The Crime Tsar Read Free Page B

wasn’t a supplicant to be granted the occasional emotional concession. She had grown to love him, encouraging healthy feelings like blind crocuses. Now she was closing down those small emotions. Putting them into hibernation. Protecting herself against the day her black suit would be once more worn in anger.
    â€˜I don’t half fancy you, you know.’ The old words.
    He smiled, knowing it a lie.
    â€˜Go and watch the television, woman. Go on, give us peace.’
    â€˜Sure? Want anything else?’
    â€˜No … go on.’ She left him reluctantly but knew he needed privacy to give in to the exhaustion.
    She sat in front of the television. A political talk programme was just starting. The ringmaster one of those plump media graduates still relishing popularity with the Labour government. The debate was about inner-city policing and racial tensions on the streets.
    â€˜We’re joined by the Association of Chief Police Officers’ spokesman, Tom Shackleton, on the borders of whose area last night’s disturbances occurred. Good evening, Mr Shackleton …’
    Again the pancake flip. The sweat, the shaking hands. She smiled at the thought of the Pope’s blessing only working if it was a live broadcast. Tom Shackleton was just as potent recorded. He was in uniform, the darling of the tabloids, the people’s copper, the liberal chief constable who could be relied on to speak out on behalf of debate and openness. Tipped to take over the Met if Labour got in at the next election. If? Where was the competition?
    She wondered if Jenni’s ambition for her husband was the lubrication for her potential affair. Jenni’s obsession was the furtherance of her family. Her husband was her creation no less than her children. Her hysterical outbursts were not the result of an excess of emotion but a fear of loss of control.
    Tom took refuge from the volatility of his wife in the masculine predictability of the Job. Lucy, unwilling to betray Gary or Jenni, had tried briefly to play therapist, that day in the study, while he was talking about his wife’s treatment of him.
    â€˜You must love her very much,’ Lucy had said, unwilling to believe the fairy-tale marriage was just that, a fairy-tale.
    â€˜I think I despise her,’ he had replied without anger. Indeed he spoke about Jenni with a curious hurt.
    Lucy watched him on the television and couldn’t believe this powerful, confident police chief was the same man who’d made such gentle, apologetic love to her.
    Jenni was watching him too. Her head at an angle. He sat in the armchair opposite her, intent on the television screen. The interview was opened out to include some other talking heads.
    â€˜He thinks you’re a fool,’ said Jenni dispassionately. ‘The BBC want Geoffrey Carter to get the Met. He was at university with most of them.’
    Tom didn’t say anything. He could see the interviewer becoming irritated with his replies. With his pedantic police speak, his uniform. The others on the programme were intellectuals. There was still that prejudice among the chattering classes towards plod, no matter how high plod rose.
    He knew Jenni was right, the intelligentsia would prefer Carter. He was as reasonable and charming as Tom Shackleton but he was an Oxford graduate. Double first in theology, organ scholar and now Chief Constable of Tom Shackleton’s neighbouring county.
    Shackleton had a degree too, first-class law degree. From night school and day release, done while fast-tracking through the force. Where Jenni and Tom had come from, Oxford and Cambridge were just words on the front of coaches leaving the bus station by the chip shop.
    Geoffrey Carter spoke French, relaxed in Provence and Tuscany and came from a family with immaculate old Liberal credentials. An unusual policeman and outspokenly critical of knee-jerk home secretaries who used the police as a blunt instrument. Urbane,