He surged after her. Ricky caught her in the doorway.
For a fraction of time he felt himself threatened: she had the steel nail file still in her fist. With a short-arm punched blow, he hit the side of her face.
Had never done it before. He saw the shock in her eyes arid mouth, then the flush colouring her cheek.
He could not speak.
If she had cried out, if she had fought him and tried to slash his own face with the pointed file, he would have taken her in his arms and kissed her, told her he loved her, made excuses – pressure, problems, things he was sweating on. She did not. He saw contempt.
Quietly, as if it mattered to her that she did not wake Wayne, she went up the stairs.
The marriage had been thought by their families to forge an alliance. She lay on her back, dressed, in the spare room and stared up at the ceiling, her cheek tingling from the blow.
She had known him from school. She was taller than him then, and taller than him now. They were thrown together at school because the Smyth and the Capel breadwinners were away. Seemed natural for them to be close because their fathers were. In Brixton, the fathers shared a cell. In Wandsworth, the fathers were on the same landing. In Pentonville, the fathers had been in adjacent cells. Her father was a snatch man, his a driver. While the fathers tramped the exercise yard, together, the children were in a school playground.
Lying in the darkness, Joanne felt her cheek and her teeth. Nothing broken but there would be a bruise, big and rich, in the morning.
The first boy she had kissed had been Ricky Capel, tongues in mouths and him with smoother face skin than hers. The first boy she had had sex with had been Ricky Capel, her showing him what to do in her bed when their mothers were gone visiting. They had left school together, not a qualification between them, the only ones in their year who were not encouraged by the teachers to make something of themselves. She hadn't gone out with him when he'd been on the streets for thieving, but he'd talked about it with her and she'd told him where he was wrong and where he was right, and he'd listened. Natural that they'd be married. They were inseparable. Soulmates. His mother and her mother would have liked a church and a white dress. They'd done a register office, and then a reception down at the British Legion. 'I don't want nothing flash,' Ricky had said. 'I don't want nothing that draws attention. Just the Smyths and the Capels and the cousins.' The alliance her father had hankered after had not happened. Ricky had said her family were crap, couldn't keep their mouths shut, were losers. She had moved into Bevin Close, next door to his mum and dad and his grandfather. She was distanced now from her own clan, did not confide in them – would not tell them that he had hit her face.
No tears, only the anger. She heard him pace below.
She would not go down the stairs and tell him that the loss of a bloody necklace mattered not a damn to her, and she knew he would not come after her.
She had been told by Sharon about the cat, had been told by Mikey about the arrest and the kicking of the detectives. Nothing surprised her now. She was a woman of intuition and intelligence. Might spend her days under the eye of her mother-in-law, keeping a house clean, cooking meals and not complaining if they were wasted because Ricky was not back when he'd said he would be, looking after her child, but she knew the weakness of her husband. Her own father had explained it years back: 'He'll go away, hazard of the job. He'll be put inside. Nobody stays out, not for ever. You got to put up with it, girl, like your mum did, like his. Actually, it'll be the making of him. A man who's not done bird isn't rounded off. Terrible pressure there is on any man the longer he stays out.
Once you've done it, realized you can handle it – well, then it's a cake walk.' She had watched the swell of his irritation, like that pressure built, because he had not been inside… They didn't talk about life any more.
He didn't bounce ideas at her, tell her what he was thinking, planning. They had nothing.
His grandfather liked to come next door, old Percy did. Old Percy was the only one in the Capel family that Joanne now had time for. Made her laugh. Used to tell his stories and she'd end up fit to bust with her sides in pain from the laughter: how he'd screwed up, how he'd cocked up. But two years back, old Percy had told a different story. No weeping, no sentiment, but told with a cold rancour that didn't sit easily on a grandfather's shoulders. Winnie had died in '93, and she'd gone to the funeral – not married yet to Ricky but regarded as family A bloody awful day, cold and wet, and a hell of a turn-out for her.
Two years back, on the anniversary, old Percy had called by. He'd have been driven that morning by Mikey to the cemetery and would have laid some flowers and had a quiet moment… Mikey had brought him back and old Percy must have made some excuse and come to see her. First he had talked about the girls who had fled abroad. Perhaps she'd encouraged him to talk, reckoned it was a therapy for him. No smiles that day, no laughter, only the story that had chilled her. He had done big bird, had done a war, and could tell a story. She had not known that a story could be so heavy with bitterness brought from a grave. 'You're the best thing that ever happened to him, love, not that he has the brain to know it. Don't know how you live with him. My Winnie couldn't stand the sight of him, reckoned the girls were right to get out – but she missed them. You heard about the cat? Yes? We were all frightened of him, what he might do… My Winnie was in hospital and sinking.
Ricky and I went to see her. Ricky was all smarms, all comforting. You could see it in her face, she loathed him. He went out to the car park for a fag – or maybe to do a deal on his mobile. She hadn't much strength left. She said to me, 'We should have drowned him at birth. That's what we should have done, Percy, drowned the little bugger. Drowned…' Last thing she ever said. She turned away, she coughed, she was gone… All that hate in her when she moved on – not right, is it? To hate when you're dying. You watch him, love.' Told the story once, and she'd shut it away, had tried to obliterate i t… But Ricky had hit her.
He could yell, he could scream, but it wouldn't be her hand that reached out to save him. Lying alone in the darkness, in the quiet of Bevin Close, she wondered what, who, could drown him.
'You all right, Polly?'
'Fine, I'm OK, just fine.' She did not look up. She was bent over her desk and light cascaded down in a cone from the lamp and fell on the cheap little notepad with the wire coil binding it.
'The photographs have gone, and your prelim report. Well received. So it bloody well ought to have been. Can't the rest wait till the morning? If not, can I get you a sandwich, some coffee?'
The girls in the office, long gone home, had told her often enough that she allowed Justin Braithwaite, station chief (Prague), to load work on her as if she were a pack-mule. Because she did not confide, entertain them with the soap-opera of her life, they knew so little. After being dumped by email from Buenos Aires, work kept Polly Wilkins sane… She realized her rudeness.
'Sorry. I'm grateful you called by Nothing, thanks. I want to go on hitting it.'
'Just checking. Freddie's at the other end of the line, sleeping in. You can handle it?'
'I can handle it.' A yawn creased her face and she giggled. 'I'll pack in when it's done.'
'Goodnight, Polly.'
He was gone, closing her door softly behind him.
She glanced at her watch, and grimaced. Hadn't realized it was deep in the small hours, that the embassy had emptied and the city slept. She heard him move away through the outer office and there was the bang of the grille gate closing on the rooms used by what Consular, Trade and Political called the 'dirty raincoat crowd'. At first, responding to the email, she had joined everything. Within a week she had signed up to art-appreciation courses, walking weekends and clay-court tennis lessons. Within two weeks, nursing a bruised brain, blisters and elbow ache, she had gone into Justin Braithwaite's office, spilled out the story of her broken relationship, had brushed away his offered sympathy and pleaded for work. Work was salvation.
What she respected most about her station chief, he had not offered a homily on the effect of tiredness on the quality of performance; nor would he take personal credit for what she had achieved inside the smashed, ineptly searched cafe. How many in
London, among those who had savaged the desk, would not have claimed a medal and citation for what she had found? Precious bloody few. It was an old work technique. After dumping the passports with the blown-up photographs on Justin Braithwaite's desk, and after writing up her report for encoding and dispatch and leaving it with him, she had gone on a search of every cupboard, drawer and storage box in their offices and in the secure section of the basement they used. She had been among old cobwebs, spiders' territory, and had finally retrieved the graphite powder.
The notebook, of course, should have gone in a pouch to London. A courier should have been sent pell-mell from Heathrow to collect it, bag it, chain it to his wrist, and fly it back for the boffins to handle.
Not Polly Wilkins's way.
