Quite Ugly One Morning (9 page)

Parlabane reeled. ‘Pissed or not, a hundred quid is a lot for a first-timer who started the day on a tenner a throw.’

‘Well, don’t ask me what was going through his mind. I only married him. Although I suspect it was the risk, because that was what hooked him. Jeremy’s life had been such a smooth journey of measured order and control; he had known what to expect in everything he had done. He worked conscientiously for exams but unlike me, he never worried he might fail. He knew what was required, and assessing how much work he had got through, knew what mark he was likely to get.

‘And on the practical side, medicine was all cause and effect, problem and solution; percentage chance of survival, percentage chance of complication, patient not for ressus . . . The sense of risk, of a lack of control, would terrify most medics; might even have terrified Jeremy during a less nihilistic phase. Instead it electrified him. He could have lost the hundred quid on that race and it wouldn’t have made a tiny bit of difference, I suspect. The rush was enough. The seed was planted.’

Parlabane shifted his position and sat forward, placing his empty glass on the table.

‘So why did he want to hurt you?’ he asked.

Sarah paused, running a hand through her hair and grimacing, thinking uncomfortable thoughts.

‘Things between us . . . deteriorated. Slowly at first, a few peaks and troughs, but . . . it was definitely downhill. What confuses it all is that my disillusion with medicine stems from the same period. I don’t know whether my disillusionment with medicine accelerated my disillusionment with Jeremy or whether my disillusionment with him made me less tolerant of what I was coming up against in my job, but they certainly had a symbiotic relationship in my mind.

‘I had built him up as a figurehead for all of it when I was younger, and . . . I don’t know. My attitude to the whole thing was changing and he didn’t have a problem with any of it. He never questioned anything in medicine, never thought that how it was wasn’t necessarily how it should be.’

‘What happened to you? What changed your attitude?’

‘Well, after the phony war of medical school, actually working was a rude awakening. You’re prepared for the work, the exhaustion, the fear, the mistakes . . . it’s not that you’re not expecting a hellish time. The first six months as a JHO passes in a sleepless haze of bewilderment and sheer terror. The next six you’re used to it, fed-up and vaguely resentful. But by the time you’re into your SHO job, your eyes are open that bit wider. You’re less concerned about what is happening to you and more able to notice what’s happening round about you.

‘And to cut a very long story short I didn’t like what I saw. I wasn’t naive enough to think that I would be saving lives and curing people’s ills, but I wasn’t prepared for the fact that nothing we did seemed to have much effect. I got the impression that nobody ever got better. There was a soul-destroying feeling of banging my head against a brick wall.

‘Looking back, I’ll admit that this
was
naive. I should have
been ready for the futility as much as I had been ready for all the other pains and torments. Most people were, and they could deal with it. Some developed a cheerful resilience that I admire unconditionally. Sure, it got them down, but unlike me they didn’t let it
grind
them down. The word futility had no meaning for them. They knew there was bugger all they could do half the time, but they weren’t in the business of lasting solutions. They were in the business of alleviating suffering, slowing effects, combating symptoms. They knew every battle was a losing battle but they could go out there and fight it every day with a commitment I just couldn’t give.’

‘But presumably Jeremy didn’t number among these medical guerrillas,’ Parlabane said.

‘Not quite. I said some dealt with it with heart and resilience. More time in their company and I might have picked up the example and learnt their admirable attitude. The problem was the other way people dealt with it.’

‘Total detachment?’

‘Worse. I could have dealt with total detachment. You have to have fucking feelings before detachment becomes a self-defence mechanism. In a nutshell, when I saw a patient with some unusual, bewildering, painful and possibly fatal condition, I just saw a suffering human being that I couldn’t do much to help, and it depressed me. Jeremy, and many like him, coming across the same patient, would be bloody delighted. They wouldn’t be looking at a person there at all. They’d be looking at a very interesting case. A collection of symptoms. An intriguing study. They’d be looking at a paper in the British Medical Journal with their name and qualifications at the top of it. And if they were really lucky they might get to name what was wrong with the poor bastard after themselves. “Ponsonby’s syndrome: a searing, stinging sensation in the rectal region. Other symptoms: sudden disappearance of all your money.”

‘People like Jeremy – channelled into medicine from day one without being allowed a glimpse of the possibilities in the wider world – they saw medicine as merely a place to excel. They had never considered the patients before they went into the job, why would they now that they were there?

Anyway, my general dischuffment with the subject wasn’t quite the ideal accompaniment to having my own crack at the MRCP, and it was little surprise when I failed part one twice.
It was about a week after I got the letter informing me I’d failed again that Jeremy suggested, basically, that as I wasn’t cut out to shine in hospital medicine, I should consider a move into GP training and think about bearing him some children. It wasn’t quite as blunt as that, but it was close. I was in a vulnerable and fragile condition at this point, so I just took it along with the other blows, not really thinking about it properly. Then we went to the Ponsonbys’ for Sunday dinner and the same suggestion was made by his parents over the fucking roast lamb and mint sauce.’

Parlabane almost choked on his drink.

‘What?’

Sarah nodded.

‘The message was simple,’ she said. ‘If you marry a Ponsonby, either you’ve got to shine dazzlingly in the field, or squeeze out some sprogs to keep the line going and play a quiet, supporting role while he maintains the glorious family reputation. I just said excuse me, walked out and drove home.

‘I came to realise that me bearing him kids had always been in Jeremy’s plans, even though he hadn’t talked much about it. It was as if he had been
expecting
me to screw up in medicine, patiently tolerating this silly pursuit of ambition until I inevitably came to accept reality, then offering me a more appropriate role. So I wondered how far back it went: was I singled out as a good candidate to mother his kids – and therefore someone not likely to go far in medicine – way back when I was in fourth year?’

‘So I’d imagine domestic bliss did not ensue after that,’ Parlabane offered.

Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘Not exactly. That’s when he started upping the stakes on the horses. He had been gambling steadily since that day at Musselburgh, but nothing too drastic. He knew I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t a big deal. He made it a big deal from then on.

‘He got sucked in deeper and deeper because he was doing it for dangerous reasons. Doing it as a self-indulgence because things were bad at home, doing it to hurt me . . . But what really nailed him was a combination of the rush he got from risking big stakes and the bizarre confidence he had that he would win in the end. Apart from my refusal to get up the stick, everything had gone Jeremy’s way in life, and he
thought this must carry through into gambling. If he lost three or four big stakes, he convinced himself that this meant he must be due a really big win. Hundred-pound stakes became two hundred. Two hundred became five hundred.’

‘Jesus.’

And it mounted up over – Christ – a year at least. After a while he was in too deep to be doing it to hurt me any more. He became increasingly secretive about it until one day I tried to pay for the shopping with my Switch card and they wouldn’t take it. I visited the bank the next day and found that he had cleared us out. Not only that, but he had run up tabs that were still outstanding, and the bastard sold the car for cash to pay one off because the bookie was threatening to get heavy.

‘I kicked him out and we agreed to a divorce. I got the flat, as it was about the only material asset left in the marriage. Ironically, it’s me who’s still living in Southside Doctorsville, while Jeremy had a place in a more interesting area of town.’

‘How did he get that?’

‘His father bought it for him. He was a total mess by the end, and was in fact in such a state that he kind of woke up suddenly and looked in horror at what he had wreaked. He wasn’t a total bastard, you must understand, just a rather fucked-up individual. I’m only telling you the negative stuff because the good times aren’t likely to cast much light on our mystery. He was sorry for what he had done to me, and in fact it was he who first mentioned divorce, saying I deserved better and I should be allowed a clean break from the mess he was in.

‘However, it was only once we had agreed to split that he felt able to reveal the true extent of the debt he was in, and it was terrifying. I’d have had to re-mortgage the flat and he wasn’t going to let me do that even if I had wanted to.

‘I wanted a clean break, but for me that meant I needed to know he would be all right. However, I couldn’t do it alone. We had to tell his family, from whom we had kept it all a secret. They just thought our marital problems were down to me being a dope who wouldn’t do the right thing by her man.

‘He was terrified,’ she said, shaking her head again. ‘More scared of their reaction than of the bookies who were tapping their feet in the background. But there was no way we
could sort it out ourselves. In the end he needn’t have worried.’

‘Because his family blamed you.’

‘He shoots, he scores. But I knew they would anyway. In fact I was banking on it. That way they would pull out all the stops to sort their poor son’s life out and get him back on his feet for a new start, free of that dreadful strumpet.’

‘So they made good with the big cheque?’

‘Not quite. Prof Ponsonby may have blamed me, but he still knew his son had a lesson to learn, and probably feared that if the slate was wiped clean, Jeremy might start all over again. He paid off the bookies’ debts, but – using his considerable influence – arranged with the hospital that a large – and I mean painful – slice of Jeremy’s monthly wages be paid into his own bank account over two years until the debt was cleared.’

‘Why with the hospital? Why not just work out a direct debit?’

‘Because Jeremy could stop a direct debit with one phone call. This way there was no opt-out. Jeremy was happy enough with it. I think he had a sense of redemption in paying it off himself, although I didn’t burst the bubble by asking when he would be buying me a new car or replacing any of the various domestic appliances and items of jewellery he had flogged.

‘Anyway, I was too busy sorting my life out to want to settle scores. I had decided to get out of medicine a good while back, and had got on to an anaesthetics rotation round about the time Jeremy moved out. It wasn’t easy; if you get your MRCP then switch to anaesthetics, fine, but they don’t like the thought that you’re trying your luck there because you couldn’t hack it in medicine. I was lucky, I suppose. I think my problems were a badly kept secret in the medical community and my desire for a fresh start was appreciated, but what really clinched it was that most of the interviewing consultant anaesthetists hated Professor Ponsonby’s guts.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Parlabane, eyes twinkling. ‘The pungent odour of politics. So how much did you see of Jeremy after that?’

‘Occasional encounter in the canteen or a corridor. Less so in recent months as he had been working over at the George Romero a lot.’

‘The what?’

‘The George Romanes Hospital. It’s an attached geriatric
hospital, a granny-dumping site. Some of us call it the George Romero because it’s full of the living dead.’

‘And how was he when you did see him?’

‘In a hurry. Before, he would take time to talk to me, I think because he needed me to be nice to him for conscience-salving reassurance. The few times I saw him over the past four, five months, he tended to dash past and make excuses, and when I did buttonhole him he seemed . . .’

‘Nervous? Jumpy?’

‘No. Distant, maybe. Guarded. I got the impression he feared – given what we’d been through – that I could see through him, and presumably there was something he didn’t want me to see. I suspected he might have been gambling again, but it could as easily have been the fact that he was going out with that nurse.’

‘Why should he worry about you knowing that?’

Sarah laughed, the note of albeit mischievous humour like a brief drop of rain on the parched desert of bitterness she had just dragged Parlabane across.

‘I was always a bit brutal about doctors going out with nurses. And Jeremy was never done slagging nurses off, so maybe he was afraid of what I would think about him seeing one.’

‘But when he was murdered, did you return to the idea that he might have been gambling again?’

‘It was there, but it wasn’t writ large. I should emphasise that at the time I didn’t think he was acting weird at all. I just thought it was symptomatic of our separation, evidence that we were drifting apart. But the reason it stuck in my mind was that while I knew where my life was headed, I was curious as to where Jeremy was drifting to. It was clues to that that I was looking for in his flat, a sense of where his life had been going without me. I suppose I still wanted to know where he would have ended up otherwise.

‘But part of me couldn’t help suspecting – after the fact – that being murdered
was
where Jeremy was headed,
was
where he was going to end up.’

Blast.

The police had released that malnourished local scruff and were maintaining a worrying silence about who they now sought for Ponsonby’s murder.

Worry, worry, worry.

Stephen Lime had felt like this before. An ice-walking limbo period, all plans, all hopes, all feelings suspended until further notice. He hated risk, hated the thought that some other factor, some other person could hold the balance of his future.

The time before, it had been stupid. Unlucky, certainly, but still rather stupid. But he had got out of it, come away wiser. A cheap lesson, really, and it had come with the first-time bonus of Darren’s seemingly undisposable services.

This time he stood to gain millions if it went right and to lose
everything
if it went wrong, but the risk had been low enough to justify such a high stake. He had endeavoured to minimise that risk, calculated the odds and covered all the bases. What had started as an idle daydream had suddenly become possible when he discovered Ponsonby, and all had run smooth until the final hurdle.

But then that lumbering fool had disobeyed him, tried to deceive him even, by pocketing the cash and carrying out the contract himself. If he had stuck to his instructions, they were covered against all eventualities. By using a private contractor, Lime knew he had the safety net of there being nothing to connect the operator with himself, only with Darren, whom he would only know from a couple of meetings in smoky pubs. And besides, as insurance the hitman was to be told that in the event of getting caught – as he would be going down anyway – his silence would be worth a large sum deposited in a high interest account from the first day of his stretch.

No. You just couldn’t rely on anyone but yourself. There was no more vivid illustration of this than the ironic fact that the person who had been the answer to his troubles before was the one who may have dropped him right in it this time.

Back then it had been his ex-wife’s fault, Tina, curse the
peroxide slut. She had been a calculating little gold-digger, a predatory secretary in the City, waiting to pounce on the most likely mug to enter her lair, and he had nominated himself. She had been all short skirts, high heels and Wonderbra cleavage, he remembered bitterly. It had become real cleavage some years later, silicone tits he had shelled out for but never even got to touch; he had felt like demanding custody of them in the settlement as he had paid for the bloody things.

She had appeared to be a black-belt prick teaser, a whiff of her perfume and a glimpse of lace-bordered breast as she bent over a desk enough to send himself and many of his boardroom colleagues scurrying off to the toilets for some executive relief. There was a combination of the unattainable and the cheaply tarty about her that had made her the object of his every non-fiscal fantasy.

And fantasy was about as far as he ever imagined he would get, which was why he was so off-guard when some excruciatingly pleasurable flirting – just nod-and-wink suggestive talk in his office one Friday evening – turned into her unzipping his fly and going down on him where he sat.

‘See you on Monday morning, sir,’ she had said when she finished, then walked out for the night, leaving him in a state of heavenly disbelief.

On the Monday, she acted as if nothing had happened, then at the end of the day came back to his office, locked the door and let him have her right there, bent over the desk.

Women had never looked at him twice before; indeed (although he never told her) that had been his first time, despite being already in his late thirties. And now the girl who was the executive floor’s collective wet dream was throwing herself at him.

They were married in a matter of months, throughout which he showered her with gifts and money, while she continued to bestow her exquisite favours upon him, in the office for a fortnight, and after that exclusively in expensive hotel rooms.

Then once they were hitched she seldom let him near her, save for a few isolated fucks in the early years when she wanted a new car or that bloody Jacuzzi when they had the place in Kent. She lounged around the house all day, spent his money and screwed every passing male but him, although to double the frustration he had no way of proving it. She was way too sharp for that.

She had nailed him good and proper, and he knew he couldn’t get rid of her without it costing him a slice of every quid he made for the rest of his life. Sometimes he thought it would be worth it, just to be free of her, but he suspected that a lucrative divorce might be the final part of her long-term plan, and he was buggered if he was giving her the satisfaction. Unfortunately, there seemed no hope of her getting fed-up waiting for it to happen, as she was still living the life of bloody Reilly on his money.

He never thought about killing her, no more than spur-of-the-moment fantasies when she was being particularly annoying, or when she was letting fly with that dreadful, whiny laugh she had. He had just resigned himself to being stuck with her, concentrating on getting satisfaction from his business pursuits and writing her off mentally as an immovable overhead.

But there was no relief from the torture of how aroused her eternally tarty behaviour made him feel, still wearing the most revealing outfits, still wandering around the house in her underwear or less, and still not letting him touch her.

An affair was out of the question. Firstly, she was just waiting for him to do something like that. Probably spending
his
money on a private detective to watch
him
every time he was away for the weekend on business or rang to say he’d be home late. Secondly, all evidence had pointed to no woman on the planet wanting to sleep with him except Tina, and she had only done it to get to his wallet.

This line of thinking had led him to consider going to a prostitute. For goodness’ sake, he had to do
something,
as he was masturbating so much that he was convinced his right arm was becoming noticeably wider than his left. But the thought of those filthy women on street corners, of disease, and of getting caught – good God, getting caught – always shunted the idea back out of his head.

Then one Friday evening – he had to bloody learn: disasters always start on Friday evenings – he found himself alone in the bar of a hotel in Hornchurch, where the St George’s Trust had been having an afternoon meeting after a four-course lunch, paid for by the Trust as it was strictly for business purposes (as were the half-dozen bottles of Bordeaux they had worked through). The board had adjourned briefly to the bar before dispersing, leaving him the last one there, and he had been
finishing off a G&T whilst casting an eye over some papers. An attractive, youngish – maybe mid-thirties – woman, dressed neatly, even businesslike, sat down beside him and smiled.

He smiled back.

Then she leaned over and said: ‘I’m in business. Are you interested?’

He was rather drunk and slow on the uptake. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m in business,’ she repeated, placing a hand on his thigh.

It took great restraint not to exclaim Ah! I see!’ as he suddenly realised the situation.

There seemed no reason not to. Tina wouldn’t find out as she was staying at her mother’s that weekend; the woman looked clean, she looked pretty, and he was also fairly pissed.

He booked a room then and there.

After recovering from the initial bout of panic and fear that followed ejaculation, he arranged a discount rate with her to stay the night.

One night, that was all, just one bloody night. He couldn’t believe how unlucky he had been, but it did teach him that the most dangerous risk, however small, is the unknown risk.

The following Tuesday he was walking through Accident and Emergency at St George’s, showing the local MP and his entourage around the place, when he saw her – and she saw him. She had broken her arm and was sitting in the crowded waiting room as he passed through at the head of what must too visibly have been a VIP party.

The phone call came two days later. She had checked out who he was, and realised two things. One: he wasn’t just the usual travelling sales rep she picked up in hotel bars, but might have a bit of money. Two: he had a public profile and would therefore be keen to protect it. The cheeky bitch even suggested that having to wait for four-and-a-half hours before someone in his ‘fucking shitty hospital’ had a look at her arm may have been a further factor.

She wanted £50, 000 or she would tell the papers, and she assured him that she could remember anatomical details that would make it more than just her word against his.

It was an utter nightmare. Initially he didn’t care so much about her telling the papers as about Tina finding out. She would get her blasted divorce and be able to name her
terms. Adultery with a prostitute wouldn’t score him much sympathy with the judge – at least not in court.

Everything he was ever going to earn was about to be sliced in half and handed to the person he had come to hate most in the world. But even that might not be as much as he had hoped now, as the Party was on the ropes from a volley of sex scandals and would expect him to fall on his sword over his own. He would have to resign from the quango and kiss all his lucrative little schemes goodbye, as well as never getting his real money’s worth from the thousands he had pumped into the Party’s coffers.

He would have no choice but to pay her, but there was no guarantee she wouldn’t hit him for more at a later date, or even go to the papers anyway once she had the money. It wasn’t as though she would be handing over any negatives that he could assuredly destroy.

Hopeless.

He could barely sleep a wink the next few nights, and was lying worriedly awake, staring balefully at the augmented boob falling out of Tina’s skimpy nightie beside him, when he heard a splintering sound downstairs. Quietly, he got up and crept to the landing, hearing a muffled yelp that sounded like his alsatian, Tebbit. He tiptoed to the hall cupboard and pulled out his shotgun, bought for him a few years back as a memento of a memorable weekend at a hunting lodge in the Scottish highlands. A Surrey catering firm had paid for him to join them up there as they considered the place ideal surroundings to present their bid for the staff canteen contract at the firm he was working for. They had also suggested that a week’s golfing in the Algarve might be the best environment in which to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s in the event that they got the job, which, funnily enough, they did.

He popped a couple of shells into the pump-action gun and quietly moved downstairs, then burst into the kitchen where he was sure the noise had come from.

There was an enormous neanderthal standing in front of the sink, behind which the window was broken. He was dressed in a matt black shellsuit and black Adidas trainers with the white stripes blacked out, and at first glance appeared to have a sovereign ring or something equally chunky on every finger. He also had Tebbit’s jaws attached to his right forearm,
and was holding the dog up above a puddle of blood on the linoleum.

Lime gaped at first, wondering at the stoicism or high pain threshold of this creature who could silently endure such a bite and the massive loss of blood that had ensued. Then he noticed the red-stained blade in the brute’s other hand, and the fact that there wasn’t much in the way of growling or even movement coming from Tebbit.

‘Put your hands up,’ he said, nervously and quietly.

The brute obeyed, raising the limp dog as he did so. It hung off his forearm like a hairy scarf, the image reminding Lime briefly and bizarrely of Rod Stewart during one of his more tartan-bedecked phases.

His fear turned to anger as he realised that Tebbit was no more. Not only was his life falling apart, but some bastard had killed his dog.

Expertly killed his dog.

Quickly and with very little sound, killed his vicious attack dog.

Hmmm.

They stood motionless in their respective positions for a while, the ball in Lime’s court but him unsure what to do next.

‘Look, John,’ the brute said eventually. ‘You’ve got the shooter. I’m doin’ what you ask. I’ve got me ‘ands up. The weight of this dog’s fuckin’ killin’ me, but I’ve got me ‘ands up. Are you callin’ the Ole Bill or what?’

Then he said it before he could think about it. Before he could stop himself, before he could add up the pros and cons, it was out there.

‘How would you like to make some real money?’

The brute, Darren Mortlake, was allowed to escape. Lime told Tina and the police that the burglar had fled when he entered the kitchen with the gun, and gave a false description, the principal fib being over the matter of skin colour.

When the prostitute phoned back, he said he would have the money in two days, and the stupid cow – obviously an opportunistic amateur – told him to bring it to her house in Ilford. He said that as he didn’t trust her not to set him up somehow, he would be sending a friend with the cash. He also said he wanted assurance that she was in this alone, and
that if his friend found anyone else in the flat, the deal was off. She reminded him that she would go to the papers, and he reminded her that the papers would pay about a tenth what she would be getting from him if she cooperated.

He gave Darren five thousand in cash as an advance, another five to be collected upon successful completion of the task. If he got caught, his silence bought twenty. He was to bring along the cash from his advance to her house in a bag, and open it at the front door for her to see, so that she’d let him in.

Darren didn’t get caught.

Stephen didn’t get caught.

Everyone was happy.

Except Julie Marron, who had her throat cut and bled to death on her living room floor. With no evidence of breaking and entering, it was assumed by the police to have been carried out by a client.

And all Stephen’s problems went away.

Stephen was so happy with Darren’s work that he paid him a monthly retainer to return his calls and have first shout on his services.

And a bit of lateral thinking helped Stephen apply similar principles to the problem of getting rid of Tina.