Deep Sleep Page 15

  ‘Fine,’ she bellowed back. Smiling encouragement, wondering quite what to do next and thinking, You bastard. I’d like to get revenge on you at our party where policeman guests stand around propping up the walls like a load of spare parts, but I suppose this is a fitting revenge for all those genteel dinner gatherings you’ve endured with me.

  The generosity of policemen always amazed her: a party, by God, was a party. There was enough food for the feeding of the five thousand. Peanuts, crisps, curled sandwiches, scotch eggs, enough chicken drumsticks to have caused the death of a whole flock of hens, pies, cheeses, bread, a gesture towards salad. The whole groaning table, where the lightest thing was paper plates and plastic forks, was a reminder of the presence among the guests of almost every publican within a ten-mile radius.

  More familiar faces approached: more conversations stilted by deference and the mistaken belief that solicitors could not laugh, however easy their manner. Helen found one lone woman in the gloom, and chatted with greater ease, but most of her own sex, determined not to be wallflowers, occupied the middle of the floor, some dancing dutifully round their handbags. They were kind and welcoming, and she liked them, but no conversation could be uninhibited as soon as she opened her mouth. And if life were about building bridges between yourself and others, there were times when it was better not to try too hard. She was the stranger here.

  ‘Wanna dance?’ a lanky young man with quite a few beers on board stood by her elbow, dared by a friend. Never refuse, thought Helen, so they danced in an uncoordinated but enthusiastic gyration from one foot to another.

  ‘Hats!’ he was shouting. ‘Bloody hats, I ask you. Told us to come in hats, so the rest could have a go. Didn’t half feel a berk.’

  Smiling and nodding was the only possible response.

  ‘Wass your name, then?’

  ‘Helen.’

  ‘Dave,’ he shouted, pointing at his chest. ‘Come on your own, did you?’

  ‘No. With Superintendent Bailey.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said again, lower, in time with a lull in the music and an obvious lull in his mood. ‘Well, hallo, Mrs Bailey. Nice to meet you.’ It was neither the time nor the place, but she could rarely resist it. So pedantic you are, Helen, sometimes, said her own inner voice, too slow to prevent the words. ‘I’m not Mrs Bailey. I’m his girlfriend.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Dave, slowing to a standstill. ‘Where’s his wife then?’

  It was so easy to tread on toes, and she knew this floor was full of sensitive feet even though Christmas had already made men mad and driven them into the kind of drinking which might precede a year of drought. The music was louder, the voices correspondingly shriller: there was an argument raging on one side about someone being rude to a girl and quite soon there would be some woman crying in the ladies’ loo and the careful settling of a few animosities outside. She had seen it before, could smell the sweet hilarity of a drinking crowd in danger of going sour.

  At least there was Bailey if anything came to a fight, as likely here as at any gathering of the predominantly young and fit, trained for conflict, never mind if they were paid to uphold the law. There was something about Bailey, she thought, as she perched on a stool beyond the edge of the dancing but in reach of the drinking, chatting to another stranger. She knew that Bailey would protect her, unlike the previous partners of her life, her divorced husband, the other men of her own ilk. He would fight if need be and she was aware that he would fight to excellent effect, if not always to Queensberry rules. Not like a lawyer who would worry about his image, his suit or the consequences, and the contrast was one which gave her enormous pleasure. Some compensation for the vigorous display of good will and the sheer hard work of parties like this.

  These might be basic, their food and celebrations might be primitive, but, thought Helen, she would really rather be around them than any other men.

  Helen stood on the top rung of her bar stool in time to see the now swaying mass in the middle of the dance floor part to admit a large man with his arms clasped round the waist of a woman. His head was pressed into her back, whether for support or affection was difficult to tell at first sight, but in any event the total effect was restraint of the woman, who obviously resented what was more an arrest by force than an embrace. She was plucking at the hands fastened round her middle, screeching in protest, looking round wildly for some protector, and she was patently someone else’s property. So much was obvious to the others, hence the shouts. ‘Here, Duncan, leave it out …’ ‘You daft bugger, Duncan, bloody let go.’ ‘Sod off, Duncan … Piss off out of it …’ He seemed oblivious, swaying to his own beat, his hands not loosening but splaying over the slippery fabric of the woman’s dress, dragging down the modest décolletage to dangerous levels. There was panic in her expression. The man Duncan, his face obscured, was wearing a metal helmet slightly too small for his head, some makeshift wire object scarcely worth calling a hat. The others had abandoned their hats after initial teasing: the metal of his was digging into the woman’s shoulder.

  Somebody hit him. The one hand visible to Helen clawed at the bosom of the dress, and tore off a bright button reflected in the revolving light which distorted each movement and each expression as he slid to the floor and the hordes crowded in. Helen was afraid, paralysed afraid; and then she saw Bailey, pushing people this way and that, straight to the centre of the crowd where heads were bent and obscenities uttered. A man’s arms were raised, a profile twisted as a foot was raised for a savage kick, bitterness caught in the light with a smell of sweat and an expression of surprise as he was pushed aside. The music went on: she could sense Bailey’s voice below the pulse of sound, somehow being obeyed. Seconds later he emerged from the mass, dragging a man by the elbow. The metal hat rolled on the floor: Helen leapt off her stool, Bailey shoved the body on to her seat with the torso of it slumped fully over the bar and they sat down again in a trio. In one quick action, sign of an automatic tidiness in anyone else, Helen retrieved the metal hat. Duncan stirred, swore, looked at Helen with a leer and then looked straight ahead to all the bottles above the bar. Bailey coughed and straightened his tie. The gesture was so automatic that Helen wondered, not then, but later, how many times in his lifetime he had done exactly the same.

  ‘Helen, meet Constable Perry. One of my best, at the best of times. Which this is not. Say hallo to the lady, Constable.’

  ‘’Aloo, Mrs B. Let me get you a drink.’

  ‘He doesn’t need a drink,’ Helen murmured, fascinated despite herself. The truly drunk were fascinating, whenever there was someone to guard you from them.

  ‘Yes, he does need a drink,’ said Bailey. ‘One more will make him malleable. With a bit of luck, even unconscious.’

  ‘Fine, if you say so,’ said Helen, signalling to the man behind the bar, rallying, even beginning to enjoy the situation. ‘Who’s going to take him home?’

  ‘I am,’ said Bailey. ‘Will you wait for me? Shan’t be long.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’ Duncan was fixing Bailey with a baleful eye.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He might be sick.’

  ‘And I have his hat. Nice parties you have. Come on.’

  The car cruised onwards in silence. Stopped at traffic lights, started, behaved. ‘How do people generally get home from police Christmas parties?’ Helen asked. ‘If they all turn out like that? I didn’t see anyone sober for the last hour.’ Bailey coughed. ‘There are ways,’ he began. In the back seat, Duncan snored.

  ‘Always wondered,’ Helen was saying, ‘about what you do on the nights you don’t get guarded by me. Ferry round unconscious people in cars. So it seems.’

  ‘Not every night. Hang on. He’s awake.’ From behind the driver’s seat, there was the sound of weeping. Copious, noisy, suddenly sober weeping, sounds of such desolation from so large a man, Helen was moved to pity. Turning round to the back seat, she put out her hand and found it grasped. A limp, hopeless grasp which
made her curl her fingers round his while the smell of him hit her nostrils.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ said Duncan, ‘Please don’t leave me. Take me home. Please take me home to Kim.’ Drunk. Lonely and desperate, clutching at hands.

  ‘This is home,’ said Bailey, brutally. The car stopped and he hauled himself out of the door and round to the back while Helen, less practised, jumped out of the front.

  ‘Can we leave him like this? I’ll come in with you … Poor bloke’s in some kind of pain …’ Detective Constable Perry was leaning out of the back seat, threatening to fall. Bailey dragged him upright, shoving one sagging arm round his own neck.

  ‘No,’ he said with one backward glance as he walked down the short path. ‘For God’s sake, stay put. You’ll only embarrass him. I’ll put him to bed. Stay in the car and lock the doors. Back soon.’

  She sat, grateful to be obedient, conscious of her own naivete. She shuffled after a minute or two and wondered, selfishly, how long it took one man to put another to bed, only aware, from briefer experience than Bailey, that it took one woman quite a long time, so she settled to wait. Part and parcel of the life of a policeman’s wifely half, waiting. Bugger Christmas. The halfhearted light of one street lamp shone directly into Bailey’s big car: she could have read a book if there had been a book to read. Instead, she turned in her hands the metal hat, looked at it upsidedown and inside-out, thinking, looking, coming round slowly and regretting the intake of gin and tonic.

  Perry. As in Kimberley Perry. Husband of? Only connect. In any event possessor of some funny little item which could pass as the amateur double of that mask Hazel had shown them today. Oh Lord. An anaesthetic mask.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE phone shrilling in the early morning was so rare for Kimberley Perry she could not believe the sound, woke with that frightful fear of not quite knowing where she was. Back in her mother’s house or back with Duncan when calls at all hours were commonplace. In less than seconds, she saw where she was, loathed where she was, struggled a groggy route out of bed with a pounding heart and lifted the receiver. She had no strength to say hello.

  ‘Mrs Perry?’

  ‘Yes, who the …’

  ‘Superintendent Bailey. We met, once or twice, I think. I’m sorry to bother you …’

  Christ, by seven-thirty she should have been up a whole half-hour. What was the matter with her? She dimly remembered getting off the settee and into bed, finding Tom already there, herself so sleepy she had neglected to eat or even brush her teeth.

  ‘You all right?’ continued the voice. Such a question. She was asked every day, always replied as she did now.

  ‘Fine.’ Then a consciousness of the oddity of this crept in. ‘Yes I do remember you. Duncan’s boss. He’s not here. What’s the matter, what’s he done now?’

  ‘No, he’s fine. Listen …’

  So she had listened, promised to phone back, which was why Pip had caught her on his phone in the dispensary while his back was turned. She could have explained to Pip, asked permission first as she had done before when a phone call in working hours was vital, but she did not. She waited until he had gone down the road to buy fruit from Mrs Beale, because none of this was Pip’s business. Thus he discovered her, explaining to a senior Superintendent of Police how her son had told her that the metal hat object they were discussing had been given to him by a drug addict in the street and left in his father’s car. Describe the drug addict, Bailey said, and she had done that part. Name and pack drill, feeling as if she were giving something away. Kimberley was a jangle of nerves, assailed by emotion. Motherly instincts had told her that Tom, responding so defensively to questions that morning, had lied a little, and duller instincts, half formed and quickly rejected ideas, were making her withdraw from Pip; who had lied about his wife’s so-called drug addiction; whose bloody sherry had made her sleep like someone hit on the head; whose eyes were drilling holes in her back as she tried to hurry the telephone conversation to a close.

  ‘You all right?’ Bailey was asking again.

  ‘Fine, fine. Look, I’ve got to go. We get busy after nine.’

  ‘Listen, Mrs Perry, phone me will you? Might help to talk. In confidence, of course. Will you meet your son from school? Yes, I know where. Could we speak then? Here, take my number.’ She wrote the number carefully, feeling a flush spread over her shoulders as she scribbled on the back of a packet of paracetamol, crashed down the phone with relief. Yes, it would be nice to talk. About everything. And especially about the fact that Duncan last night must have taken advantage of her profound sleep, sidled indoors with Tom, and stolen half her underwear. Bras, knickers, gone. Kim rubbed the back of her own neck to postpone the business of turning round, thought of that half-empty drawer in her bedroom and wanted to vomit with a mixture of anxiety and rage. All her cheekiness, her ebullience and jokes in the face of hardship, were gone. She wanted to behave like the tortoise Tom craved and hibernate for the winter.

  ‘Who was that?’ Pip asked mildly. She wanted to say, no one, recognised that this would resemble the airy nonsense of Tombo telling a lie, and said, ‘Oh nothing. Sorry I had to use the phone. About Tom. School. He was late today. Do you want some tea, before the rush?’

  ‘Please,’ said Pip. Kim went for the kettle, passing the door to the back room where Pip had half covered the entrance with piles of boxes. Quickly he looked at the writing on the paracetamol box. Detec Super Bailey, meet school, 471 66, the rest indecipherable. He thought he had seen enough.

  ‘What none of you seems to understand here,’ Redwood was shouting, ‘is the b-balance of proof.’

  Helen thought he might rise and strike the table, the pedagogue incarnate.

  ‘Beyond reasonable doubt. Not beyond the immediate comprehension of the man on the Clapham omnibus: not scientific gobbledygook but straightforward proof. Without flaw.’

  ‘Perhaps a man standing over a dead body with a knife in his hand,’ Helen suggested lightly. Redwood glared at her.

  ‘All right, something more like that. Juries are thick. So are magistrates. At least something we could get past the latter. Not a dead drug addict called Daniel Maley who apparently knew all there was to be known about drugs, apparent possessor of an anaesthetic mask which he gave to some child. This wretch has to be suspect number one, dead at the moment. Not some respectable chemist with at least half an alibi and no known motive to murder a perfectly good wife, even if she did like chloroform. You don’t convince the Clapham omnibus man with a scientific reconstruction without identikit, provided by a crazy old doctor who should have retired years ago.’

  ‘He’s certainly not crazy.’ Helen’s voice was loudly defensive.

  ‘No,’ Redwood admitted, patting the report which was open on his desk. ‘Not crazy. He writes like a dream: his thesis is elegant and convincing if only we had a culprit. But he cannot be called as a witness. I’m surprised at you, Helen. I told you to check his background.’

  ‘What?’

  Collins shuffled in his seat, coughed apologetically. Redwood leant forward.

  ‘Doctor Hazel’s previous convictions, Miss West. Your … I mean, I understand Superintendent Bailey did a check. Two for drug abuse, years ago. Suspended by the medical council, temporarily, for sniffing ether, likewise years ago and criticised heavily for anaesthetising, possibly killing his own son. Accident, of course, not deliberate. Do you want any more? The defence would tear that to pieces.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Shock fell like a dead weight on her shoulders. She should have guessed with Hazel: there had always been the sense of something hidden. A feeling of conspiracy was growing in this cold room, Bailey, Collins, Redwood, a united front. She rallied, raising her voice, knowing it was useless. ‘Since when has there been a rule, house rule or otherwise, that we can’t field a witness with previous convictions, especially spent convictions? We call people from prison, don’t we? Hazel is the lynchpin. It strikes me we aren’t in a position to choose.�
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  ‘We are actually. We only call witnesses like that when we don’t have a choice. We have a choice here. And I’m exercising it. Anyway I think that’s all …’

  ‘I’ll get someone else,’ said Helen. ‘Someone else can do Hazel’s experiments.’

  ‘As you please. But not in my time and not on my budget. I trust you’re fully recovered from your operation having been so busy? I need you to go to court tomorrow and all next week. Mr Collins will continue to investigate.’

  Though the sound of a slap did not actually reverberate in the room, she could nevertheless feel the imprint of one in the pink of her face. She knew her reaction bordered on the juvenile, and she was ashamed, but continued. Shrugging with insolent indifference as she walked past his desk to the door, contempt resonant in her footsteps even while she saw the sense in what he said. Like a frustrated child, determined not to agree, she told herself later. Murmuring as she went, ‘Fine, absolutely fine, anything you say. By the way, how did Daniel Maley die? If he might have done for Mrs Chemist, they had nothing in common but her husband. See you. Happy Christmas.’

  Helen remembered the all-singing, all-dancing bed in hospital. Wanted to lie there and be carried away to some place where wounded pride and the squirming of failure was not visible to any eye, especially her own. There was also the unworthy wish that Bailey had never been born.

  Back in her own office, she grabbed the phone. Anger, frustration, a sense of guilt making her fingertips stab at the numbers. Speak to me, nice doctor, please. The one who put needles in my arm, let me sleep, so likeable, so trustworthy, such a good human being. Tell me my judgement of human nature is not as rotten as it seems. And the law which pays my labours not really such an ass.