DI Peter Hanken's plan was to carve an hour out of his Saturday to work on Bella's new swing set, a plan that he had to abandon not twenty minutes after his return from Manchester Airport. He'd got back home by midday, having used up his morning tracking down the Airport Hilton masseuse who had worked on Will Upman on the previous Tuesday night. She'd sounded sultry, sexy, and seductive over the phone when Hanken had spoken to her from the Hilton lobby. But she'd turned out to be a thirteen-stone Valkyrie in medical whites with the hands of a rugby player and hips the width of a lorry's front bumper.
She'd confirmed Upman's alibi for the night of the Maiden girl's murder. He had indeed been “seen to” by Miss Freda, as she was called, and he'd given her his usual generous tip when she'd finished tenderising his knotted tendons. “Tips just like a Yank,” she informed Hanken in a friendly fashion. “Has done from the first, so I'm always glad to see him.”
He was one of her regulars, Miss Freda explained. He made the drive twice a month, at least. “Lots of stress in his line of work,” she said. Upman's appointment had been for one hour only. She'd seen to the solicitor in his room, from half past seven.
That, Hanken reckoned, gave Upman plenty of time to trot from Manchester back to Calder Moor afterwards, to dispatch the Maiden girl and her companion easily by half past ten, and to scurry back to the Airport Hilton to resume his stay and firm up his alibi. All of which kept the solicitor in the game.
And a phone call from Lynley made Upman a principal player, at least to Hanken.
He got the call on his mobile at home, where he'd just laid out the pieces of Bella's swing set on the floor of the garage and was standing back to study them as he counted the number of screws and bolts that had been included in the package. Lynley reported that his officers had tracked down a young woman who was Nicola Maiden's new flatmate, and he himself had just completed an interview with her. She'd maintained that there was no lover in London-an assertion that Lynley appeared to dispute-and she'd also suggested that the police have another chat with Upman if they wanted to know why Nicola Maiden had decided to spend the summer in Derbyshire. To this, Hanken said, “We only have Upman's word for it that the girl had a lover in the South, Thomas.” To which Lynley replied, “But it doesn't make sense that she'd drop out of law college in May yet spend the summer working for Upman… unless the two of them had something going on together. Do you have time to wring more information from him, Peter?”
Hanken was happy-delighted, in fact-to wring away at the smarmy sod, but he sought some firm ground on which to base another interview with the Buxton solicitor, who so far hadn't called on his own lawyer to stand by his side during questioning but was likely to do so should he begin to believe that the investigation was tunneling in his direction.
“Nicola had a visitor just before she moved house from Islington to Fulham. This would have been on the ninth of May,” Lynley explained. “A man. They had an argument. They were overheard. The man said he'd see her dead before he let her do it.”
“Do what?” Hanken asked.
And Lynley told him. Hanken listened to the story with a fair amount of incredulity. Midway through, he said, “Hell's bells. Damn. Hang on, Thomas. I'll need to take some notes,” and he went from the garage into the kitchen, where his wife was supervising his two daughters’ lunch while his infant son dozed in a baby carrier that was set on the work top. Clearing off a space next to Sarah, who'd separated her egg sandwich into halves, which she was smearing on her face, he said, “Right. Go on,” and began jotting down places, activities, and names. He whistled softly as Lynley told the tale of Nicola Maiden's clandestine life as a London prostitute. Dazed, he looked at his own young daughters as Lynley explained the dead girl's speciality. He found that he felt torn by the need to make accurate notes and the desire to crush Bella and Sarah to his heart-grimy with egg mayonnaise though they were-as if by that action he could ensure that their future would be blessed with the safety of normalcy. It was, in fact, in consideration of his girls that Hanken said, “Thomas, what about Maiden?” when Lynley had concluded his remarks by explaining that his next move was going to be to track down Vi Nevin's former flatmate Shelly Platt, sender of the anonymous letters. “If he somehow found out that his daughter was turning tricks in London… Can you imagine what that would have done to him?”
“I think it's more profitable to consider what that knowledge would have done to a man who thought he was her lover. Upman and Britton-even Ferrer-seem far more likely than Andy for the role of Nemesis.”
“Not when you consider how a father thinks: ‘I gave her life.’ What if he also thought her life was his to take away?”
“We're talking about a cop, Peter, a decent cop. An exemplary cop without a single black mark on his whole career.”
“Right. Fine. But this situation has sod all to do with Maidens career. What if he went to London? What if he stumbled on the truth? What if he tried to talk her out of her lifestyle-and I want to be sick even calling it a lifestyle-but failed and knew there was only a single way to end it? Because, Thomas, if he didn't end it, the girl's mum would have discovered it eventually and Maiden couldn't abide the thought of what that would do to the woman he loves.”
“That goes for the others as well,” Lynley countered. “Upman and Britton. They'd want to talk her out of it. And with far more reason. Christ, Peter. Sexual jealousy goes a greater distance than protecting a mother from having to hear the truth about her child. You must see that.”
“He found that car. Out of sight. Behind a wall. In the middle of the God damn bloody White Peak.”
“Pete, the children…” Hanken's wife admonished him, delivering glasses of milk to their daughters.
Hanken nodded in acknowledgement as Lynley said, “I know this man. He doesn't have a violent bone in his body. He had to leave the Yard, for God's sake, because he couldn't stomach the job any longer. So where and when did he develop the capacity-the blood lust-to beat in his own child's skull? Let's do some digging on Up-man and Britton-and Ferrer if we have to. They're unknown quantities. There are at least two hundred people at the Yard who can testify that Andy Maiden isn't. Now, the flatmate-Vi Nevin-is insisting we talk to Upman again. She may be temporising, but I say we start with him.”
It was, Hanken realised, the logical place to begin. But something about tackling the enquiry from that direction didn't feel right to him. “Are you personalising this in some way?”
“I might very well ask the same of you” was Lynley's reply. Before Hanken could argue, the London DI concluded the call with the information that Terry Cole's black leather jacket was missing from the personal effects Usted on the receipt that had been handed over to his mother on the previous morning. “It makes sense to have a thorough look for it among the crime scene evidence before we rally the troops,” he pointed out. And then, as if he wished to smooth over their disagreement, he added, “What do you think?”
“I'll see to that at this end,” Hanken said.
The call concluded, he looked at his family: Sarah and Bella shredding their sandwiches and dipping the torn bits of bread into their milk, PJ awakening and beginning to fret for his own lunch, and Hanken's own darling Kathleen unbuttoning her blouse, loosening the nursing bra, and raising their son to her swollen breast. They were a miracle to him, his little family. He would, he knew, go to any extreme to keep them from harm.
“We're richly blessed, Katie,” he said to his wife as she sat at the table where Bella was inserting a carrot stick into her sister's right nostril. Sarah screamed in protest and startled PJ. He turned from his mother's milk and began to wail.
Kathleen shook her head wearily. “It's all in the definition, I dare say” She nodded at his mobile. “Are you off again, then?”
“Afraid so, darling.”
“What about the s-w-i-n-g-s?”
“I'll have the set up in time. I promise.” He took the carrots away from his daughters, grabbed a dish cloth from the sink, and mopped up some of the mess they'd made on the kitchen table.
His wife cooed, crooned, and comforted PJ. Bella and Sarah made tentative peace.
After directing DC Mott to paw through everything they'd taken from the murder site, and after phoning the lab to make sure Terry Cole's jacket hadn't been accidentally omitted from the list of clothing sent onward for analysis, Hanken set off to duel with Will Upman once more. He found the solicitor in the narrow garage that abutted his home in Buxton. He was casually clad in jeans and a flannel shirt, and he squatted next to a fine-looking mountain bike whose chain and gear cluster he was attending to with a hose pipe, a small spray bottle of solvent, and a plastic bristle brush with one end shaped like a crescent.
He wasn't alone. Leaning against the bonnet of his car, her eyes fixed on him with the unmistakable hunger of a woman desperate for a commitment, a petite brunette was saying to him, “You did say half past twelve, Will. And I know I'm not mistaken this time,” as Hanken joined them.
Upman said, “I couldn't have done, darling. I'd always planned to clean the bike. So if you're ready for lunch this early-”
“It isn't early. And it'll be even less early by the time we get there. Damn it. If you didn't want to go, I just wish you'd have told me for once.”
“Joyce, did I say… did I even bloody hint that-” Upman caught sight of Hanken. “Inspector,” he said, rising and tossing the hose pipe to one side, where it burbled water in a gentle stream from the garage out onto the driveway “Joyce, this is Inspector Hanken, Buxton CID Could you deal with the tap for me, darling?”
Joyce sighed and saw to the water. She returned to the car and took up position in front of one of its headlamps. “Will,” she said. I've been patient as a saint, her tone implied.
Upman flashed a smile at her. “Work,” he said with a jerk of his head in Hanken's direction. “Will you give us a few minutes, Joy? Let's forget the lunch and have something here. We can drive over to Chatsworth afterwards. Have a walk. Do some talking.”
“I have to pick up the kids.”
“By six. I remember. And we'll manage it. No problem.” Again the smile. It was more intimate this time, the kind of smile that a man uses when he wishes to suggest to a woman that he and she speak a special language understood only by the two of them. It was mostly the language of bollocks, Hanken decided, but Joyce looked needy enough to accept the central theme such a language implied. “Could you make us some sandwiches, darling? While I'm finishing here? There's chicken in the fridge.” Upman didn't mention Han-ken's presence or the privacy that Joyce's removal to the kitchen would effect.
Joyce sighed again. “All right. This once. But I wish you'd start writing down the time when you want me to come over. With the kids, it's not exactly easy to-”
“Will do in future. Scout's honour.” He sent her an air kiss. “Sorry.”
She took it all in. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother,” she said with absolutely no conviction.
We all know the answer to that, Hanken thought.
When she'd taken herself off to prove herself in the housewife department, Upman went back to his mountain bike. He squatted and sprayed solvent lightly on the gear cluster and along the chain. The pleasant smell of lemons rose round them. He spun the left pedal backwards as he sprayed, running the chain through one revolution round the gears and, when it was soaked, he leaned back on his heels.
“I can't think we have anything more to talk about,” he said to Hanken. “I've told you what I know.”
“Right. And I've got what you know. I want to hear what you think this time round.”
Upman took up the plastic brush from the floor. “About what?” he asked.
“The Maiden girl moved house in London four months ago. She left law college round the same time, and she had no plans to return to her studies. She had, in fact, taken up an entirely new line of work. What do you know about that?”
“About the new line of work? Nothing, I'm afraid.”
“So why was she spending the summer doing the sort of job a law student takes in between terms for work experience? It wasn't going to get her anywhere, was it?”
“I don't know. I didn't ask her those questions.” Upman applied the brush to the bicycle chain, meticulous with his cleaning efforts.
“Did you know she'd left college?” Hanken asked. And when Upman nodded, he said, exasperated, “God's teeth, man. What's the matter with you? Why didn't you tell us when we spoke to you yesterday?”
Upman glanced his way. “You didn't ask outright,” he said dryly. And the implication was clear: A man in his right mind never gave answers to questions that the police didn't ask.
“All right. My mistake. I'm asking now. Did she tell you she'd left college? Did she tell you why? And when did she tell you?”
Upman scrutinised the bike chain as he worked upon it, one inch at a time. The grime that resulted from the marriage of off-road dust, dirt, and bicycle lubricant began to liquefy into soapy brown globs, some of which plopped to the floor beneath the bike. “She phoned me in April,” Upman said. “Her dad and I had arranged her summer job last year. In December, this was. I let her know then that I was selecting her on the strength of my friendship-well, acquaintance, really-with her father, and I asked her to let me know at once if something more to her taste came along, so I could offer the job to some other student. I'd meant more to her taste in law, but when she phoned in April, she told me she was giving up the practise of law entirely. She'd got another job that she liked better, she said. More money, less hours. Well, don't we all want that?”
“She didn't say what it was?”
“She named a firm in London. I don't remember what she called it. We didn't dwell much on the subject. Just spoke for a few minutes, mostly about the fact that she wouldn't be working for me in the summer.”
“But she ended up here anyway. Why? Did you talk her into it?”
“Not at all. She phoned again a few weeks later and said she'd changed her mind about the job and could she work for me as previously arranged if I hadn't got anyone yet.”
“She'd changed her mind about college?”
“No. She was still leaving college. I asked her that and she told me as much. But I don't think she was ready to tell her parents. They set a lot of store by her achievements. Well, what parent doesn't? And, after all, her dad had gone out of his way to arrange a job for her, and she knew that. The two of them were close, and I think she'd had second thoughts about letting him down when he was getting so much mileage from bragging about her. My daughter the lawyer. You know what I mean.”
“So why did you employ her? If she'd already left college, if she'd made it clear that she wouldn't be returning… She wasn't a law student any longer. Why hire her?”
“As I know her dad, I wasn't averse to going along with a little deception to spare his feelings, if only for the time being.”
“Why does that sound like pure cock to me, Upman? You had something going with the Maiden girl, didn't you? This summer-job rubbish was nothing but a blind. And you damn well know what she was up to in London.”
Upman withdrew the crescent end of the brush from the bicycle chain. It bled slick soapy residue onto the floor. He looked at Hanken. “I told you the truth yesterday, Inspector. All right, she was attractive. And she was intelligent. And the thought of having an attractive and intelligent young woman picking up the slack round the office from June till September didn't exactly set my teeth on edge. She would be a visual diversion, I thought. And I'm not a man who's distracted from his own work by a pleasant visual diversion. So when she wanted back in, I was happy to have her. As were my partners, by the way.”
“Have her, did you say?”
“Hell. Come on. We aren't playing at examine-the-hostile-witness. There's no point to your trying to trap me with slips, because I'm not hiding anything. You're wasting your time.”
“Where were you on the ninth of May?” Hanken persisted.
Upman's forehead furrowed. “The ninth? I'd have to check my diary, but I expect I had meetings with clients, as usual. Why?” He looked over at Hanken and appeared to take an accurate reading from the DFs face. “Ah. Someone must have gone to London to see Nicola. Is that right? To talk her into-perhaps even to force her into-a scintillating summer in Derbyshire taking depositions from housewives estranged from their husbands. Is that what you think?” He got to his feet and went for the hose pipe. He turned on the tap and brought the nozzle back. He directed a gentle spray at the bike chain, moving it along and watching the muck wash away.
“Perhaps that was you,” Hanken told him. “Perhaps you wanted to keep her from her ‘other employment.’ Perhaps you wanted to make sure you got the”-he felt his lip curl-“‘visual diversion’ you were looking for. Since she was so attractive and intelligent, as you say.”
“You'll have copies of my office diary on Monday morning” was Upman's even reply.
“Names and phone numbers appended, I hope?” “Whatever you'd like.” Upman nodded at the house, at the door through which the long-suffering Joyce had disappeared. “In case you hadn't noticed, I already have attractive and intelligent women in my life, Inspector. Believe me, I wouldn't have gone all the way to London to arrange for another. But if your thoughts are heading in that direction, you might want to consider who didn't have access to such a woman. And I think we both know who that poor sod is.”
Teddy Webster ignored his dad's bark of an order. Since it came from the direction of the kitchen, where his parents were still finishing up their lunch, he knew he had a good quarter of an hour before the order came a second time. And since his mum had made apple crumble as their sweet for once-a rare occurrence considering that her usual offering was a packet of fig newtons opened without ceremony and tossed into the centre of the table while she was clearing the plates away-that quarter of an hour might stretch to thirty minutes, in which case Teddy would have plenty of time to watch the rest of The Incredible Hulk before his father shouted “Turn off that damn telly and get yourself out of the house right now! I mean it, Teddy. I want you out in the fresh air. Now. Now! Before I make you sorry I've had to repeat myself.”
Saturdays were always like that: a boring, daft repetition of every other boring, daft Saturday since they'd moved to the Peaks. What always happened on Saturdays was this: Dad clumped round the house at half past seven, bellowing about how fine it was to be out of the city at last and weren't they all just bloody delighted to have fresh air to breathe and open spaces to explore and their country's history and culture and tradition jumping out at them from every stupid pile of rocks in every dumb field. Only these weren't fields, were they? These were moors and weren't they all lucky and blessed and… oh, just bloody special to live in a place where they could set off north just beyond their own house and walk for six billion miles without ever seeing a single soul? This wasn't a bit like Liverpool, was it, kids? This was heaven. This was Utopia. This was-A place that sucked, Teddy thought. And sometimes he said it, which set his father off and made his mother cry and sent his sister into one of her fits where she started whingeing about how was she ever going to go to drama school and become a real actress if she had to live in the middle of nowhere like some sort of leper?
Which really set Dad off at full gallop. And took the heat off Teddy, who always used the opportunity to slink to the television and tune in to Fox Kids, which, at the moment, was featuring that always-wicked moment when pencil dick Dr. David Banner got his knickers twisted just enough by some ignorant yobbo that he went into one of those very cool fits where his eyes went backwards into his head and his arms and legs popped out of his clothes while his chest swelled up and his buttons flew off and he was beating the shit out of everyone in sight.
Teddy sighed with pure happiness as the Hulk made hash of his most recent tormentors. It was exactly what Teddy wished that he could do to those pea-brain twits who met him at the school gates every morning and shadowed him-taunting, poking, tripping, and shoving-from the moment he set foot inside the school yard. He'd beat them to puke and guts and shit if he were the Hulk. He'd take them one at a time or all at once. It wouldn't matter because he'd be more than seven feet tall and twenty-five stone of pure muscle and they wouldn't even know where he'd come from or why. And when they were sprawled out in their puke and their pee, he'd pick one of them up by his hair and he'd say, “You leave Teddy Webster be, you hear me? Or I'll be back.” And he'd thump that arsehole back to the ground and step on his face as he walked away. And then-“God damn it, Ted. I want you out of here.”
Teddy scrambled to his feet. So deeply into his fantasy had he sunk that he hadn't noticed his dad come into the sitting room. “It was nearly the end,” he said hastily. “I wanted to see how it-”
His father held up a pair of scissors. He grabbed the flex from the back of the telly. “I didn't bring my family to the country to have them spend their free time with their noses glued to the television. You have fifteen seconds to get out of this house, or the flex gets cut. Permanently.”
“Dad! I just wanted-”
“You need a hearing test, Ted?”
He shot towards the door. But there he paused. “What about Carrie? Why doesn't she-”
“Your sister's doing her school prep. Would you like to do yours? Or will you be going outside to play?”
Teddy knew that Carrie was no more doing her school prep than he was preparing to perform brain surgery. But he also knew when he was defeated. He said, “Play, Dad,” and he trudged outside, giving himself full marks for not sneaking on his sister. She was in her room mooning over Flicks and writing loony love letters to some loonier actor. It was a bloody stupid way to spend her time, but Teddy understood. She had to do something to keep the bats from her brain.
Telly did that for him. Watching telly felt good. Besides, what else was there to do?
He knew better than to ask Dad that question though. When he'd asked it at first-shortly after they'd moved here from Liverpool-the answer had been having a chore assigned to him. So Teddy no longer asked for suggestions when it came to free time. He took himself outside and shut the door, but not before he allowed himself the satisfaction of casting a baleful look over his shoulder as his father retreated into the kitchen.
“For his own good” were the last words Teddy heard from his dad.
And he knew-with despair-what those four words meant.
They'd come to the country because of him: a fat little kid who wore pebble specs, who had pimples on his legs and braces on his teeth and breasts like a girl, who got bullied in school from day one. He'd overheard the Big Plan when his parents were making it: “If he's in the country, he'll be able to exercise. He'll want to exercise-boys are like that, Judy-and then he'll lose the weight. He won't have to worry about being seen while he's exercising, the way he does here. And it'll be good for all of us anyway.”
“I don't know, Frank…” Teddy's mum was the doubtful kind. She didn't like disruptions, and a move to the country was Disruption Times Ten.
But Teddy's dad had his mind made up, so here they were, on a sheep farm where the sheep and the land were rented out to a farmer who lived in Peak Forest, which was the nearest thing to a town within miles. Except it wasn't a town, it wasn't even a village. It was a handful of houses, a church, a pub, and a grocery, where, if a bloke decided to sneak a packet of crisps for an afternoon snack-even if the bloke paid for them, mind you-that bloke's mum was sure to hear about it by six o'clock in the evening. And there'd be hell to pay.
Teddy hated it. The vast empty space that stretched into forever on every side, the great dome of sky that went pewter with fog on a moment's notice, the wind that whipped round the house all night and rattled his bedroom window like aliens trying to get in, the sheep that bleated like something was wrong but ran off the first time you took a step towards them. He just bloody hated the place. And as Teddy left the house and plodded into the yard, a piece of grit-shot by the wind like a missile-flew past his glasses, exploded into his eye, and made him yowl. He hated this place.
He removed his glasses and used the bottom of his T-shirt against his eye. It stung, it burned, and his sense of grievance grew. Blurry of vision, he stumbled to the back of the house, where the Saturday morning washing was flapping and snapping on the line that was strung from the eaves to a rust-eaten pole near a crumbling drystone wall.
“Pooey, phooey, poop,” Teddy muttered. On the ground near the house he found a long, thin branch. He scooped this up, and it became a sword. He used it as he advanced on the washing, a row of his dad's jeans his target.
“Stay where you are,” he hissed at them. “I'm armed, you lot. And if you think you can take me alive… Ha! Take that! And that! And that!”
They'd come from the Death Star to deal with him. They knew that he was the Last of the Jedi. If they could just get him out of the way, the Emperor would be able to Rule the Universe. But they couldn't kill him. AbsoLUTEly no way. They were under orders to take him captive so that he could be made an Example to All Rebels in the Star System. Well, Ha! And Ha! They would NEVER take him. Because he had a laser sword and swish swish lash and swish. But omigod. Hang on now. They had laser guns. And they didn't want to capture him at all! They wanted to kill him and… eeeeooooowww! He was completely outnumbered! Runrunrun!
Teddy turned and fled, waving his sword in the air. He sought the protection of the drystone wall that fronted the property and edged the road. With a leap, he was over. His heart pounded. His ears throbbed.
Safe, he thought. He'd gone into light speed and left the Imperial
Star Troopers behind. He'd landed on an undiscovered planet. They'd never find him here in a zillion years. HE would be an Emperor now.
Whoosh. Something whizzed by on the road. Teddy blinked. The wind pummeled him like an angry ghost's fists, bringing water to his eyes. He couldn't quite see. But still, it looked like… No. It couldn't be. Teddy peered to the right and to the left. He realised with horror where he'd landed. This wasn't a brand-new planet at all. He'd taken himself into Jurassic Park! And what had lightninged by with the fury of hunger driving it was a velociraptor homing in on something for the kill!
Omigod omigod. And he had NOTHING with him. No high-powered rifle, no weapon of any kind. Just a stupid old stick and what good would THAT be against a dinosaur with human flesh on its mind?
He had to hide. One velociraptor didn't exist without another nearby. And two meant twenty. Or a hundred. A thousand!
Omigod! He tore along the road.
A short distance ahead, he saw his safety. A yellow bin stood in the weeds on the verge. He could hide in there till the danger passed.
Whoosh. Whoosh. More 'raptors tore by as Teddy flung his body inside the bin. He lowered himself and brought the lid down.
He'd seen what 'raptors could do to a person, Teddy had. They tore at flesh and sucked out eyeballs and crunched bones like they were McDonald's french fries. And they liked ten-year-old boys the best.
He had to do something. He had to save himself. He crouched within the safety of the bin and tried to come up with a plan.
The bin held the remainder of last year's grit: some six inches of it, left over from the winter when it was used on the road so that car tyres didn't slide on the ice. Teddy could feel the pebbles and shards of it biting into the palms of his hands.
Could he use the grit? Could he make it a weapon? Could he ball it up into a nasty missile that he could throw at the 'raptors and hurt them enough for them to leave him alone? If he did that, he would then have time to-His fingers grabbed on to something hard, something buried three inches into the grit. It was slender and palm-sized and when he dug round it, he was able to free it and to bring it up into the weak light that came through the yellow walls of his hiding place.
Wicked, he thought. What a find. He was saved. It was a knife.
Julian Britton was doing what he always did at the end of a mountain rescue: He was checking his equipment as he put it away. But he wasn't being as thorough or as careful as he usually was when organising and repacking his gear. His thoughts were far away from ropes, boots, picks, hammers, compasses, maps, and everything else they used when someone got lost or someone else got injured and a team was required to find them.
His thoughts were on her. On Nicola. On what had been and what could have been had she only acted the appropriate part in the drama he'd written for their relationship.
“But I love you,” he'd said to her, and even to his own ears the four words had sounded pathetic and stricken.
“And I love you back,” she'd replied kindly. She'd even taken his hand and held it-palm upwards-as if she intended to place something within it. “Only it's not enough, the kind of love I feel for you. And the kind of love you want-and deserve-to have, Jules… well, it isn't the sort of love I'm likely to feel for anyone.”
“But I'm good for you. You've said it enough times over the years. That's enough, isn't it? Can't the other sort of love-the sort you're talking about… can't it grow from there? I mean, we're friends. We're companions. We're… for God's sake we're lovers… And if that doesn't mean we have something special together… Hell. What does?”
She'd sighed. She'd looked out of the car window to the darkness. He could see her reflection in the glass. “Jules, I've become an escort,” she said. “Do you know what that means?”
The statement and the question had come out of nowhere, so for a moment he'd thought ridiculously of tour guides, travel escorts who stand at the front of a coach and speak into a microphone as the vehicle lumbers round the countryside with tourists crammed into its seats. “You're traveling?” he'd asked.
“I'm seeing men for money,” she replied. “I spend the evening with them. Sometimes I spend the night. I go to hotels and pick them up and we do what they want. Whatever they want. Then they pay me. They give me two hundred pounds an hour. Fifteen hundred pounds if I sleep in their beds for the night.”
He stared at her. He heard her clearly, but his brain refused to assimilate the information. He said, “I see. You have someone else in London, then.”
She said, “Jules, you're not listening to me.”
“I am. You said-”
“You're hearing. Not listening. Men pay me for companionship.”
“To go out on dates.”
“You could call them dates: dinner, the theatre, a gallery opening or business party when someone wants a nice-looking woman on his arm. They pay me for that. And they pay me for sex as well. And depending on what I do to them when it comes to sex, they pay me quite a lot. More than I would ever have imagined possible for fucking a relative stranger, to be honest with you.”
The words were like bullets. And he reacted as he would have done had she fired a volley through his body. He went into shock. Not the normal sort of shock when one's system has undergone a physical trauma like a motor accident or a fall from a barn roof, but the sort of shock that shatters the psyche so that one can take in only a single detail and that detail is usually the least dangerous to one's peace.
So what he saw was her hair, how the light was behind it, and how it shone through individual strands so that she looked like an earthbound angel. But what she was telling him was far from angelic. It was foul and disgusting. And she continued to tell him, and he continued to die.
“No one forced me into it,” she said as she took a boiled sweet from her bag. “The escort stuff. Or the other. The sex. It was my decision once I saw the possibilities and once I knew how much I had to offer. I started out just having drinks with them. Dinner, sometimes. Or the theatre. All on the up and up, you know: a few hours of conversation and someone to listen, to reply if they wanted, and to look starry-eyed otherwise. But they always asked-every one of them-if I would do more. At first I thought no. I couldn't. I didn't know them, after all. And I always thought… I mean, I couldn't imagine doing it with someone that I didn't actually know. But then one of them asked if he could just touch me. Fifty pounds for putting his hand in my knickers and feeling my bush.” A smile. “When I had a bush back then. Before… You know. So I let him and it wasn't half bad. It was rather funny, in fact. I started laughing-this was inside, not openly, mind you-because it seemed so… just so silly: this bloke-older than my dad, he was-breathing heavy and going all teary-eyed because he had his hand in my crotch. So when he said Touch me back please, I told him that would be fifty pounds more. He said Oh God, anything. So I obliged. One hundred pounds for feeling his willie and letting him poke round my bush with his fingers.”
“Stop.” He'd finally managed the words.
But she was eager to make him understand. They were friends, after all. They'd always been friends. They'd been mates from the moment they'd met in Bakewell: she a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl with an attitude and a strut to her walk that had always said I'm open to anything only he hadn't seen that until this moment, and he nearly three years her senior, home from university for the holidays and consumed with worry about his father's drinking and a house that was falling down round their ears. But Nicola hadn't seen his worries then. She'd seen only an opportunity for some fun. Which she'd taken happily. He understood that now.
“What I'm trying to explain is that it's a way of life that works for me at the moment. It won't always, of course. But it does today. And because it does, I'm grabbing it, Jules. I would be every sort of fool if I didn't.”
“You've gone bloody mad” was his numb assessment. “London's done this to you. You need to come home, Nick. You need to be with friends. You need help.”
She looked at him blankly.
“It's obvious, isn't it? Something's wrong. You can't be in your right mind and be selling your body night after night.”
“Several times a night, frequently.”
He'd clutched at his head. “Jesus, Nick… You need to talk to someone. Let me find a doctor, a psychiatrist. I won't tell anyone why. It'll be our secret. And when you've recovered-”
“Julian.” She drew his hands from his head. “There's nothing wrong with me. If I thought I was having relationships with these men, there'd be something wrong. If I thought I was on the path to true love, there'd be something wrong. If I was trying to avenge a wrong or hurt someone else or live in a fantasy, I'd need to be carted to the madhouse straightaway. But that's not how it is. I'm doing this because I enjoy it, because I'm paid well, because my body has something to offer men, and while it's silly to me that they'd pay me to get it, I'm perfectly willing to-”
He'd hit her then. God forgive him, but he'd hit her because he was desperate to make her stop. So he struck her in the face with a hard, closed fist, and her head flew back and hit the window.
Then they stared at each other, she with her fingertips at the point where his knuckles had met her face, he with his left hand holding those knuckles and in his ears a high, loud singing like the whining of car tyres caught in a skid. And there was nothing to say. Not a single word to excuse what he'd done, to excuse what she was doing to both of them with the choices she was making and the life she was living. Still, he'd tried.
“Where did this come from?” he'd asked hoarsely. “Because it had to come from somewhere, Nick. It's not how normal people live.”
“A nasty skeleton in the closet, d'you mean?” she'd replied lightly, fingers still at her cheek. Her voice was the same, but her eyes had changed, as if she was seeing him differently. Like the enemy, he'd thought. And he'd despaired right to the soles of his feet because he loved her so. “No, Jules. I haven't got any convenient excuses. No one to blame. No one to accuse. Just a few experiences that led to other experiences. Just exactly as I told you. First an escort, then a brief little grope and feel, then…” She smiled. “Then on from there.”
He read the truth of who she was in that instant. “You must despise us all. Men. What we want. What we do.”
She'd reached for his hand. It was still clenched and she unclenched it. She raised it to her lips and kissed the knuckles that he'd used to bruise her. “You are who you are,” she said. “Julian, it's the same for me.”
But he couldn't accept the simplicity of that statement. He railed against it. And he railed against her. And he determined to change her no matter the cost. She would see reason, he'd decided. She would get help if that's what it took.
She'd got death instead. A fair trade, some would argue, for what she offered life.
Julian felt numb as he packed his mountain rescue equipment away in its haversack. His mind was swarming with memories, and he was willing to do just about anything to silence the voices in his head.
Distraction arrived in the person of his father, who toddled along the first floor passageway just as Julian was placing his haversack into the old mule trunk. Jeremy Britton clutched a glass in one hand, which was no surprise, and a fan of brochures in the other, which was. He said, “Ah. M'boy. Here you are, then. Have you a minute for your dad?”
His speech was clear, which caused Julian to eye his fathers drinking glass curiously. The colourless liquid suggested gin or vodka. But the glass was large enough to hold at least eight ounces of fluid, and since it was three-quarters empty and since Jeremy would have never splashed so meagre an amount into a glass whose volume could have held more, and since he wasn't slurring his words, it could only mean that the glass didn't hold either vodka or gin at all. Which in turn had to mean… Julian rattled his own head mentally. God, he was losing it by leaps and by bounds.
“Sure.” He did his best not to eye the glass or to sniff its contents.
Jeremy smiled, lifted the glass, and said, “Water, Julie. The old local aitch-two-and-oh. I'd nearly forgotten the taste of it.”
The sight of his father drinking water was akin to having a vision of the Ascension into Heaven while hiking on the moor. “Water?”
“Best there is. You ever notice, my boy, how the flavour of water taken off our own land tastes sweeter than what you can get from a bottle? Bottled water, I mean,” he added with a smile. “Evian, Perrier. You know.” He tipped the glass up and swigged down a mouthful. He smacked his lips. “Spare a bit of time for your dad? I want to ask your advice, old chap.”
Puzzled, wary, amazed at the change in his father-prompted, it seemed to Julian, by nothing at all-he followed him into the parlour. There Jeremy sat in his usual chair after pulling another round to face it. He gestured for Julian to take that place. Julian did so hesitantly.
“Didn't notice at lunch, did you?” Jeremy asked.
“Notice what?”
“Water. Nothing else. That's what I was drinking. Didn't you see?”
“Sorry. I've had things on my mind. But I'm glad of it, Dad. Good for you. Brilliant.”
Jeremy nodded, looking pleased with himself. “Had a think over the past week, Julie. And here's what it is. I'm going to take the cure. I've been thinking about it since… oh, I don't know since when. And I think it's time.”
“You re going to stop? Drinking? You're going to stop drinking?”
“Enough is enough. I been… I've been blotto for something like thirty-five years. Thought I'd try the next thirty-five sober as a judge.”
His father had made this claim before. But he'd usually made the claim when either drunk or hung over. This time he seemed neither. “You're going to go to AA?” Julian asked. There were meetings in Bakewell, others in Buxton, in Matlock, and in Chapel-en-le-Frith. More than once Julian had phoned each town to get schedules of meetings that were sent to the manor house and then thrown away.
“That's what I want to talk to you about,” Jeremy said. “How best for me to beat the devil forever this time. Here's what I think, Julie,” and he handed over the fan of brochures he'd been holding, spreading them out on Julian's knees. “These're clinics,” he said. “Dry-out houses. You check in for a month-two or three if you need it-and you take the cure. Proper diet, proper exercise, sessions with the resident shrink. That's where you start. Detox. Once you've done the dance steps, you're into AA. Have a look, m'boy. Tell me what you think.”
Julian didn't need to look to know what he thought. The clinics were private. They were expensive. And there was no money to pay for them unless he gave up his work on Broughton Manor, sold off the harriers, and got a proper job. It would be the end of his dream to bring the estate back to life if he sent his father to a clinic.
Jeremy was watching him hopefully. “I know I could do it this time, m'boy. I feel it in my gut. You know how that is. With a little help, I'll do it. I'll beat the devil at his own game.”
“You don't think AA's enough to help you?” Julian said. “Because, you see, Dad, in order to send you to a place like this… I mean, I can check our insurance, and I will, absolutely. But I rather think they won't pay… We have the most basic health insurance, you know. Unless you'd like me to…” He didn't want to do it. And the guilt of his reluctance felt like a gouge incised on his soul. But he made himself say it. This was, after all, his father in front of him. “I could stop work on the estate. I could get a proper job.”
Jeremy reached forward and hastily gathered up the brochures. “I don't want that. Great Scot, Julie. I don't want that. I want Broughton Manor back in its glory like you do. I won't take you from that, son. No. I'll make do.”
“But if you think you need a clinic-”
“I do. I do. I'd get squared away proper and have a foundation. But if there's no money-and God knows I believe you, boy-then there's no money and that's an end to it. Perhaps another day…” Jeremy stuffed the brochures into his jacket pocket. He gave his gaze moodily to the fireplace. “Money,” he murmured. “Damn me if it doesn't always come down to money.”
The parlour door opened. Samantha entered.
It was quite as if she'd heard her cue.