The Last Detective

Chapter Four

Late the same afternoon, I was drinking coffee in the kitchen of my house on Bathwick Hill, when the drum-roll sound of the rollers on the garage doors signalled Geraldine's return from her pub lunch. In quick succession came the thump of the Metro door, the clatter of heels across the concrete floor and the rasp of the door handle. She flung open the door. All those years in television and she still couldn't resist making an entrance.

This one was perfectly set up for her. 'Christ,' she said when she saw the white bathrobe I was wearing. 'What's going on – infidelity?'

I smiled. If she was being humorous – and I couldn't be sure these days – it was worth encouraging. 'Want a coffee?'

She nodded. She was pink from the Pimm's she'd been putting away. Her skin was drawn tight from cheek to jaw. For almost a decade the BBC make-up department preserved the peachy softness of her youth. Now it was gone. She had been written out of the series for two years, yet the image of Candice was impossible to forget when you looked at her. She was still a strikingly attractive woman, but the changes were striking, too – a poignant illustration of why the framed wedding photo in most homes gets consigned to a drawer after a few years.

She told me, 'For a moment just now I thought you were dead.'

'Dead?'

'I saw the suit hanging up in the garage. At first glance I thought you were in it. What on earth is it doing there?'

'It got wet, or at least the trousers did. I had a ducking today. My things smell of river water so I hung them out there.'

'River water? Are you serious?'

I spooned instant coffee into a cup, poured on the boiling water and told her about the boy in the weir. When I had finished, she said, 'You could have drowned doing that. You could really have been dead.'

There wasn't the depth of concern in her voice that the statement warranted. On the contrary, there seemed to be a note of wistfulness.

I let it pass. As a literary man I know the mind's limitless facility for flights of imagination. 'Unlikely,' I said cheerfully. 'I have a charmed life, like the pigeon in Great Russell Street.'

'That:

'You haven't entirely forgotten, then?'

'I'm not likely to.'

These days, the Great Russell Street pigeon seemed to have become a bird of ill omen. Our marriage might have broken up already, were it not for the way we had chosen to conduct it. Although Geraldine no longer had professional commitments, we had kept to our pact to conserve a strong measure of independence. I would go abroad on courses without expecting Geraldine to tag along; and she took her own skiing holidays. We each had our own cars, beds, newspapers, books and records. She went to church; I didn't. We sometimes went separately to dinner parties. The theory was that when we did spend time together, the experience was more precious because it was by choice, not circumstance. And for the first few months it had worked, sexually and emotionally.

Given the free-ranging style of our marriage. Gerry's altered life after she lost her part in The Milners didn't threaten to spoil things too much. She had a pile of money from television and she spent it liberally. She soon linked up with a lively crowd from Bristol who were only too happy to hoist her on to the social merry-go-round she had missed before.

Now, two years on, our independence was about all we could agree on. Her erratic moods, the rages and the accusations, had turned the space we had created into a gulf. The sex had become perfunctory, and we both needed to be half plastered to perform it. Our conversations were strained even when Geraldine switched to her exultant, highly animated states, because our worlds hardly overlapped. She had friends I had never met. 'They would bore you,' she'd say, 'and, God, would you bore them!' There was an assumption in the way we treated each other that it would have to end in a separation.

However, I hadn't yet grasped that Geraldine's notion of separation was more absolute than mine.

And I still felt some responsibility towards her. I said casually as we sat drinking the coffee, 'I went for my medical this morning. I saw Bookbinder, your doctor.'

Geraldine gave me a sharp look. 'I didn't tell you Bookbinder was my doctor.'

'You didn't tell me you were being treated for insomnia, either.'

'Bloody hell!' The jar of coffee tipped over as she swept her arm outwards. 'That's private and confidential. You had no right to ask.'

'Hold on, Gerry,' I told her. 'Before you hit the ceiling, Bookbinder volunteered the information. He expected me to know all about it. I told him I didn't. It's news to me. I must say, I haven't noticed you lying awake.'

She didn't answer. She glared at me with her green eyes, threatening any minute to prove the truth of the axiom about redheads and their temper.

I said in conciliation, 'Gerry, I don't want to make an issue out of this. If you haven't been getting your sleep, I'm sorry. On the few occasions I've had a wakeful night myself lately, I've heard you breathing evenly and assumed you were out to the world. But I suppose the tablets have solved the problem.'

Her eyes widened and narrowed almost as quickly. 'You heard about those, too? What else did you bloody find out? Did you read my notes at the same time?'

After my attempt to take the heat out of the exchange, I found her response abusive. I rapped back, 'You'd better complain to your doctor, not me.'

She vented her fury m a piercing attack. 'Snake in the grass! You've been trying to find out things, haven't you? Prying into my treatment. What are you plotting? Going to my own doctor behind my back – it's disgusting!'

The usual tack. I said, 'Will you listen to me? I'm getting heartily sick of this persecution mania of yours. I was sent in to Bookbinder because my doctor – Marshall – is away. I went in to get the result of my medical.'

'You fixed a date when you knew Marshall was away.' She stabbed the space between us with her finger. 'You trumped up this medical just to get in to my doctor and find out what my medication is.'

'Give it a rest, will you?'

'It sticks out a mile! What are you up to, that's what troubles me. Are you trying to get something up with him behind my back? That's it, isn't it? You're in league with my doctor now, you bastard.'

'If this was behind your back, why do you think I told you about it?' I pointed out.

'Because you're bloody devious, that's why,' she shouted. 'You're covering your tracks, pretending it's all out in the open when it isn't. Why did you mention it at all if you knew it would upset me? You're up to something, there's no question of that.'

'Have you finished? You want to know why I mentioned this. I'll tell you. It's the reverse of what you're suggesting. The reason I spoke out is that I've always believed in being straight with you. And there's another reason: I'm damned sure you shouldn't be drinking or using the car if you're on phenobarbitone. A taxi might be sensible next time.'

'Go to hell.' She snatched up her bag and walked to the door.

I said, 'I mean it. You're going to kill someone if you carry on like this.'

She started to laugh.

I gave up trying to reason with her.