The Crime Tsar

by Nichola McAuliffe

  She turned to look at him: he was grey with tiredness. He put the backs of his fingers to her face and lightly rubbed the down on her cheek. There was no sex in the contact, just comfort. Perhaps his mouth tasted like the inside of an army boot too. Well, if he wanted to kiss her maybe she could hold her breath. She put down her glass and sat back. His eyes were closing. He was struggling to push off his left shoe with his right foot. Having managed that he did the same with his socked left foot. The wool kept slipping on the leather. Lucy automatically leaned over and helped him.

  ‘Smelly feet. Sorry,’ he murmured.

  The only thing she could smell was expensive shoes. Long sight and innocuous feet were the rewards of age.

  She sat back and picked up her wine.

  ‘Cheers.’

  She said it quietly turning to look at him with what she hoped was a seductive half-smile. His head had slumped on to his chest. He was sound asleep. Lucy watched him while she sipped the rather good Sauvignon. Jenni had abandoned Chardonnay when women who wore Giorgio perfume started to drink it instead of rum and Coke. He was snoring slightly. Lucy thought she might have fallen in love with him as this just seemed to make him more attractive. She wondered if she should wake him up, pack him off to bed, remind him to clean his teeth. She wished she could, that this was the end of a normal day for Tom and Lucy Shackleton in their lovely home … She sighed a small polite sigh, put their glasses out of harm’s way and left the house.

  Part Three

  The election had dominated the news since its date was announced. The pundits were talking themselves round in circles, trying, for the sake of keeping it alive until the poll, to convince the public there was a chance of the government being defeated and the removal van fetching up at Number 10 on the morning of 22 November.

  Behind the scenes the jockeying for position was absorbing everyone who thought they had a future and quite a few who knew they only had a past.

  Jenni was finding herself more and more in demand to write sympathetic features about various hopefuls, most of whom seemed to be earnest young women who wouldn’t know an original thought if it got up in their fat-free yoghurt and bit them. Jenni had recently turned her back on the broadsheet left and was concentrating on her natural constituency, the female readership of the Daily Mail.

  She was sitting in the Ivy with a particularly irritating first-time MP from Birmingham. She hadn’t meant to waste a good lunch on this earnest, shining young thing but the seasoned battleaxe with whom she was to have lunched was called to a crisis meeting at the Treasury, so rather than waste the booking Jenni threw out her line and reeled in this ambitious girl who was, according to the press office, ‘a bright hope for the future’. God help them, thought Jenni.

  They were sitting facing the entrance, side by side on one of the rather awkward banquettes that lined the room. The sun was making pretty lights through the coloured diamonds of the windows and the Lovely of London were grazing with confident noise. The bar area was busy with people, some eating at tables by the door, the poor corner. She watched them coming in, influential, famous, all on first-name terms with the maître d’.

  The girl by her side was droning on about the importance of being ‘on message’. An expression Jenni thought had fallen into disrepute after Labour’s first term in government. Perhaps it had only just filtered through to the Black Country.

  Then the swing door opened and Robert MacIntyre walked in with Geoffrey Carter. Jenni hadn’t seen MacIntyre in the weeks since the encounter in his flat. The bite marks had faded but she could still feel him forcing entry … She controlled the expression on her face but had to put down her fork because her hands were shaking. They paused by the maître d’s desk, MacIntyre surveying the room, making sure he was seen, checking who would be paying court to him before he left. Then Carter saw Jenni and pointed her out. The Gnome’s face lit up. They came straight towards her. She felt sick. The idiot child next to her was almost wetting herself with excitement.

  ‘Jenni, what a lovely surprise. How are you? And your husband?’

  Jenni gave the right responses, smiling.

  ‘And of course you know Geoffrey Carter.’

  ‘Yes. Oh Geoffrey, congratulations, wonderful news. A baby Carter! You must be so thrilled, and looking forward to more time at home, I should think. There really is nothing like watching them grow up in the first few years. It really does go so quickly. Do tell Eleri I’ll drop in later in the week.’

  ‘She’d appreciate that. I’m afraid she’s not having the easiest time. She’s a bit mature to be having her first. Thank God men only have to put up with shaving, eh?’

  Jenni laughed.

  ‘But you’re looking very well. Are you recovered? Oh, I’m sorry, may I introduce Belinda Sharrow?’

  The Gnome was instant charm, overwhelming the silly ninny simpering on Jenni’s right.

  ‘Belinda, of course, one of our fastest-rising stars. Keep an eye on her, Jenni, she’s got a very bright future come the election. Now, we must sit down. I tried you a couple of times but your son, was it? said you’d gone to a health farm … I long to hear all about it. I’ll give you a call – we must get together again soon. I so enjoyed our last meeting.’

  ‘Mmm … me too.’ She sounded gratifyingly genuine but her hands were shaking and she felt herself sweating.

  Belinda hadn’t noticed a thing. She was twittering.

  ‘God, how can someone that ugly be that attractive? Don’t you think so? He’s asked me to go and see him a couple of times – do you think I should?’

  Jenni looked at her silly simpering face.

  ‘Oh yes, you should. It’ll do your career no harm.’

  ‘It’s not my career I’m thinking of. I’ve heard a rumour that he’s got the most enormous thingy, you know.’

  She laughed, looking across at the two men. MacIntyre raised his glass. Carter smiled.

  ‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he? Geoffrey Carter? But I hear he never plays away. Such a waste.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenni, wishing she’d shut up or be hit by a falling chandelier.

  ‘Your husband is a chief constable too, isn’t he?’

  Jenni didn’t like the way she made it sound as common a job as bus driving and no mention of his good looks. She might not want him herself but she liked other women to desire him.

  Belinda continued while attacking her galette inelegantly.

  ‘I thought he was very good on Question Time. But Carter is very impressive, isn’t he? No wonder they want him for this new thing.’

  Jenni was still distracted by MacIntyre. She wiped her hands on her linen napkin.

  ‘What new thing?’

  The question was automatic. Jenni’s mind was back in the ‘health farm’ from which she’d recently emerged. A celebrity refuge for neurotics and addicts. Jenni had gone in as one and come out the other.

  ‘Oh, I thought you’d know …’

  Belinda had spilled the crumbs of her bread across the tablecloth.

  Jenni placed a translucent fingertip on one of the larger pieces. She wanted to pour the girl’s glass of mineral water over her badly cut hair.

  ‘No, I don’t know, Belinda. Do tell me.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think I’m telling any secrets … no, I know I’m not. Apparently he’s favourite to head up a new force.’

  Jenni still wasn’t hooked.

  ‘What? Are they creating a new county or something?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Belinda, eagerly accepting her Caesar salad from the waiter. ‘It’s a new national thing – like the FBI. You know… they’ll handle all the big stuff all over the country. I believe he’ll even have jurisdiction in Northern Ireland in some cases. He’s going to be a very powerful man. The most senior police officer in Britain. The Crime Tsar, they’re calling him – there’s never been anything quite like it. Bit of a risk if you ask me, mind you we’ve anointed more tsars than the Patriarch of Moscow and most of them are as much use as c
hocolate fireguards. Oh please, don’t write that. Strictly off the record!’

  The waiter put another plate between them.

  ‘Ooh, what gorgeous chips. Here, Jenni. Dig in. Are you all right? You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’

  Jenni couldn’t speak. She shook her head, picked up her handbag and, with deliberate care, walked from the table, behind the wooden barrier where the waiters busied themselves, to the carpeted stairs. Up the stairs past pictures of louche women smoking cigarettes and into the Ladies.

  A large black woman in a nylon overall was arranging yellow flowers in a bright vase. Jenni nodded. The woman beamed back. Sitting behind her by the open window was an older woman, also black, but skeletally thin. Jenni felt panic. She was desperate to be alone, to rebuild herself.

  She locked the door of her cubicle and sat down. In her bag was a bottle of pills. The bag wasn’t large but she couldn’t find them. In her frustration she tipped the contents on to the floor. But she couldn’t see the bottle. She scrabbled through tissues, filofax, perfume, cosmetics. There was no gap under the door. It must be here. It must be. It wasn’t. In a fury of frustration she smashed the door open into the dividing wall. The surprise of what she saw almost made her laugh. A third black woman, this time well over six feet tall with a scarred face and sightless eyes, was standing there, her nylon overall too short and the arms reaching barely below her elbows. Like the Goon friend of Olive Oyl she blocked out the light and was compellingly abnormal.

  She was holding the bottle of pills.

  Jenni was too taken aback to wonder how she’d got them.

  Her hand reminded Jenni of the enormity and delicacy of a gorilla’s. Suddenly Jenni was embarrassed. Could the woman see she had mentally compared her to a great ape?

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Jenni with a sufficient smile, taking the bottle.

  She closed the door. The lavatories seemed a little overstaffed – she’d have to mention it when she left. She took the top off the bottle. One pill? Two little pills? They were only tranquillisers after all and she really needed one – two – now. She swallowed the two little pieces of magic and sat with her eyes closed watching them take effect.

  She had woken up in the middle of the night after Lucy put her to bed, alone and surrounded by demons forcing her to feel him again, ramming his way into her, chewing on her. Whimpering, she ran downstairs. By the time she reached the foot of them she was screaming, fighting off Robert MacIntyre. With the logic of the insane she thought she could cut him out of her. A knife, a carving knife.

  She was in the kitchen when Tom was woken by the noise. Lucy was no longer beside him. After years of Jenni’s hysterical outbursts he didn’t hurry to find out the cause. As he crossed the hall her words became clearer. She was screaming a rosary of obscenities. He thought there must be someone with her. Lucy. She must be attacking Lucy. He opened the door. For a moment he was confused; he could see blood and his wife attacking someone or something with a carving knife but he couldn’t see Lucy. Then he saw it was her own body Jenni was slashing into, it was her own blood sprayed across the kitchen cabinets.

  Jenni remembered him grabbing her, the knife skidding across the floor and his arms round her holding her as he might have done a lover or a violent criminal. She wanted to pass out but her mind wouldn’t let her. The ambulance attendants, young people who shouted her name as if she was at the other end of a tunnel, loaded her on to a wheeled chair. She was smothered in a green blanket.

  She would never forget the way her husband looked at her. With pity and revulsion. An odd thought struck her as she was pushed out into the street, lit by the silent blue strobe of the ambulance light: Tom would never willingly touch her again, not with anything like affection and certainly not with desire. With one look… wasn’t that a song? With one look he told her she was the other side of repulsive.

  He didn’t travel with her in the ambulance. He said he’d follow in the car. When she saw him again he was distant, unable to find words in his limited emotional vocabulary for her. She had been stripped of her dressing gown and put into a backless hospital shift.

  She knew he had seen the marks on her. She turned her head away from him. There was no point trying to explain to Tom Shackleton; the time for talking had gone soon after they married. The time for listening before. She was too complex, too frightening for him to want to tackle. And in her frustration with his limitations she had been cruel to him too many times to find his compassion now. Never complain, never explain. An unbelievably stupid maxim that had come to symbolise their marriage.

  During Jenni’s lost weeks in the clinic to which she’d been transferred after initial psychiatric assessment, she had been surprised not to receive a visit from Lucy. She had decided to be hurt by this until she discovered Tom had told Lucy Jenni didn’t want visitors. Even Tom only dropped in occasionally, awkwardly and not for long, delivering and replacing clothes and flowers. They had little to say to one another that wouldn’t open an unacknowledged wound.

  Tom felt uncomfortable around so many people whose grip on reality was fragile or non-existent.

  Lucy had phoned to say Eleri Carter had been on wanting to send her some flowers. Would she like them? During their conversation it became clear Tom had been very economical with the truth of what had happened, and very few people knew Jenni was ‘ill’. Indeed she was surprised and annoyed that Eleri had found out.

  Jenni didn’t know how much Lucy knew but maintained the fiction of a health farm, being wrapped in seaweed and drinking carrot juice. She assured her she’d be home soon and that it wasn’t worth coming all that way to visit. Lucy, dear docile Lucy, seemed satisfied and rang off promising to clean out the cutlery drawer.

  The next day, while Jenni was sitting in the vast conservatory surrounded by subdued, white-gowned patients, Eleri appeared. Jenni was initially embarrassed and angry to be found so, so far from herself, worse, unmade up. But her aggressive reaction was soon soothed by the serene good temper of the other woman. She positively glowed with pregnant happiness, wearing what looked like a cast-off circus tent in case anybody didn’t notice her condition.

  Eleri’s quiet Welsh voice and calm presence really helped Jenni. They talked about things Jenni hadn’t thought of for years. Morning sickness that in Eleri’s case went on for twenty-four hours. Piles, varicose veins, sagging pelvic floors and the chances of Carter getting anything approaching conjugal rights ever again. They laughed at the lack of dignity and downright humiliation of childbearing and found after an hour together they’d really enjoyed themselves.

  Jenni didn’t object when the other woman said she’d like to visit again and soon Jenni was looking forward to the increasingly rotund figure waddling in, always carrying flowers or fruit or silly magazines.

  It soon became their habit to sit with a box of chocolates reading out the horoscopes and the problem pages and shrieking with laughter. All the jagged sophistication fell away from Jenni and Eleri was rewarded with the revelation of a very funny, wonderfully attractive and totally natural companion.

  But then Eleri had never seen her as anything else. She had touched a part of Jenni no one else had ever realised was there. A small good heart arrested in development by sex, envy and mistrust. And now, twenty-five years after that little heart stopped, a late girly flowering had restarted it.

  It was raining the afternoon the conversation turned to husbands and lovers. They were playing an endless game of Monopoly and working their way through a box of Harrods chocolates. Jenni liked Harrods, Eleri found it rather vulgar, having been brought up to dislike conspicuous expense, but she battled through sprawling tourists and the loud-voiced wealthy for her friend.

  ‘Were you a virgin when you met Geoffrey?’

  It wasn’t the reply Eleri had expected when she asked for rent on Leicester Square but she just said, ‘Nearly. That’ll be ten pounds.’

  Jenni burst out laughing.

  ‘What do you mean nearly?’<
br />
  Eleri tilted her head coyly.

  ‘Well, it didn’t really count because he was wearing a condom.’ She paused. ‘And he lost his erection. So I don’t think that counts.’

  Jenni nodded and handed over the money.

  ‘I never tried again till Geoff. What about you?’

  Jenni laughed.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I was ever a virgin. Tom was.’

  Eleri threw the dice. Five.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  Jenni sat back, elegant even in a towelling dressing gown.

  ‘I’ve …’ She stopped.

  Eleri waited.

  ‘It’s stupid, all this crap they put you through here. We do what we do.’

  She stood up quickly and toppled the game board off the low table between them. Eleri automatically put her hands out to stop it falling. Jenni didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘It was his own fault. Tom had only himself to blame. He made me feel trapped. I can’t tell you how he used to look at me. God, it was horrible, like a fucking dog. He worshipped me, followed me around. If he’d stayed at home that night … it was his own fault. These fucking psychiatrists … there’s nothing behind it.’ She was arguing with a voice in her head. ‘No fucking trauma. It’s a weapon …’ She was angry now, impotently furious.

  Eleri, far from being shocked at Jenni’s language or savagery, saw a desperately unhappy child she wanted to calm and comfort.

  ‘Sleeping with men has got nothing, fucking nothing, to do with self-esteem. It’s crap. Total crap.’ She was talking not to Eleri but at the walls, the door. ‘I’m beautiful, you ugly, ugly bastards … I’m not like you. I’m different …’

  She stepped backwards and caught her leg on her chair, causing her to sit down suddenly, comically. But Eleri wasn’t laughing. She reached towards her friend and, at the touch of her fingers on Jenni’s hair, Jenni calmed down but she was coldly angry.

  ‘Tom thought I was some porcelain doll. It was his own fault. Sex is just something men want, that’s all. That’s all it is. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s like money, Eleri, you spend it. It gets you things.’