Fever of the Bone

CHAPTER 44

Carol woke much earlier than she had planned. These days, too much alcohol had that effect. When she’d been younger, going to bed pissed had been a guarantee of eight hours of unconsciousness. These days, if she’d had too much to drink, she slept fitfully and not for nearly long enough. Another reason to follow Tony’s advice and cut it right back, she reminded herself. Her head felt muzzy and battered, her stomach bruised and tender. She vaguely remembered throwing up when she’d finally got back in the small hours.

But it had been worth it. It had been a night of great celebration for the team. Murders solved, lives saved, and Bronwen Scott stiffed. The icing on the cake had been the phone call Sam had taken from Brian Carson, the concierge of the Bayview Caravan Park. He’d been surprised to recognise the photograph of Nigel Barnes on the local TV news. He remembered him turning up at the caravan park one night with a puncture. Carson had insisted on helping him change his tyre, in spite of the man’s insistence that he’d be fine. He particularly remembered the bale of clear polythene, the pack of black bin bags and rolls of duct tape in the back of the Volvo estate, because they’d had to move them to get at the spare tyre.

A woman couldn’t ask for much more, really. Carol lay on her back and stretched like a starfish. There was a soft thud and then a smoochy tickle in her ear. ‘Nelson,’ she said affectionately, scratching her cat behind the ear. He purred and head-butted her. ‘OK,’ she grumbled. ‘I’ll feed you.’

Her two mobiles, personal and work, were lying on the worktop above the cutlery drawer. As she took out a spoon, she noticed there was a message on her own phone: Brkfst? Txt me whn u get ths, Im up. Tx

She checked the clock. She’d been right first time, it was only quarter past six. It wasn’t like Tony to be up and about at this hour. Carol hadn’t noticed him leave the restaurant but she knew it had been pretty early in the impromptu party. She’d looked for him around nine, when they’d been ordering some food. But he’d been nowhere to be seen. She’d asked Paula, the person most likely to notice his departure, but she’d been too wrapped up in Elinor Blessing. Which was a good thing, naturally, but inconvenient right then.

She dished up Nelson’s food and texted back: Ur place or café?

Mine. I can haz sausages and eggs.

haf hour. She put the kettle on and headed for the shower.

Thirty-five minutes later, showered, dressed, Nurofen-ed and marginally caffeinated, she climbed the stairs from her basement flat to his house. The connecting door was already unlocked and she found him in the kitchen, pulling a tray of sausages from the oven and inspecting them suspiciously. ‘I think they need another five minutes,’ he said. ‘Which is just long enough to do the eggs.’ He waved at the coffee machine. ‘That’s ready to roll, do you want to help yourself? ‘

She did. While he whisked the eggs in the pan, she made lattes for them both and carried them to the table. ‘I can’t believe you’re up at this time, and with the makings of a proper breakfast,’ she added, noticing the plate of toasted crumpets dripping with butter.

‘I’ve been up all night,’ he said. ‘I went for a walk and the supermarket was open and I needed to talk to you, so I thought, breakfast.’

Carol pounced on the key part of his reply. ‘You need to talk to me? Don’t tell me you think there’s a problem with Diane Patrick?’

‘No, no, nothing like that,’ he said impatiently, plating the eggs and getting the sausages out. He put a plate of food in front of her with a flourish. Carol tried not to shudder. ‘There you go. Free-range eggs and local sausages.’

‘I can’t remember the last time you cooked for me,’ she said, gingerly trying the eggs. They were better than she expected.

‘No,’ he said, considering. ‘Me neither.’ He wolfed down a sausage and half his eggs. ‘This is good,’ he said, sounding surprised. ‘I should do this more often.’

Carol was making slow but steady progress. ‘So what do you need to talk to me about?’

‘You have to listen to something. But let’s finish eating first.’

‘This is very intriguing,’ she said.

‘It’ll blow your socks off,’ he said, suddenly sombre. ‘And not in a good way.’

Carol forced the rest of her food down and pushed her plate away. ‘I’m done,’ she said. ‘Wedged.’

‘Well done for a woman who walked in gripped by the hangover from the outskirts of hell,’ Tony said drily, taking the plates away. He came back with the recorder and the headphones. ‘This is what you need to listen to.’

‘What is it?’

‘It doesn’t need an explanation,’ he said, putting the cans on her ears and pressing play.

As it dawned on her what she was listening to, Carol’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh. My. God,’ she breathed. Then looking at him with tears in her eyes, ‘Oh, Tony . . .’ And then, ‘Unbe-fucking-lieveable. Jesus!’ Tony said nothing, just sat impassively watching her reactions.

When she reached the end, she pulled the headphones off and reached for his hand. ‘No wonder you were up all night,’ she said. ‘Talk about bombshells.’

‘We both said we didn’t trust Vanessa’s version. That there must be a hidden agenda. Turns out we were right.’ His voice was dull and hard.

‘Yeah, but I never expected to be right like this,’ Carol said. ‘What are you going to do? Are you going to confront her with it?’

He sighed. ‘I don’t see the point. She’ll just deny it. It won’t have any effect on how she lives her life.’

‘You can’t just let her get away with it,’ Carol protested. What he was suggesting ran counter to all her convictions about the importance of justice.

‘She’s got away with it. Nothing can change that now. Carol, I never want to see her again. All I want to do is to cut her out of my life the way she cut Arthur out of mine.’

‘I don’t know how you can be so calm about this,’ Carol said.

‘I’ve had all night to think about it,’ he said. ‘This case, it’s not been my finest hour. The only real lead that came from the profiling process was where to look. And that was Fiona Cameron’s work, not mine.’

‘You worked out Warren was dead. And you knew to ask the questions that uncovered the vasectomy,’ she protested.

‘You’d have got there in the end. But I’ve had to face the fact that I’m maybe not as good at this as I like to think. The last couple of weeks have made me realise I need to completely reconsider who I am. I’ve made choices about my life based on incomplete data. I need a total rethink, Carol.’

There was an absolute quality about his seriousness that she knew she had no power to argue against. She fell back on the tactics she knew best. The ones that had made her such a formidable copper. When in doubt, attack. ‘What does that mean, Tony? You sound like a politician. All words and nothing concrete. ‘

He gave a sad little smile. ‘I can do concrete, Carol. I just wanted to explain myself first. I’m planning on handing in my notice at Bradfield Moor. I’m planning on selling the narrowboat because I don’t like it. And I’m planning on moving into Arthur’s house in Worcester because it’s the only place I’ve ever slept that felt like home. Beyond that, I don’t know.’

She understood all the words, but taken together they made no sense. It was as if she’d gone to bed in one world and woken in another. ‘You’re going to live in Worcester? In Worcester? You spent one night there and now you’re going to move there? Have you lost your mind?’

He shook his head, misery on his face. ‘I knew you’d be like this. I’ve not lost my mind, no. I’m just trying to figure out how I move forward in my life knowing the things I know now about where I came from. So much of what I thought I knew isn’t the case. And I need to work out where that leaves me.’

She wanted to scream, ‘What about me?’ Not screaming it was a physical effort. She gripped the edge of the table and forced her lips tightly together.

‘It’s OK, Carol. You can say it. “What about me?” That’s what you want to say, isn’t it?’

‘And that’s why I want to say it,’ she said, dismayed that she sounded so choked. ‘Because you know without me telling you.’

‘I can’t make your choices for you,’ he said. ‘It’s up to you. You’ve won this round against Blake, but he’s not leaving any time soon. You’ve met Alvin Ambrose, you’ve spoken to Stuart Patterson. They’re decent men who care about what they’re doing. If you wanted a change, West Mercia would probably bite your hand off.’ He made a small gesture with his hands, as if to suggest an offer.

Carol knew that for him to ask her to come with him was probably an impossibility. He’d never believed he deserved her. But she needed more than this. ‘Why should I, Tony? What’s in it for me?’ She challenged him with the hundred-yard cop’s stare.

He looked away. ‘It’s a big house, Carol. There’s plenty of room for two.’

‘Room for two like there’s room for two here? Or a different kind of room for two?’ She waited, watching for something in his face to give her hope.

Eventually Tony picked up the chrome recorder and weighed it in his hand. ‘This morning,’ he said slowly, ‘anything seems possible.’