Fatlands (20 page)

‘I stuck to magnolia,' he said. ‘It seemed safer that way.'

‘Did you use a Rawlplug?'

‘That and a tube of Polyfilla.'

‘It looks great.' Which was more than could be said for me, eh? Oh, what the hell. Why didn't I say it? It was what we were both thinking, anyway. ‘I've been contemplating doing the same to the other eye. Just to give it a sense of symmetry. What do you think?'

OK in theory but a mess in practice. It came out angry with no humour to undercut the pain. The doctor had warned me before I left—something about my emotions
taking longer to heal than my face. Smart guys, doctors. When it comes to other people's bodies. Nick took in a small, sharp breath through his teeth.

I shook my head. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘No. I'm sorry. I should have said something. Except you wouldn't have believed me. It's already so much better, Hannah. I mean compared with Sunday night you look—'

‘Like a million dollars. I know.' I saw him again, sitting there watching over me, staring at the floor. He'd never know I had seen him. Unless, of course, I told him. I looked at him now. He was wearing a pair of stonewashed jeans and a grey cotton sweater I had bought him in the January sales. A lot of women would find him very attractive right now. A lot of women would be right. I was in more trouble than I realized. Help me, I thought. Or just leave me alone.

‘I bought a bottle of something. But I didn't know how you'd be feeling. Maybe you'd just prefer to go to bed and have supper.'

‘No. No. Let's drink.'

He went into the kitchen and came back with a tray, a bottle of champagne and two new, elegant glasses, thin and fluted. He eased out the cork and poured carefully. I watched the bubbles flow. Then he pushed a glass across the table to me. It was the moment when somebody proposes a toast. We waited, but nobody did.

He took a swig, then put down his glass. ‘I have something to say to you, Hannah. Except I don't know if this is the right time.'

‘I don't think there'll be a better one,' I said.

He nodded. ‘I'm not sorry I walked out on you. You should have told me. But then you know that. I am sorry that I didn't come back. I should never have left you to make that walk on your own. I almost didn't. I drove the
car a mile down the road and sat in a lay-by for twenty minutes wondering what to do. I just couldn't see that you'd thank me for trying to look after you.'

I smiled as much as my lip allowed. ‘Don't give yourself a hard time, Nick. You were right. I would have been furious. It wasn't your fault. He knew I was after him. If it hadn't been then, it would have been some other time. I'm glad I got it over with, really.'

He carried on looking at me. I knew what he was feeling. I had seen the same thing in Frank that first night. God save me from chivalry. ‘When I saw what he'd done to you, I wanted to kill him,' he said quietly. And God save me from other people's emotion when I can only just cope with my own. You'd think a therapist would know better.

‘Yeah, well, I had a similar reaction myself,' I said, trying for lightness but missing by a mile. I got up and walked over to the window, pulling back the curtain. I caught a blurred reflection of myself in the glass. Quasimodo. I looked out on to the street. ‘The plane tree's starting to leaf,' I heard myself say. ‘It really must be spring.'

He came up and stood by me. After a while I turned to him. My heart was beating fit to burst. Slowly he put out a hand to my face. I'd been waiting for him to touch me ever since I walked into the flat. But even though I saw it coming, something short-circuited inside me. I swear I didn't know I was going to flinch away until it had already happened. He pulled his hand back abruptly.

‘It's OK, Hannah. It's OK.' I nodded, swallowing hard, except I couldn't get my saliva down. ‘I won't touch you. You're OK. I'm not one of them, all right?'

‘I know,' I said. ‘I know that. I do.' And to my fury I began to cry.

He stepped away from me. And I could see him covering up the hurt with expertise: becoming Nick the professional
with a difficult client, watching, judging the moment, making sure it was the right response. ‘Let's just leave it for a bit, eh? Why don't we sit down and have another drink? Then I'll get supper.'

I shook my head. ‘Listen Nick. I … I have to be on my own for a bit.'

‘OK,' he said easily. ‘We need some coffee, anyway. I'll take a walk down to the shops.'

‘No. No. I mean properly alone.'

He looked at me for a long time. I kept thinking about what he was seeing: Hannah, and not Hannah. But a lover now, no longer a patient. And it may be cruel to say it, but it was a relief to feel confusion in place of his infinite understanding. ‘Are you sure about that?'

I nodded. He moved over to the chair and picked up his coat and briefcase. Jesus, I thought. Am I sure? Is this really what I want?

He put on the coat slowly. ‘I'll call you tomorrow then,' he said lightly, and walked towards the door. Each action reeked with significance. I could hardly stand it.

He picked up his car key from the hall table. Then turned. ‘I just need to know one thing. Is this about you, or about us?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘I don't know.'

And I didn't. But he seemed to. He looked at the floor, then up at me. ‘Oh, Hannah,' he said softly. Then, ‘Will you be all right?'

I gave a little shrug. ‘Yep.' But it came out more as a question than a statement.

‘Yes,' he repeated. ‘I think you will.' Out of his coat pocket he had pulled a single key, with a globe key ring on it. He stood running it though his fingers. We both knew which door it opened. And closed. He looked down at it. ‘If it's all right with you, I'll hold on to this for a while.
You never know. You might need someone to do the shopping.'

And he smiled. I'll repeat myself at the risk of being crude. There must be fifty ways … Let's hear it for Paul Simon. And for Nick Thompson. Not such a bad therapist after all. I smiled too. This time when he turned he didn't look back. The door closed behind him. I waited till his footsteps had gone down the hall and out the main door. Then I walked over and put the chain on behind him.

I drank another glass of champagne and made myself an omelette. The booze turned me nasty, but by then I was too drunk to care. So I no longer had a lover. All the more room for my toy boy. I wouldn't call it overwhelming, but there was no doubt that since our tryst in a dark country lane the thought of him had crept insidiously closer to my heart. What was it Frank said about their forgetting you quicker than you forgot them? With good reason. Every time I moved, I had a memory of him where my stomach met my bowels. And when that faded, there was always the mirror to refresh my passion. Good fantasy stuff, eh—the detective becoming obsessed with the criminal? And on the way exposing some dark, pathological similarities, making them a true match for each other. To be honest, I've always found it a bit of a cliché. Until now. Now I understood it. Not so much symmetry as tit for tat. He beats me to a pulp, I want to do the same thing to him. That kind of longing can turn you inside out. Just like sex. Problem is he was playing hard to get. Still, when you want someone enough …

Until that moment I don't think I had really thought about the future. About whether or not I was still working on the case. As far as Don Peters was concerned, it was over for me. He'd implied as much at my bedside and I'd said nothing to disillusion him. He was hardly likely
to check. After all he had six hundred phone calls to keep him occupied. Whereas I had a clear mind and an ache that only one thing would cure. I took my omelette to bed with the rest of the champagne and indulged my madness.

Like all good fantasies he was never far away. Page two of the
Guardian
showed his picture. Mr Nobody. I wondered if he was distressed at how badly he'd been reproduced. The
Independent
had a box entry with a further story on page four. I was on my way to find it when I came across the other little newsworthy tale.

I wouldn't have noticed it but for the words ‘animal rights' in the third line. They pulled me like a magnet. The headline read
HUNT DOGS IN DEATH MYSTERY
. Apparently it had happened just a few days ago. The hounds of the Otley Hunt in Suffolk had been due out last Sunday for their weekly search and destroy mission, but when the huntsman had gone to the kennels he had found three of the beagles dead. Initially there had been fears of animal rights poisoning, but according to the local vet all three animals had died from natural causes. They were still awaiting the post-mortem results, but they seemed to have suffered some kind of heart failure. Strange but true. Three heart attacks? Maybe it wasn't so innocent after all. Maybe the Animal Liberation Front had come in the night and scared them to death with pictures of beagle experiments. Pity the local vet. He must have had his work cut out for him. I remembered the Framlingham man, with the farm dog wrapped tenderly in his blanket. And Greg, the farmer, so solicitous for his animal's well-being. And there was something about the scene that lodged in my mind. Something. But what? I was pouring the last of the champagne into my glass when the phone rang. The bed got its own libation as a result. It was Frank. Just checking.

‘So how much did it scare you?'

‘What?'

‘The phone ringing.'

‘Er … Four out of ten.'

‘You OK?'

‘Too many men asking the same questions, Frank. I'm fine. A little drunk.'

‘That you are. Does this mean Nick isn't there?'

‘No. He's gone home.'

‘I see. Is that all right?'

‘Yes … No,' I said. ‘Next question.'

‘I rang to see how you were and to give you some news.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Let's do the welfare bit first, OK? A job has come through that's going to take me out of town till Friday afternoon. I didn't want to leave without checking you'd be OK.'

Who loves ya, baby? ‘Thanks. I'm fine. Really. I'm sitting in bed with the newspaper and a half—no, fully empty bottle of champagne. Still in the happy-to-be-alive stage, I think.'

There was a pause. ‘You don't sound great, but I'm going to believe you. Right. They got the results of Shepherd's post-mortem back.'

‘And?'

‘The substance he used to kill himself was Malkarin, a specialized form of animal poison. The kind that they use in laboratories once the experiments are over.'

Ooof. ‘What do they think?'

‘The money's on poetic suicide.'

‘How about poetic murder?'

‘Animal rights finishing off what they began, you mean? Nice idea, but too melodramatic for the boys and absolutely nothing to back it up. No forced entry, no
sign of a struggle. Also this stuff was traceable. It could only be got from Vandamed laboratories.'

I saw him again, that haggard face, brought down by suffering. So Tom Shepherd had died like an animal, doing to himself what he must have done to a hundred rats and mice. It gave such an awful, blasted symmetry to it all. ‘I see.'

‘Also the inquest verdict on Mattie Shepherd has come in.'

Ah, I had forgotten. The date had been set for a while. I should have been there, would have been if I could … Well, they had my evidence, anyway. My face would only have upset the coroner. ‘Don't tell me. Another suicide verdict.'

‘Hannah, I strongly advise you to stop drinking. Either that or don't take the sleeping pills. They never worked for me, anyway. What I'm trying to tell you is the remains have been released and there's a funeral service for her tomorrow at a chapel of rest in Finchley. I've got the address. I thought you might like to go.'

I was away from the phone scrabbling for a pen, so I only got back in time for the last bit. ‘ … the ignition.'

‘Sorry?'

‘How long have you been gone?'

‘Long enough. Tell me again.'

He sighed. ‘I'll tell you, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. Forensics'final report on the car came through last Friday, in time for the inquest. As far as it's possible for them to tell, the bomb was definitely set to be triggered by the ignition.'

‘What?'

‘You heard. Which means either it went wrong, or—'

Or fourteen-year-old little Mattie had been going somewhere, after all. So how come Daddy hadn't told me that she knew what to do with a car key? No doubt he
didn't want to have to think about where she might be going with his precious papers. I saw her standing in front of me, that earnest look on her face.
‘Where would I run to? Anyway, I'm fourteen, remember. I don't even know how to drive.'
Well, well. And I had so much wanted her to be telling me the truth. Maybe that had been the problem. I gave it some thought. And I felt a little better. After all, in the end what are lies but the stuff that plots are made of?

I
t was raining, soft spring drizzle like a mist sticking to your coat and frizzing your hair. It turned out to be a crematorium, which seemed in bad taste to me given the way she died, but then I wasn't her parents. Parent. My God. I'd been so busy with my own pain, I hadn't had a chance to feel anyone else's. Christine Shepherd, a woman who left her family only to find that her family had left her. I thought of Veronica's slim, capable hands. Good for pleasure. Let's hope they were as good for pain.

I was late. I had trouble finding the right clothes. Then I had trouble finding the right road. The service had already begun. Frank had warned me it would be a private affair. But he had slipped the wink to the boys and I got in through the main gate without any trouble. Presumably he hadn't known about the private security firm inside. There were two guards at the chapel door. And I wasn't on either of their lists. Of course my looks didn't help. Well, would you want a face like mine in a chapel of rest? I didn't push it. They would be finished soon enough and whatever I had to say to Mattie could be said out in the rain, without the help of some professional preacher who had only met her through a set of newspaper cuttings.