He missed the Gnome’s expression as he produced a gold half-hunter and consulted it.
‘I’m always surprised at what beauty hides. Anyway, I must be off. You going to Traviata on Thursday? Kitty’s looking forward to seeing Lizie again, wants to talk to her about wisteria or something …’
When he’d gone the Gnome re-read the report. Of all the words in it the only one that had any meaning for him was syphilis. Dirty, degrading, degenerate, all words that had the power to excite him, but disease wasn’t one of them. The long-conquered loathing for his physical self came back like a smell. A combination of unpleasant odours that made up the hated stench of his body, his feet, his groin, armpits, hair, stale skin and breath. And now decaying flesh.
He had no doubt Jenni had contracted it from him. An extraordinary female he’d met on an official visit to Macedonia came back to him. She’d been a hanger-on with some Russian delegation, ostensibly there to calm feelings in the wake of Milosevic but actually to ensure the Trepeca Mine in Kosovo would be available to Serb protectors when the regime finally fell. A grubby girl, a memorable lay, but not worth what it was going to cost.
If he had impregnated Mrs Shackleton he had infected Lizie. Lizie, the only woman he’d never hurt.
What could he possibly say to her that would not destroy his marriage? With only words he was going to create that look of nauseous revulsion he strove to see on the faces of other women as he physically assaulted them. But not Lizie. Never Lizie. He had raised his wife above all other women, confident his depravity would never touch her. Now, as in some distorted Greek myth, she was his victim. The bitter irony was not lost on him.
There was a knock at the door. The secretary came in carrying a sealed box file.
‘Are you all right, Mr MacIntyre?’
He nodded.
‘Mr Hemsley sent this over, sir – it’s the file on Dieter Gerhardt.’
‘Sorry?’ MacIntyre came back into focus. ‘What were you saying, Susan?’
‘The Austrian MP, sir, do you remember? Dieter Gerhardt, he’s –’
‘Coming for the conference, yes.’
MacIntyre snapped, annoyed at being spoken to like a backward child. Susan really didn’t like him and she almost let it show.
‘I was saying, Mr MacIntyre, Mr Hemsley was sent this file by the Austrian police along with information on all the other delegates to the conference. For security reasons, you understand.’ It pleased her hugely to see how much her slowness irritated him. ‘He seemed to think there might be something of interest to you in Herr Gerhardt’s file.’ She was still clutching it, warming to her subject. ‘I used to enjoy his films enormously – I think he was a very good actor. Of course the fuss over his looks often obscured that fact. But maybe, when his career in politics is over, he’ll return to what he does best. After all, you never know when they’ll stop voting for you, do you?’
As Susan had been installed in Whitehall at about the same time as the Cenotaph she would be difficult to remove, but MacIntyre made a silent vow she’d be gone before the end of the year.
He sat for quite some time imagining Lizie’s reaction when he told her. Perhaps, just perhaps, if he phrased it carefully, she would, might, eventually forgive him. Then again he had a very good relationship with a consultant at St Thomas’s, over the bridge. He might, for a knighthood, give him something to slip in her food.
MacIntyre never lingered in despair for long.
Cheered by a chink of hope he opened the file.
Jenni Shackleton paying for a magazine was the top photograph. The cover was plainly recognisable. The next photograph: her hand holding a kiddie-porn video. He worked slowly through the rest of the file. The photographs that could have saved a life. In Vienna they had been no more important than blurred smudges from a speed-trap camera.
What if they’d come to light earlier? Messy, very messy. Carter would have not only been Crime Tsar but in an impregnable position. Shackleton would have been disgraced and possibly prosecuted with his wife. No, two deaths and a controllable anti-crime coordinator was a much neater result. Sad, regrettable but, in the final analysis, better. Poor Carter, at least it had been quick.
He opened his desk and took out an unmarked folder containing a great deal about Carter and Shackleton. MacIntyre tucked the photographs into the back flap. As he did so Carter’s letter to Danny and another piece of paper dropped on to the floor. He bent to pick them up; the second letter caught his eye. He had deliberately put this one to the back of his mind, and the file. He re-read it.
Dear Mr MacIntyre,
My mother doesn’t know I’m writing this letter and she would be very angry if she knew I’d sent it. But everyone is saying my father, Geoffrey Carter, has done things to boys. I know you are in charge of investigating him so I’m writing to tell you my dad has never done anything. He never hurt me or my brother. Please believe me, I don’t tell lies and neither does my dad.
If you can tell everyone it’s all right then I can go home and my sister can have the same name as me.
Thank you for helping,
Peter Carter.
MacIntyre looked at the childish writing. He would have liked to have helped, really he would, but to clear Carter’s name now would be to undermine Shackleton’s appointment. Yes. Wiser to save it. One day though, one day he’d give the boy back his dad. For the greater good, the little children would have to suffer just a little longer.
He put the letter in the file on top of a short report on Danny Marshall. A good man for the future and no friend of the new Crime Tsar. There was enough here to keep Tom Shackleton in order until he reached the end of his shelf life.
In the meantime he was perfect. Not as prone to brilliant inspiration as Carter, less likely to impress the public. Not such a good speaker or politician. And he was biddable, he wanted the trappings of success.
MacIntyre wondered why they had been so keen to have Carter in the first place. He would have become uncontrollable, inspiring loyalty in his men, respect in the media and the people. He wouldn’t have been satisfied towing the Party line. Shackleton would be the government’s man. Grateful. Always on message. Perfect.
The file was secure, back in the drawer. Good. Now to make an appointment with the clap doctor and buy Lizie something very, very expensive.
Jenni’s funeral was gratifyingly well attended. Press and cameras were kept outside to record the arrival of celebrities, of which there were plenty. Jacinta and Tamsin in black suits flanked their sister Chloe, back from an orphanage on the Tibet border, wearing a version of Mother Teresa’s blue-and-white sari enlivened with a large amount of silver jewellery. She looked like a heron in a parliament of crows.
Shackleton, followed by his daughters and grandchild, carried the coffin with Jason, Vernon his deputy, two undertakers, and Jenni’s favourite editor. She could never bear those wheeled gurneys coffins were usually taken on, she thought they looked like dessert trolleys, and she hated the idea of strangers handing her into eternity. Everything was done according to the wishes her children imagined she’d had. Romanticised memories of her likes and dislikes.
Shackleton had kept out of it all, retreating to the dining room in the evenings, leaving them to bicker and plan in the living room. The church was filled with flowers, as if for a wedding. No chrysanthemums. Jenni hated chrysanthemums. Tom sat in his pew, knelt, stood, prayed with no thought of the contents of the coffin.
He saw Robert MacIntyre, head bowed with cares of state and subtle sadness. And Lucy, sitting with Gary at the back of the church. Lucy. She still had the drugs. Well, that wasn’t a problem – there was nothing to link them with him. But he should talk to her. He should talk to all these strangers. Sometime. After. After today.
At the end of the service they shouldered their burden again. The coffin was heavy, ridiculously large for the seven-stone body inside it.
At the grave, in a light wind that caught the vicar’s robe, more prayers were s
aid then, in the Scottish tradition – the children said Jenni had thought it charming when she’d come back from a funeral in Perth – the pall bearers took up the cords, fine black ropes tied to the coffin handles, and lowered Jenni Shackleton into the deep shaft, room enough for three, which would be her final resting place. Her daughters dropped roses on to the pale wood then those who wanted to filed past throwing handfuls of earth into the grave.
Tom nodded to each, friends, neighbours, colleagues. Lucy held back. She had no right to give that final blessing, who’d wished for Jenni’s death in abstract so many times. She reached for Gary’s hand.
‘Go on, Luce,’ he said. ‘Say goodbye.’
Numb, Lucy joined the queue, taking a pinch of dust from the priest. She and Tom stood on opposite sides of the grave, looking, unblinking, into each other’s eyes as the earth trickled through Lucy’s fingers on to the coffin so far below. She searched for recognition from Tom but saw none. She moved on. He didn’t watch her but shifted his gaze to meet that of the next mourner.
It was such a shock to see those cowrie eyes, that black-scarred face, he almost fell. Almost toppled into the gaping grave at his feet. His son caught his arm. The three black women, their mourning dresses stirring like the feathers of ravens, faced him. As one they poured earth on the coffin. And then they started to sing. The sound was primitive and beautiful but bleak, without comfort, with no promise of eternal life and happy resurrection. It sounded like lonely wind in desolate places.
It was the sound of the death we all fear. Final, cold, pointless. As they stopped singing the heavens opened and rain fell in vicious, unforgiving needles. Everyone ran for cover. Within minutes the coffin was surrounded by water, the clay soil allowing no drainage. The earth liquefied to mud. The mourners slunk away to their cars and dispersed. The grave-diggers hastily threw a cover over the hole and went back to their card game.
Shackleton was deeply disturbed by the appearance of the three women. Fear and anger made him shake as he drove, alone and too fast, to the estate. He didn’t know what he wanted to say to them but he had to see them again. What did they want? Who were they?
He didn’t see Vernon and another officer following him. He just drove, determined to stop them ever coming near him again.
He screeched to a stop. Everything was exactly as it had been on his last visit, even the stained mattress outside the pub on which sat two drunks asleep with their cans of Special Brew. He jumped out of the car and ran over to the flat.
No, this couldn’t be right. He looked at the rest of the block. Yes, he was sure this was it. But the garden had gone. In its place was a brown patch of weeds and rubbish. The doors and windows covered with aluminium shutters. Graffiti all over the walls.
There was an old black man coming out of the pub.
Shackleton called him over.
‘The flats. Where are the people who live in the flats?’
The man looked at him with yellow eyes.
‘No people there. No one been there since the fire, years back. I remember. Big fire, people die. Twas a bad business. They waitin’ to pull the lot down. Too many rats and cockroaches. Too much bad stuff. No one lives there now.’
And he wandered off.
Vernon came up behind him.
‘You all right, sir?’
Shackleton jumped.
Vernon had never seen his boss frightened. It was a surprise.
‘I … I’m looking for someone. The people who live over there. In that flat. I need to speak to them.’
Vernon looked puzzled, like a dog trying to understand a command.
‘No, sir. I don’t think so. That block’s been empty for ages. Like the old boy said, there was a fire. Three women died in it. Caused quite a stir. Before your time, sir. Three black women. Thought it was a race crime at first but forensic decided it was a candle or something. There was a rumour of magic, satanism, voodoo, but nobody believed it. It was just one of those things. Nobody’s there now, sir.’
Shackleton ran to the boarded-up door, banging on it, shouting incoherently to be let in. He saw the metal sheet over the window was bent: he grabbed at it and put his face to the broken glass. Nothing moved in the darkness.
Vernon dared to put his hand on Shackleton’s arm and lead him back to his car. He signalled to his colleague and sat Tom in the passenger seat. There was no resistance but Shackleton twisted to look back as they drove away. There was a man standing where the garden had been. A police officer. As the car turned the corner he recognised Geoffrey Carter.
Vernon had to restrain his chief as best he could. There was no way he was stopping before he’d delivered him to his house.
Shackleton kept talking about seeing Geoffrey Carter, then he was rambling about the black women being at the funeral, singing. Vernon had only said that morning he’d have to break down sometime, poor bastard, he’d lost his wife, for God’s sake.
Shackleton disappeared for several weeks. Every day Lucy looked out for him but he didn’t come home. The children had gone. Unwilling to stay in the place where their mother had died so tragically. Chloe scooped up her little brother and took Jason back to India to find consolation in the theology of reincarnation.
The house was empty. She’d stopped going over there: something about the place frightened her.
When she couldn’t stand it any more she tried his mobile. Disconnected.
Controlling her panic, she phoned Janet.
‘I just wanted to know if I should go in and clean. Water the plants.’
Janet was not forthcoming.
‘I’m sure if Mr Shackleton wants you to go in he’ll let me know.’
‘Well, perhaps I should phone him. Do you have a number where he can be contacted?’
‘I’m afraid not, but I’ll tell him you called if he rings in.’
Lucy put the phone down, desperate now to speak to him. Aching to touch him. Obsessed as only denial can make us. He’d changed his mobile number. Why hadn’t he told her? How could she find him? He needed her. He must need someone, and who else did he have?
Then one afternoon, unable to stop herself, she rang his office again and he answered. Lucy was thrown for a moment. Where was Janet? One o’clock. Lunch.
She was surprised at how normal her voice sounded.
‘Oh, hello. I … er … I’ve been trying to get hold of you. I didn’t expect you to answer.’
The self-deprecating laugh.
‘I’m being a good boss, answering my secretary’s phone. I must answer it more often.’
She felt a surge of hope. Maybe the intimacy was still there. She lowered her voice.
‘Are you all right?’
His reply was formal. Polite.
‘I’m fine, thanks, Lucy. How is Gary?’
She was burbling now.
‘He’s fine. Well, no, he’s got to go into hospital for a couple of days … I mean … I’ve been worried about you.’
It was as though he hadn’t heard her.
‘I’m sorry, I have to go. I have a meeting.’
Lucy heard the desperation in her voice. Yet again he’d turned her into a supplicant.
‘It would be nice to meet. If you want to talk. Well, um … you know, if Gary’s going to be away, I’ll be on my own till the weekend at least and well …’ She trailed off hoping he’d come to her rescue.
But as if replying to a journalist he outlined his reasons for not being available: he had to draw up a national anti-crime strategy, he even detailed the government’s policy towards recidivists.
When he drew breath Lucy said, ‘So this is goodbye then.’
He was quick to reply.
‘No, no. I don’t want to say goodbye.’
Lucy was surprised at the strength in her voice.
‘Well, I’m not going to phone up every six months to listen to the government’s thoughts on repeat offenders.’
He was taken off guard by her tone. Defensive.
‘But we w
ere talking about –’
Lucy cut in. At last she was angry, indignant.
‘Will I see you again?’
Pause.
‘Probably not.’
Lucy knew she’d never been so coldly angry or so in control.
‘Well, say goodbye then.’
Shackleton hated to give up anything that was his. When he spoke his voice was soft, reluctant.
‘Goodbye.’
Lucy’s voice was strong, loud.
‘Goodbye.’
As she rang off she heard him say with a gentleness he only had with her, ‘Take care.’
But it was too late. Lucy stared at the phone, the urge to call back not quite as strong as the desire to be free. But after a moment, regrets started to whisper, and she reached for the phone.
Then, through the window, she saw it pull up. A white flat bed truck. A nondescript man in jeans got out and heaved something off the back. He walked with it, like a suburban Christ carrying his cross, to Shackleton’s gates. Then he tied the FOR SALE sign to the upright with metal ties. After checking it was secure, he returned to his van and drove off.
Lucy hadn’t moved. She had barely breathed. She grabbed her bag and ran over to the house. Scrabbling for the keys she dropped the bag’s contents on the front step. The key didn’t work. It wouldn’t turn. The locks had been changed. She leaned against the door and sobbed, sliding down it until she was sitting knees up and head down against it.
The same position Jenni had died in.
After speaking to Lucy, Shackleton had gone back to the work of putting his team together, meeting politicians, preparing his first statement of intent. It wasn’t until after a rather fine dinner at the Athenaeum he thought about her again.
MacIntyre was also a guest and they found themselves sitting around the same low table in the bar drinking ancient brandy and savouring the burnt autumn smell of a large arrangement of lilies which dominated the otherwise soberly masculine room.
Their host, a desiccated wit whose life had been made comfortable by the Law, if not always justice, had the rare gift of making his guests relax into indiscretion and, occasionally, inebriation.
The Crime Tsar Page 37