The Crime Tsar

by Nichola McAuliffe

  He found some relief in thinking about the new recruitment strategy. About the progress he was making with his community initiative. The dry stone walls of policy excluded imagination. Provided a screen against the chaos of feeling. Just as he fell asleep, his neck numbed by the latest in painkillers, he saw the faces of the black women, laughing at him. He fell into a dream of them, defenceless against his own subconscious.

  They showed him Geoffrey Carter’s funeral, and himself speaking the eulogy. And he was good. So quietly sincere. The church littered with politicians, their faces shining with approval. He felt the women dressing him, placing his medals in order, QPM Jubilee, Long Service, others he couldn’t see. Jenni in a hat. An investiture. Cameras and Buckingham Palace. The three black faces pushed against the railings, laughing. Telling him not to fall.

  He walked towards them to hear them more clearly; he didn’t see the hole, the black echoing nothingness into which he fell, his stomach churning over and over, sweating fear, and the faces looking down at him from the rim far above him. And this was hell. The wages of sin is death. No hope or suspicion of another chance. Blackness. Emptiness. As if they’d never been. He and Jenni. Obliterated from life and no one to speak a word for them. No flowers. No headstone. No memory of his achievements. Where was Lucy? She’d speak for him. Pray for him. Hope for his eternal life. The sewn-up eyes stared blindly at the dust that had been him. A breath blew the dust into a landscape of nothingness.

  ‘We were at an auction just down the road. We didn’t buy anything but we thought we might pop round to see you.’

  Jenni swept in, past Geoffrey, trailing Tom behind her. The two men hadn’t seen each other since the night of the curry and, vaguely shamed by the memory, behaved as if it had never happened. Carter was surprised to see them but was warmly welcoming and showed them into the living room.

  Alexander was pacing up and down, absorbed in the mysteries of his fingers. Shackleton watched him while Carter and Jenni chatted about Eleri. Those fingers, too long, too tapering, weak caricatures of Christ’s praying hands. For Shackleton, as for Danny, there was something even less human about them than about the boy’s too thick, low-growing hair and empty eyes. Looking at him he understood Carter’s fear. But, unlike Danny, Shackleton felt no guilt at the discomfort the child caused him.

  Carter offered coffee and Jenni insisted on making it. She brought in the tray, the drinks alone, no cafetière, no milk, because of Alexander’s obsession with liquids. While picking up the bowl of brown sugar she had looked at the bowl of white. It made her think of the tiny sniff of cocaine she’d promised herself after this visit was completed successfully. Having served the coffee Jenni suggested she take Alex up to his room so the men could talk. Alex could show her his collection of batteries.

  Now they were alone there was the possibility of awkwardness, but Carter picked up his newspaper and handed it to Shackleton.

  ‘“Labour Mouthpiece Made a Fool by Educated Archie”.’

  Shackleton laughed.

  ‘I thought Archie was a ventriloqist’s dummy.’

  ‘I believe that’s the point. As the government’s anointed one it was assumed I’d be exactly that.’

  Shackleton read the article.

  ‘Any feedback from Whitehall?’

  ‘I’m sure there will be. They’ve got an election coming up – they don’t want any gaffes.’

  The drugs debate that had been dragging on since New Labour’s ascendancy had been enormously enlivened by Carter’s complete devastation of a badly briefed junior spokesman the day before. The new strategy had been published but instead of it being a one-day wonder the media had decided, in the absence of a natural disaster or train crash, to whip up the controversy always surrounding the subject. Carter had in the past couple of weeks been a fixture on every news programme, becoming less and less on message as the days passed. But last night he’d surpassed himself.

  Shackleton had watched, admiring and envious of Carter’s ease and fluency.

  The junior minister, flabby in body and mind, said, ‘Well, of course it would be ludicrous to legalise the whole gambit of drugs.’

  Carter dismissed him so effortlessly Shackleton almost didn’t register the sin he was committing.

  ‘I’m not about to shoot you down in etymological flames, but nothing this government has put in place has allowed police officers continuity. We’re still in a situation where individual chief constables are left to decide the ferocity or laxity of enforcement, rather than …’

  He then climbed off the political fence with a show of verbal and mental gymnastics which left the official spokesman looking, at best, a fool.

  Shackleton, reading the newspaper, felt Carter had made a mistake in pitting himself so blatantly against the government. Would they really want a Crime Tsar who was so unpredictable? He smiled and handed the paper back.

  ‘What do you think of Villa’s chances this afternoon?’

  Carter was surprised at the change of subject. He had never had Shackleton’s acute antennae for the sensibilities of his superiors.

  ‘I don’t know … I’ll put the telly on.’

  Alexander, once occupied with his batteries, was guaranteed to be quiet for between five and ten minutes, so Jenni had quickly laid out the thousand-strong collection on the carpet, waited until the boy was crouched over them, then slipped out of the bedroom down the stairs to the first landing. Off this small carpeted square was one room which, during her many visits to the house, Jenni had discovered was Carter’s study.

  She was shaking as she pushed the door open with the back of her hand. Although what she saw was what she’d hoped to see, the shaking worsened, making it awkward to put on the thin latex gloves she took from her pocket. She paused a moment, listening to the sound of the television and the men’s voices below. Three deep breaths.

  In the study everything was neat, books, files and papers. She’d been in there before. In fact there wasn’t a corner of the house she didn’t know. During her respite visits to Eleri she had patiently examined and assessed every nook and cranny and, like a parasitic wasp, had laid her eggs. Behind rarely disturbed books in the living room she had placed one of the bugs, in Eleri’s chaotic kitchen another and, when Eleri went out for an antenatal appointment, a third behind their bedhead.

  The videos she left among the vast collection of Disney and cartoons in the rarely opened hall cupboard. The magazines she was unsure about until, using the bathroom one afternoon, she looked at the fascia enclosing the bath and saw the perfect hiding place. The next day, prepared with gloves and screwdriver, she removed the tiled board, watched by a solemn, silent Alexander, and pushed the magazines under the bath to the wall. She replaced the fascia and swept up the debris. Alexander silent witness throughout. The floppy disc she had taped to the back of a drawer in Carter’s study. Everything, thanks to her patience and planning, was going to be perfect.

  Jenni sat in front of the computer. Carter’s computer. The screen saver twirled lazily. She’d discovered he always left it on when he was in the house – apparently it was bad for the mechanism to be switched off frequently. Not as bad as leaving it on, Jenni thought with a smile. She’d discovered a lot during her baby-sitting sessions. It had been worth every boring, irritating minute with the two boys when Peter had told her Daddy used his name as a password for his computer. She remembered her automatic reply of ‘How sweet’. It wasn’t until later that little seed germinated and grew.

  Later she’d mentioned how slow her laptop was when filing stories and Eleri had said yes, that’s why they’d got ISDN and Broadband, it was on all the time. No more dial-up. That had been a relief, the noise of the modem would have wakened the dead, even the dead watching football.

  Her hands were wet now inside the surgical gloves. Downstairs the television still roared, the husbands shouted encouragement. Upstairs Alexander was standing watching her, shifting from foot to foot in agitation. She recognised the signs: any
second he’d start that inhuman wailing, the screeching expression of isolation she’d come to dread. She spoke to him calmly, quietly. Asked him to come down and see what Auntie Jenni was doing. The screams were building up inside him.

  In desperation she said, ‘I’m finding some batteries for you.’

  He didn’t seem to understand but stretched his neck and threw his head back against the wall. Jenni ran up the stairs to him, grabbed his wrist and pulled him, tripping and falling, down into the study. Inside she closed the door. Alex was petrified. He started to whimper. She knew she had very little time before he exploded into uncontrollable screams.

  She quickly typed in the password. The screen revealed itself, ready at the home page. She carefully put in the coordinates of one of the paedophile sites she’d found in Vienna. It was bone-achingly slow in coming up; she browsed its contents for a minute, then visited another. This requested credit card details to proceed. She took a breath, calming herself to remember the numbers she’d taken from Carter’s Mastercard. He was so vain he’d never carry a wallet when in full dress uniform, might spoil the line, so one morning while he and Eleri were out at an official function she’d copied it down. Halfway through keying it in she realised Alexander was almost at the boil, then she saw, down by the waste bin, a half-finished bottle of mineral water. She reached down with her free hand and picked it up.

  ‘Alex, look. Look what I’ve got.’

  The boy dived for it, instantly obsessed by the fluid within. While she continued her visits he tore at the cap. By the time he’d got it off and sucked out the contents she had returned to the home page and restored the screen saver.

  Jenni was now shaking so badly she could barely find the keys. Her pills were downstairs in her handbag. She felt a handful of them wouldn’t be enough to tranquillise her but she also felt triumphant. She’d downloaded the first images that came up after payment then returned the computer to its dormant state. Originally she’d thought of using the Trojan virus as a conduit for the material, but that would be easily found out. Then she’d planned to alter the time and date to make it look as if everything was done after she and Tom had left the house, but after thinking about it decided it was better not to. If there were alterations to the clock forensics would find it sooner or later when, hopefully, there was an inquiry. But if the material was downloaded while she and Tom were in the house, well… It would be word against word. Why would she or her husband do such a thing and, more to the point, how could they? She knew a man would have altered the time but then the female was more deadly than the male. She’d always liked that line. It was the only poetry she carried with her.

  The shakes were getting worse. She controlled herself, took the empty bottle from Alex, pushed him from the room and closed the door.

  She took off her gloves and looked at her watch: the whole exercise had taken less than twenty minutes. Perfect.

  Alexander burst into the living room with Jenni.

  ‘Oh God, Geoffrey, I’m so sorry, I’ve just remembered I’ve got the washing-machine mechanic coming round. I’m so sorry, it completely went out of my head. Tom, we must go. If I miss him I won’t get him again for days. He’s doing us a favour coming out on a Saturday anyway.’

  ‘Can’t you phone Lucy and get her to let him in?’

  He thought for a moment Jenni was going to hit him. Even Carter couldn’t miss the anger on her face even though it was erased as quickly as it appeared.

  ‘She’s out,’ said Jenni. ‘Geoffrey, I’m so sorry. Do forgive us, and you and Eleri must come over for dinner. Soon. Bye, Alex darling. Give me a kiss.’ He seemed as repelled at the idea as she was but she hid it better. ‘No? Oh well then, never mind. Give our love to Eleri, Geoffrey. Oh and doesn’t my plant look lovely there, just perfect, look, Tom. Isn’t it gorgeous? Bye.’

  She was down the steps by the car, the two men trailing behind in a wake of confusion and disappointment. They’d been enjoying themselves.

  Geoffrey waved them off and closed the door. Alexander seemed very disturbed and tried to drag Carter upstairs. His father resisted and managed to distract him with an unopened twelve-pack of double-A batteries.

  Carter felt as if he was in shock – the effect of Mrs Shackleton up close and in overdrive was exhausting. He had been thinking of mowing the lawn but he decided, using Alexander’s mood as an excuse, to give himself up to paperwork and the remains of the Villa game instead.

  Tom and Jenni were silent on the drive home. He knew she had done something. Something he wouldn’t like, but if he didn’t know what he was innocent. The brief opening up of tenderness between the two men had healed over with no scar.

  ‘Why don’t men ever want to know what goes on?’

  Jenni’s voice was sharp. She often seemed to read his thoughts.

  He knew where this was going but, out of habit, he avoided the destination.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Jenni was too triumphant to be contemptuous so she just laughed at him, almost affectionately.

  ‘Oh come on. You know I wasn’t admiring his low-level avocado bathroom suite up there.’

  ‘I thought you were playing with Alexander.’

  The words ‘No you didn’t, you spineless liar’ lay between them unspoken for once.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tom, I’ve got you this far without you knowing how, I’m not going to spoil your little fantasy that you did it on your own.’

  She turned to look at his profile. More handsome now than in his twenties. He concentrated on his driving.

  ‘You really think you could have done it without me, don’t you? You’d have had as much chance as a sperm swimming up the Thames.’ She laughed. As always she’d managed to hurt him. ‘Oh, can we stop at Tesco, we need some more Scotch. You really gave it a hammering while I was away. Couldn’t get through a few days on your own, eh?’

  He stopped the car on a yellow line and she got out. He didn’t watch her go into the shop. Should he ask her what she’d done? Then what? Tell Geoffrey. Sacrifice Jenni and implicate himself? Maybe she hadn’t really done anything or perhaps what she’d done wasn’t too extreme. The only way to find out would be to ask or wait and see. He knew he wouldn’t ask.

  Lucy had returned to her house after Tom’s regretful rejection. She had the feeling she’d outlived her usefulness and, like many women before her, had mistaken the passion of a powerful man for love. She had made a fool of herself over men before but not since her teens.

  Gary was very much awake when she let herself in, hoping he’d be sleeping.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  His question was innocent but she felt it to be accusatory.

  ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?’

  She regretted her sharpness but did nothing to soften it.

  Gary had hoped her infatuation with Teflon Man would wear off. He had reasoned the situation from every angle. He understood what Lucy’s needs were: he saw, more clearly than anyone, that his condition was impossible to come to terms with, physically or mentally. He had even managed to convince himself that this was best for Lucy, that it would make it easier for her when he was gone. But now he could see whatever had happened between his wife and Tom was hurting her and he couldn’t bear it.

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come here a minute, will you?’

  Lucy stopped her tidying and sat on the edge of his bed. He took her hand; there was no response.

  ‘What’s the matter, Luce?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She pulled her hand away and went to get up.

  ‘Is it Tom?’

  She reacted as though stung.

  ‘No. Why? Why should it be him?’

  Gary had nothing more to lose.

  ‘Because you’re sleeping with him.’

  Lucy wanted to defy the truth and face Gary out. Just deny everything that had happened – who could contradict her? But she had wanted to tell Gary for
weeks. Not in the way of a spouse offloading the guilt on to their partner by cathartic confession. No. Lucy wanted to share it with her husband as she would with a brother or a close girlfriend. She had never been in this situation before so didn’t know if it was normal to regard her husband as a repository for the joys and miseries of an affair. The pause between them had gone on too long for her to deny the accusation. She just made a tiny movement of her head. Guilty as accused.

  Gary felt strangely calm, as if he was just an actor in a well-rehearsed play.

  ‘Are you still sleeping with him?’

  Lucy shook her head miserably.

  ‘He’s dumped you?’

  The use of this adolescent expression made her cry.

  He put as much of his arms round her as he could now move and felt comforted himself by the quiet tears soaking into his pyjama jacket.

  ‘There there, there there. He’s not worth this, you know.’

  Lucy snorted, the result of laughing and crying at the same time. The contents of her nose were projected on to his sleeve.

  ‘Don’t tell me. I’m too good for him. Oh God, I’m sorry, take it off and I’ll wash it.’

  ‘Never mind that. Lucy. Lucy, come on. Come back here.’

  Lucy sat down again. Gary stroked her face.

  ‘Why are you being so nice to me, Gary? I don’t deserve it.’

  ‘No, I know you don’t. I mean, if you were going to play away, couldn’t you have picked someone better? Something part of the human race would have been nice.’

  ‘It was just sex,’ mumbled Lucy.

  ‘It’s never just sex with you, Lucy. Maybe the first time but after that you want to be knitting him jumpers and tidying his sock drawer. I know. You did it to me, remember?’

  Lucy tried to smile.

  ‘Yes. I suppose you’re right. I’ve just got into a mess over it. Not him. I don’t really feel anything for him. You do believe me, don’t you?’