A Clear Conscience (22 page)

‘And if his wife goes back to him, she would be in danger too?'

‘Doesn't follow. He loves her.'

‘He must have loved her brother once, too. And if it was Joe who did it, she'll remember something, won't she? When she's finally recovered from the death, she'll think of some niggly little detail. She'll remember how hubby didn't come home at quite the time she says in her statement. How he went straight to have a bath and left early the next morning with his clothes in a bag, something like that.'

‘It rained,' Ryan remembered. ‘It was raining when I got to the body.' His case, he thought bitterly; my case with minimal supervision from you. Bailey letting him spread his wings only to gum them later. Blood running away into the ground; the dead man's yellow hair plastered against his head.

Bailey made more coffee. ‘Enough danger to the wife for you to get your PC Secura officially involved.'

‘Are you going to arrest him?'

‘Who?'

‘Joe Boyce.'

‘On what grounds? There's no more evidence than there ever
was. Even if Mary Catherine Boyce told us interesting things, we'd be nowhere near.'

‘So what's all this for?' Ryan yelled. ‘Why have I got this bloody headache?'

‘I needed to know, that's why. Do you need a clean shirt?'

C
ath had not been allowed the luxury of open grief, but she had still been grieving, wandering in a daze, a constant fog, like someone high on tranquillisers, floating along at the same level as other people's knees, never quite able to raise her eyes or concentrate for more than a minute. Even in the Eliots' house, wandering from room to room to fetch something and forgetting when she got there what it was. Sometimes, sitting on the bus, she would find herself surprised at the sight of a landmark which she could have sworn they had already passed. Today, she could see it all clearly. Joe had not let her cry; when she had cried he had hit her and then cried himself as if to say, what about me, what about me?

Cath sat on the 59 in a state which approached contentment. Not happiness, Cath had long since forgotten what that concept was, but a state of anxious resolution which she felt called for some self-congratulation, although she could not say why.

Handling Mickey Gat, keeping a hundred pounds of her money, learning that Joe missed her? Better still, being left independently in charge of Mrs Eliot's household: that had been a source of pride, too. Proving indispensable to Helen West added some weight, although that was less important. Cath dismissed to the anterooms of her mind her own sojourn in Mr Eliot's study, although she was half-heartedly aware that it was the most important thing of all and would have to be disinterred, later. The immediate impact was clearer, because it brought a measure of relief. All those papers in the study could only mean that nice Mr Eliot (and, it followed, his wife) knew more about Cath than she could ever have guessed; knew about Damien,
for instance, had some measure of what she had suffered and how brave she had been these last months, so that when she took the momentous step she would take this morning, of asking Emily for help, she would not have to begin at the beginning, because in the information stakes, she was halfway there. How kind and sensitive of them both to mind their own business. In the midst of all this concluding, planning, swaying with the bus, anxious, but confident, it never occurred to Cath that the first-name-only terms which prevailed in the relationship between cleaning lady and cash-paying employer made it unlikely that anyone would automatically connect her full name on a page with the Cath they knew, or that if they had, they might fail to tell their nearest and dearest. Cleaning ladies were treasures with telephone numbers; their full names, their identities, apart from idiosyncrasies, remained in a kind of limbo. The more reliable they were, the more anonymous.

The sun touched Cath's face through a smudged window; she thought briefly of what it would be like up in the eyrie in winter. Yes, explain, calmly and briefly, what her situation was and ask for help. How easy, and yet how difficult a concept that was, but it was not as if she was asking for much and certainly not for anything they could not give. She would like more work, enough to fill three afternoons a week, babysitting, anything they could arrange for her, with all their friends. Emily had fixed her up with Helen West, hadn't she? And there was surely more. Plenty enough to allow her to squat in Damien's flat until she could find something better. Mustn't overburden Mrs Eliot, though, she was a busy woman; ask Helen West later about things like dole money and all that stuff, or take up the offer of that friend of hers, Mary somebody. What a calculating customer she was becoming: she'd be making lists next. The Eliots loved her: she was family, they had often said so. Today, she would accept the accolade, break the habits of a lifetime. Ask for something.

With the bus moving into the smoother reaches of Knightsbridge, it all seemed simple.

S
he let herself in with the key, smelling
the household warmth which was so different from the warmth of the sun, carrying scents of burned toast, soap, feet, and the promise of cheerful voices. She put down her PVC carrier bag, which she always carried regardless of need, and made for the hall cupboard and the Hoover. She always did that first thing, so as not to be seen to have to wait for some special instruction and in any event, there was never a day when this hall did not need cleaning. The house was silent: it seemed almost a shame to waken it into life with the bad-mannered noise of a machine.

Despite her activity Cath was anxious to reach coffee time. Emily Eliot was not. She waved over the noise of the Hoover, disappeared rapidly to the upper regions, put on her make-up and made a list. Ask Hormsbies to supper: frightful people, but their daughter gets on well with Jane and we've been there twice. Write to your mother and thank her for Mark's present. Buy new clothes for Mark, although he does not deserve it, must be his fault he's growing out at the knees, or has he actually cut those jeans? Emily threw her pen across the room. This was procrastination. Get on with it, woman, get on with it. There had never been a motto better suited to a wife: she should get the words emblazoned on a T-shirt.

‘I want to talk to you,' she yelled, over the noise of the Hoover. Where was Jane, subversive, eavesdropping little brute with a passion for dirt? Ah yes, waiting for the friend who was coming for the day, and arranging her room in accordance with what said friend would find most admirable. Cath beamed at her, followed her meekly, while Emily felt irritated. Worse still, when Cath sat at the pine table in the kitchen, she fingered with evident, if critical, affection the surface she had scrubbed so often. Honey spilt at breakfast, a shower of crumbs left by Alistair, Coco Pops spilt by someone. Same old stains on the ceiling, food hiding in every crack.

‘Mr Eliot's room,' Emily began, putting bread and butter on the table, fumbling with a jar of instant coffee.

‘Yes,' said Cath. She grabbed a piece of bread, talked hurriedly with a full mouth. ‘I was going to tell you about that.' She looked round, a trifle shifty, looking out for Jane, waiting
to say how the child had only been looking for paper and was very sorry, and hadn't she herself put it all back more or less right? Emily looked at the open mouth, nauseated. On cue, Jane came sidling in. No hellos, just a sideways shuffle, clinging to the cupboards.

‘Look what I found, Mummy.'

‘Where?'

‘In Cath's bag.' She held aloft a boxed bottle of Estée Lauder, White Linen. Mickey Gat's bribe, which Cath had dropped in there, intending to give it to little Jane, who liked that kind of thing. Emily got up and switched off the kettle. She put back in the bread bin the remains of the granary loaf which Cath ate with such relish, amusing the children who could not understand anyone who did not prefer biscuits.

‘I think you'd better go, Cath. I'm sorry about this, but it's best all round.'

Cath stared dumbfounded. She had begun to laugh, her face contorted in a smile which would preface an explanation about how anyone was welcome to Mickey Gat's perfume, since none of it was real, despite the labels, and it wouldn't last five minutes on a camel, although it was still lovely if it was free; and there was Emily Eliot, fumbling in her handbag and handing her five twenty-pound notes, crisp from a cash machine.

‘A week in hand,' Emily said, her voice as crisp as the notes. ‘Don't worry about the Hoover, I'll put it away.'

J
oe was right then, wasn't he? Joe was right about a lot of things, including people in big houses. Cath stood on the doorstep, clutching her bag. Her head seemed to be shaking with a life of its own, turning left and right, right and left like some weary old dog suffering from blindness. She had money in her fist, her bag on her arm; she had never left a house with such speed and she had no idea why. She wanted to sit on the steps which led down to the street, but the thought of lingering where the chill of their cruelty could contaminate her further moved her on. Wandering, she remembered to put the cash in her purse, the second
one-hundred-pound bribe she had received in twenty-four hours: at this rate, she would be rich. Cath sat on a doorstep five doors down.

They knew, was why. The bad things as well as the good. With their clever wit and all their knowledge they had decoded it all. About she and Damien shoved out to care, shuffling around in the same bedsit when they ran away; the brother with convictions for theft, and the baby that never was. They knew everything there was to know about the potted life-history contained in the statement of Mary Catherine Boyce. And from the pinnacle of their omnipotence they had decided she was not worth the butter on their bread. Four hours a day, sometimes more, five days a week for a year, uncomplaining Cath would do anything, and she still wasn't worth a hearing. She found herself looking down the road which led into the mews where the Spoon and Fiddle sat; but resisted the temptation to walk down there, find Joe and say you were right after all. She had sat on cold stones for more than an hour: she was strong enough to move out of range, but all the morning's resolution was gone, leaving nothing but a residue of duty. The afternoon was promised; another hundred yards brought her to the number 59, and the golden yellow walls of Helen West who could not paint her own bathroom and did not have a man.

She had had enough of the PVC bag, too: Mrs Eliot had given it to her last Christmas. Cath prepared to shove it in the bin by the bus-stop, felt the weight at the bottom, looked inside instead. Resting on her umbrella was the wee bayonet Jane had shown her yesterday. Get rid of rubbish on the cleaning lady. Cath felt a moment of complete panic, but then it fell into perspective. There was no malice in the child, no knowledge, no accusation; only the contemptuous action of getting rid of something which disturbed her. Just like her mother, getting rid of clothes infected with moth. It was a gift of fate, nothing sinister in it, only contempt.

B
ailey could not settle. He found himself in that vacuum created by useless knowledge which he could not share for lack of proof. It would lie on his brain like indigestible food. No-one
inside the police force wanted knowledge which led to nothing. He could tell the collator at the local nick to mention Joe Boyce on the files, brief each relief to watch out for him, but what good would that do? Bailey was angry with himself for setting a hare he could not catch; he had disturbed Ryan to the marrow of his bones, for nothing. There was no-one to save and almost no-one to tell. He sat at his desk, drumming his fingers, and looked out of the window into the back yard which steamed with heat and exhaust fumes. He heard laughter coming from next door and thought of his uncluttered home. Then he thought of Helen's.

Well, he seemed to have cut himself off from solace there. She would have given him a good objective analysis, would she not? Yes, in normal circumstances, but perhaps not when it was so close to home. Bailey knew he was refusing to give her the benefit of the doubt, knew that in some way he was on the brink of disaster with her, and that part of it was his own fault for saying he would not see her until the weekend, let her sort out her own household mess, leave him out of it. Selfish, yes, but she had agreed with it. She knew damn well his offers of help were halfhearted. Bailey did not like change. He disliked it, perversely, as much as he disliked staying still.

The leisure centre park where Damien Flood had died was no great distance from the police station where he had landed, peripatetic animal that he was, that morning. There was a monumental pile of papers on his desk: there were other more recent murders, but he could not let this last case lie. Somewhere soon, he would be moved on to new professional hunting-grounds, despite his own resistance, in the same way that life was going to shift Helen and himself into another gear. He wanted something settled before the revolution he could sense on the horizon, like the promise of a storm. And he did not want that boy convicted of murder when all he had done was a feeble attempt at revenge.

W
alking round the perimeter of the park, Bailey found it difficult to imagine it in the depths of winter. There would be fewer
places to hide. Trying to imagine it in the depths of winter. There would be fewer places to hide. Trying to translate the appearance of a place into another season was like trying to look through binoculars the wrong way round. Now, in the afternoon, it was a vision of innocence. There was a small playground beyond the tennis courts; mothers sat with babies in prams, and if the peace was disturbed by shrieked commands, ‘Val! Get down off there!' ‘Danny, stop that, now!', often punctuated by imprecations not suitable for the ears of children, there was nothing sinister about it. It was a multicoloured scene of racial harmony, paralleled in the crowds on the tennis court, kids mainly, playing games without discipline, using this space like any other space. Animals herding, Bailey thought, making lowing sounds to one another, enjoying the sun.