Human Conditioning (45 page)

“I’m sorry, darling, we’ve been investigating the whole
operation for months now, but we can’t pin anything on Aiden...”

Lily followed her father into
the place she called home, on Victoria Park Street. She stayed close to his
tail as he strode down the corridor and into the large airy kitchen, where he
proceeded to remove his keys and other random objects from his pockets and
place them on the tiled breakfast bar. Sergeant Howard Summers was a tall,
slender man with mousy hair, a long face and square jaw. He wore thick-rimmed
glasses, which he now removed so that he could rub his tired eyes.

“Did you speak to the girls?”
Lily nagged. “What about the old woman I told you about? She can describe him
down to the colour of his eyebrows, for Christ’s sake!”

Howard sighed. “We’ve been
through all of this over and over, Lily. It doesn’t change the fact that
whatever they know, none of them are talking... and none of my men saw Aiden
near the flats. I’m sorry.”

“This is insane! There must be
someone
who will confirm his identity?”

“Lily, love, we had the flats
under surveillance for three months! No one went in – not Aiden, not anyone we
know of – apart from family members. If Aiden is involved in anything, and
that’s a big
if
, we can’t arrest him without any evidence.”

“There’s no
if
about
it, Dad! Gina practically confessed his involvement!”

“
Practically
is not
enough, Lily! As far as my team are concerned, Gina Watson is a hard user of
drugs. She admitted to knowing Aiden, yes, but I knew that anyway, and she also
told one of my female officers that she was in love with him. For all we know,
Gina was telling you a bunch of lies just to get between you and him... she was
always a trouble-maker, Lily.”

“No, no, that’s
not
the
case! He beats her. He feeds her those drugs!”

“Can you prove that?” Lily
fell silent and stared down at the floor, tears pooling in her eyes. “Lily? You
haven’t been round there again, have you? I told you you weren’t to interfere
in this investigation!”

“I haven’t been there,
alright! I haven’t seen Gina for months because of your poor investigations. I
dread to think what kind of state she’s in. If Aiden hasn’t been there, then
someone else must have been sneaking in...”

Howard groaned in frustration and stepped up to his
daughter, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Lily, I have never been a great
lover of the man, but do you honestly think Aiden,
your
husband, is
capable of running a huge sexual exploitation operation right under our noses?”

Lily glared at her father.
“Yes... I... do!”

He closed his eyes and shook
his head. “Oh, Lily, don’t be bloody ridiculous! Gina has got you right where
she wants you! Let... this... go! The investigation is over!”

Lily shrugged her father’s
hands from her. She was just about to divulge the conversation she had had with
Mr O’Donoghue right before this had all started, but she bit her tongue once
again, like she had had to do many times over the past few months. Apart from
keeping Aiden’s secret out of some ridiculous sense of loyalty, Grant seemed a
good man. She didn’t want to get him in trouble for withholding information.
And even if she did inform her father what Grant knew, Grant would probably
deny ever having spoken to her, like the old woman had. It would be her word
against his. He knew the waitress in that café, so it wasn’t likely she was
going to get a statement of truth from her either.

Howard stared down at his
daughter in distress. Lily had completely lost it since informing him of what
she thought she knew. She was so wrapped up in her old friend’s stories that
she couldn’t see things for what they really were. Not one shred of evidence
had come up to give them grounds to arrest Aiden, and the girls denied ever
having slept with anyone for money.

“Lily, how about we talk to
Aiden about this...”

“No!” Lily screeched. “Dad, if
you mention one word to him, I’ll never speak to you or Mum again, I mean it!”
Lily was hysterical. “You can’t tell him, you can’t...”

“Jesus, Lily! Calm down, Lily,
love!” Howard gripped her shoulders again and pulled her tight to his chest as
she began to wail. “Come on, love, hush...”

Mrs Summers entered the
kitchen to see her daughter sobbing and her husband trying to comfort her.
“What’s happened?” she asked, wide-eyed and fretful.

Howard shook his head and
mouthed the word ‘later’ to his wife as Lily continued to sob into his chest.

************

When Lily returned home that night, Aiden met her in the
hallway. She could hardly get herself inside the door before he accosted her.
“Where the hell have you been?”

“At my parents’,” she
retorted, frowning at his intrusion.

“I’ve been going out of my
mind with worry. Where’s your mobile?”

She replied huffily, “I must
have left it in the car...”

She bustled in, dropping her
handbag in the corner of the hallway by the phone, then headed to the kitchen.
Aiden followed on her tail. He didn’t speak, but she felt the heat of his
presence behind her. “The babysitter had to call me and ask me to come home
because she needed to leave. Why did you leave Amy with a sitter?” he demanded.

Lily turned to him, her
eyebrows furrowing once more. “I needed a break.”

“So you went to see your
parents? You don’t like your parents...”

“I do like my parents!” She
turned away, but Aiden took her arm. She pulled it from him immediately. His
grip held no conviction, but even so, she was taken aback and her expression
conveyed this. Aiden recoiled slightly, his natural temper having betrayed him.
“What’s it to do with you whether I get a babysitter round or not?” she spat,
without thinking.

His eyebrows shot up. “What’s
it to do with me?”

He licked dry lips and stepped
back. It was a conscious move, because he was beginning to mistrust his temper.
He surveyed her, his hands remaining at his side but twitching slightly. It
took him a long moment to compose himself, and Lily watched him nervously as he
did so. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Something’s up with you...
something’s been up for a while...” His manner was suddenly accusing and
suspicious. He was glaring at her, his eyes narrowed and glacial.

Lily gulped and shook her
head. “There’s nothing the matter with me, Aiden...”

“STOP LYING TO ME!” he roared,
and the force of his anger vibrated through the room as if a plane landing at
Luton Airport had just flown dangerously low over the house. It took her breath
away. Aiden pointed a stiff finger at her. “You’ve not been right for months.
You think I haven’t noticed, but I have...”

Lily was momentarily lost for
words. She stared in horror, wide-eyed, at her husband.
Had he really
noticed? What could she say to that?
She blinked at him and fortunately
Aiden lowered his eyes first. He sniffed and ran the front of his hand over his
nose. At first, she thought he was crying, but then Aiden never cried, and when
she focused on his hand she saw that there was blood on it. “Fuck sake...” he
muttered irately.

“Why is your nose bleeding?”
she quavered. He sniffed and looked up at her. His expression was hard and
indifferent. He moved so hastily over to the sink that he made her flinch.
Running the cold tap, he threw some water over his face, and checked his nose
again. It appeared to have stopped bleeding.

Lily watched him with growing
disgust. When he swaggered over to the other side of the room to the fridge to
take out a can of lager, her eyes went with him. “You’ve been on it again,
haven’t you?” she warbled.

He didn’t answer her. Snapping
the ring-pull of the can back, he put the can to his lips and drained it in
one. Scrunching it in his fist, he threw it on top of the kitchen counter and
got another can out of the fridge, all without acknowledging his wife.

“Aiden!” His glacial eyes
finally met Lily’s. “Are you high?”

He stepped forward to retort,
but restrained himself once more. Lily was uncharacteristically angry and ready
to have a fight. It baffled Aiden, who was battling his instinct to go over and
give her a slap across her pretty face for her disrespect. But this was his
Lily. He could never raise his hand to her. He answered coldly, “No. I’m not.”

Lily just stared at him,
unsure as to whether she believed him or not. Aiden, however, didn’t quite know
how to handle this situation. Lily was rarely this irate. Yes, he had been
using today, but he wasn’t high now, so he wasn’t thrilled to be nagged by his
own damned wife. He decided the best course of action was to leave the
vicinity. Taking off towards the door, can of lager in hand, he walked briskly
into the next room. But this time, it was
Lily
on
his
tail.

“Don’t you walk away from me!”
she screamed as she stormed into the lounge after him.

Aiden spun around. “Keep your
fucking voice down, woman!” he whispered through gritted teeth.

It occurred to Lily that Amy
would be asleep upstairs. It also occurred to her that Aiden had just screamed
at her not five minutes ago, but she let it slide and took a deep breath to
calm herself.

Aiden stared at her as if she
had just grown two heads, totally bewildered by her animosity. He sighed and a
hand went over his face. “What the hell is up with you, Lily?” he asked for the
umpteenth time.

Lily knew she needed to calm down. She was only acting
out because of the disappointing news she had received from her father, but it
was not a sensible move. She may end up saying something out of turn and then
all hell
would
break loose. She now needed a get-out plan from the hole
she was slowly digging for herself. So she said, “I’m tired of being on my own.
That’s why I went to see my parents today.” She knew, as soon as she played the
‘lonely’ card, that he’d drop all antagonism and instead fuss over her. She
wasn’t disappointed.

He stepped up to her and took her face in his two hot
hands. She looked up at him. His deep blue eyes were searching her face, filled
with anxiety over her current mood, but also with admiration and wonder. He was
taking her in and his manner compelled her to admire his beauty for the first
time in months. He was the perfect embodiment of a man: absolutely gorgeous,
skin unblemished, cheek bones, nose, and chin all perfectly prominent beneath
it and his thick, dark eyebrows and black ruffled hair emphasising the vibrant
colouring of his deep ocean-blue eyes, both of which were gazing at her as if
he had just found her again after a long absence.

“You haven’t looked at me the
way you are now in what seems a very long time, Lily,” Aiden whispered.

How could she have been so
naive as to think that her husband would not notice her coldness towards him?
All the times she had flinched at his touch these past months. All the times
they had gone to bed and she had staged her enjoyment. Of course he would have
noticed!

“I thought you had just been
struggling with Amy or had that postnatal-whatever... I even spoke to me mum
about it...” he added.

He gazed down at his wife, who
he loved so much, and Lily saw written in his expression the pain of what her
impassiveness had caused these past months. “Why did you not say anything
before?” she found herself whispering, totally wrapped up in this moment with
her husband.

Aiden shrugged. “You know me,
Lils... plus I hate arguing with you and you’ve been pretty argumentative
lately.”

He dropped his hands and his
mouth set into a hard line, conveying his disappointment over the night’s
events so far. Lily was now totally and utterly absorbed in his words. Whatever
he was guilty of, she couldn’t accuse him of not loving her. He had always made
it clear that she was the centre of his universe, and however much she wanted
to deny it, he was the centre of her universe too. She was spending her every
waking moment trying to think up ways to catch him out and have him pay for
what he was doing to Gina, and what he was doing to all those other poor girls.
She had instigated an investigation into her own husband. She had even sought
information from a man Aiden had vowed to loathe for eternity. And yet she
still loved her husband with every atom of her being.

She had been walking the edge
of a precipice when it came to Aiden. He had no idea how much he consumed her,
how much he beguiled her. She had been so sickened when she had discovered
Gina, and the anger and resentment that had gnawed at her from the inside out
had been overwhelming. But time lessened the pain of even the most despicable
misdemeanours, and although she had not forgiven him and although she was
determined to make him pay for what he had done to her friend, she found
herself responding to Aiden’s lips when they found hers, because in her heart
she adored him, and, if she got her way, she knew she would not have him
forever...

Her response compelled him to
kiss her with more fervour, as if she had deprived him of her interest for too
long – which, of course, she had, and not unwittingly. But there was a need in
her tonight: a need to forget everything that had happened in the past months,
everything her husband was outside of the four walls they had lived happily in
for a short time. Tonight, she wanted her husband, the man she had married, the
father of her child, and the man who would never hurt her directly. She was
tired of being frightened and tired of being alone. Tonight, she needed to
exist outside of reality.

Lily gasped as Aiden’s lips
found her neck and his hands skimmed her thighs, moving quickly up over her
stomach to her breasts. The feel of his hands on her sent warm shivers down her
spine and she relished in the enjoyment of his touch. She had not felt so alive
for months.