to her stomach. The ringing doorbell brought her back to a sort of reality. A reality where there were at least possibilities and the future wasn’t written out like a bus timetable.

  The nurses bundled into the hall, as always, full of good humour. This particular team, Denise and Mel, were Gary’s favourites. They always flirted with him and made him laugh. Watching them with Gary Lucy felt guilty over not being more grateful for what she had. As she put the kettle on for his girls’ cup of tea (‘Mugs, please, Lucy, mugs, me and Mel only have cups at funerals’) she wondered about the workings of her mind – it was always scurrying about trying to find an emotion or a feeling to wallow in.

  One minute elation, next depression and anger, now guilt. She looked at her carefully made-up face in the chrome of the kettle: but you’d never know it from that ovine stare, would you? She made the tea and took it through.

  Gary was suspended above his wheelchair in a sling attached to a flimsy-looking mobile hoist. It had cost £700 but meant that, theoretically, they could get away on holiday, just booking a local nurse at the destination. Of course they had never risked it. And now they’d bought the hoist they couldn’t afford a holiday.

  Denise was threatening to leave him hanging there while they drank their tea and all three were shrieking with laughter. Gary so helpless he looked in danger of falling out of the grubby white cradle. Lucy looked at them. If she could only settle for what she had. Be content. Be grateful. If she could just go to the phone and call Jenni, tell her Gary wasn’t well, his cold had got worse today, that wouldn’t be a lie. If she didn’t go to dinner maybe she could start tomorrow without Tom Shackleton, without discontent and this fidgety longing for excitement.

  Maybe if she joined the Open University or the amateur dramatics. A nice hobby. Something to take her mind off the great expanse of nothing inside her. That big echoing hole shaped like Tom Shackleton.

  ‘Gary, how’s your cold now?’

  ‘Oh, getting worse,’ he said cheerfully as he was lowered on to his bed.

  ‘Only I could not go tonight. I wouldn’t mind. Really.’

  She found she was desperate for him to say yes, stay at home. She panicked. She suddenly saw the evening as a science-fiction window between dimensions; if she passed through she would be unable to turn back. Nothing would be the same again.

  Gary was sipping his tea, a biscuit, brought by Denise, held ready for dunking.

  ‘No, you go. I told you, I’m talking wheelchairs tonight.’

  ‘That’s his story,’ hooted Mel. ‘He’s got girls coming in, haven’t you, Gary? You’re having one of them orgies.’

  ‘Ooh, can I come?’ Denise’s voice was loud, as if talking over the noise of a party. ‘I’ll bring the baby oil.’

  Gary was enjoying himself.

  ‘I think I’d be better with WD40.’

  Lucy wanted to be a part of this fun. It might be false, it might be forced, but it was safe. She wanted them to let her in. But it was good for Gary because she wasn’t a part of it, this was his. He was the centre of attention for these two women. They knew his body better than Lucy: they were close, they were his. Lucy remembered from her brief youthful sojourn as a care assistant the way the intimacy of illness would exclude wives. The unconditional love offered by infatuated patients to their nurses. The simplicity of affection between strangers.

  ‘Isn’t it time you put your dress back on, Luce? Show Mel and Denise.’

  Lucy smiled and said, ‘I’ll just pop over the road and make sure everything’s all right.’

  Jenni and Tom arrived back from Buckingham Palace at five o’clock. They had eaten their Lyon’s Swiss rolls and chatted briefly with members of the Royal Family who had been politely curious about the Flamborough Estate and politely concerned about Tom’s burns. Jenni was thrilled when a princess in a hat said she was an avid reader of her newspaper articles. Several junior members of the government paid them court.

  Jenni was very satisfied. Her husband was being regarded with respect. And he was, above all, her creation. She let him hold her hand in the car on the way home. Shackleton found holding hands comforting. It was never a prelude to further intimacy. She approved of him and that made his life more comfortable.

  Lucy tapped apologetically on the door. A radiant Jenni let her in, pleased to see her, overwhelming her with gratitude and praise. The caterer was pottering in the kitchen and there was an atmosphere of happy anticipation. Tom went upstairs to change. As he did he winked at Lucy, a funny, conspiratorial flicker that made her giggle. Lucy went into the kitchen to see if there was anything she could do, reluctant to go home and leave the memory of that half-smiled wink. When she came out, Jenni was picking up and putting down bottles. Tom was coming down the stairs and the mood had changed. He felt it as cold as the air from an open freezer. Jenni turned on him, two mixer bottles in her hand. Tom winced, ready for her to throw them. Lucy, taken unaware, stood still in the doorway, not daring to move.

  ‘Where’s the ginger ale?’

  As always Jenni caught him unprepared, the most successful policeman in the country, the darling of the media, the man of achievement.

  ‘What ginger ale?’

  ‘Yes,’ she hissed triumphantly. ‘What ginger ale? There isn’t any. You’ve drunk it, haven’t you?’

  He was unsure what the right answer was. He took too long to decide.

  ‘You stupid prat. Don’t look at me like that! Why the hell didn’t you tell me we’d run out?’

  As always he rolled over.

  ‘I’ll go and get some. Now.’

  The cater
er, coming out of the kitchen, was embarrassed by this onslaught.

  ‘I’ve got some ginger beer in the van.’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ spat Jenni.

  The caterer quailed and went back to her hors d’oeuvres. Lucy, helpless, looked at Shackleton but he could only look away, braced for the onslaught. All he could feel was humiliation, which seemed to hang round him like the smell of unwashed clothes.

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. You’re unbelievable …’

  Jenni was screaming now, incoherent. Her outbursts had been getting more frequent but he didn’t want to consider the possibility that she might be deteriorating. That these ‘turns’ might be a sign of something seriously wrong. While he sometimes hated her he often thought nostalgically – and probably inaccurately – of their early, gentle days together when she was his beloved Jen. Now Lucy was showing him that gentleness but he knew what would happen if he trusted her. He glanced across at her, cowering in the kitchen doorway, willing the carpet to swallow her. Witnessing his cowardice. How could any woman love or respect a man too weak to stand up to his wife? Jenni was destroying him and Lucy was part of the humiliation.

  But the pain Jenni caused him concentrated his mind remarkably on his job. Lucy was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He picked up his car keys.

  ‘Oh, you can’t even walk to the shop – no wonder you’re so fat.’

  She was still shouting as he closed the door.

  He didn’t drive to the nearest repository of ginger ale but to a large busy supermarket where he knew he’d have to queue behind families with trolleys of industrial packs of everything from pizzas to nappies. Buying time with a dozen small bottles of ginger ale. Even the wailing of ill-disciplined children was preferable to the screaming of his wife.

  When he parked back in the driveway he glanced across the road. He could see Gary laughing, his nurses clowning with the hoist. Lucy, minutes ago holding him in her eyes with a gentleness that hurt, now holding mugs of tea. She couldn’t have understood it was her tenderness that caused him more pain than Jenni’s onslaughts. Shackleton saw her laughing too. Had she told Gary? Had they had a laugh about poor pussy-whipped Tom Shackleton? She looked so happy. He envied the warmth of the scene. He wanted to be in the picture as he’d wanted to be in Christmas cards when a child. To feel wrapped round with love. He envied Gary his wife and saw no irony in envying a man whose wife was all that was left of a life once as successful as his own.