The Crime Tsar

by Nichola McAuliffe

  He’d worked all evening at home, reading and re-reading his law books, trying not to listen to his mother talking to the television. Eventually he’d had enough. He decided to go into work for some peace but then, restless, walked round to Jenni’s, although his station was in another area, young police officers not being trusted in their own communities. It was raining. A fine drizzle. Loud teenagers were swearing at each other for lack of anything more interesting to do.

  When he arrived at Jenni’s house, he wasn’t sure if he should ring the doorbell. Maybe it wouldn’t be right. Her parents would be embarrassed, feel they had to ask him in. The television would be turned down but not off… He stood, unwilling to go home. Drizzle turned to rain.

  A car pulled up. The lights were out. The rain made it impossible to see into the car. He stood watching for ten minutes. He didn’t know if Jenni was in the car but he was dully sure she was. Dull. His mother said he was dull. Everything about him was dull. He was looking forward to moving away from her. To starting again with his lovely Jenni. She didn’t think he was dull. She loved him and he loved her like he’d never loved anything in his dry life. And now, at almost twenty-six, thanks to her he was a success, envied and disliked for his beautiful fiancée and obviously glittering future.

  The passenger door opened and Jenni’s legs appeared: her skirt was rucked up high under her thighs. As she leaned forward to get out of the car the driver’s hand reached round and pulled her back. She hung half in and half out of the car, he watched her kiss the unseen man. Straining to satisfy him she stretched herself the better to accommodate his tongue and hands.

  Tom watched.

  He watched, no less dull than before. There was no move in him to pull her out of the car, to punch the man whose tattooed hand he could see slipping under her skirt. He just stood, dully staring. Finally she got out, a little bit tipsy, a little bit giggly. She waved to the unseen driver as he roared off, fuelled not by petrol but testosterone.

  She balanced, stork-like, searching for her door keys. Tom walked across. She was standing under a street lamp, the better to see past the contents of her bag. She was startled when he said hello and she looked up at him. The same pure green eyes as when she was thirteen. He remembered the shining admiration then and saw the alcoholic resentment now. Her blouse was open and he could see the lace of her bra. And on her skin the pattern of the driver’s teeth, the red-brown blotches of his sucking lips. Her smeared face smiled at him above a collar of love bites.

  ‘He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be.’

  She was drunk and the words were spat out in angry self-defence but nothing could have hurt him more. He turned away and walked up to her front door. His love was left to die on the rendered wall as so many of his flowers had been before. The evening was never mentioned again. They married and moved away; they had children and created an image of success and confidence.

  The children came quickly and Tom was separated from his family for the first time after four and a half years of marriage. A posting to another area, a place Jenni didn’t want to live in with a gaggle of fractious under-fives.

  A female officer saw him alone in the canteen and took pity on him, the lonely handsome giant. The same pity got him into the beds of numerous women over the next five years. Then he stopped. Stopped sleeping with all the women who wanted to nurse his shyness or who perceived in him a lack of need. There was no point. He had never been close enough to anyone to find out that all women would not, in time, metamorphose into his mother or his wife.

  But each time he bedded a woman he’d ask the same question: ‘You won’t hurt me, will you?’

  And each one would cradle him and reassure him. But he never waited to find out. Always got his retaliation in first and left them puzzled and angry at his sudden indifference. His withdrawal and denial.

  Eventually, disgusted with himself and their easy availability, he just stopped having any contact with women. It was easy in the police force, in the days before it became a police service, easy to deal only with a uniform. Sex was a form of release to him and now he was being promoted quickly through the hierarchy he didn’t need that release any more – he was no longer frustrated. So ambition took the place of affection and his marriage was founded on the common ground of wanting to escape upwards from the mud of the past. It was a way to live. He’d never known any other. Until he saw the love bites on Jenni again and found the comfort of Lucy.

  Examine your life … He kept hearing the women. But it was uncomfortable, painful. And it was frightening. For the first time he felt fear. Fear of failing, fear of allowing a woman in, the real fear that there was nothing for that person to discover. He had looked into himself and found nothing looking back: no garden, no morality, no soul. And Lucy wanted to love him. Love what? There was nothing in him to love. He was afraid he didn’t exist. With Jenni he was safe.

  When the doctors told him of Jenni’s mental condition they said one of the symptoms was ‘an inability to introspect’. Shackleton had thought he’d been blessed with that gift too, until now.

  He changed the channel of his thoughts to Geoffrey Carter and the new force. He would have to refuse the Met now, when, if, it was offered. He could not be seen to be subordinate to Carter. Soft, sentimental Geoffrey. Then what? Retirement? Ultimate failure. He dismissed that thought and changed the perspective. He must make it known he wanted the new force. But what would be the point? It was a political appointment, a political creation – they would have decided on Carter from the beginning. Shackleton knew his strengths but he knew Carter’s just as well. He couldn’t fault his intellectual ability or his political skill and administrative flair. Old-fashioned coppering hadn’t counted since the Sheehy Report.

  Who was it that had put his wife over the edge? Who had she allowed to write his signature in her flesh? He shook his head. The thoughts were intrusive, unwelcome. He had never had difficulty controlling his thoughts before: control was a pleasurable vice. But in these few weeks rogue thoughts had leaked in, emotions, jealousies, affections. He found himself missing his son in the house, becoming sentimental. No, feeling sentiment.

  Geoffrey Carter. He was the problem. He’d thought maybe there could be a friendship there, nothing too close, nothing that might expose Shackleton as an alien. Carter had told him that now Eleri was pregnant he no longer cared if he got any further in his career. Then why didn’t he just throw the towel in? Why was he forcing Shackleton to compete against him? He had everything he wanted, more. Why was he being greedy? What was it those women had said? He didn’t want to think about them. He had felt a fool after revisiting them, as if their fairground voodoo meant anything.

  Jenni would have an idea. Jenni always had a solution. He went to the fridge and took out a piece of cold chicken. Jenni didn’t like him eating with his fingers. He stood with the fridge door open, something else she detested, for fear of flies. Flies sneaking into an open fridge and laying their eggs. Sluggish maggots in awkward corners. He ate the chicken without tasting it. He would wait. Carry on as usual. He closed the fridge and washed his hands. Cleared away every sign of his presence. Yes. Just wait. Wait for Jenni.

  Lucy looked at the luminous numbers on her bedside clock. As always she couldn’t see what time it was because the hands weren’t luminous. She thought she might get some of that tape cyclists wore on their jackets to prevent them becoming organ donors and stick it on. But it would be fiddly and she wasn’t good at fiddly jobs.

  Lucy turned over.

  She switched the light on. It was four o’clock in the morning. Working out the logistics of making her alarm clock visible at night had followed counting sheep, calculating the amount of feet on a mixed herd of sheep and ducks and trying to remember what stopped a legless lizard being a snake.

  She lay on her back wanting to touch her breasts, resting her hand on her pubic hair, wondering how it felt to someone else. To Tom. Wondering if it was soft. She’d doused it in conditioner the
morning after their first night together. It was so unexpected she hadn’t had time to moisturise her elbows. She had caught sight of them as they undressed, like her knees, ten years older than the rest of her. Mercifully, he switched the light out.

  Tom didn’t like making love in the light. She was quite grateful really although she would have liked to have seen him. But that was silly because she always closed her eyes during intimacy. It was an automatic reflex.

  She lay staring into the dark wondering why. Predators closed their eyes when killing prey to protect them from the thrashing of the dying.

  Lucy knew if she allowed her fingers to start to move, if she brought herself to a climax re-enacting scenes with Tom, the exquisite pleasure would end in gulping sobs. She’d read in a magazine about women whose orgasms were so intense they resulted in uncontrollable crying. How silly, she’d thought. And now it was happening to her. Tom had been taken aback when it happened and then tender and protective. Holding her while she bathed his chest in her tears. She had clung to him and whispered, ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with you.’

  He hadn’t said anything, just held her a little tighter and put his lips against her forehead. She wanted to believe he was unbearably moved but suspected he was just embarrassed at being so far from love himself.

  Once Gary was out of danger she had come home, and commuted to visit in the afternoons, between his waking and falling asleep again. She enjoyed the train journey which was, against all expectations, fast and efficient.

  He was out of danger but the pneumonia had left him frail and depressed. As always he tried to be the cheerful patient, not wanting to be any trouble.

  ‘The man’s a saint,’ said the large Irish staff nurse who shifted him about on his bed with no thought of the silent pain that made his face a rigid, vein-raised red.

  Lucy hated being in the house alone, with Gary’s disability hardware. The rooms reminded her of ships’ graveyards, with their strange, malevolent metal hulks abandoned and accusing. An empty wheelchair was not a versatile piece of furniture. The frames and pulleys had only one use and without Gary they seemed to be waiting for something. Or someone.

  Lucy wondered if a Chippendale or Rennie Mackintosh would ever design for ‘the disabled’, that strange place where sex, colour and religion didn’t count. To take her mind off the emptiness she had spent more time across the road, cleaning, and having cleaned, finding more behind, above and below to polish, wipe and lather with sugar soap.

  It wasn’t until two days after Jenni was taken to hospital Lucy realised she was away. Tom left a note for her. It was brief, formal: Jenni was away and Jason had moved out. Please hoover his room.

  Lucy had finished her cleaning and sat down in Jenni’s showroom kitchen with a cup – no mugs, Jenni didn’t like mugs – of instant coffee. Jenni wouldn’t have instant in the house. ‘Ugh, ghastly!’ she’d cry in her actressy voice. So Lucy brought a little jar across in her bag. Lucy didn’t much like real coffee, and she preferred evaporated milk to cream. She and Gary had a Saturday-afternoon treat, in front of the football results. Tinned peaches and evaporated milk, with slices of bread and butter. Comfort food.

  Gary.

  Always a fighter. Never a loser. But now, home from hospital, the fighter was just a shadow boxer. A winner only on points. But still no complaint, no whisper of defeat. And still laughing. He’d heard a joke on the radio: Centurion goes into a bar and asks for a Martinus. The barman says, ‘Don’t you mean a Martini?’ The centurion says, ‘When I want a large one I’ll ask for it.’ He’d laughed so much he’d needed the nebuliser. When he realised it was true he was put on pure oxygen. Laughing, faith in God and Lucy kept him sane. Kept him alive.

  Her hands moved to the no man’s land of her belly. She tried to concentrate on Gary, downstairs, asleep. But Tom kept pushing him out. Think about Gary’s love for you. Unconditional devotion. It was no good. She gave up and let the last few weeks take her towards sleep.

  When she had realised they were both alone she had decided to seduce Tom. Lucy automatically recoiled from the idea of seduction. Lucy was not seductive. Affectionate yes, cosy, reassuring but …

  She had gone and bought two salmon en croûte from Marks & Spencer, some ready-washed salad and a bag of new potatoes. She hesitated by the fruit flans but thought individual crèmes brûlées were probably sexier. And a bottle of wine. Did Tom prefer white or red? She wandered the aisles agonising over Beaujolais and unoaked Chardonnay. She settled on a sparkling New Zealand nearly champagne. It was three pounds more than the wine but he liked champagne and this, according to the assistant, was just as good.

  Once she got the food home she felt she was about to make a fool of herself and left the bags in the hall, where they challenged her until she had to leave for the station.

  She had been to the hospital and visited Gary who was too ill to talk. He smiled weakly when he saw her, then slept until-she left.

  When she opened the front door the bags toppled over. What should she do? Just put the stuff in the fridge and pretend she’d bought it as a treat for herself? Pretend she never intended to go over the road and force herself on a chief constable in his own home while his wife was in a clinic? What if his driver came in? He did sometimes. Or if he had someone with him. Another woman. Maybe he already had a mistress. The local papers never stopped putting him on ‘best-looking’ and ‘sexiest’ lists. What on earth would he want with Lucy? Well, hopefully exactly what he’d wanted before.

  Oh, for goodness sake – Lucy was irritated with herself – just give it a try. What have you got to lose? Your dignity, your pride. All right, just offer to cook him supper because you’re both alone at the moment. Just a neighbourly gesture. No hint of being desperate for him. No whisper of the aching desire that obsessed her. No. Nothing like that. Just dear old Lucy being nice. Making the right gesture. Good.

  Having decided on her strategy she waited until eight o’clock, made herself watch a soap opera, then put on her jacket, just her ordinary jacket over an ordinary skirt and rather clingy jumper that showed off her bust. Nothing special, as the pile of discarded outfits on the bed testified. No lipstick but a light gloss that wouldn’t mark if. … If. …

  She picked up the carrier bags and went across the road. She let herself into the empty house and turned off the bleeping alarm. Then she wasn’t sure what to do. Sitting in the living room would be too forward, too intrusive. The kitchen then but not to look as though she was waiting. She thought if he found her cleaning out the cutlery drawer that would strike the right note. As if she’d been working away and just lost track of the time. And then she’d produce a splendid supper as an afterthought. ‘Oh by the way, Tom, I happen to have this salmon en croûte I made earlier on …’ Who was she trying to kid? Herself.

  She jumped as she heard his key in the door. She strained to hear voices. He was alone. There was a pause, then she heard him cross the tiled hall. She concentrated on polishing a fork. The door opened.

  ‘Hello, Lucy, what are you doing here at this time of night?’

  ‘Oh, is it that late? I hadn’t realised.’

  ‘How’s Gary?’

  ‘Still very poorly.’ That awful word again.

  He nodded sympathetically.

  ‘And Jenni?’

  He shrugged. ‘About the same.’

  As mad as a bag of stoats, you mean, thought Lucy.

  ‘I … er … I thought as we’re both on our own. I wondered … I got some stuff to eat. If you’d like to. It won’t take long to cook.’

  He did that smile, the shy one with the little head-dip. She clenched her fists to stop herself reaching out and touching him.

  ‘That’d be nice,’ he said. ‘Can I do anything?’

  She opened the fridge and handed him the ersatz fizz.

  ‘Open that if you like.’

  He took off his suit jacket and his tie, hanging them on the back of a chair. Lucy was surprised – he was always meticulous abo
ut his clothes.

  ‘Don’t tell Jenni,’ he said, smiling conspiratorially at Lucy. ‘She doesn’t like clothes hung anywhere they shouldn’t be.’

  Lucy smiled back happily.

  The meal was well received. He ate everything and, when the nervous flutterings of her stomach prevented her eating her potatoes, he reached across and took them from her plate. She was thrilled with the gesture. Thrilled he felt he could do things with her disapproved of by Jenni.

  Jenni became the absent headmistress and they giggled like kids at a forbidden midnight feast. They finished the champagne and opened another bottle, real this time. He talked about his young days in the job, nothing daring, nothing private. Lucy listened, not realising how much more powerful an effect on him her trusting adoring eyes had than any amount of femme fatalism. She made him feel protective, masculine, attractive, and it wasn’t just the bubbles that made him lean across and kiss her, pulling her on to his lap.

  They kissed for a long time, for the first time with no hurry, no fear. His hands moved over her clothes and then under them. She rippled and squirmed at every caress. The intensity of her pleasure was painful. It was almost a relief when he took her nipple in his mouth; the feelings that produced were familiar and deeply satisfying. He explored her breasts slowly with his lips and tongue then, as if having made a decision, he settled on to her left nipple and started to suck. He sucked with the rhythmic intensity of a baby feeding.

  At first she found it disconcerting, looking down on his famous profile buried, oblivious, in her flesh, watching his jaw move as he fed on her. Then the feelings deepened, as if a sensual door had opened and she passed on to a different, more intense plane of pleasure. She groaned. He pressed his fingers into the muscles low on her spine, a slow explosion of feeling, nerves deep inside overwhelming her with waves of ecstasy she thought were more intense than any orgasm she’d ever had.