‘Could you have tests done on her body?’ I asked after we had both sat, mulling over what Grest had told us.
‘Well, her blood and hair could be tested for chemical traces, but it’s a NatSec case, so I can’t touch it. And, even if I could, we don’t know what they should be looking for – they can’t test for every drug known to man.’
‘She’s being cremated tomorrow. After that, we’ll never know.’ I stared at the monument to the Soviet sailors who had died in the battle for London. Their names were carved into the mottled marble block shaped like a cruiser. Someone had laid fresh red flowers on it – Pioneers, perhaps, or one of the Soviet guest regiments.
‘My guv’nor called me in for a word this morning,’ Tibbot said after a while. ‘NatSec’s been on to him.’
I understood what he was getting at. ‘You think you’ll be out?’
‘The station’s getting a political officer from next week. I know who it is. He’s not a pal. So it’s for the best if I toddle off, probably – well, retirement wasn’t far off anyway. And that’s that.’
I had the impression it was more of a blow than he was letting on. The police, after all, had been his life. ‘What will you do with your time?’ I asked.
‘Fishing. Lots of fishing.’
‘That’s your hobby, is it?’
‘No idea.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Haven’t tried it yet.’
‘Never?’
‘How hard can it be? Sit by a river. Pole. Bit of string. Worm.’ I smiled. After a moment he spoke again. ‘Jane, it looks like your husband has some responsibility for Lorelei’s death. He sent Grest to her and that led to her drowning. But there’s no real evidence that he drugged her.’ He pointed to Grest’s retreating back. ‘Whatever he thinks or says – it can’t be trusted.’
‘But you think he’s telling the truth, don’t you?’
He looked pained. ‘Yes,’ he said after a while.
36
The bedside clock said it was after nine when I woke the next morning, Friday, in the spare bedroom. I had told Nick I was having a bout of insomnia and wouldn’t want to disturb him – in truth, I just hadn’t wanted to spend the night in the same bed as him. I wouldn’t usually sleep nearly so late either, but recent events had left me exhausted. I heard voices downstairs. ‘Who was–’ I began, as the bedroom door opened. But it wasn’t Nick, as I had expected, standing there. It was Sanderson Morton, observing me. I was too taken aback to say anything.
‘Your husband has asked me to talk to you,’ he said. He was carrying a black leather bag.
‘Has he?’ was all I could reply.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘He thinks that you may be having a difficult time right now.’ He walked over and sat on a stool in front of the dresser. ‘You recently suffered something very distressing.’ I couldn’t think what to say. ‘He told me you suffered a miscarriage. That must have been a terrible event for you.’
‘Yes,’ I whispered, knocked for six by the invasiveness, the directness.
He looked as if he were broaching a topic he found difficult himself. ‘Mrs Cawson – this can be quite a delicate subject – you know about shell shock, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘It comes from being in a very stressful situation. Essentially, your mind attunes to that level of stress. Then it can’t cope when you’re in a normal situation. You suffer panic, insomnia, general unhappiness. That sort of thing. This is something that Soviet doctors have recently discovered and passed the knowledge on to us. So, believe it or not, what you are going through now is something like shell shock.’ He opened the clasp on his bag with a click that seemed to ring off the walls.
‘What do you mean?’
He turned on a small electric lamp. ‘Lie back,’ he said. My nerves were stretched taut, but I did so and he peered in my eyes. ‘Look up,’ he said, pulling down my lower eyelid. ‘And now look down.’ He released me and timed my pulse. His fingers on my wrist were oily. I watched his face as the second hand whirred around the dial on his watch. ‘Do you think about it a lot?’
‘Yes,’ I said, truthfully.
‘I can give you something that will lift your mood, so you don’t dwell too much on it. From there, you can recover at your own pace. It’s healthier in the long run.’
‘I just want to deal with it myself.’
‘I understand. And that is to be commended. But sometimes we need help from our friends and family.’
‘Please just leave me alone.’
‘I have treated many men with shell shock. Believe me, you will recover far more quickly if you give yourself a rest from those thoughts.’ He took a phial and syringe from his bag.
‘I don’t want it,’ I said.
‘It will help you.’ He drew a line of liquid up into the glass of the syringe.
‘I don’t want it,’ I said again, pushing him away.
‘Now, Mrs Cawson–’
‘No!’ I cried.
‘Mrs Cawson!’ He grabbed my wrist from under the blanket and dragged it up, exposing my arm. ‘Do you want me to get your husband up here?’ I struggled to get out of bed, but he was a big man and used his weight against me. All I could see was Rachel, dragged away in her hospital, spitting and screaming out in raw pain.
‘Morton!’ He and I both spun around at the sound, to see Nick in the doorway. ‘What the hell are you doing? I said nothing of this.’
I wrenched my arm free. ‘I said I don’t want it!’
Morton glared at him, then at me, put a cap on the syringe and shoved it back in his bag. ‘A word,’ he muttered to Nick as he left the room.
‘Jane–’ Nick began, coming over to me and taking my hand.
‘Leave me alone,’ I said, drawing it away. He glanced at me, and then followed Morton out.
I lay there shaking. They were downstairs, arguing, but I couldn’t make out the words. Morton seemed to leave, and Nick came back up. He stood at the foot of the bed and swept his hands over his hair. ‘I don’t know why he did it like that – that was wrong of him – but he was trying to help you,’ he said, keeping his voice under control.
‘He was attacking me.’
‘It just got out of hand.’ He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Christ. Morton and his bloody Russian ideas. I wish he had left them over there where he found them. He can’t even see how brutal they are.’
Could any of us? Stuck, now, in the middle. Nick’s American orders, Morton’s Russian ideas.
‘Will you leave me alone?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I have to go to work anyway.’
He left and went to his study. I could hear him opening and closing drawers, and then his steps as he went down the stairs and out into the back garden. I hauled myself to Hazel’s room, which overlooked the garden. Below me, Nick emerged from the shed hefting a rusted old brazier into the middle of the lawn. He crossed back towards the house and bent over to pick up something just out of my view before going back to the brazier and dumping what he carried into the iron cage. Small, folded pages spilled in. I guessed what they were. Pages that he had found himself unable to destroy, no matter how much he had wanted to.
After that he took a box of matches from his pocket and lighted the corner of one of the pages. The flame spread up the edge and along the other until the whole thing was a blaze of light. He threw it in and the brazier glowed, sending smoke up into the mist. As he watched them burn, I slipped downstairs to make a telephone call.
Tibbot answered. ‘Nick’s burning the letters from Lorelei,’ I told him.
‘Be careful,’ his voice crackled down the line.
‘I will be.’
I heard the handle of the back door turning. I shoved the receiver into the cradle and flew up the stairs as quietly as I could, all the while listening to Nick’s footsteps through the hallway. I heard him stop by the telephone. Had I put the receiver on the wrong way around? Had I moved it from where it was normally kept? But he opened the front door and I watched him from our bedroom window as he stepped out. He halted and I saw his head bow down. Then he turned around and looked up. For what seemed an age he just gazed at me. Then he turned back on his path and walked away.