The Price of Failure (3 page)

‘How's the missus?' Buckley asked.

‘Much as before.' He threaded his way through to his desk, sat. He was not a man who usually talked about his misfortune, but was grateful for the chance to do so now. ‘If only they could move her back to the maternity ward it might do some good, but they say they can't because she's become long term and they have to keep all maternity beds ready for immediate occupation.'

‘It's a real bugger having kids. You'd have thought that whoever arranged things would have made it easier, like it is for the kangaroos.'

‘I don't suppose women would welcome walking around with their kids in pouches until half grown.'

‘I suppose there's a point there … Any news when they might let her out?'

‘Not until the baby's born.'

‘And there's no knowing when that'll happen, except that it'll be in the middle of the night. Makes it rough for her.'

‘Even rougher when she keeps getting someone in the next bed who's either gaga or who pops it. Doesn't help her depression to have someone carried off feet first.'

‘I can imagine.'

‘I've asked around to find out what it would cost for her to go into a private nursing home as she so wants.'

‘What's the answer?'

‘Not all that short of five hundred a week. Where does a copper find that sort of money?'

‘Not in his pay packet.'

‘So it's not on. And every time I go there and see her getting more depressed and know that if I had the money…' He became silent.

‘I can imagine.'

Could he? Carr wondered. Could he even begin to appreciate his feelings of pity and self-condemnation as he tried to lift Gloria out of her latest bout of depression and to convince her that this pregnancy would go to full term and she would finally bear the baby she so desperately wanted?

Buckley said, happy to change the conversation: ‘The skipper was shouting for you.'

‘What's the panic?'

‘Can't say.'

‘Then I'd better find out.' Carr stood, left, and went along to the detective sergeant's room.

‘How's Gloria?' Wyatt asked.

‘Not too bad.'

‘Freda wants to know what she really likes most, fruit or chocolate?'

‘Chocolate, but she has to keep off it because she must keep her weight down and that's hell when she's not taking any exercise.'

‘Any particular kind of fruit.'

‘Everything but figs. Apples as much as anything.'

‘I'll tell Freda to find some Coxes. Trouble is, most of the shops are filled with those French apples that don't taste. The only thing the French are good for is garlic.'

In many respects, Carr thought, Wyatt was the archetypal John Bull. Likely to complain that it was impossible to understand the natives in France because they all jabbered away in French.

Wyatt opened a folder, picked out a single sheet of paper. ‘We had a complaint in yesterday, too late to do anything; you can deal with it now. As the guv'nor said, more of a PR job than anything. Miss Genevieve Varney, Flat 3, Easthill House, 36 Egremont Road. She's been getting dirty telephone calls. We've advised the Malicious Calls bureau so there's not much more we can do at the moment, but you can ask a few questions to make it seem like the whole division's been put on the job. And if she's the usual middle-aged, dried-up spinster, don't overlook the possibility that she's making the whole thing up.' Then he said, with studied casualness: ‘I suppose that address isn't far from the hospital.'

Which meant, Carr understood, that a quick visit to see Gloria afterwards would go unremarked. He left and returned to the general room to collect his mackintosh. Wyatt came from a breed of coppers that was dying out fast. His creed was stolid loyalty for and to the unit. And loyalty meant fostering the regimental spirit (to many, a concept fit only to be jeered at) and being prepared to be concerned in problems that lay beyond work. Normally, he would demand that rules be observed on the grounds that they were rules; but if someone within the unit needed help, then that observance might take on a flexible air. Which was why he'd dropped the hint about the nearness of the hospital …

Carr stepped into the general room. ‘D'you know if both CID cars are out?'

‘Couldn't say, mate,' Buckley replied. ‘What's the news?'

‘Only some woman who's been receiving hot telephone calls.'

‘Seems like more and more people are getting their kicks in strange ways. Makes you wonder if being normal isn't odd.'

Carr went down to the courtyard and found that one of the CID Escorts was parked there. A good omen? Perhaps Gloria would have cheered up since the previous evening. He sat behind the wheel, started the engine, backed out, turned, drove to the exit and waited. The traffic did not thin and as his impatience grew, he suffered an abrupt swing of emotion. It was a shitty world! The hospital staff were competent and caring, but the endless pressures of their jobs left them unable to appreciate the unique problems of individual patients. ‘When you're with her, try to be more cheerful. Laugh and joke,' one of the doctors had recently said to him, almost as if prescribing a dose of ipecacuanha. Did the stupid bastard think he spent his time with her detailing all his own woes and miseries? Couldn't any of them understand that however illogical it was for her to be so affected by conditions in the ward, since they were by most standards good, if they did depress her with an ever-growing intensity, then logic had no part to play … And on top of his fear and vicarious suffering, there was the added pain of knowing that could she be moved to a nursing home, she might slough off her depression whether this was logical or illogical. He'd tried to find the money by raising a second mortgage. But the building society had been very quick to point out that their house had become trapped in negative equity by the falls in value of property. So Gloria was condemned to remain in hospital because he'd no other way of raising the money to be able to move her. In bitter contrast to his position, each day there were reports of politicians putting up their pay above the rate of inflation, of incompetent directors being given platinum handshakes, of City workers expecting Christmas bonuses that would ensure they kept drinking champagne, of sportsmen earning hundreds of thousands on the final putts, even – and bitter irony here – of servicewomen being paid fortunes for having become pregnant … An oncoming lorry stopped. He flashed the headlights as a thank you, drove on to the road. Reason returned. All right, life wasn't fair, but that was hardly news. Adam had discovered this truth when Eve had cajoled him into eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. All her fault, but he'd been just as severely punished as she.

The area around Bullock Common, named after a mid-nineteenth-century philanthropist, had once been the smartest part of Everden and the houses reflected that fact – large, three-storey Victorian and Edwardian buildings with the blunt, forceful character of the age. Even now, when the motor car had caused so much to change, it was still a road suggesting prosperity. He parked between a Volvo and a Mercedes.

Number 36 had a small, well-tended front garden. He passed through this, climbed the three steps to the front door, checked the name tags on the entryphone unit, pressed the button for flat 3.

‘Who is it?'

The loudspeaker had distorted the voice too much for him to make even a guess at the speaker's age. ‘Detective Constable Carr, divisional CID. Is it convenient to have a word?'

‘Come on up.'

The door lock buzzed and he entered. The hall was large, but sparsely furnished and the flowers in a vase on the table were looking distinctly tired. He climbed the two flights of poorly carpeted stairs and as he stepped on to the top landing a door opened and Genevieve said: ‘Hullo.'

So much for Wyatt's dried-up, middle-aged spinster! She was in her early twenties. Her figure was outlined, but not too closely defined, by sweater and jeans. Jet-black hair framed an oval face in which the most noticeable feature was large, deep blue eyes; her complexion was peaches and cream, her nose impishly inclined, her mouth shapely and only a muscle twitch away from a smile. She made him think of his lost innocence.

‘Do come in.' Free of the tinny distortions of a loudspeaker, her voice was soft and warm.

He followed her across a small hall into a large sitting-room, furnished in modern style, which offered a view of the common.

‘Will you have a drink?'

‘Thanks, but no thanks.'

‘Then it's true! Policemen on duty don't drink.'

He returned her smile. ‘Not before midday.'

‘Do sit.'

He sat, waited until she was seated on the settee. ‘What can you tell me about the phone calls?'

‘Not very much, I'm afraid. Now I just put the receiver down when I know it's him.'

‘When was the first?'

‘I suppose it was roughly three weeks ago.'

‘Yet you've only just reported them?'

‘There was a break after the first one and I hoped he'd gone away. It's only in the last few days they've become such a nuisance. As a matter of fact, I've been making a note of dates and times – would that be of any use?'

‘It might very well be.'

‘I'll get it for you.' She crossed to a small table on which stood a phone and answerphone unit. She opened a notebook, brought out a loose sheet of paper, handed this to him.

He briefly studied the dates and times. There was no readily discernible pattern to suggest the caller had some sort of routine. ‘What has he said to you?'

‘What you'd expect.'

‘Could you be more specific? If some of the words embarrass you, just use some sort of symbol, like XYZ.'

‘I'm not embarrassed – after all, one hears them on the television all the time – it's just that I don't like speaking them.' She looked anxiously at him. ‘Does that sound really stupid?'

‘Far from it. It's how my wife thinks.'

‘Then here goes.' She repeated what the caller had said.

‘Fairly standard, I'm afraid.'

‘I can't think why anyone should behave like this.'

‘After another case recently, I asked a psychiatrist if he could explain. He waffled on about the man suffering a dominant mother which left him frightened by the power of women and unable to form normal relationships with them. The calls give him the chance to revenge himself by humiliating a woman who doesn't have the chance to reject him. For my money, psychiatrists would bring in mother love-hate to explain why a chicken lays an egg.'

‘Are they dangerous?'

‘Psychiatrists?'

She smiled. ‘The people who make these calls.'

‘Very unlikely. What they're after is to be able to talk dirty without running any risks.'

‘It's just … Well, I've been wondering.'

‘He won't offer any physical harm,' he said authoritatively, even though this was not strictly certain. ‘Now, as to what we can do to help. We've been on to British Telecom…'

‘They've phoned to say they'll be along as soon as possible. In fact, I thought you must be the engineer.'

‘Good. I expect they'll instal one of those gadgets that tells you the number of the caller. And also an alarm unit that you'll activate if the call unit is blank because the man's used the withholding code; as I understand it, they can still trace his call. But I'd better point out that it may not help all that much to trace where he's phoning from because if he's any sense, he'll use a public box. In which case, there'll be precious little chance of directly identifying him. Probably the best bet will be for you to ask BT to change your number and have the new one ex-directory…'

‘I can't do that.' She noticed his look of inquiry. ‘I do a little work from home and can't afford to be cut off from my clients.'

Clients could be advised of the alteration, he thought, but did not pursue the point. ‘Then we must try to identify the caller indirectly. If you can think of anyone who might be pestering you, I can have a word with them … You say the first call was about three weeks ago. Just before then, did you have a row with anyone?'

She thought back, her brow slightly creased. She shook her head.

‘Did anyone make a pass at you which you smartly rejected?'

This time she smiled briefly as she again shook her head.

‘Did you have any workmen in?'

‘I haven't had any men in for months … Hang on, that's not right. The phone went on the blink and an engineer came along and fixed it.' She hesitated, then said: ‘And as a matter of fact, he … I was going to say something that's probably very stupid.'

‘I doubt it.'

‘It's just that he was a bit of a creep and made me think that a lot of nasty thoughts were going around in his head. But it's absurd to judge from appearances, isn't it?'

‘Mostly, but not always. Did you learn his name?'

‘I'm afraid not.'

‘Did he actually say or try to do anything unpleasant?'

‘Not overtly. But although he'd never look directly at me when we were talking, I did once catch him staring at me with a look that made me feel I needed a bath. Does that make any sense at all?'

‘It does. When exactly was this?'

‘A month back, give or take a couple of days.'

‘In other words, before the first obscene call?'

‘That's right.'

He stood. ‘I think I've covered everything. We'll do all we can and I'll be in touch.'

She led the way to the front door and as she opened it he noticed how the sweater tightened to outline her left breast … He jerked his gaze away. He wasn't a randy teenager. But as he made his way down the stairs, he realized something of which he must have been aware almost from the moment of meeting her, but which he had not consciously acknowledged until now. She possessed all the charm of innocence; but also, however contradictory this might seem, a vibrant sexuality that stretched a man's imagination.