Painkiller (18 page)

It was a long journey. It was always a long bloody journey. The digital milometer on DI Geoff Marks’s dashboard flickered playfully between five and six miles an hour. The traffic on Putney Bridge inched along like snails in formation, and he watched the taxis and buses zoom past in their special lanes. He fantasised about sticking a siren on and charging through the traffic.

Fat raindrops exploded on his windshield and refused to be dislodged by his windscreen wipers, which squeaked and swished impotently back and forth. He should get them looked at but when had he got time to go to a garage these days? Anyway, he’d feel stupid, wouldn’t he? Putting his car in for a squeaky wiper. It was one step up from putting it in the shop when the air freshener ran out.

Not the best day to come back from a holiday. It was rush hour – hell, it was
always
rush hour in west London, cars were permanently buggering each other over Hammersmith bridge and he could see some lucky bastards heading the other way, making a break for it, dashing with relief for the M4, like swimmers breaking the surface of the water and gasping for air.

Dad once told him: ‘Geoff, don’t buy a house out in Roehampton. You don’t have to be near me, son. Get yourself a bijou bachelor pad in town. Take it easy on yourself. Live a little,’ and Geoff replied, ‘A flat in London? At those prices? You’re having a bloody joke, Dad. I could buy a castle in Scotland for that kind of money.’ And they both laughed at exactly the same time, because they realised they’d swapped roles – he was saying all the things he said to his dad after he got divorced, and his dad was saying all the things he used to say to Geoff, about the price of this and that, about buying a castle in Scotland for the price of a BMW.

He was right, of course. Dad was in a home now, and Geoff was stuck out in the sticks on his own, trying to drive into work and trundling along the road like some toddler in his pedal car.

Some idiot was right up his arse, practically kissing his back bumper, and for the twentieth time that hour Geoff wished he was in a squad car. That would make the bastard think twice about tailgating him.

He flicked his eyes into his mirror, mentally taking the twat’s number and feeding his details into the ‘most wanted’ list, and realised how red and angry his forehead looked. There was a big faded shape around his eyes where his sunglasses had been. He looked like the world’s crappiest superhero. Christ! That’ll teach him. He can’t win with this complexion.

He was going to get all the jokes when he got back to the station.

The traffic shuddered to a halt and he could see brake lights shining all the way from Holland Park to Notting Hill.

Scrub that
. If
he got back to the station.

DS Mike Fennel was there, at his desk, when Geoff got in, and he put his hands up in pre-emptive surrender. ‘Yes, Mike, I know. I’m a beetroot. I’m a steamed lobster. I’m a sun-ripened tomato. You could use my face to cordon off traffic incidents on the M4. I’m redder than that telly comedian’s arse when we busted Doris the dominatrix. Come on. Do your worst. I can take it.’

Mike looked at him with genuine surprise. ‘I wasn’t going to say any of that.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘No. Seriously. I wasn’t…’ His fingers pattered along the edge of his desk, feeling for his notepad, and he stared into space. ‘You see, I’ve gone completely blind…’

‘Oh ho ho ho.’

‘They warned me never to stare directly at your forehead…’

‘Guffaw.’

‘… not without tinted glass. But I wouldn’t listen.’

‘Very good.’

Still doing the blind act, he held a note up under Geoff’s nose, close enough to stuff it up his left nostril.

‘Trevor – that is DCI Bradbury to you – wants to see you in his office.’

He did try to stop it but a sigh escaped Geoff’s lips. Mike caught it and savoured it, inhaling it. ‘Now, now, Geoff, you’ll love it. Chance for you two to catch up, to reminisce about old times.’

‘Oh joy of joys.’

‘I’m sure it’ll throw up all sorts of memories.’

Four years ago, Trevor Bradbury was just another copper. He was Geoff’s puppy for a time; Trevor wasn’t a bad lad, but he was one of those fast-track types who got promoted at an incredible rate. It was rumoured he was on his way to ACPO, but it was difficult for Geoff to have any kind of respect for a man who vomited over his good shoes when he saw his first dead body.

He trudged up the stairs, through the open-plan offices and across to Trevor Bradbury’s glass-fronted office. The door was ajar, but Geoff tapped on it anyway.

‘You wanted me, sir?’

DCI Bradbury looked just as young as he’d been when he’d emptied his insides over Geoff’s best DMs and wiped the flecks of vomit off his chin. There was a clear inch-wide gap between his shirt collar and his scrawny neck. His bony fingers hovered mid-tap over his keyboard. ‘Geoff, great – I heard you were back. Come in, come in. Sit sit sit.’

Geoff sat, awkwardly, in a low padded chair, and Trevor perched on his desk. He seemed to have dropped the big chief act. He looked almost excited. He was acting like he was still a baby copper.

‘I’ve got something to show you. I thought it might mean something to you.’

He danced around his desk and pulled his laptop around to face Geoff. ‘I don’t know if you remember but when we were out on the beat together…’

He never brought up those days. Not if he could help it. Old times meant nothing to him. This must be something special.

‘Well, remember when we followed up…’ He shook his head. ‘No. I think it’s best that I show you. This is footage from a car park in Woolwich. There was a bit of a disturbance there a few nights back. Someone found some bullet casings on the floor and rang us, we checked a CCTV from a nearby garage, and
voilà
, the whole incident was recorded.’

He pressed ‘play’, and sure enough, Geoff saw a shitty-looking car park. He saw two light-grey blobs facing up to each other. ‘IC1 males,’ he said automatically. ‘They look like they’re having quite a disagreement.’

‘They do, don’t they? Keep watching.’

One grey blob shoved the other inside a van and slammed one of the doors on the other blob’s legs, and then he was flinching; there was no sound but it was obvious that shots were being fired from inside the van. The grey blob outside the van twisted the legs around and leapt inside.

‘Wait a couple more seconds,’ Trevor said, staring at the screen. ‘Just a couple – more – seconds…’

Geoff watched as the bigger grey blob leapt out of the van, holding a gun, and then ran helter-skelter towards them, right by the camera. DCI Bradbury jabbed hastily at the pause button, just as the grey blob was filling the screen. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Who’s that?’

Geoff shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Who is it?’

Bradbury was outraged his stunt hadn’t provoked more of a reaction. ‘It’s him! It’s that bloke who we thought was trying to kill his wife.’

‘Him? I can’t see it, sir.’

‘It is him! You know! The wife who was flat on her back with the pain.’

Geoff knew who he was talking about. Of course he did. Trouble was, he couldn’t see it. To him, it was just another tubby IC1 male.

‘It’s definitely him,’ said Bradbury. ‘I’ll swear to it by all the gods. I’m very good with faces. Derek. No… Dominic Wood. The guy with the crippled wife. I’d know him anywhere. Definitely,’ he said, with undisguised triumph. ‘Looks like he’s up to his old tricks again.’

Geoff leaned in. ‘I suppose there’s a passing similarity.’

‘Similarity nothing. It’s him. I’ve got the eyes of a bus driver and I know who that is. And he’s buying a gun. He’s serious about it this time.’

‘We thought he was serious about it last time, sir, but you know what happened.’

‘His wife wouldn’t put him on the hook, yes. But here we are, back here again. More evidence. Perhaps in the last four years she might have realised that he was serious about it too.’

‘If she’s still alive.’

‘That’s not a good thought.’ He tapped his expensive gold pen against his lips.

Bradbury liked the man’s wife; they both did. She seemed so vulnerable, lying stretched out there on the floor, obviously in mountains of pain. After they left the house and got in the car they didn’t speak for a while; not until that afternoon.

Then, Bradbury started talking about his own sister, who got MS one day and her husband packed his bags within the year. Geoff listened, thinking about his dad, who had popped into his own mind after their visit to Mrs Wood. Geoff’s dad, who moved away from Roehampton when he forgot Mum’s name and started walking along the high street in his pyjamas, and during his more rational moments asked Geoff to do something that he wasn’t prepared to do. Scrub that; that he didn’t have the
courage
to do.

‘Why don’t you give her a call?’ said the DCI.

‘On what grounds?’

‘On what grounds? It’s
him
, Geoff.’

He was ‘Geoff’ again. It seemed for DCI Bradbury the years had been peeled away. It was all he could do to stop calling him sir.

Geoff spread his hands wide, helplessly. ‘What do I say? Has your husband bought a gun recently? Can you check your bank statement?’

Bradbury dropped his pen petulantly. ‘Look, just give her a ring. Make something up. See if she’s OK. Then, if she isn’t OK, talk to her some more, see if she’s changed her mind about pressing charges.’

‘And if she hasn’t?’

‘We’ve got enough evidence to bring him in on something, whether she wants to press charges or not. Suspected possession of a firearm, conspiracy to murder, we should put him on the PNC. Let’s give him a fright. Let him know that we’re aware he’s up to his old tricks.’

Geoff didn’t feel there was any evidence at all. One copper thinking a man on a blurry screen was the same man they sort of suspected of trying to kill his wife four years ago? If it wasn’t a DCI getting excited about it…

But it
was
a DCI getting excited about it, and there is a long list of things you don’t say to your guvnor. And ‘you’re completely bonkers, sir’ is right near the top.

Geoff went to the door. ‘I’ll get on it, sir.’

Dominic roared through the back streets of Kensington, using every shortcut he knew, easing his foot off the pedal only slightly when he went past the primary schools. His phone rang, large and loud, and his thumb nudged ‘accept’ on the steering wheel.

‘Hello?’

‘Dominic, mate. How are you?’

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s your old mate Larry French.’

Dominic’s hands gripped tighter on the steering wheel, trying to tie it into a knot. ‘You’re not my mate.’

‘Well I’m your wife’s mate. I’m her guardian angel. You know that.’

‘What do you want, Larry?’

‘I was just taking time out from a bit of a poncy workshop. Not a proper workshop with tools, mark you. We’re fleshing out our characters today. Me, I just want to learn the words and get on stage, but there you go. But I digress. I was just wondering how your missus was doing, Dominic. I hear she’s going for some sort of miracle treatment.’

‘Is that a fact?’

‘She came to see me. She said you weren’t going to help her get this treatment.’

‘That’s my business.’

‘I hope you’re not thinking of doing anything stupid. Not like last time.’

‘What last time?’

‘You know what. PC Plod and his ilk have got enough on their plates without running after the likes of you.’

‘Did you take my gun?’

‘It’s for your own good.’

‘Don’t threaten me, Larry.’

‘I’m not threatening you, mate. I’m asking you. Your missus is a diamond. Don’t try this stupid thing again. If you ever loved her you’ll —’

Dominic terminated the call.

He left the car in the street, round the corner from the house. He thudded along the tarmac, dived in the back alley, and tried to open their back gate.

Locked, of course.

He struggled onto the wall and craned across to slide the bolt. And then he found himself lying on his back, staring at the white sky, heaving and sucking at the air. He had leaned too far, fallen over the gate into the garden, and winded himself. He struggled to his feet, controlling his breathing, and thanking his lucky stars he’d landed on the path and not impaled himself on a fork.

What was the combination of the shed padlock? What was it? Don’t panic – just calm down and… oh yes. That was it. The year of his birth. The lock clicked free, he stuffed it in his pocket and the door creaked open. The spade was leaning within easy reach and soon he was attacking the soft soil, spraying huge gobbets of mud onto his trousers, onto his shirt… A piece of mud hit him behind the ear and the world lurched on its axis, and the single high-pitched note sounded in his head again.

Slower now, don’t panic
. Soon the bag was visible. He pulled it out, hearing the comforting rattle of the wire clippers inside knocking against the baseball bat. Pulling the carrier bag from his pocket he unwrapped the gun, just to look at it again, because he still didn’t quite believe it when he saw it, wrapped it in the balaclava and the gloves, put it in the bag, and put the bag in the hole.

He was bending down to pick up the spade when he realised he couldn’t leave the bag here. Larry would just take the gun again, or worse, Monica might become curious about him digging in the garden. If there was just a chance… He had to put the bag somewhere else. He spun around, looking for options. Perhaps the shed? Monica didn’t go anywhere near the shed any more. He could hide it in one of those plastic bin things they once bought to make their own manure. Cover it with old sacks.

Yes, that would do for the moment.

From somewhere inside the house, the telephone rang.

Geoff Marks discovered there was no file; just an incident report, with a transcript of the interview with Dominic Wood. He remembered it as if it was just that morning. They didn’t like the husband one little bit, so they insisted on going through the procedure at a glacial rate, and he cooperated fully, but all the while he was shaking his head and saying it was all a waste of time, that if they just rang his wife at home, she would confirm it.

‘It’s just a game we play,’ he said, grinning.

‘A game?’ Geoff said, with a suitable note of sarcastic incredulity. ‘Right, can I get this straight? You go out and ask people to kill your wife as a game? Have you ever thought of Monopoly? Cluedo? At least that one’s got a murder in it.’

‘It’s role play,’ he said. ‘For kicks. You know. Kinky stuff.’

‘Kinky stuff. Right. Cos that’s what I do every Valentine’s Day for my missus. It beats chocolates any day.’ Bradbury had added his voice to the interview, trying out his technique. Geoff knew he’d be a good copper, one day.

‘So she wanted you to pretend to kill her.’

‘Yes. Well done you. Got it in one.’

‘Whatever turns you on, right?’

‘Yep. Exactly. I go out and pretend to try and kill her. I go to the roughest, grimmest places I know and ask scar-faced thugs to do her in, and then I make my excuses and leave, and when I get home I tell her I what I’ve done, and it… turns her on.’

Geoff remembered the sight of his wife lying spark out on the floor, her face shiny, her hair sopping with sweat, and he thought that Mrs Wood didn’t look like she was able to get ‘turned on’ by anything. Ever.

But she backed up her husband’s story. And they took him home in a panda car, him grinning and looking out of the back window like they were escorting him, like he was the fucking queen on a tour of the Commonwealth.

Geoff still remembered looking down at her, just as he left, saying, ‘Is that everything, Monica? Is there anything else you want to tell me?’

But she told him there wasn’t, and they left, and as they drove away he was looking out of the window, still grinning, and then the curtains were drawn back, and Geoff remembered saying to Trevor:

‘Well that’s the last we’ll see of her. One way or the other.’

Geoff rang the number in the report and, thankfully, it still worked. He heard the voice of that smug git telling him to leave a message. He mentioned it was the residence of Mr and Mrs Wood, so she was still alive.

Unless he’d done her in and remarried, of course…

In spite of Geoff’s scepticism, he was intrigued.

He left a suitably enigmatic message. ‘Hello. This is Detective Inspector Geoff Marks for Mrs Monica Wood. Something of yours has just been handed into the station. Could you give me a ring?’

He gave the number of the station and ended the call.

I’m fading, not keeping up my end of the conversation, so it dries up, and the car goes silent. I start to recognise the tops of the taller buildings. Then he suddenly says:

‘Do you have a key to your house?’

‘Why… uh… do you want a key to my house?’

‘So we can get in.’

‘Oh yes. Of course.’

I have a key somewhere, but I can’t bear to think of looking for it now. And I don’t want Niall wriggling his hands inside my pockets. ‘Uhh… There’s a key in the lamp by the door…’

I listen to his footsteps, a rattle, and more footsteps coming back to me.

‘No there isn’t. There’s no key.’

I flounder. ‘But there should… No. Dominic moved it, because he was worried it was too vulnerable… There’s a barbecue in the shed, with a… cover on it. Dominic hides the… the spare key inside. The combination is one, nine, six, nine…’

So we’re at my house. It looks different somehow, strange. It’s still the same little Victorian end-of-terrace that it’s always been, same as all the houses in the area; the same little gate with the squeaky hinge, the little path leading up to the white wooden door. The path used to be gravel, and then some doctor scared the life out of us by telling us I would be wheelchair-bound within a year, so Dominic had flagstones put down.

Dominic. Oh, Dominic.
 

What have I done?
 

There’s the struggling agapanthus poking out of the big blue pot, the faded ‘welcome’ mat, the rusty lamp with the dusty glass panes. Everything is the same.
Why does it feel so different?

But I realise it’s me that’s different.
It’s me that feels strange.

There were footsteps outside, coming down the path. Dominic gave an almost comical gasp and looked around the shed for a place to hide. He dived behind a pile of logs and threw some potato sacks over his head. Why he had potato sacks, he couldn’t fathom. He had never grown anything larger than a tomato. The rough, woven material rubbed against his ruined ear and made him wince.

Someone was at the door of the shed, probably expecting to jemmy open a padlock that wasn’t there. He could imagine the burglar/mugger/psycho shrugging and thinking:
Great, some idiot’s left the shed unlocked.
The door squealed open and a man came in. The man who took his wife to the hospital.

It wasn’t good enough that this man pretended to be him in the hospital. He had come into his shed to do some gardening in his garden, picking up his pots and looking at his tools. Dominic could see the Man Who Was Now Him, through the gauze. The Man Who Was Now Him was young and fit and toned and he had dark hair. Lots of it, and none of it was grey.

He watched as the new Dominic slid up the barbecue lid, and for a moment the old Dominic thought the new Dominic was going to start a barbecue.
Good time of year for it.
The old Dominic approved. And then, when he saw the new Dominic was only after the key to the house, it all made complete sense. Perhaps it was for the best. The new Dominic was going to move in, and make Monica happy in every way he couldn’t, and they would live happily ever after, and he, the old Dominic, would live here in the shed, and they would bring his meals out here, and he would eat them on the Black and Decker Workmate.

Dominic found that he was in serious danger of giving away his location to the new Dominic; his potato sacks were shuddering because he was giggling uncontrollably, and he couldn’t stop.

Thankfully, the new Dominic found the spare key to the house and left, and the old Dominic was free to fill the inside of the shed with hysterical laughter. After he finally calmed himself, the old Dominic wrestled free from the potato sacks and left too.

Niall has retrieved the key and is escorting me up the path. His eyes are flicking around the outside of the house, taking in details, and he looks like a burglar gauging the wealth of the residents, judging possible points of access.

I’ve finished with the water bottles and replaced them with the lukewarm remains of the ice patch the hospital gave me. I hold it onto my side and lean weakly against the brickwork while he fumbles for the keys.

It seems like minutes before the door falls open, but I’m no judge of time – or anything – at the moment. He looks at me expectantly, offering an arm for me to hold on to, but I shake my head, perhaps a little too violently.

‘The alarm,’ I gasp. ‘You have to deactivate the alarm.’

He notices the beeping coming from inside and looks startled. The same nightmare scenarios are flicking through his mind, too.

‘Just inside the kitchen door. Open the panel. Key in three-four-one-oh, and press the hash key.’

‘Right. Three-four-one-oh. Hash key. Three-four-one-oh. Hash key.’

He disappears inside, and I wait, but the beeping doesn’t stop.

‘Monica!’ he shouts. ‘It’s not working! Three-four-one-oh, hash, it’s not stopping!’

The beeping is accelerating and is joined by another beep a semitone lower. In my pain-addled state, my imagination conjures up a tiny French police car driving through the house.

He appears again, his eyes wide. ‘Can you hear it? I’ve put the numbers in twice now. What am I doing wrong?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is this the right number?’

He holds my shoulders. I know he’s resisting the urge to shake me. ‘
Is it the right number?
’

‘Yes! I put it in every day!’

‘Jesus fuck! I can’t believe this!’

The beeping is scraping my brain of thoughts. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t concentrate.’

‘You have to concentrate. We could be standing here with the police!’

‘You’re not helping!’

‘That’s it. I’m done! I’m done with this!’

He’s jogging back to his car, leaving me, when I shout. ‘DISARM! After the hash key you have to press disarm!’

He pivots on his heels and dashes back into the house. After a few seconds the beeping stops with a chirp, and the silence it leaves behind is the most wonderful thing in the world.

He emerges with a relieved (and sheepish) grin. ‘Well done,’ he says. ‘Panic over. Bit of a brown-trousers moment, but we got there in the end.’

He offers his arm again, but I don’t take it. I must have made a face because he asks, ‘What’s the matter?’

‘You ran. You were going to run.’

‘No I wasn’t.’

‘You were running for your car.’

‘My phone is in the car. I was going to phone the number on the alarm and tell the police not to worry, that we’d screwed up the combination and it was just a false alarm. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?’

He’s right. And if it wasn’t the truth, then he was awfully smooth and quick with a lie.
 

Just stay on your guard, Monica Wood
.
 

I allow him to support me and together we stagger to the open door. We’re just about to go in when I sag and pull back.

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing. It just feels weird.’

‘The patch?’

‘No. That just feels bloody awful. This feels weird. Doing this. Like I’m breaking into my own house.’

Niall grins his dazzling grin. ‘Yes, I can imagine.’

‘It doesn’t feel right. I feel like… I feel like I don’t know how I feel, and that’s the strangest feeling of all. At the moment I feel most like a cow being led into an abattoir. I don’t think that makes much sense.’

‘Not really.’

‘After I walk through that door I know that things… Things will… probably never be the same again.’

‘OK, let’s try this.’ He grabs me around the waist. ‘Hold onto your cold patch.’

‘Why?’

His arms encircle me and suddenly my feet are up in the air and he’s holding me in his arms; my arms automatically reach up and encircle his neck.

‘There,’ he says. ‘Now you’re not walking at all.’

He carries me over the threshold. And I thought things felt weird before.

I am coming into the house afresh, seeing all the things I’d not registered for years. The little shelf with his ‘n’ hers wellingtons on them; fitted at a time when we’d decided to take long walks in the countryside. They are still here, six years later, the black boots shiny and unused, poking out of their cubbyholes like the noses of Labradors sulking in their kennels.

Talking of dogs, there is the extra hook next to the coats, the one labelled ‘Benjy’, that used to carry a long brown leather leash, which dangled into the umbrella stand. It was preparation for a dog that never arrived, a possible substitute for a baby if the fertility treatment didn’t work; so we could look at it as we came in the door and it would tell us that ‘there are always alternatives’. We even gave the dog a name, and it is still there, a ghost of something that never arrived, just like the pots of blue and pink paint hiding in the shed.
There are always alternatives.
How funny. Now there are no alternatives. No dog, no baby. I would struggle to look after a goldfish, now.

Niall wobbles up the stairs, slowly, ponderously, one foot, and then the other foot.
He’s very strong
. He doesn’t look like he’s straining at all.

Unbidden, my mind swims back to my sweating, gasping husband who struggled to even lift me onto my bed a week or so ago. Then I try not to think about him at all.
This is not the ideal time to compare the men in my life.

I give him directions to my bedroom and we struggle inside. I uncouple myself from his arm and collapse on the bed with an audible
flumph
, curling my body into a fetal position.

‘Do you want help to get undressed?’

‘No… jeez… No, I’m not a cripple, my arse is on fire. That’s all… God… This patch is already warm, and it’s the… last one they gave me…’

My teeth are jammed together. I can’t open my mouth because of the pain. My left hand is curved like a talon, and my right is gripping the cold patch onto my bum like my life depends on it, like I’ve cut a major artery and it’s holding the blood inside my body.

‘Just… do me a favour… OK?’

‘Anything.’

‘Go downstairs, go to the fridge… ahhah… get the wine cooler from the freezer box…’

‘Wine cooler…’

‘Like a padded green sleeve with Fortnum and Mason written on it… You can’t miss it… Wrap it in a clean cloth… And it has to be clean… Make sure of that… Get a fresh tea towel from the airing cupboard… top of the stairs, use one of those… And bring it here.’

He nods furiously. ‘Will do.’ He yomps out of the bedroom, leaving the door open, and hurtles down the stairs.

I’m alone, helpless
…
and there’s a strange man in my house.
 

A man who looks like the wolf, and he didn’t have to huff and puff. I just let him in.
 

I listen to the bang of the kitchen door.
I haven’t much time
.

I peel my clothes off as fast as I can, hurling my blouse and skirt under the bed (leaving the knickers on to keep the patch in place), and then pull my pyjamas from under my pillow. It’s very tricky, but the fear of being discovered by Niall in a state of undress forces me to work precisely and quickly, whipping my pyjama bottoms on in one swift motion.