Frank’s diagnosis of the stomach pains turned out to be a little premature, and they insisted I stay in for more tests. The pursuit of profit or the fear of malpractice suits? Private medicine. It was just what I needed to get my aggro level back up to scratch. Still, if someone else was paying for it … The interesting thing was who.
It seems news travels fast in the country. When the girl bartender and her boyfriend found me (we’ll gloss over what they were doing out in the dark in the middle of the night), they remembered enough from my public performance in the bar to know what to tell the local police, who then contacted Vandamed. Well, they didn’t have much choice. At the hotel I had let Nick register us under his address, and all they got from his home number was an answering machine.
Of course, by rights, even without him they should have been able to get all the info they needed from my handbag. But that was the point. There was no handbag. Well, what would you do if you were a professional thug who wanted to make a beating-up look like a mugging? Except it was worse than that. Bags can be precious things. Driving licenses, cheque books, credit cards—all that kind of stuff is replaceable, and anyone who walks the mean streets without a duplicate address book is asking for trouble. But some things you can’t replace: in this case a certain brown envelope containing a photograph of the man who had mugged me.
And, of course, once I thought about it that way, it all began to make sense. To say there was no point in beating me to a pulp so soon after the warning may have been logical, but only as far as it went. This way he had killed two birds with one stone. No Hannah, at least for a while, and no incriminating photo of himself. Brain as well as brawn, eh?
Of course, Vandamed would probably have a photograph of the student who had infiltrated them. But security mug shots always make people look like convicts, even the good-looking ones, and anyway, mine had been a more personal memento, not to mention the only real proof of the affair which had so effectively brought down the house of Shepherd.
Anyway, the fact was that as I lay unconscious in Ipswich Hospital the only person who knew anything about me was one Marion Ellroy, managing director of Vandamed, plucked from his, no doubt, expensive bed to the bleak horrors of an NHS casualty ward. And from there the rest was private. Well, I already had ample evidence of how well Vandamed looked after its employees. In this case, even someone who hadn’t agreed to go on the payroll. The flowers, the room, the medical care—it was all on them. Impressive, eh? And the kind of offer you couldn’t refuse, particularly in my condition. I did the decent thing and wrote Ellroy a note to thank him. He, equally decent, did not try to visit me.
So I sat in my private room with my flowers, my television and my telephone while my face turned from black to blue and my eye opened enough for me to see the extent of the damage.
On Monday afternoon they offered me a hand mirror—I suppose they decided I was ready. But some things you can’t share, even with professionals. So a little while later I made my own solitary visit to the bathroom. And there, above the sink, made the acquaintance of the new Hannah Wolfe.
You never really know how vain you are until you lose the looks you’ve got. Maybe the worst thing about what I saw was that I was still recognizable. I think I’d had this fantasy that the violence had somehow transformed me, turned me into someone else, someone ennobled by suffering, and that this new spirituality would shine through the pulp of my face. Well, it didn’t.
The main problem was not so much the smashed lip or the bruises, as the fact that there was just too much flesh. My whole face had blown up like puff pastry, as if to protect the bones from any more damage. Maybe that was why my eye had closed, in preparation for another crack of the fist. In its place there was a long, livid gash held together by a couple of stitches and an expanding purple-black bruise which dragged the side of my cheek down towards my mashed lip. Altogether a stunning sight. Gone were the pleasures of working incognito. From now on the private eye had an all too public face.
I thought of Jack Nicholson in Chinatown pulling Faye Dunaway into bed with a slashed nostril and sticking-plaster: injured hero, aroused heroine, a symbolic variation on a common genre theme. I put my hand up to the mirror, running my finger from my split lip up to the line of the eye. ‘Why, Miss Wolfe, I do declare I just love that cute little scar.’ But some kind of gender equalities are simply impossible. And my Southern accent left a lot to be desired. The more I looked the better it didn’t get. I would have cried, only the salt would hurt the stitches too much.
After the second day I stopped looking. There wasn’t any point. I wasn’t going anywhere. And, after all, someone else was doing the work now.
Considering how little I had told him, DI Peters had been quite civilized about it. Well, you can hardly hit a lady when she’s down, and, anyway, I got the impression it was no more than he expected from an employee of Frank Comfort’s. Of course he was still not to know whether this new truth was the whole truth. But that was his own fault, really. He should have waited till the painkillers had begun to work and my head was less fuzzy. As it was he just jumped too quickly, got so excited about the gardener and the envelope with the leaflets and photo that he didn’t give me time to get back to that ‘forgotten’ phone call that Mattie had taken that night in her father’s study.
I didn’t feel too badly about it. After all, at least they had a lead now. They moved fast. When they couldn’t trace either student Malcolm Barringer or gardener Tony Marriot to any known animal rights activist groups, they made a public appeal. The day I was due to be released the papers carried a small, blurred photograph of a young man somewhere between the age of eighteen and thirty. Vandamed’s mug shot—as I predicted—was a joke, apparently a completely different person from my moody black-and-white love study. To add insult to injury, Peters let the Debringham College schoolgirls loose on an Identikit picture for a television crimewatch programme. Their version—a cross between Christian Slater and Ian Brady—looked like yet someone else entirely. According to Frank, the boys got over six hundred calls from people who were sure they knew him. Police work. The indefatigable in search of the indistinguishable. Sometimes it pays to be a one-man band.
And so I was allowed to go home and pick up the pieces of my life—the largest one of which was Nick. As you know he had waited all through Sunday night to see me. Frank had stalled him, but it was left to the pretty young nurse to do my dirty work for me, assuring him that it was only natural for me not to want to be seen by my lover in my present state. ‘Give it a couple of days,’she no doubt said. ‘She just needs a little time.’ And, of course, as an excuse it was not without its truth. You and the bathroom mirror both know that. But you also know it wasn’t the whole truth.
Except it could only get worse the longer I left it. So I rang him on Monday night and agreed that we would meet in London when I got home. He had left his car for me. Maybe he’d hoped I would ask him to drive me back, but he understood when I said I wanted to drive myself. I knew he would.
I liked the drive. It gave me a chance to be alone but in the world again, and, truth be told, I was quite grateful to get out from under the roses. There can be such a thing as too many flowers. If I had been nearer, I might even have gone back to the pub, just to have a look at the lane in daylight, exorcise my demons. But the A12 beckoned and it didn’t make me a coward to listen to its call. Apart from odd moments at traffic lights when I would find the driver next to me staring uncontrollably, the journey home was uneventful. It was early evening by the time I arrived. I parked outside my flat. The lights were on and the curtains drawn. But then you have to expect that when you give someone your key. The only people I had seen for three days were policemen, nurses and doctors. What the hell was I going to do with a lover?
I climbed the stairs slowly. He must have heard me, because he was waiting in the doorway. It reminded me of that time at his house a couple of days after her death, when I had been so unexpectedly pleased to see him. We st
ood for a second looking at each other. He made no move towards me. ‘Hi, Hannah, welcome home,’ he said quietly, then stood aside to let me in.
The flat felt warm, I went into the living room. It was unbelievably clean and filled with flowers (no roses, thank God) and, wonder of wonders, the curtain rail had flown back up to its rightful place above the window sill and the wall around it had been redecorated. It was a great testament to the power of recovery.
‘I stuck to magnolia,’ he said. ‘It seemed safer that way.’
‘Did you use a Rawlplug?’
‘That and a tube of Polyfilla.’
‘It looks great.’ Which was more than could be said for me, eh? Oh, what the hell. Why didn’t I say it? It was what we were both thinking, anyway. ‘I’ve been contemplating doing the same to the other eye. Just to give it a sense of symmetry. What do you think?’
OK in theory but a mess in practice. It came out angry with no humour to undercut the pain. The doctor had warned me before I left—something about my emotions taking longer to heal than my face. Smart guys, doctors. When it comes to other people’s bodies. Nick took in a small, sharp breath through his teeth.
I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No. I’m sorry. I should have said something. Except you wouldn’t have believed me. It’s already so much better, Hannah. I mean compared with Sunday night you look—’
‘Like a million dollars. I know.’ I saw him again, sitting there watching over me, staring at the floor. He’d never know I had seen him. Unless, of course, I told him. I looked at him now. He was wearing a pair of stonewashed jeans and a grey cotton sweater I had bought him in the January sales. A lot of women would find him very attractive right now. A lot of women would be right. I was in more trouble than I realized. Help me, I thought. Or just leave me alone.
‘I bought a bottle of something. But I didn’t know how you’d be feeling. Maybe you’d just prefer to go to bed and have supper.’
‘No. No. Let’s drink.’
He went into the kitchen and came back with a tray, a bottle of champagne and two new, elegant glasses, thin and fluted. He eased out the cork and poured carefully. I watched the bubbles flow. Then he pushed a glass across the table to me. It was the moment when somebody proposes a toast. We waited, but nobody did.
He took a swig, then put down his glass. ‘I have something to say to you, Hannah. Except I don’t know if this is the right time.’
‘I don’t think there’ll be a better one,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I’m not sorry I walked out on you. You should have told me. But then you know that. I am sorry that I didn’t come back. I should never have left you to make that walk on your own. I almost didn’t. I drove the car a mile down the road and sat in a lay-by for twenty minutes wondering what to do. I just couldn’t see that you’d thank me for trying to look after you.’
I smiled as much as my lip allowed. ‘Don’t give yourself a hard time, Nick. You were right. I would have been furious. It wasn’t your fault. He knew I was after him. If it hadn’t been then, it would have been some other time. I’m glad I got it over with, really.’
He carried on looking at me. I knew what he was feeling. I had seen the same thing in Frank that first night. God save me from chivalry. ‘When I saw what he’d done to you, I wanted to kill him,’ he said quietly. And God save me from other people’s emotion when I can only just cope with my own. You’d think a therapist would know better.
‘Yeah, well, I had a similar reaction myself,’ I said, trying for lightness but missing by a mile. I got up and walked over to the window, pulling back the curtain. I caught a blurred reflection of myself in the glass. Quasimodo. I looked out on to the street. ‘The plane tree’s starting to leaf,’ I heard myself say. ‘It really must be spring.’
He came up and stood by me. After a while I turned to him. My heart was beating fit to burst. Slowly he put out a hand to my face. I’d been waiting for him to touch me ever since I walked into the flat. But even though I saw it coming, something short-circuited inside me. I swear I didn’t know I was going to flinch away until it had already happened. He pulled his hand back abruptly.
‘It’s OK, Hannah. It’s OK.’ I nodded, swallowing hard, except I couldn’t get my saliva down. ‘I won’t touch you. You’re OK. I’m not one of them, all right?’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know that. I do.’ And to my fury I began to cry.
He stepped away from me. And I could see him covering up the hurt with expertise: becoming Nick the professional with a difficult client, watching, judging the moment, making sure it was the right response. ‘Let’s just leave it for a bit, eh? Why don’t we sit down and have another drink? Then I’ll get supper.’
I shook my head. ‘Listen Nick. I … I have to be on my own for a bit.’
‘OK,’ he said easily. ‘We need some coffee, anyway. I’ll take a walk down to the shops.’
‘No. No. I mean properly alone.’
He looked at me for a long time. I kept thinking about what he was seeing: Hannah, and not Hannah. But a lover now, no longer a patient. And it may be cruel to say it, but it was a relief to feel confusion in place of his infinite understanding. ‘Are you sure about that?’
I nodded. He moved over to the chair and picked up his coat and briefcase. Jesus, I thought. Am I sure? Is this really what I want?
He put on the coat slowly. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow then,’ he said lightly, and walked towards the door. Each action reeked with significance. I could hardly stand it.
He picked up his car key from the hall table. Then turned. ‘I just need to know one thing. Is this about you, or about us?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’
And I didn’t. But he seemed to. He looked at the floor, then up at me. ‘Oh, Hannah,’ he said softly. Then, ‘Will you be all right?’
I gave a little shrug. ‘Yep.’ But it came out more as a question than a statement.
‘Yes,’ he repeated. ‘I think you will.’ Out of his coat pocket he had pulled a single key, with a globe key ring on it. He stood running it though his fingers. We both knew which door it opened. And closed. He looked down at it. ‘If it’s all right with you, I’ll hold on to this for a while. You never know. You might need someone to do the shopping.’
And he smiled. I’ll repeat myself at the risk of being crude. There must be fifty ways … Let’s hear it for Paul Simon. And for Nick Thompson. Not such a bad therapist after all. I smiled too. This time when he turned he didn’t look back. The door closed behind him. I waited till his footsteps had gone down the hall and out the main door. Then I walked over and put the chain on behind him.
I drank another glass of champagne and made myself an omelette. The booze turned me nasty, but by then I was too drunk to care. So I no longer had a lover. All the more room for my toy boy. I wouldn’t call it overwhelming, but there was no doubt that since our tryst in a dark country lane the thought of him had crept insidiously closer to my heart. What was it Frank said about their forgetting you quicker than you forgot them? With good reason. Every time I moved, I had a memory of him where my stomach met my bowels. And when that faded, there was always the mirror to refresh my passion. Good fantasy stuff, eh—the detective becoming obsessed with the criminal? And on the way exposing some dark, pathological similarities, making them a true match for each other. To be honest, I’ve always found it a bit of a cliché. Until now. Now I understood it. Not so much symmetry as tit for tat. He beats me to a pulp, I want to do the same thing to him. That kind of longing can turn you inside out. Just like sex. Problem is he was playing hard to get. Still, when you want someone enough …
Until that moment I don’t think I had really thought about the future. About whether or not I was still working on the case. As far as Don Peters was concerned, it was over for me. He’d implied as much at my bedside and I’d said nothing to disillusion him. He was hardly likely to check. After all he had six hundred phone calls to keep h
im occupied. Whereas I had a clear mind and an ache that only one thing would cure. I took my omelette to bed with the rest of the champagne and indulged my madness.
Like all good fantasies he was never far away. Page two of the Guardian showed his picture. Mr Nobody. I wondered if he was distressed at how badly he’d been reproduced. The Independent had a box entry with a further story on page four. I was on my way to find it when I came across the other little newsworthy tale.
I wouldn’t have noticed it but for the words ‘animal rights’ in the third line. They pulled me like a magnet. The headline read HUNT DOGS IN DEATH MYSTERY. Apparently it had happened just a few days ago. The hounds of the Otley Hunt in Suffolk had been due out last Sunday for their weekly search and destroy mission, but when the huntsman had gone to the kennels he had found three of the beagles dead. Initially there had been fears of animal rights poisoning, but according to the local vet all three animals had died from natural causes. They were still awaiting the post-mortem results, but they seemed to have suffered some kind of heart failure. Strange but true. Three heart attacks? Maybe it wasn’t so innocent after all. Maybe the Animal Liberation Front had come in the night and scared them to death with pictures of beagle experiments. Pity the local vet. He must have had his work cut out for him. I remembered the Framlingham man, with the farm dog wrapped tenderly in his blanket. And Greg, the farmer, so solicitous for his animal’s well-being. And there was something about the scene that lodged in my mind. Something. But what? I was pouring the last of the champagne into my glass when the phone rang. The bed got its own libation as a result. It was Frank. Just checking.