Killing Time (22 page)

This went on for some time while Slider and Hart waited in silence, Slider feeling a familiar blend of emotions, pity for the writhing victim before him, relief that they were obviously on the right track, hope that he was going to come across with the goods. At last, when the paroxysm seemed to be waning, Slider got up, went to the cupboard where the sherry had been stored, sniffed out the brandy, and poured a large slug. He took it back to the cabinet minister, laid a kindly hand on his shoulder, and said, ‘Here, try this. It will steady your nerves.’

Grisham removed his hands from his face reluctantly, but he knocked back the brandy and then busied himself with his handkerchief, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose.

‘Another?’ said Slider. Grisham nodded. After the second stiffener, he seemed back in control. He sighed, sat up straight, clasped his hands together in his lap for comfort, and said, ‘I suppose I must tell you all about it.’

‘It would be better if you did,’ Slider agreed.

Grisham looked at him, half pathetic, half resentful. ‘But I swear to you, I never meant any harm to come to him. You must believe me. I was as shocked as anyone when I saw in the papers that he – that he—’

‘That’s all right, sir,’ Hart said gently. ‘Why don’t you tell it from the beginning? It’ll flow easier that way. Just start at the beginning, and see how it comes.’

And, oddly, it was to Hart rather than to Slider that Sir Nigel Grisham told the tale. As though she would understand better. One minority to another, perhaps? But he told it, that was what mattered.

‘I don’t want you to think – I haven’t lived a double life, you know,’ Sir Nigel said. ‘What I mean is, I haven’t made a habit of—’ He paused, and the words
this sort of thing
hovered unspoken. The trouble with the unspeakable, Slider thought, was that there were no words for it.

‘You’re a happily married man,’ Hart said helpfully, and Grisham looked rescued.

‘Yes, very happily. Annie is a wonderful person. Without her I could never have got where I am today. I love her very much. We love each other very much. It’s important to understand that.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ said Hart, willing to be convinced. ‘So where does Jay Paloma fit into it?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. He stared away bleakly. ‘It was an extraordinary thing. It was not something I expected. I’m not – I haven’t ever been—’

‘Were there others before Jay?’

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Oh, I got up to the usual things at school, the way boys do, but it didn’t mean anything. At that age it’s just eroticism, not homosexuality.’ There, the horrid word was out. Grisham seemed the better for it. ‘As a teenager I had all the normal urges. I went out with girls. I planned to get married. There was nothing different about me.’

‘So Jay was the first male lover you ever had?’

He hesitated. ‘The first lover, yes. But I did – have encounters. Just a few. Over the years.’ Hart nodded, easy, uncritical, simply interested, and Grisham unfolded a little. ‘The first time was when I was in Frankfurt on a business trip. A group of us went out for the evening, rather overdid things, ended up in
a night club. I started chatting to a gorgeous-looking female – well, she looked gorgeous in that light. I was rather drunk, you know, otherwise I wouldn’t have—’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘We ended up going back to my hotel room. I don’t honestly remember all that much about it. But I suppose you can guess the rest.’

‘The female turned out to be male.’

‘Yes. And – well – he seemed to think I’d known that all along, and I was – I don’t know – it was rather exciting in a strange way. So I—’

‘Done it,’ Hart finished for him. He looked at her carefully, to see if she were mocking or disapproving, and she made a tiny movement of her hands, shoulders and head which said as clearly as words,
c’est la guerre –
or, since it was Hart after all,
vese fings ’appen
. ‘So that was the way it went after that, was it?’

‘I didn’t make a habit of it,’ he said with a little sharpness. ‘I felt very bad after that first time – mostly for being unfaithful to Annie. But over the years – the stresses of the job – I wasn’t proud of myself, but I don’t want you to think I was ashamed, either. We dedicate ourselves to public service, and we live a life of unnatural strains, terrible hours, long periods away from our loved ones—’

‘Yeah, tell me about it!’

‘Of course, you would understand.’ And for the first time he looked at Slider, including him in the ‘you’. Slider nodded slightly. ‘Well, when you live that sort of life, something has to give in the end. And I think Annie preferred it this way, rather than – well, I never gave her a rival, you see. She has been the only woman in my life. And I was always discreet. What I did harmed no-one.’

‘And it was always like that, was it?’ Hart prompted. ‘A casual pick-up in a club. Just a one-night stand.’

‘Anything else would have been dangerous – and unfair to Annie. And it wasn’t all that often, you know – once or twice a year. Half a dozen times at most. In any case, I’ve hardly had the time or energy in recent years. You can’t imagine how ministerial work has multiplied in the last decade. I’d been living like a monk for years when I met Jay.’ He paused at
the sound of the name, as if re-realising the purpose of this cosy chat.

‘So how did you meet him?’ Hart picked up the thread easily and passed it back to him.

‘One night, about a year ago, I was at my London house, alone and at a loose end. A meeting had been cancelled at the last minute and I suddenly had nothing I had to do. No-one was expecting me anywhere. I can’t tell you what a heady sensation that was! It was the first time in months. Of course, I thought at first of coming down here, and I was on the point of telephoning Annie to say I was coming, when I suddenly thought, no, damnit, I’m going to take a little time for myself, be unaccountable for an evening—’

‘Cut yo’self a little slack,’ Hart supplied.

Grisham seemed charmed with the phrase. ‘Cut myself a little slack, just so! That’s exactly it! After being tethered head and foot for so long, the idea was intoxicating. So I went to the Pink Parrot Club.’

‘How did you know about it? Had you been there before?’ Slider asked.

‘Only once, and a long time before, but I’d heard about it. If you go to clubs at all, you hear about others. And it was conveniently close. That’s why I chose it, because it was the nearest.’

He seemed struck by the idea, and dropped into silent thought. Slider guessed what it was: by such random, meaningless decisions our fates are determined. If you listen very carefully, he thought, you can hear the gods laughing.

‘And it was that night you met Jay Paloma?’ Hart prompted after a moment.

Grisham came back from his distance, and seemed older, colder, greyer. The dance was over. This was the morning after. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was – do you know the expression
coup de foudre?’

‘Yeah,’ said Hart, rather than break his rhythm.

‘The moment I saw him, I was lost. And I knew it was the same for him. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt before. Not even for Annie. I love her dearly, but this was something different. It was like meeting the other half of my soul after a lifetime of searching – except that I hadn’t been searching. I hadn’t even known I
was incomplete. I fell in love with him, even though he wasn’t a woman. It didn’t matter what he was, what body he happened to be in. I just fell in love with
him
. Can you understand that?’

‘Yeah, I can understand.’

Grisham shrugged as though the story was finished. ‘So we became lovers. Whenever I could make time, we met. It was the start of a new life for me.’

‘It couldn’t have been easy,’ Slider said, ‘given how busy you were.’ Grisham looked at him. ‘And given that he was living in a place where you couldn’t visit him, and that he was working as well.’

‘You know all about it, I suppose.’

‘I understand that you had – disagreements. About his working at the Pomona Club.’

‘I wanted him to give it up,’ Grisham said. ‘If only he’d listened to me, none of this would have happened. I wanted him to give up work and move into a place nearer the centre, so that we could see each other more often. So that he could be more flexible about when we could meet.’

‘So that he would always be available when you found yourself with time to spare,’ Slider filled in.

‘Is that unreasonable?’ He addressed the protest to Slider, but then looked at Hart. ‘He wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with him. I had enough money. I told him, he would never want for anything. I’d always been generous with him. Whatever he wanted, he only had to ask, he knew that. But he said he didn’t want to be a kept man. He said it was humiliating. As opposed to what he did at the Pomona, I asked him? A kept man. How could he talk like that? When you love someone, you don’t think like that.’

‘So you quarrelled,’ Hart said neutrally.

‘Oh, not really quarrelled. We had arguments. Disagreements. It was something that came up from time to time. Mostly we were happy, very happy. But I did worry about the Pomona for other reasons, security reasons. And just recently – with the reshuffle coming up – I told him he
must
give up working there. If it got out, it would mean—’ He stopped. ‘Well, that’s all over now,’ he went on flatly. ‘My career is over.’

Slider stopped Hart with a look and said evenly, ‘Tell me about the cocaine that Jay bought for you.’

‘Oh, you know about that, do you?’ Grisham said with a bitter look. ‘What do you want to know, then?’

‘Whose idea was it? Did you ask him or did he offer? Did you use it together?’

‘We didn’t use the damned stuff! I’ve never taken drugs. I’ve smoked a little pot now and then, but only abroad in countries where it was legal. In my position you can’t be too careful.’ He did not seem to see any irony in the words. ‘And Jay hated drugs, hated everything to do with them. He was passionate on the subject. I think if I’d ever suggested we took something together he’d have walked out on me there and then.’

‘Nevertheless, he did buy cocaine for you.’

‘Yes, he got it for me, under protest. He didn’t want to do it. I had the devil of a job to persuade him. But it was – necessary.’

‘What for?’

Grisham frowned. ‘I suppose I have to tell you. At least then you won’t think I took the beastly stuff. I don’t want that slur laid on me, along with everything else. The truth is that I got it for a colleague. A fellow Member of Parliament. He was blackmailing me.’ He looked from Slider to Hart and back. ‘That’s the sort of person we get in the House nowadays. Nice, isn’t it? This –
colleague –
found out about Jay and me. He came to me and said that if it got out it would be the end of my career. At first I brazened it out. Told him to publish and be damned. But he said it wouldn’t hurt
him
to spill the beans, and that if I wanted to make sure he couldn’t do so without implicating himself, he’d tell me how. I couldn’t think what he meant – I thought he was suggesting some disgusting
ménage à trois –
but it turned out that what he wanted was cocaine. He reckoned that Jay would know how to get hold of it, and if we formed his supply chain, he would never be able to split on us. A painless kind of insurance, he called it.’

‘And did Jay know how to get hold of it? Slider asked.

‘He found out. After a lot of persuasion. I gave him the money, he got the stuff and passed it to me, I passed it to my colleague and collected the cash. What he did with it I don’t know. I hoped fervently that he would poison himself with it, but he hasn’t so far.’

Sold it, probably, Slider thought, in single fixes to fellow ravers. At a profit. ‘Do you know where Jay got it?’

‘He found some contact through the club. That’s all I know. He wouldn’t tell me any names, and I didn’t want to know them.’

‘He actually bought it from someone at the club?’

‘He wouldn’t tell me any of the details. I suppose he thought it was safer for me not to know.’

‘He was taking a considerable risk,’ Slider said.

‘I hated putting him in that position,’ Grisham said, ‘and he hated doing it, but he did it for me. That’s the sort of man he was. He did it to protect me. Because I couldn’t see any other way out. Oh, I’ve made such a mess of things!’ He put his head in his hands.

‘Tell me about the last time you saw him. The Monday, wasn’t it?’

Grisham raised his head wearily, and obeyed. ‘It was all arranged. We had the whole afternoon together, the first time in weeks that we’d had a decent amount of time. I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to it. But I could see as soon as he arrived that he was not in the best of moods.’

‘How do you mean? Depressed? Worried?’

‘I don’t know quite how to put it. On edge, perhaps. Restless. He kept walking about the room, wouldn’t settle. Did dance steps and stretches against the furniture. He did that sometimes to – to distance himself from me. Emphasising his independence.’ This was addressed to Hart again.

‘Why’d he wanna do that?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know. He was upset about something and wanted to take it out on me. I didn’t enquire too deeply because it didn’t pay. I didn’t want to quarrel with him, and I thought he’d just come out of it once he relaxed a bit. So I said what’s wrong, and he said nothing, and I left it at that. But he kept picking at me, finding fault, wanting to quarrel. I let it all bounce off me. But then he picked up the newspaper and glanced through it and said, “Oh look, there’s a bit about us in here.”’

‘I bet that gave you a fright,’ Hart said.

‘I can’t tell you how my heart jumped. I thought he meant him and me. And when I looked at it, it was a news paragraph about some brawl at the Pomona Club. I – I’m afraid I just snapped. My temper was already frayed. He had been—’

‘Winding you up?’

‘Yes, winding me up. And I was always worried about the Pomona Club, and his connection with it. And I hated the fact that he went on working there in preference to a more civilised life where we could see more of each other. We had the most dreadful quarrel—’