A verbal prod had worked well enough with Simon Tick. But there hadn’t been any risk with him. No one had suggested he was in touch with the most violent of criminal gangs.
‘There are structures in place to deal with the very few rogue officers left,’ he said easily.
‘Oh, right. And what about corruption?’ Trish put the breathiness back in her voice for protection. ‘Is it really true that one of the commissioners actually said in a public speech that he had officers who are “corrupt, dishonest and unethical”?’
‘Nothing would surprise me about the police,’ Lulu said bitterly enough to make the air feel colder. ‘If it’s not rogue males, it’s bossy women fighting unnecessary battles and making everyone’s life a misery.’
Like Stephanie Taft, Trish thought, looking from Lulu to her husband and back again. She must know Stephanie had been killed, so this had to be a deliberate dig at John. What was there between them to make her resent his earlier relationship so much that she set out to hurt him in public like this?
His mouth turned down at the corners and there was a new tension in it, as though he was trying to suppress a yawn. He caught Trish watching him and for a second she thought he looked furious. He turned away to pick up his glass. No one said anything. When he looked back at her he was smiling again. Had she imagined that brief flash of rage?
The phone rang, breaking the tension. Caro went out to answer it in her bedroom.
‘That was George’s secretary,’ she said as she came back into the room. ‘Apparently he’s locked in talks with a client and probably won’t make it. We’d better eat.’
Over the dried-up chicken stew, conversation moved on to films and food and holidays, before swinging back to the big questions of crime and its causes that seemed to obsess Caro and John, fascinated Trish, and bored the other two equally. Jess and Lulu soon found a mutual interest in the pilot for a television series, in which Jess had starred and which Lulu had thought absolutely brilliant.
Once Caro saw they were happily absorbed, she stopped trying to include them in the law-and-order conversation and let it run as it would between Trish and John. Trish liked his ideas more and more, but with Stephanie’s suspicion of him in her mind, she waited for an opportunity to bring the killing into the open. It came when he and Caro were talking about drive-by shootings and gun crime in general.
‘It’s getting worse, isn’t it?’ Trish said then. ‘I was horrified by that story last weekend. You know, the one about the woman who was shot in a raid on a crack house. Have they caught the man who did it yet?’
‘Not yet,’ John said, turning away from her, so he could look at Caro. ‘At least, not as far as I know, but I’m stuck at headquarters. Have you heard anything?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘Did either of you know her?’ Trish asked, wide-eyed and innocent again.
Caro said nothing, smiling at John Crayley, as though courteously waiting for the guest to speak first. Trish saw that he was trying to swallow a mouthful of chicken. His hand might have tightened on his fork, but not enough to make the knuckles whiten.
‘Both of us did,’ Lulu said for him. ‘And he used to live with her before he and I got together.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Trish said at once, putting a gentle hand on his. He made a tiny instinctive movement to pull away, then let his hand lie on the table under her hand. She could feel all the little muscles quivering, but that could have been just because he hated being touched by a stranger.
‘This seems to be my night for trampling all over your life, John,’ she said, keeping her hand there to see what he did with it. ‘Forgive me?’
‘Of course.’ He put down his knife and picked up his napkin to wipe his lips, which gave him a good excuse to shake her off. ‘How could you know? As Lulu says, Stephanie and I were together for a while, but we parted amicably, in the way you do. Did you ever come across her, Caro?’
‘Occasionally, although not for years.’
Trish admired the way Caro kept her face clear of all guilt as she told her lie.
When the Crayleys left, well after midnight, Jess headed off to the kitchen to start stacking the dishwasher. Trish confessed she had nothing to offer Caro yet, adding, ‘I don’t think you’re going to get anything out of him by guile, or direct questioning either. But there’s more to him than he pretends.’
‘What did you see?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who gives so little impression of who he is or what he’s feeling,’ she said, pinning down the idea as she spoke. ‘There’s was one flash of rage, but that was all. For the rest of the evening it was as though he had a firewall, stopping anyone raiding him for information or impressions.’
Trish shook her head in frustration and made one more effort to explain. ‘Lulu was easy. You could feel she was resentful and unhappy and determined to needle him. I got nothing like that from him: almost no emotions at all. And I don’t believe – I can’t believe – that he really doesn’t feel anything about Stephanie’s death, or about being abandoned by his birth mother for that matter.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s bent.’
‘No. The firewall could be the only way he’s found of managing things he can’t bear to feel. Caro, I honestly think the time’s come for you to pass the problem on to your contacts at MI5. The implications are too big – and dangerous – for you to go on fiddling about yourself. Let the spies sort it out. Either they’ve been incompetent with the information Stephanie tried to pass on – or at least one of them is playing games with you. Don’t let them.’
‘But—’
‘Forget the liaison job. I know you wanted it. But there will be others. Tell whoever interviewed you what Stephanie told you, and get rid of the problem for ever. It’s not safe to do anything else.’
Caro said nothing, but her expression was stubborn.
The lights in the flat told Trish that George must have extricated himself from his work drama. In case he was asleep, she walked as quietly as she could up the iron staircase and eased the keys into their locks with unusual care.
She was rewarded with the sight of him, flat out on one of the sofas, still wearing his loose old Burberry on top of his suit. His briefcase and umbrella lay beside him, in the remains of a puddle of rain.
Years ago, soon after she’d first come to London, she’d lived with a man who drank so much that he often passed out fully dressed. George wasn’t like that. He liked wine as much as she did, but she’d never seen him drunk. He only ever collapsed like this when he’d been involved in all-night negotiations over a client’s deal. Even then, he usually managed to take off his coat and eat something before crashing out. And those days should have been over. As senior partner, he ought never to have become this closely involved in any one deal.
Trish sat for a while, watching him. The anxious, angry lines had been smoothed out of his face by sleep, and he looked vulnerable in a way he would never have allowed himself during the day. His chest rose and fell. Occasionally a soft popping sound would issue from between his lips; it wasn’t a snore or even a snuffle, more like a small soap bubble bursting.
This must be love, Trish thought, if I can enjoy watching my partner of seven years fast asleep in this most ungainly heap.
She felt as though trust in him had crept up on her when she wasn’t looking and got under the defences she’d hated but been unable to dismantle. In their early days together, she’d yearned to feel like this and been terrified of what might happen if she did and it all went wrong. For a while she had tried to force trust – and happiness – on herself, telling him several times that he had transformed her and her view of the world. Then had come the hard years, when she’d learned that those pronouncements had been no more than wishful thinking. Now, something had clicked into place without her even noticing when it had happened, and they were all true.
‘Good dinner, Trish?’ he said, without opening his eyes.
�
�The evening was fine, but the food didn’t match anything you’d have cooked: you know, lumps of defrosted chicken in an amorphous kind of brown sauce for the meat-eaters and lentil stew for the rest. But the beetroot and parsnip crisps we had with drinks were good.’
‘Great. This sofa’s big enough for the both of us, Trish. Why don’t you join me?’
She walked to his side, and let her hand trail across his face, feeling the day’s stubble under her fingers. ‘We’d be more comfortable in bed.’
‘Yes, but there are those stairs to get up, and I don’t think I’d make it.’
‘You can’t sleep in your clothes, George. You’ll feel unspeakable in the morning. Come on.’
He lay there, smiling up at her, his brown eyes still sleepy but full of tenderness. ‘I suppose you’re right, smarty-boots. Help me up then.’
With one arm around his waist, and one of his draped across her shoulders, Trish got ready to haul him across the polished wooden floor to the spiral staircase that would get them up to her eyrie in the roof space. Not at all to her surprise, he was entirely capable of supporting himself and did so, while keeping his arm around her shoulders and holding her tight against his side.
‘D’you want a bath? I could run it for you.’
He shook his head and, still dressed in the Burberry and suit, he began to work his tie loose, leaning back against the bedroom wall and letting his knees sag.
‘Come on,’ Trish said, feeling more maternal than she had with anyone but David for years and years. She undid his tie and slid it out from under his collar, before helping him off with the mackintosh and suit jacket.
At last he galvanised himself and managed to remove the rest of his clothes and drop them on the spoon-backed chair, before falling face-down on the bed.
A moment later she realised he was already asleep again.
She rolled him over so she could get him under the duvet. Then, recognising that she would have neither talk nor anything else from him for a good twelve hours, she picked up his clothes and shook them out. She collected her book and dressing gown and went downstairs again to make a cup of tea, before running a deep bath for herself.
Lying in the scented water, she read and drank her tea, until her mind began to slow down. When she slid, still a little damp, into bed beside her big, generous-hearted, sometimes tetchy lover, he didn’t move. She lay beside him, listening to his breathing, and waited for sleep to overtake her too.
Just as the first blissful wafts were draping themselves across her mind, a fully formed sentence came into it. ‘If you want to understand a man, get to know his mother.’
She couldn’t remember whether this was a standard old wives’ tale, a bit of modern psychobabble, or something she’d just made up. But as she thought about its implications, plans began to suggest themselves to her. She’d told Caro to give up on the problem, so it was mad to be thinking like this, but she couldn’t make her mind shut down.
Chapter 10
Monday 26 March
Monday morning started with another call to David’s head teacher, who still hadn’t found any evidence of bullying in his year or any clues as to who might have stolen his phone. Trish thanked her, promised to pass on anything she might get out of David, and set off for Catford.
Against all her instincts to leave Caro’s problem to the secret authorities, she hadn’t been able to stop herself digging a little deeper. If John Crayley’s adoptive mother had resisted the approach, Trish would have dropped it at once. But she hadn’t. Trish had used a similar excuse to the one she’d used for interviewing Simon Tick, adding, ‘When I met your son at a dinner on Friday, he was so enthusiastic about you and the way you brought him up that I realised your story would be a wonderful counterbalance to some of the sad case histories I already have.’
‘Did he give you my phone number?’ Gillian Crayley had asked, clearly puzzled. ‘He didn’t tell me you’d be calling.’
‘I didn’t think about it till after the dinner. I didn’t want to bother him, so I just looked you up.’
‘I see. Give me a phone number where I can reach you, and I’ll let you know.’
Gillian had phoned back only half an hour later to say she’d looked up some of the reviews of Trish’s first book on Amazon and would be happy to see her.
When she opened her gleaming front door, she revealed herself to be much the same age as Bee Bowman, but far less sleekly dressed. Her iron-grey hair was permed into an old-fashioned helmet of disciplined waves, and she was wearing a flowery shirt-waister in thick, smooth brushed cotton, tan-coloured tights and well-polished court shoes.
‘Please come in,’ she said, before leading the way into the front room.
There was the usual tray of coffee and biscuits waiting on a smooth-edged table made of some orange-coloured wood, which matched the lamp that stood in the corner under a pleated chiffon shade. The walls were decorated in magnolia emulsion, with gleaming gloss paint on all the woodwork, and the curtains were chintz, printed with large reddish-purple peonies on grey-green stems against a cream background.
‘It’s good of you to see me, Mrs Crayley,’ Trish said, sitting down on the plum-velvet sofa.
‘What do you want to ask me?’
Trish ran through her list of straightforward questions, taking notes of the answers, before confiding a few of her old problems and anxieties over David. As she talked about him, admitting her fear that his early experience and the genes he’d inherited might ruin his chances of a happy life, she saw Gillian Crayley’s rigidly held body loosen a little. She even smiled when Trish said, ‘When I first agreed to foster him, his social worker told me I had to watch out for all kinds of horrors. She thought a boy with his background might easily steal – either from my handbag or from his schoolfriends. She was sure he’d lie, and she even suggested he could take to arson in his early teens. So far we’ve been lucky. Were you afraid of that kind of thing?’
Gillian shook her head, looking absolutely definite.
‘I’ve never had any trouble with John. He always fitted in at school and did well. Rules matter to me, and he seems to have understood that from the word go.’ She took a pile of photograph albums from the bottom shelf of one bookcase and started to leaf through it, pointing out favourite pictures of him as a child and giving a history of all his innumerable achievements at each stage of his development. Trish saw plenty of pride in her, but devotion too, and no signs of the doubt or resentment that might suggest she’d picked up hints of some kind of double life.
‘I always think it’s very brave of adoptive parents to take on babies about whom they know virtually nothing,’ Trish said, having admired a handsome picture of John in his first constable’s uniform. ‘How much were you told about his natural parents?’
‘I didn’t need to be told anything. It was a private adoption. They were still allowed in those days.’
‘I hadn’t realised. Does that mean you knew his parents?’
‘I came to know his mother really quite well. At first I saw her as just a silly little rich girl, who had romantic ideas about working-class men – until she fell pregnant to one and discovered they’re no different from any other kind.’ Gillian recrossed her legs.
‘Does John know about her? I don’t want to write or talk about anything you’d rather I kept confidential.’
‘He knows. Just as he knows how much I came to like her during her pregnancy. I looked after her, you see.’
‘And found she wasn’t as silly as you’d first thought?’
‘That’s right. John’s inherited her brains as well as her looks. But I hope he’s happier. Poor Sally hadn’t had an easy time at home, which is why she’d looked elsewhere for love.’
‘It doesn’t sound as though she found that. Did you know the man, too?’
Gillian shook her head. Her lips were tightly clamped together. Trish was planning another question, when Gillian suddenly opened her mouth and said bitterly, ‘Can you believe i
t? He tried to force her have an abortion, even though it was still illegal then, and very dangerous. Not surprisingly she got hysterical whenever he talked about it; she’d heard all sorts of horror stories about back streets, haemorrhages, infections, death even. Later on she told me wistfully that he must have cared for her a little because when he understood how frightened she was, he did stop trying to bully her into it. But that was the only good thing I ever heard her say about him.’ She paused, looking so troubled that Trish apologised for bringing back hard memories.
Gillian managed to smile. ‘It’s all right. I don’t really mind talking about it now, but it was a difficult time. Sid and I had tried to have kids, you see, and couldn’t. That does things to you, you know.’
She pulled one of the photograph albums forwards and turned to the first page, putting her finger on a tiny black-and-white print of a baby wrapped in a shawl. The caption underneath read: ‘Gill and John. Our first day.’ All that could be seen of her were the arms that cradled the sleeping child.
Trish had enough friends with fertility problems – and sharp enough memories of the miscarriage that had ended her own single pregnancy – to understand how the searing hunger for a child could so overtake a woman’s mind that she became obsessed by the need to satisfy it. Family, lovers, friends, work counted for nothing in comparison with the urge that drove such women.
Confronted with Gillian’s honesty, Trish couldn’t think of a convincing way to switch the conversation round to the possibility that John might have got into bad company, or signed up for so much debt that he’d been tempted to take money from a crime syndicate. Instead, she asked how Gillian had got involved with Sally and her baby in the first place.
‘London neighbourhoods were different in those days,’ she said with a regretful smile. ‘Everyone in the street knew about our trouble. I think the news must have got back to the father, whoever he was, and he sent Sally to knock on my door and ask for help. It was brave of her.’
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