Murder... Now and Then (16 page)

‘I said get up. Unless you want some more.'

Oh, God, no. He dragged himself into a crouching position, but there were long moments before he could haul himself out of the beam of light, slumping exhausted over the bonnet of the car, his chest heaving. He opened his eyes, but he could see nothing but a wall of light.

‘If you're going to throw up, get off my car.'

Fighting the nausea, Bannister straightened up, trying to blink away the blindness, staggering a little. He put a hand out to steady himself, finding the car roof.

‘I need you fit for duty after Christmas. That's why you can still stand up. You'll do what I tell you, or you'll never stand up unaided again.'

Eventually, the kaleidoscope of light began to fade, resolving itself into the colour-stained image of the bearded man, backlit by the reflection of the headlamps. He hadn't even broken sweat.

‘You can continue to refuse to co-operate with me, of course. But if you do, you won't be fit for duty or anything else.' He moved towards the car. ‘Except to stand trial – and Annabel will go to court whether she likes it or not, believe me.' He opened the rear door of the Daimler.

Bannister believed him. And Annabel would have bruises, if bruises were required.

‘Get in.'

Through the swaths of purple and green, Bannister felt his way along the car, his hands on the cold metal, groaning as his battered body was pushed in.

The car fired and drove off as soon as they were both seated, the driver behaving for all the world as though his employer had stopped to give Bannister a lift.

The Christmas party. Sitting with his colleagues in a pub, wearing a party hat, smoking a cigar he didn't like and didn't want, watching them all get legless, wasn't Lloyd's idea of fun. But Judy was there.

They had weathered the non-happening at Sid Compton's leaving party quite well, considering. They didn't often have a lot to do with one another in the normal way at work, task-force raids excepted. When their paths had crossed again, she had apologized, and thereafter their working life had gone on as though nothing at all had happened, much to his relief. No embarrassed silences, no awkwardness.

But that just made it worse, in a way. If she had compounded her perverse behaviour by trying to put him in the wrong, he could perhaps have told himself that she was just a tease who got her fun that way. But she wasn't and he knew it. She had meant to go through with it; his bright idea of borrowing a room had blown it. He wondered if Andrew Marvell had had better luck.

He was going before the promotions board in the New Year; if he was successful, and there was no reason why he shouldn't be, he would be moving on. Before, he had worried about that, but now he thought that it might be easier when they weren't actually working at the same station. It was, after all, the thought of one of her colleagues knowing that had given her cold feet and the ever-present possibility of their superiors finding out. He'd get in touch with her once he was in his new post. He wasn't going to lose her.

He was startled when she joined him at his table, which he realized had been deserted while he had been staring into his pint and his future. He smiled at the tiny policeman's helmet which perched on the top of her head. ‘ Trust you to get that one,' he said.

She looked puzzled, then realized what he was talking about, and smiled too, removing it. Then came the reason for her unexpected presence at his table. ‘I thought you ought to know,' she began.

No one ever thought you ought to know that you'd won the Irish Sweep; this wasn't going to be good.

‘Michael's firm is sending him back to Nottingham,' she said. ‘He'll be based there instead of in London. It won't be for about six months,' she said. ‘But I'll be going with him.' There was a tiny pause before she carried on. ‘We're getting married before we go,' she said. ‘The date isn't fixed yet.'

What was she expecting him to say? It was a moment or two before he could say anything at all. When he did, it was that he hoped they would be very happy.

And perhaps they would.

Anna had finally succumbed to her alcohol intake; her eyes had opened once or twice when Max had tried to waken her, but there had been no conscious thought involved. She had been murmuring, but what she had been saying had consisted mostly of incomprehensible obscenities about Victor Holyoak.

Now, there wasn't even that.

Max lifted his clothes from the floor where he had dropped them in his hurry to divest himself of them, and hung them neatly over the chair. He took another look at the unconscious Anna, and went out into the living room, through to the kitchen, where he made himself coffee, and sat down. And that was when the full realization of everything that had happened came crashing down on him, unstoppably, unbearably.

He had been operating on some primitive level of self-preservation until he had stopped having something to do; now, his hand shook uncontrollably as he tried to hit the mug to his lips. Coffee wasn't the right thing, not if he wanted to calm down. It just made people jumpier than they were in the first place. He poured it away, and went back into the bedroom.

Anna still didn't stir, as he got back into bed beside her. She was what he needed; it had worked before, and it would again, if only she would wake up. But gentle shaking failed to produce more than a snuffling little snore as she turned over. The alcohol had worked for her, he thought, in the end. She wasn't quivering like a leaf, jumping at her own shadow. She was oblivious to everything. He had never tried it; maybe it would work for him, even if she hadn't left much. How much would he need to reach oblivion? Probably not a lot.

He used her glass; he shivered as he drank. He had never liked the taste of alcohol.

Two o'clock in the morning, and all was far from well. Charles wondered what town criers had actually said when things hadn't been as they should be.

Gerry would get over it in time. It was, after all, her own fault. But she still hadn't come back upstairs. The crying had stopped, at least the audible crying. He sat up, suddenly frightened by the silence, but in that moment he heard her come upstairs, and he lay back, deeply relieved. Her tread was slow, like an old person's, and she didn't come back in to the bedroom. After a few moments, he heard the guest-room door close.

He hadn't really been surprised when she hadn't come home; he had rung Zelda, and got no reply. As eleven o'clock approached, he had rung again, but there was still no one there. He hadn't waited up. She had come home just after midnight.

‘Where have you been?' he had asked, putting down the book he had been trying to read, as she had come to bed.

‘With Zelda,' she had said, and had stopped undressing as she had spoken. ‘We were worried about Catherine.'

‘I'm sure he isn't going to murder her in her bed,' he had said.

‘What in God's name made you tell him about the abortion?' Geraldine had demanded.

Charles could feel again the cold wave of realization that had swept over him with her words. ‘ He didn't know?' he had said, horrified at the thought that he had betrayed a medical confidence.

‘No! Catherine made Zelda promise not to tell him. He was angry enough as it was without finding that out as well.'

He should be grateful to her, not angry, in Charles's opinion. The discovery that Catherine was having his child would rather have given the lie to Max's insistence that they were no more than employer and employee, and that would have made that whole dreadful episode drag on even longer than it had.

Gerry had begun undressing then, picking up her nightdress, stopping in the act of slipping it on over her head. ‘Why were you so angry about it anyway?' she had said.

Charles sighed, as he recalled every sentence that had led to the inevitable. He had wanted to leave all this until tomorrow, but the conversation had moved inexorably towards it, and he had been powerless to stop it. ‘I thought he'd sent her to you. All the doctors in Stansfield to choose from, and he'd sent her to you. I thought it was a lousy thing to do.'

If only things had ended there, he might still have waited, at least until the morning, when daylight would bring with it the common sense that seemed to desert human beings when the sun went down, before saying what he had to say. But far from it; his reason for berating Max had touched Gerry, and her baffled irritation with him had softened into a smile of apology, of gratitude, even.

She had put her hand on his where it lay on the covers, and had given it a little squeeze. ‘Thank you,' she had said. ‘But no one sent her. We were the only doctors she knew. She chose me because I was a woman, that's all.'

Then she had got into bed. Leaving her nightdress lying on the duvet. ‘She didn't know we were desperate to have a baby,' she had said, kissing him gently on the cheek, moving closer to him.

He had shifted away from her. ‘ Gerry,' he had said. ‘I've been meaning to … well, talk to you. Because we really can't let this dominate our lives for much longer.'

She had frowned, puzzled. ‘Let what dominate our lives?' she had asked, and it had been an innocent question. Trying to have a baby was so much a part of her life that it was as if he had been telling her that she mustn't let breathing become too important to her.

‘Having a baby,' he had said, with as much patience as he had been able to muster. ‘You're forty-two, Gerry.' He had turned to face her, taking her hand. ‘A baby would have been fine once,' he had said.

‘A baby would be fine now,' she had said, smiling, though he had been able to see the tears already bright in her eyes. ‘It might happen, Charles. If it doesn't … well, at least we'll have tried.'

‘But there are too many things to go wrong.'

‘What?'

‘There would be a higher risk of miscarriage, of the baby's being damaged – you couldn't take that kind of disappointment – it's become too important to you.'

‘I could. I know – for God's sake, Charles – I
know
the pitfalls! I'd be prepared for them. And most births are perfectly all right, even with older women!'

‘But some aren't.' He had clasped her hand tighter, more for his own sake than for hers. ‘ Look – I know I wasn't too keen on the idea, but perhaps we could try to adopt.'

She had pulled her hand from his then. ‘ Oh, no,' she had said. ‘No. You talked me out of that a long time ago, Charles. And you know as well as I do that they'd say we're too old now!'

He knew they were too old; it was why he had been prepared to suggest it, because if she had taken him up on it, it would never have happened. And it had provided him with an opening for the rest of the reasoned argument that he had been working on all evening.

‘We are too old,' he had said. ‘A childless couple, in their forties – they'd say that we were too old to start having to cope with night-time feeds and dirty nappies, because we
are
, Gerry. We're too old.'

‘No! They say it keeps you young, having a—'

‘We're too used to being a couple. Sleepless nights, nappies, babysitters … we couldn't adjust to all that, not now.'

‘Yes – oh, yes, we could. We
could
. It—'

‘All right,' he had said. ‘We'll go to an agency. If they say we can adopt we'll do that. Fair?'

She had been shaking her head all the time, blinking away the tears. ‘
No
,' she had said. ‘ No. It isn't fair. Not now. If I have a baby now, then I want it to be
my
baby!'

But not necessarily his. In his solitude, Charles faced the reasons for his decision.

He thought again of Gerry's familiarity with Victor's pent-house flat; that had set up a suspicion that he had pushed away. Not with Victor, he had thought. Surely not Victor? But all doubt had been dispelled by the conversation that he had overheard between Victor and Anna Worthing. No wonder she had been so keen to convince him that Anna was Victor's mistress; that, apparently, was the idea. But Anna had clearly been unwilling to play ball.

He hadn't questioned Victor about it; for one thing, it had been obvious that Anna Worthing must still be in the flat, though Victor had chosen to pretend that they were alone, pressing him to stay, even. For another, there was little point. Charles knew why Gerry had done it; she was quite prepared to have someone else's baby, and let him believe that he was the father. He doubted if Victor was aware of his entirely perfunctory role. It wasn't the first time she had done it, and he had kept his counsel then; she never knew that he had found out. But this would be the last time, he had promised himself that.

Charles's own deviation from acceptable social behaviour was one he preferred not to think about, but he had been forced to, as he had listened to the furious Anna Worthing. Zelda was right about her and Max, of course, and Victor had been far from pleased by their behaviour.

But it was when Anna had begun shouting at Holyoak about her being used as a decoy for his own amorous adventures that alarm bells had started to ring; Charles had interrupted before any names were bandied about, and had given Victor no inkling that he had overheard.

‘The risk of my making you pregnant may be minimal,' he had told Gerry. ‘But I'll be taking precautions from now on, so there will be no risk at all.'

If she had a baby now, she couldn't pretend that it was his, and he knew Gerry well enough this time round to know that that would ensure that she would never put him in this position again. She wouldn't cheat on him, not if she couldn't disguise it.

Gerry loved him; she would never take the risk of losing him, and he knew it. Her infidelities had been prompted by an overwhelming desire to have a baby, and nothing more. But it had to stop. The scandal could be ruinous.