Murder... Now and Then (11 page)

‘Victor's told her about us,' she said.

‘It doesn't matter,' said Max, and watched her for a moment as she drank. ‘What's that all about?' he asked, touching the glass as he spoke.

‘Victor.' She looked over the rim of the glass at him. ‘ I told him to stuff his job tonight.' She drank some more. ‘And I think perhaps I wasn't very clever,' she said.

For a moment, Max's own insurmountable problems took a back seat as he became intrigued by hers. If problems
were
insurmountable, then all you could do was leave them alone. Hers must be easier to handle. ‘Why did you do that?' he asked. ‘You were singing his praises to that policeman.'

‘Well, I'm not now.' She poured herself another hefty measure, lifting her glass in a sardonic toast. ‘Don't you think you should ring your wife or something?' she asked. ‘This isn't like you, Max.'

Max didn't know what to do. He didn't think he had the courage. He didn't understand what was happening. He felt as though he didn't know her any more.

‘She was in a bad way, Max,' she said. ‘And you just abandoned her. That's not like you. I wouldn't like to think I'd caused that.'

‘You didn't,' he said. ‘It had nothing to do with you.' He drew the phone towards him, dialling the number, waiting long enough for her to come from the other end of the street. ‘Did you get into trouble because of me?' he asked Anna, as the phone rang out.

‘Not really,' she said. ‘It was my own fault.'

She would have gone to Zelda's, he supposed. He must have frightened her so badly, and he … He bent his head, then looked up at Anna, who was filling her glass again already. ‘She's not there,' he said, hanging up.

‘Well, let's hope she's not gone to make it up with stepdaddy,' said Anna. She smiled, without a trace of humour, and joined him on the sofa again, bringing the bottle with her this time. ‘In view of what happened last time she walked in on him,' she added.

‘He's got someone with him?' said Max.

‘Oh, yes,' she said. ‘ He got rid of me fast enough.' She took another swig of brandy. ‘His wife's as good as dead, I suppose. And this is someone whose reputation Victor has to protect at all costs. It doesn't matter what people say about me.'

He smiled, just when he had thought that nothing would ever make him smile again. ‘The last I heard you were denying that you had ever had any relationship with Holyoak,' he said.

‘Fuck that,' she said.

Max had never heard her swear. Not even the mildest of oaths. ‘The relationship?' he asked. ‘Or the denial of it?'

‘Both.'

Max was quite used to women crying on his shoulder; he seemed to attract it. She had problems too, and he much preferred someone else's for the moment. ‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘You've been with him a long time.'

‘He set me up. He'd set his own mother up if it got him what he wanted. He's a psycho, Max,' she said seriously. ‘Only I think I'm the only person who really knows that.' Then she shook her head. ‘No,' she said. ‘Someone else knows. I shouldn't have done what I—' She broke off. ‘I think I've lost my job, Max,' she said, her voice small.

Once again, Max took refuge in someone else's problems. He was so much better with them, even if he didn't understand a word of them. He thought she had handed in her notice; now it looked as though she had been sacked. He felt guilty about that. ‘How did he set you up?' he asked.

She took another fortifying gulp of brandy before she spoke. ‘His wife got much worse, and she wanted to be with Catherine, for them to be a family again.' More brandy. ‘And he said he wanted me to come here and …' She waved her hand as she tried to remember the language that she had only recently begun to speak again, and which was deserting her now that she was drunk. ‘You know … represent him. But I hadn't got to say which company it was,' she said. ‘ So that Catherine didn't try to put a spoke in it before it was finalized.'

Max nodded, remembering the secret negotiations about which he and Catherine had laughed. Hard to believe now that they had ever laughed.

‘Your wife's the only person who's ever got the better of him – you know that?'

Max said nothing; he watched her drink, and listened.

‘And then when he went public with it he said he wanted me to be his public relations manager. It was a proper job, he said. He was the one who kept saying that he wanted me to have a proper job. This … this public relations thing. And … and … I was frightened I wouldn't be able to do it.'

She gave a little, unconvincing half laugh. ‘But I needn't have worried about not being able to do it, because the whole thing was just bullshit. Bull … shit,' she repeated, leaving a long space between the words. ‘All of it. But now he's met someone. And no one must know. So I'm reprieved.' She blinked.

Max frowned. She hadn't lost her job?

‘Catherine was right, and I was wrong. He's a Grade A dyed-in-the-wool bastard. I mean – I knew he was, all along. But I thought—'

She was very close to tears. Max's arms were round her.

‘A bastard,' she repeated. ‘I was all right the way I was! He didn't have to tell me that I could have a real job, and a real life. He wants people to think
I'm
his mistress.'

Max had taken liberties with the opposite sex in his time, but he'd never had the brass neck to get his ex-mistress to act as decoy for his new one.

‘You mean he ditched you, but you were supposed to carry on as though he hadn't?'

She closed her eyes in frustration. ‘I'm
not
his mistress, Max. I never have been. He wants people to think I
am
. He wants to give the so-called journalists something to get their teeth into. That'll keep them happy, and then they won't dig about in his dustbin.' She finished the brandy and reached down for the bottle again. ‘Well, fuck that!' she said, and poured another, even larger, measure. ‘Fuck that, and fuck him.'

‘I – I don't quite understand,' Max began. But she was crying now, the words tumbling out, and he gave up trying to understand.

‘I believed him,' she said. ‘ He said I'd done a good job. I deserved it.' She leant closer to him, her eyes barely focusing. ‘ I was set up,' she said. ‘D'you see?'

No. Max wasn't following much of this; the alcohol and the hurt didn't allow for a very coherent telling of the story.

‘His wife's dying, so he needs me.' She stopped, and looked bleakly at him before downing what was in her glass, and pouring herself another with utmost care.

She was drinking far too much and far too fast; Max felt he ought to try to stop her, but he didn't know how. He was beginning, just, to understand, remembering what Catherine had said last night. Victor was using Anna to cover up his homosexuality, just as he had used his wife. That was what had upset Catherine so much all those years ago. Anna didn't seem to know that that was why the secrecy; Max thought it best to leave it that way.

‘I
know
I'm just paid to do what he wants,' she shouted, moving her arm in an expansive gesture that at least got rid of some of the alcohol from her glass, ‘but I don't—' she broke off. ‘I thought we were friends,' she said, quietly. ‘ That's the relationship I thought we had. I know the sort of things he does, but he doesn't do them to me, and I thought we were friends. I thought that was why he took me with him in the first place.'

‘Why
did
he take you with him?' Max asked mystified by the whole thing. ‘What did you do?'

She shrugged. ‘This and that.' Her eyes grew misty. ‘But he did take me,' she said. She looked at him, pointing an unsteady finger. ‘I want you to understand,' she said.‘ I'd have done it. I'd have covered for him. But I think I blew it.'

Max felt as though he was the one who had consumed vast quantities of brandy.

‘I'm glad he's got someone – it wasn't natural, before.' She smiled. ‘Maybe she gave him permission,' she said. ‘ Bitch. She's always got me into trouble.'

‘Who?'

‘Who do you think? Your wife.'

She was pretty good at getting him into trouble too, he thought. But perhaps the abortion explained a lot of things. And the anger was subsiding now; he was simply bewildered.

‘He was good to me. He's always been good to me. He's done really terrible things, you know. But not to me. He was good to me. So I'd have done it. But he shouldn't have set me up. So I told him to stuff his job up his …'

She was crying; Max kissed away the tears, comforting her and himself at one and the same time. She returned his kisses through brandy-laden sobs, and he couldn't work out if she hated or loved Victor Holyoak, but he supposed it hardly mattered; the distress was much the same, whichever. Her mouth touched his in a tiny kiss before she drew back and wiped the tears with her hand.

‘Will you come to bed with me?' she asked, her face wet and streaked with tears, her eyes glazed, her nose red.

He had had more alluring invitations, but none had been more nakedly vulnerable to a rebuff, and none had been more welcome. If ever he had needed the comfort of a woman's body, he needed it now. He needed the respite, the relaxation. Then he would be able to think clearly. But he wasn't sure Anna could provide him with that, as he found tissues, and handed them to her, helping her up from the sofa.

The bottle came with her, but even stoned out of her mind Anna was the best partner he had ever had. So it wasn't until some little time later, in his post-coital calm, that he realized what must really have happened, and what, in her inebriated and largely incomprehensible ramblings, Anna had actually told him.

Judy was having a hard time making Lloyd concentrate. He was supposed to be playing Scrabble with her, but his mind was miles away.

It wasn't ordinary Scrabble. In this version, the more suggestive or downright rude the word, the more points you got. Judy had devised it to even things up, because he always won the straight game. This way she was in with a chance because he was too polite to put some words down even if he saw the opportunity. A word carried no extra points at all, even if it covered two treble word squares, contained the Q, and used up all your letters, if it did not have a sexual or vulgar connotation. The bonuses ranged from five to thirty points, and any word described as ‘taboo' in Lloyd's dictionary of slang got an extra fifty.

She put down an arbitrary collection of words. ‘It's mildly rude,' she said. ‘The score plus ten.'

‘You've made that one up,' he said.

‘No, I haven't! Shakespeare used it.'

‘Now I know you've made it up,' he said. ‘How would you know?' He smiled, but then the smile faded.

‘What?' she asked, a touch apprehensively. She had grown used to that look during the evening.

‘The face,' he said slowly, frowning. ‘I could see
it
, but it couldn't see me. I
knew
it couldn't see me.'

This was beginning to get to her. ‘Lloyd,' she said sternly, ‘I don't know what silly game you're playing, but if you don't stop it, I'm going home. Play your word.'

‘It's true,' he protested, examining his letters, and putting down
MOTHER
on the
T
of her
PHAT
. ‘Extra fifty,' he said.

‘Rubbish!'

‘It's a frequently used shorthand form of a taboo word,' he said.

‘It's an abbreviation, or it's innocuous,' she said. ‘So either you can't have it, or you get no bonus.'

‘It's not an abbreviation. It's a word in its own right, used in a vulgar context. Thirty points,' he bartered.

‘Ten. They wouldn't bleep it out on the telly.'

‘Oh, yes they would. They did. Remember? In that film we watched at New Year.'

So they had. ‘All right,' she said. ‘Twenty.' Twenty was all right. She would still win. He still had two tiles, and she was left with
S
,
E
,
M
and
N
, which she put down proudly round the
E
of
MOTHER
. ‘Seven,' she said. ‘Plus a bonus of five. And I'm out. What are you left with?'

‘An
A
and a
D
,' he said.

She totted up the scores, deducted the spare points from his, and added them to hers. She had won by three points.

‘You cheated,' he pointed out, as she announced the score. ‘Phat is not a word.'

She smiled. ‘Neither it is,' she said, clearing the board. ‘But I can add up quicker than you.'

‘You could have had phantoms,' he mused. ‘That would have got you more points, even without a bonus.'

‘I wouldn't have been out.' The truth was that she hadn't seen it.

‘And it would have been very topical,' he said. ‘ Since I seem to have been seeing them. Do you think phantoms have different faces from their flesh and blood counterparts?'

Judy put the letters back in their bag, folded the board, and put the box away tidily. ‘I'm making coffee,' she announced, and escaped into the kitchen, where the crockery from dinner was draining. She stayed in there, drying it needlessly, for it had been dry from some time, putting it away. She ground coffee, and hoped that she had remembered how to use his new percolator. Serve him right if she'd done it wrong. She put everything on a tray, and opened the kitchen door.

‘I'll bring the coffee in if you promise to stop going on about ghosts,' she called through.

He smiled as she came in with the coffee things, and set them down.

‘He's still alive,' he said. ‘So it couldn't have been a phantom Victor. Or could it?' he asked, dropping his voice melodramatically. ‘Perhaps we all have ghosts
even before we die
.'