A Clear Conscience

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Your brother? Can’t he help?’

  Cath looked at her with hatred. ‘Of course not. He’s dead.’

  There was a silence which defied words.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Helen mumbled. ‘Should have kept my mouth shut. Will you do something about it? About Joe?’

  ‘No, and you can’t make me.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’ Helen remembered Mary Secura. You can’t make them; they have to volunteer.

  ‘You won’t tell Mrs Eliot, either?’

  ‘Why? You haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘No,’ said Cath, uncertainly. ‘I haven’t, have I?’

  When the front door closed, Helen felt only relief, tinged with guilt. She knew what they all meant now, the Mary Securas and the judges and the great British public. In her heart of hearts, she did not want to know either.

  She did not want to know: she had too much knowledge of guilt and misery already. She did not want to be sensitive, compassionate or an ally. If she could not have a dull life, she could have a secure one, behind walls, where all problems could be postponed unless they were her own. A life without a cleaning lady who brought in garbage instead of taking it out, in a place where there was no-one to pity or ask her to treat what could not be cured. She did that all day, already.

  While Bailey and Ryan, in their sobriety, drove away from Mickey Gat’s bar to venues more convivial, Helen West began, first half-heartedly, then with increasing energy, to wash the surfaces of the red-painted room. She removed all the pictures first, then scrubbed. Ready to paint. Revamp, renew, building walls.

  PART II

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was raining outside. Too warm for central heating, too chill for the window to be open, they huddled in a fug, windows misted, adding to the sense of claustrophobia in an office already too small. The photo of Shirley Rix was no longer on the wall. Instead, there was a series of postcards, bright blue seas, golden sands, legends of absent colleagues having a good time. Only the childless remained at work in August. If you can’t take a joke, Sylvia had been saying to Mary Secura for the fifteenth time that week, you shouldn’t have joined.

  ‘All right, Mike Ryan, if you want to be useful, get a mop and bucket and clean up here. We’ve got rain coming in these brand-new windows. If you don’t shift your bum from off my desk, I’ll scream harassment.’

  ‘You’re so lovely when you’re roused,’ he murmured. ‘I shan’t fight, I’ll take the compensation. You reading dirty magazines again, Mary?’

  Ryan shifted his weight from the edge of Mary’s desk, picked up her copy of Good Housekeeping and flicked through it. He was a frequent visitor to the Domestic Violence Unit of his neighbouring station, which had the added attraction of an all-female staff. Besides, he had a soft spot for Mary. Ryan liked females between sixteen and fifty, full stop, but Mary could see beyond the winking, sledgehammer humour, into his odd dependability, while all the time, there was that little frisson of mutual attraction, heavily disguised.

  ‘You don’t want to talk to her. She’s in the doghouse, she is,’ said Sylvia, shoving her bag over her shoulder, preparing to leave.

  Ryan took no notice. ‘The things you girls read,’ he was murmuring, looking at an illustration of the perfect bathroom, offset by a bath full of foam with toes pointing coyly out of the water. ‘And are you?’ he continued, without looking up as the door closed. ‘In the dog-house?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Mary.

  ‘What did you do, then?’

  Mary leant back in her chair, eyed the no smoking sign on the wall and lit up a cigarette with an air of nervy abandon.

  ‘Well, you know that Shirley Rix case? No, you don’t, but I told you about it. We’d got this bastard husband dead centre, in custody, court date fixed, perfect. Only the wife skipped on the day of the case and the CPS got it put off for a month. Clever, yes? But on the same day Shirley gets run over. Won’t be giving evidence, except in heaven. And I don’t tell anyone, right? I’m so frigging mad because this bastard’s going to get away with it, I reckon he may as well stop where he is for another couple of weeks.’

  ‘Didn’t tell anyone? No-one at all?’

  Mary shrugged. ‘Oh, I told his solicitor, who informed the ever-loving spouse he was a widower, before going on holiday himself. But I should have told the CPS, shouldn’t I? So they could go to court and discontinue and get the little rat out. But I didn’t. I left him to run up the walls and now I’m in deep shit. So’s the woman from the CPS, though God alone knows what she was supposed to do. She’s been quite good about it really. Phoned me this morning as if nothing has happened, but then she wanted a favour. Do you think I’ll get the sack?’

  ‘Naa,’ said Ryan. ‘They should give you a medal.’ He reached for one of her cigarettes. ‘Poor innocent languishing in jail, is it?’

  ‘Innocent, my eye. He’s going to get his kid back and turn him into a drunken little yob.’

  ‘Look,’ said Ryan, not quite the expert since Bailey had saved him from all but three disciplinary proceedings. ‘What you’ve got to do is plead mistake and overwork. Blame the solicitor. Say you put the memo in the out tray. Just don’t let on it was deliberate, right? You’ll be fine, honest. Wear a short skirt and loads of perfume.’

  She looked at him, a shade wearily. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Right. That’ll make all the difference.’

  The silence was heavy; the rain dripped, making a mockery of summer.

  ‘How’s home, anyway?’ he asked casually, eyeing the magazine. ‘You decorating, or what? Preparing for the patter of tiny feet?’

  Mary gave a strangled laugh. ‘Preparing to split up, more like.’ Then she sat up, dragged her bitten nails through her hair in a gesture he always found endearing. ‘No,’ she added, ‘forget I said that, I didn’t mean it. He wants the patter of tiny feet. I can’t stand the idea. Working here doesn’t just put you off men, it puts you off the whole idea.’

  ‘If you two split up,’ Ryan said with his melting smile, ‘there might be a chance for me.’

  She laughed this time, stood up and shoved him off the desk. ‘C’mon, Mike, what do you really want?’

  He sighed, theatrically. ‘Your body. And a favour. Not necessarily in that order.’

  It took less than a minute to turn up the name in the card-index. Mary Catherine Boyce. One negative visit, nine months before. Police called by neighbours, Mary taken to hospital, discharged herself the same evening, follow-up visit next morning by domestic violence personnel. Further assistance refused.

  ‘We keep all these,’ Mary explained slowly to Ryan, ‘for future reference. In case they come up again, which they usually do. And we leave them a number to call us direct. Some of them do, months later.’

  ‘Not her, though,’ said Ryan. ‘Just a one-off. Not even a breach of the bloody peace.’

  ‘Funny thing with her, though,’ Mary mused, ‘she was half stripped when they took her to hospital. That’s what made everyone panic, made the lads think it was a whole lot worse than it was, a few bruises, not nice, not too nasty. She had this massive scar, see, puckering her stomach, a real corker. Looked as if the old man really tried to kill her once. But when we went round, she explained it was a scar from a caesarian operation. In her teens, she said, nothing to do with her husband. Doctor must have been a butcher in training. Yeah, I remember. She wasn’t like the others, I mean not frightened. You going to tell me the connection?’

  ‘Nope. My guvnor’s idea, not mine. Not enough to do.’

  ‘I’d like to work for Bailey,’ said Mary, ‘if and when they push me out of this.’

  ‘Play your cards right, why not?’ Ryan squinted at the card, waiting for inspiration, shrugged. ‘Bailey wanted to know if he had any violent tendencies, God alone knows why. Personally, I don’t think a single fight with the nearest and dearest counts.’

  ‘Speak for yourself. Anyway, what makes you think it’s like that?’

  Ryan tapped the card with
his finger. ‘’Cos it says here, file dormant, stupid.’

  Mary leant forward.

  ‘You know I told you about the CPS solicitor asking for a favour this morning? All a bit vague, hypothetical. Well, it was about her cleaning lady. Cath, no surname known, but telephone number same as on this card. Covered with bruises, and what should she do? Nothing, I said, there’s nothing she can do. But it looks like your Mr Boyce is still at it.’

  Ryan sat down heavily, knocking Good Housekeeping off the desk.

  ‘Oh, my lovely Mary,’ he said. ‘In the interests of your career, do you think you could see your way to another favour?’

  ‘What do I have to do?’

  This time his leer was more pronounced. He leant forward and kissed her on the lips, so briefly it was a peck. Then sat back.

  ‘No,’ he sighed. ‘Not that. Just go and make a follow-up visit, will you?’

  The rain stuttered against Helen’s windows in the afternoon. She pressed her nose to the glass, transfixed. Those in the offices opposite, full of personnel so much better dressed, weaving their way through banks of office machinery the CPS did not have, achieving goals of which no government agency would dream, also had cleaner windows.

  There was one middle-aged supervisor who held her attention. He had receding hair and glasses, was slim, trim and busy, and equipped with his own room and secretary, while his opposite number occupied another room at the far end of the floor, which Helen could see if she craned her neck. The two men were almost identical, so were their secretaries. Man number two (without specs), never stirred from his little sanctuary, but man number one (with the specs) was certainly flirting heavily not only with his own typist but also with her equivalent, six rooms away, while nobody in the open-plan area in the middle seemed to realise. From the distance of a narrow street, Helen could see it all clearly and toyed with several ideas. The first was to stick a notice in her own window; then there was another, more complicated scenario of blackmail. She would collar Mr number one, tell him how she had rumbled his little game and offer silence provided he kept his eyes peeled and returned the compliment by delivering her a weekly video record of Redwood. Redwood poking around offices and writing policy was not an exciting prospect, but catching him doing his exercises or changing his trousers, that would be fine.

  I could show it at this afternoon’s meeting, she thought, wake us all up.

  She was pretending not to be shocked by Mary Secura’s omissions, acting as if she did not believe they were deliberate, murmuring about communication problems, while all the time she knew it was utterly wrong to leave a man inside any kind of prison, even a remand prison, when there was no longer evidence to present of his crime. Rough justice surely, but too many lies had been excused on such a basis. Justice, about which she was quietly passionate, hence her constant frustration, was not a deity ever served by pathetic revenge. Justice was only achieved by laborious attention to the long-winded method and process of the Law, however deficient that was, since nothing, in the end, worked better. Truth and rules were the only workable formula. She knew that. Creating justice was putting yourself above it, a wilful and destructive arrogance.

  Look at him now, over there. Man with specs is on the patrol. He dips into offices, saying hello, bowing himself out, making sure he knows where they all are, having a word, passing by, leaving them all frightened to move. Then he makes sure, when he reaches the other end, that man number two is hopelessly entangled in a long phone call which necessitates his waving his hands about, obviously stuck on the line for at least ten minutes. Seen through the clarifying blur of two sets of windows, the little Romeo embraces number two’s secretary passionately, having just kissed his own. He was sitting on her knee, and she, heaven help her, looked grateful.

  The phone rang. ‘Convene now, you’re late,’ Redwood barked. Helen sighed into the receiver. Trust a man like that to spoil the film.

  ‘We need to know,’ he was saying to the assembled group as she entered his room and took a seat at the back, ‘why we have these failures.’ He held his hands in front of his face, looking at them as if they were his only inspiration, and Helen thought of a very old lady, following a knitting pattern.

  ‘We need a system,’ he added, looking in Helen’s direction, ‘to monitor at least those most conspicuous failures in our communication with the police. That means, of course, building up relationships whereby we trust them and they trust us.’

  A few silent heads nodded wisely, no-one noticing such public inconsistency from a man who found any kind of trust anathema and thrived in an atmosphere of mutual uncertainty. Helen drew sketches on her pad and did not raise her eyes. Once the walls in her flat were painted, supposing the paint would cover all the lumps and bumps, then the windows would be ready for new curtains, and would Cath come this week, and what would she think of the mess?

  ‘We must impress upon police personnel the need to tell us everything. Everything,’ Redwood repeated for effect. ‘Such as when a witness is never actually going to turn up.’

  ‘Like when they die,’ Helen said, audible without being loud.

  ‘Did you say something, Miss West?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Good.’

  Pardon me for being alive. Insolence would be her downfall. All this was about poor Shirley Rix, with those great big eyes, staring out of a photo, a nameless, numberless person she had seen depicted but never met, to be remembered as another notch on the bedpost of guilt, one more tick in the record of personal failures. Mourned by Redwood like any other source of embarrassment. Helen sat at the back of the room, mulish. Even from that distance, he could feel her bitter impatience.

  ‘We’ve had a bit of a débâcle,’ Redwood went on. ‘In a case which should have been dropped at a far earlier stage. Ladies and gentlemen, please, if it is clear that a witness is not going to give evidence, make the clean decision sooner rather than later. Don’t seek adjournments simply for the sake of saving face. And then don’t just put it back on the pile for someone else.’

  Helen cringed. She watched the others, nodding, puzzled, sensing that someone in their midst was in disgrace for disgracing Redwood’s service, wondering which of them it was.

  She drew on the pad a rough sketch of rearranged furniture in her living room, slapped her own hand as if receiving a reprimand, and tried to suppress tears. Regret less for her own humiliation than for Shirley Rix and the failure to survive. Also for her own reserve, which would prevent her from tapping on the window of her office and waving at someone in the building across the street. It was that same reserve which had made her hesitate this morning before phoning Mary Secura for advice, suddenly suffused with shame both for doing nothing and for not knowing Cath’s surname. What a fool was conscience, so effective in restraint, so weak in the spur to positive action.

  She was grateful for the protection of home.

  To call this place a mess, Bailey thought later as he squeezed himself in, is the understatement of the year. He recognised Helen’s present mood although he had rarely seen it in such an extreme. There was nowhere to sit. Furniture from the living room was in the hall and in the kitchen; he was forced to insert himself round the door with indrawn breath and clamber over a chest of drawers until the dying wheeze of the Hoover stopped him in his tracks. From the small room she used as study and dining room, he could hear a theatrical sigh, before she appeared, dishevelled.

  ‘Who was it you were trying to keep out?’ he asked, pointing to the chest. ‘Or is there someone you were trying to keep in?’

  ‘I’m cleaning cupboards,’ she said, with dignity. ‘And yes, I know that may seem strange, but I’ve got a man, painting ceilings only, tomorrow. Decorator had a cancellation. Isn’t that lucky?’ Bailey did not look as if this counted as luck. In fact, he looked acutely disturbed. It had been a long, wet day. He had brought no provisions with him and it did not look as if the kitchen was fit for use in any event. The floor had become a dumping g
round for plants and ornaments; the surfaces were littered with books. She followed the direction of his eyes, and looked a little crestfallen.

  ‘How about a drink?’ she suggested brightly. He smiled at her.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it. Don’t look so guilty. You’re not a wee wifey who has to warm my slippers, you know.’

  She could sense the irritation behind the light words, and countered it with a rising irritation of her own. No, she was no wee wifey, or even a grande dame with a gin and tonic waiting for her hero and provider to come home. She was a working woman, gritty with the residue of the day’s guilt.

  ‘I thought the wonderful Cath would do all this kind of thing,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve seen what she does. She cleans everything which moves. She doesn’t wash walls and make the place fit for painting. I do that.’

  Helen followed him into the kitchen and adjusted herself into a leaning position next to the fridge, where a dusty bowl held a selection of meaningless keys, none of which she could identify but she preserved them all the same.

  ‘Listen, Bailey, I want to ask you something about Cath …’

  Bailey shifted in immediate discomfort and kept his back to her. He had deliberated whether to reveal Cath’s connection to the dead Damien Flood, and, after a day or so, found the decision to remain silent easier than the alternative. This was always Bailey’s way when in doubt, although when Helen copied his secrecy he could quite see how infuriating it was. There was no reason why his professional knowledge should impinge on Helen’s life, or the Eliots’ for that matter. What would it achieve apart from unease, if either of them knew that the woman wielding their dusters had a brother who had died by the knife and a barman husband with a dubious boss? He shrugged. Silence was not always golden.

  ‘What about Cath?’

  ‘Only that she’s being beaten up by her husband.’