The Crime Tsar Read online

Carter vomited holding the bonnet of his car. His driver caught him as he slid, groaning, to the ground. Gordon had ensured the ambulance followed them and Carter was quickly guided into the back of it. Now out of the cameras’ range he collapsed, shivering with shock.

  Shackleton looked up at him from outside the vehicle.

  ‘All right?’

  Carter winced.

  ‘Fine. You coming too?’

  ‘No,’ said Shackleton. ‘I think I’ll go home.’

  The paramedic tutted. ‘I’m sorry, sir, you need treatment for those burns. You should come with us.’

  Shackleton wanted to punch him, to feel his nose smash and see the blood. He wanted to hurt someone and this green-jacketed fool would be the perfect candidate. The surge of violence, the need to hurt. He smiled.

  ‘Thank you. Yes. I’ll take your advice and call the doctor when I get to my house. Goodnight. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Geoffrey – I think we did a fair job.’

  The paramedic closed the doors, commenting what a sweet-natured man Tom Shackleton seemed. Carter didn’t hear him; he had already passed out. His car slid away, following the ambulance.

  Gordon sat in the panda car. His tight, athletic body still rigid, his brown animal eyes seeing everything. If he was thinking there was no sign of it.

  He had not allowed his weapon to be taken by that bunch of niggers. Gordon was not a bigot or a racist – he had the same contempt and nomenclature for anyone on the wrong side of the law. Criminal women were all toms, convicted homosexuals were all shirt-lifters or nonces, depending on their crime, and anyone from Albania to Zimbabwe stopped on suspicion was a nigger.

  But not his colleagues – they were ladies, nellies and darkies, terms of respect from the depth of his ignorance. Not possible yet to police the words used in thought.

  The pain and tiredness hit Shackleton with a strong need for a drink. He turned to get into the car when the voice stopped him.

  ‘All right, Thomas? Did you get your fight?’

  The three women were watching him. All three now sitting, fanning themselves, their tin-bath fire surrounded by flickering candles. Candles on saucers, candles in jam jars, big ones, coloured ones, huge Easter candles and ranks of tiny birthday candles. The sight was weird and compelling. He didn’t want to but he walked towards them.

  ‘Come in! come in!’

  The fat woman chuckled and beckoned him into the circle of light.

  ‘Francine … get my medicine box. Come here, Thomas, sit, sit!’

  Since the story had broken on the mid-evening news Lucy had felt sick. She saw the hand-held shots of Tom walking into the petrol bomb. Of being pushed and beaten by the youths. Of disappearing into a low cheap building surrounded by hatred. Gary had taken a handful of Coproximal which hadn’t dulled the pain so he’d followed them with a couple of whiskies and was restlessly asleep.

  Lucy was glad she didn’t have to hide her agitation. Images of Tom injured made her want him so badly she found herself making sounds, groans, as she washed up the plates from dinner. Imagining him bleeding, helpless, hurt, excited her more than the thought of him whole and dominant. Looking down she didn’t see the dark water or floating debris of food but his great eyes looking up at her, trusting, needing.

  Lucy yanked the plug out, aware of her silliness but unable to quench it. She stood in the kitchen reliving adolescent feelings. Her life seemed as unfulfilled now as it had at sixteen, her dreams as liberating and her aching need for romance as desperate. Lucy, holding a plate in a wiping-up cloth decorated with spring flowers, slid to the floor crying. Crying and repeating Tom’s name over and over. ‘Tom … oh Tom … Oh God, Tom … Tom.’

  But even in her extremity, her dramatic collapse, she kept her voice down and her sobs controlled. She held her hand to her face and whined, ‘Oh God, Tom, I want you.’

  Had he walked in at that moment and kissed her, touching her lips with his tongue, she would still have smelt the bleach on her fingers from cleaning the sink. She could never be free of herself. She sat on the floor breathing in the scent of swimming pools from her skin, then quietly got up and washed her hands in scented soap.

  Although alone, she was embarrassed. Making a fool of herself. Worse, making a show of herself, as her father would say. Lucy tutted at herself for her excess of emotion. Criticised her lack of control. Having been the child, now she was the parent. After all, she didn’t really feel these things for Tom. It was all simply boredom. If she had a hobby, she’d have something to take her mind off him. Golf maybe or line dancing with Weight Watchers. She took a pen out of the ceramic bowl on the kitchen table and wrote his name: ‘Tom Shackleton’. Then over it, fitting the letters together, she wrote ‘Lucy Campion’, her maiden name. Her voices, the voices of her childhood, were in a chorus, telling her not to be so silly, to pull herself together. She shook her head to dislodge them and opened a drawer to find a box of matches. She put the piece of paper with their names entwined on a saucer, struck a match and held it to the paper.

  Making up the spell as she performed it she made a bargain with God: if the paper burned without leaving a trace of their names they would be together. In the same way, she bargained with the Fates when she let her fingers bring her to a climax. She knew if she didn’t come with his face in her mind she would never feel him with her again in reality.

  Every day she had a series of rituals like not treading on the cracks in the pavement. Little superstitions to try to assure herself Tom Shackleton’s coupling with her wasn’t just a mistake, and herself not to be more pitied than scorned. She had to believe it would happen again but with, if not love, then affection.

  The small black feather of burned paper showed no white, no words. As long as she didn’t see a single magpie he’d be all right. As long as the name Tom appeared in the credits of a television programme that night he’d be safe and they’d be together.

  She shook her head, put away the childishness of frustration and desire. She was slightly embarrassed, as if she’d been observed sitting on her kitchen floor howling for a man she hardly knew and, like a medieval peasant, making deals with a cold and distant God.

  She went into the living room and trawled the television channels for more reports of Tom Shackleton, putting in a blank video despite her good sense telling her not to be so stupid. Why not? Lucy had three videos already of him talking on everything from porn to potato theft in inner-city allotments.

  Janet had telephoned Jenni at home when the Chief arrived at the Flamborough Estate. She knew he wouldn’t have thought of phoning his wife.

  When the phone rang Jenni was in the bath soaking away the physical memory of her lunch with the Gnome of Chipping Campden. She had added lavender oil and a drop of rosemary, the first for relaxation, the latter as disinfectant. Aromatherapy and spiritual douche.

  Not that he had had the opportunity to do much more than talk himself into an erection. He had managed to get his fingers as far as the tightly resistant lace of her knickers between main course and coffee but nothing else. Had Jenni not been so used to the change that came over some men when faced with the prospect of sex with a stranger, the schizophrenic Gnome might have intrigued her. But she knew, before her age was in double figures, a standing cock knows no conscience.

  She lay in her gently rounded bath in her sunken bathroom conjuring the future. Her husband would be in the Lords. A working peer. They would receive invitations to Chequers and Sandringham as valued friends and advisers, not as part of a duty rota.

  The time would come when she and Tom could be kind. The more successful they were, the more they could afford to give. But Jenni never spent capital.

  Her mind, wary of complacency, moved on to a newspaper’s recent compilation of a list of the country’s most powerful people. Her husband had not appeared in the top three hundred. Geoffrey Carter had. He was close to the government. And his wife, Eleri, somehow related to Lloyd George, provided an echo of elevation.

  He
r thoughts chased round the rat run of frustration and fulfilment, reaching no conclusion.

  The phone rang. She let it ring three times. She always did. It might bring luck and she never wished to appear eager. She picked it up and gave her reserved, cautious ‘Hello’, the one that begged the listener to be gentle with her.

  ‘Oh … hello, Mrs Shackleton, I’m sorry to bother you.’

  Jenni knew Janet was a good secretary, personal assistant, to her husband. A good, plain soul, no threat, who lived only for her elderly mother and mobile home in Rhyl, but she irritated Jenni. Most women irritated her but for some reason Janet’s sing-song apologetic voice set her polished white fillings rattling.

  ‘Janet, yes, what is it? Tom been misbehaving again?’

  She always had a little joke with the staff – she knew they appreciated it.

  ‘Mr Shackleton’s gone to a possible … um … well …’

  Oh for God’s sake, you silly bitch, spit it out.

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s a riot situation. I think it’ll be on the news.’

  ‘I’m sure if my husband’s involved, it will be.’ Jenni’s voice was all smiles and conspiracy. ‘Thank you, Janet. How’s your mother?’

  ‘Well, you know, Alzheimer’s,’ said Janet.

  She said it lightly, as always alive to the needs of others not wanting to hear the miserable truth. But to Jenni’s ear she had the remarkable ability of a bad amateur actor to place the emphasis just in the wrong place so any lightness or wit was flattened under the weight of misplaced stress.

  Jenni was automatically gracious and laughed anyway.

  ‘Oh, I do Janet, I do. You’re so brave.’

  ‘No, Mrs Shackleton. I’m not. But thank you anyway. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Janet.’

  She put the phone down. It rang again immediately.

  Her daughter’s voice was high, excited. ‘Mem … Have you seen Dad on the news? They’re throwing Molotov cocktails at him. God … I hate the police. Why on earth couldn’t he be an accountant or something?’

  Jenni rose from the bath like some New Millennium Aphrodite, cordless phone in one hand, television remote in the other.

  ‘Because he wanted to be a policeman, so he could change things – you know that.’

  Or be inside pissing out rather that outside pissing in, as Jason had once unwisely put it. She still remembered the sting in her palm after she slapped him and the white then scarlet imprint of her hand on his cheek.

  ‘Oh God. I’m coming over, you can’t be on your own.’

  And Tamsin rang off. Her hysterical daughter was coming round to look after her. Jenni found her highly charged reactions to everything tiring but, as with all her children, she didn’t judge her. No doubt Tamsin would bring her small son with her and round up her sister too to give Mem support. Thank goodness Chloe, her most neurotic offspring, was ‘finding herself’ in India.

  Jenni found the news on the television. The story hadn’t made it on to the national bulletins yet, just the local round-up with a chip-pan fire and a couple who’d been married for seventy-five years without a cross word. Then she saw the two chief constables attacked and dragged into a dingy sixties prefab and she knew it was now real news.

  She knew this was going to be a chance for her husband to prove himself. The whole country would see this. If it went wrong he would be finished. She picked up a bottle of red nail varnish. She would force herself to apply it, perfectly.

  In front of her hysterical daughter, her concerned daughter and her pride-ridden son she would be the cool centre ready to react to anything.

  Jenni looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Naked. She turned, running her fingers down her buttocks and thighs. No cellulite there. Stomach barely rounded despite the pregnancies. The ghost of a stretch mark by her hip bone assiduously massaged with starflower oil morning and night.

  Whatever the pressure she always had time to appraise her body; it was as calming as meditation to her. She smoothed the slight shadows of muscles under the fine skin. She frowned mildly when she saw her elbows and knees were ageing a little faster than the rest of her. And was that the ghost of a wrinkle at her cleavage? She shook her head sharply, putting on casually expensive trousers and a loose shirt. Hair up in a Grecian tumble. A touch of moisture to the lips and she was ready.

  As she reached the living room the phone rang again. It was the Gnome.

  ‘Isn’t your husband brave? And so handsome.’

  ‘Is he? I don’t notice any more. I rather like Geoffrey Carter …’ Jenni let his name hang with a little tease in her voice.

  ‘Oh … you want him, do you? Does he make you wet?’

  She had thrown out her bait to see if Carter found more favour than Tom and had reeled in slime.

  ‘No he doesn’t.’ Was her tone too harsh?

  ‘It … takes more than a Disney cartoon to excite me. You know that.’ She had let her voice drop to be as quietly intimate as his.

  ‘I hoped you’d say that.’

  She could hear his satisfaction.

  ‘I’ll be interested to see how your Tom handles this. I know the Prime Minister’s interested too, I made sure of it. After all, the Met will need a new commissioner soon and we’re always looking for someone who can play a good race card.’

  Jenni breathed out, a shadow of Marilyn Monroe.

  ‘Oh, thank you. I’ll be so grateful …’

  ‘I know you will, Jenni. I can feel your gratitude already. What have you got on?’

  His voice had changed. This wasn’t polite flirtation any more.

  ‘Nothing,’ she lied. ‘I was in the bath. Thank God this isn’t a video phone.’ She laughed, trying to get back to safe coquetry.

  He had no interest now in politesse.

  ‘I want to see you naked. I want to piss down your back …’

  The front door opened and Tamsin’s small son launched himself at her shouting, ‘Granny, Granny, carry.’

  She was unsure she’d heard him right but there wasn’t time to ask and it occurred to her it would be ludicrous to say, ‘I’m sorry, did you say you wanted to piss down my back?’ So she said, ‘Well, that’ll be something to look forward to. Cheerio,’ and put down the phone.

  Her two-year-old grandson, Kit, launched himself at her. Tamsin caught him before he caused any damage. Jenni was always surprised by the amount of destruction a child was capable of and had never encouraged them to regard her as a climbing frame.

  Jenni put the television on and they discussed, as nearly as possible given their temperaments and the presence of a hyperactive two-year-old, the situation until the late-night extended news programme started. It led on the siege and kidnapping as they were now calling it. Tamsin began to cry, over-dramatising as was her habit.

  Jenni was abrupt with her.

  ‘Be quiet, you’ll upset Kit. Come and sit by Granny, darling.’

  The small boy, relieved not to have the responsibility of his unpredictable mother, sat quietly next to Granny who he’d learned could be equally volatile. Having created it, Tamsin was unable to bear the drama and went off into the kitchen to make hot drinks.

  Jenni could feel the snake of her own emotions coiling as she watched the television. Her thoughts were constructed in blocks of words. At other times daggers of words tore through the blocks. If Tom messed this up he was finished. Dead in the water. The words repeated themselves, like a faulty CD unable to move on.

  She unscrewed the top of the nail varnish and slowly drew out the encarmined brush. The laser moved on, releasing another set of thought words. Her husband was basically a kind man, a good man, but undeveloped, a blank canvas. Ambitious but not focused. His general success was due to his single-minded application to the job; his specific success was due to Jenni’s vision, her ability to see into the future.

  But she wasn’t sure he would know how much depended on the outcome of this night. The words constructed and deconstructed themselves as
she painted a perfect line of red down the centre of the pale nail of her index finger.

  Kit, seeing his grandfather on the television, jumped up and down on the cushions of the settee, screeching and laughing with the humourless overexcitement of a child. The bottle of nail varnish, as if caught in a cross wind, toppled and spilled on to Jenni’s cream linen trousers.

  A flaming wall of fury engulfed Jenni. She caught hold of the little boy by the shoulder. He was frozen with terror as she leaned over him. Unable to cry or even breathe, he stared up into Jenni’s face. She didn’t look like his granny any more – he tried to squirm away, to call his mother, but she held him tighter.

  Jenni had slipped out of reality. The child on the settee was detached from her, an object held at the end of an arm in a hand that wasn’t hers. She moved her hand up to his throat and held him quite lightly, her long nails barely touching his white unfinished skin. The distress the child was feeling was interesting. Would inflicting more pain on him make it more interesting? Could she go against nature? Jenni had never come so close to the thin barrier between her civilisation and the closed-off, stagnant pools of her barbarity.

  She felt a power, a detached desire to see suffering, death. Her hand itched to know how it would feel to stop the life held in it. Giving life had taken control away from Jenni. She had felt herself powerless during pregnancy and birth. Used. At the mercy of a greater force as this petrified child was now.

  She knew if she could squeeze the life out of him, if she could cause him more pain, there would be nothing in the future that she would stop at. To know she could torture and kill without pleasure or revulsion would release her from the restrictions of moral teaching. The future would be free of guilt or conscience.

  She knew she could do it. A wave of liberation washed over her. She didn’t have to go any further; it was her choice not to go on. The voice of society, the threat of retribution, didn’t stop her – she stopped herself because she knew she could just as easily go on.

  The phone rang. She laughed and kissed Kit, then, releasing him with a caress on his cheek, picked up the handset. The child was too frightened to call out or cry, he just cowered in the cushions unable to take his eyes off his grandmother. She smiled at him and ran the painted red nail gently down his nose. He really was a lovely-looking boy. She could see Tom’s sweet vulnerability in those great eyes. That look that at once attracted and infuriated her.