Where the Bodies are Buried (17 page)

It wasn’t the kind of thing you could confide in anybody because they would jump to the wrong, overdramatic conclusions. To
most outside observers, six weeks without sex would automatically indicate
a rough patch in a marriage. Most outside observers without two kids and two jobs between them, that was. It wasn’t indicative
of a rough patch at all: it was just practicalities, complications. Everything else was fine. That, in fact, was perhaps what
made it all the more of a strain that the physical side was so neglected. Drew was understanding, up to a point. Going by
his demeanour this morning, sealed with a cursory kiss, she could assume that point had been breached last night.

She wasn’t withholding from him. It was just bad luck. Circumstance. Things had been chaotic and exhausting in the lead-up
to their holiday, ironically because she was trying, prior to their departure, to free her mind of the kind of clutter that
might be an impediment to relaxing. Hence she had been hammering it a bit at work, trying to tie up loose ends so that she
wouldn’t end up distracted by thinking about them when she went abroad. She knew she was knackering herself and consequently
neglecting Drew, but the holiday was going to be a watershed. She and Drew would have time for each other, time to talk about
something other than work and family arrangements. They’d talk about the future, what they’d like to change. They’d talk about
sex, and they’d
have
a lot of it.

Bad luck. Circumstance.

Fraser got freaked out by the unfamiliarity of the villa, and in particular how dark it was at night compared to home, where
the street lights were a permanent glow behind his curtains. He kept reappearing during the late evening, then kept them up
half the first couple of nights as he grew overtired, irrational and consequently unable to sleep. Having barely slept since
their arrival, she and Drew were both zonked out by about nine the third night. This left them well rested and refreshed in
time for Fraser to tag his brother, so that the evenings and overnights were then dominated by dealing with Duncan’s upset
stomach. By the time that had finally abated, and another embarrassingly early night had allowed Catherine to catch up on
her sleep, they were already eight nights into their holiday, at which point Duncan briefly passed the baton, and the tummy
bug, back to his younger brother. Fraser recovered quickly, but that still only left four nights of their stay, at which highly
inopportune time Catherine’s body committed a grave act of betrayal and commenced her period a full five days early, leaving
her feeling lousy, cheated and utterly non-libidinous.

As John Cleese once said, it’s not the despair, it’s the hope I can’t
stand; thus Drew seemed to be less frustrated after that point, when he knew there was no opportunity being passed up. Drew
was a man who looked at the long-term view of everything. It was how he worked. He was realistic, philosophical and very patient.
Up to a point.

He had cooked her a meal last night: three courses, candles, gone to a lot of bother. She had got home later than planned,
but that was all right as far as he was concerned: he had already got the kids bathed and pyjamafied. Relax, he said. Sit
down, have some wine, eat. She managed the eating and drinking parts, but as she had come straight from the Bay Tree, not
the relaxing bit. She could neither think nor talk about anything else; or not talk so much as rant and seethe. Sex was on
her mind, but in the most negative way. She kept thinking about Gary Fleeting and his leery conduct towards Laura, his one-night
stands with ‘wee durties’ who ‘took it all ways’. She tanned far more than her share of the bottle, then, as her anger burned
out, she found that so had all her energy. She barely remembered Drew coming upstairs, though it could only have been five
or ten minutes after her, and she was asleep before he’d even got into bed.

He was a little brusque in the morning, and as the fog of sleep lifted, she knew why. He wasn’t in the huff about last night,
or even the past six weeks. It was the future that was bothering him. Drew always looked at the long-term view, and he didn’t
like what he was seeing.

In the shower that morning, Catherine thought about what she ought to say to him, maybe tonight if he wasn’t home too late.
She’d apologise for last night, acknowledge the situation. They’d had a lot of bad luck, she would say. She would joke about
it, tell him that they were like the IRA: they only needed to be lucky once. Or at least that they couldn’t be unlucky all
the time.

But were they just unlucky? she asked herself. Truth, girl. Truth.

No. And it wasn’t just a lack of sex that was bothering Drew about last night. It was what lay behind it, what they might
have got away from on holiday but what would always have been waiting for them upon their return.

Catherine had vowed to him that she wouldn’t become a stereotype: a senior police officer consumed by her job, slowly alienating
her spouse. And on the whole, she wasn’t. Most of the time there was balance in their lives, and they were a normal, functioning,
loving family. She wasn’t obsessed by cases, she wasn’t a workaholic and she wasn’t drinking away the fears, horrors and regrets
every night. But there was
no getting away from the fact that it was a demanding and unusual job, witness on a regular basis to the worst days of other
people’s lives, and dealing with the worst deeds of the worst people.

It waxed and waned. There were times when it had a cumulative effect, but rather than alienate her family, those were the
times when having Drew and the boys helped her keep it at bay. There was something else, though. Drew had learned to recognise
its advent at earlier and earlier stages, but was as powerless to stop it as he was to comprehend it. Catherine regretted
the former impotence but was enduringly grateful for the latter.

‘There’s this dark place you go,’ he told her. ‘You’re angry on the road to that place and you’re unreachable when you get
there. But what’s hardest is you’re numb for days afterwards.’

He had recognised the anger last night, and so had she. Other people could see it too.

You wanted it too much …You hate these people.

Moira Clark had recognised it, as had Graeme Sunderland. Not to mention Cal O’Shea, and Catherine really didn’t want to spend
time pondering what else the pathologist had noticed.

They all saw it but none of them understood its true nature.

Drew thought that her job sometimes took her to this dark place and made her forget she was a wife and a mother. The secret
truth was that her job was what had kept her out of the dark place long enough to
become
a wife and mother.

She cast a glance at the station as she waited for a gap in the traffic, half-wishing that she would see Drew rush back out
despite the rain to complete that kiss, and to hear her assurance that it constituted unfinished business. Instead she saw
only a flash in her rear-view, as a Corsa driver gave her the okay to pull away.

There was a fear she did not like to admit at times like this, as though refusing to name it would keep it from her head,
far less from happening.

It was that Drew might stray. Not hypothetically either, at some non-specific time in the future, but tonight: that something
previously only dreaded was a tangible possibility in the here and now. He could have a few too many and do something silly
but perhaps understandable. A little drunk, more than a little angry with her, feeling sorry for himself, feeling in need
of reparation: Catherine knew enough about the way people justified their transgressions to be afraid.

He was coming home, though, she remembered with relief. A big meeting with the inner circle and then dinner, after which he’d
be on a train from Waverley to Central. It wasn’t an overnight thing.

Games designers weren’t exactly rock stars, but they weren’t school librarians either. They transected certain circles, socially
and economically. Where Catherine’s own professional Venn diagram overlapped criminals, doctors and lawyers, Drew’s brought
him into occasional contact with more glamorous spheres. Two guys from
The Wire
had done voice talent on
Hostile III.
Rock bands were queuing up to get their tracks licensed on games for the kudos and exposure it delivered. And of course there
were the aspiring cover girls providing eye-candy at the launch events.

Drew was nine years younger than her, and she couldn’t be the only one who found him irresistibly attractive in a just-the-right-side-of-geeky
way. Therein lay the real root of her fear: sometimes she thought he was too good to be true. Too good for her, anyway. Attractive,
bright, successful, considerate, affectionate, a loving and dutiful dad: what the hell was he doing with a crabbit older woman
who complicated the hell out of everything and could go weeks without shagging him?

And what about that lack of shagging? Didn’t they say where there’s a will, there’s a way? Why the lack of will, in that case?
Did she just lose sight of it at times, on the road to and from that dark place? Or was she pushing him away, the scared part
of her that believed he was too good to be true attempting to hasten his inevitable departure from her life, all the time
preparing herself so that it didn’t shock or hurt so much when it happened?

She slowed down at an amber light. She would have been through it before it turned red, but there was congestion on the other
side of the junction anyway. It was a sensible, level-headed decision, and she needed sensible, level-headed thinking. These
were stupid thoughts. She was overanxious because there was tension between them, and it wouldn’t be outlandish to suggest
that the lack of a damn good fucking wasn’t helping her own head state either. Drew had never given any indication that he
was likely to do anything rash, far less that he was unhappy with his life. He was kind, solicitous, selfless and loving.
He was hers. But she was still very glad he wasn’t staying in a hotel tonight.

Sitting in the front of the Land Rover, a vehicle as rugged and weathered-looking as its driver, Jasmine found her fear partially
supplanted by a mortifying self-consciousness. She couldn’t decide whether it was being fuelled by her feelings of vulnerability,
or the other way around, but either way she felt quite literally exposed as Ingrams drove her along the winding rural lanes.

Her mind had been on other things when she came out of the shower this morning, and it was only striking her now that the
bra she had put on was one she normally wore under blouses and other looser-fitting items, as opposed to the part-Lycra top
she had stretched over herself in a caffeine-deficient semi-trance. Her nipples were showing through the material; not in
a transparent way, but their topology was vividly described. This was something that, in Jasmine’s experience, tended to be
circularly reinforcing: once she was aware of it, it made her skin crawl with goose pimples, a tautening effect that had particular
ramifications for her chest. She hadn’t been aware of it while with Rita, but up close in the front of this Land Rover she
felt acutely conscious of the masculinity in her presence. It was mostly olfactory: a smell of the outdoors and of fresh sweat,
masked by a receding hint of shower gel and deo.

She folded her arms across her chest, but by this point she felt so self-consciously conspicuous that she felt self-consciously
conspicuous about doing that. She unfolded them again and tried to make herself appear relaxed, unworried, professional.

Ingrams, for his part, didn’t appear to have noticed anyway: his focus was on the road, and when he briefly turned to address
her (only at junctions), his eyes were locked strictly on hers, something for which she was not entirely grateful. If he was
being gentlemanly, then it was the only thing he was doing to put her at her ease.

‘I hope you enjoy the ride, because it’s the only thing you’re going to get from this trip. I don’t know anything about this
guy you’re looking for. I’ve nothing to tell you.’

‘I haven’t told you who I’m looking for. And you don’t know whether you’ve nothing to tell me until I ask you some questions.’

Ingrams just sighed, though coming from his frame it was close to a growl, a kind of ominous rumbling more associated with
plate tectonics. Jasmine decided to play the only angle she felt she had.

‘You know, your friend Rita gave me the impression that she expected you to be more polite.’

Ingrams raised his eyebrows at this.

‘You think you made an ally back there?’ he said. ‘Believe me, you didn’t. Rita just suggested you come along with me because
it was the quickest way to get you out of the house. She doesn’t like anybody snooping around, and neither do I.’

Jasmine was determined not to let him rattle her. It also occurred to her that if he really had nothing to say, he wouldn’t
be acting so put out. He had been evasive since the moment he clapped eyes on her. Then there was that accent. It initially
reminded her of hearing tennis players and golfers being interviewed: people who spent much of their time on tour, permanently
surrounded by a babble of voices speaking English as a second language. However, the more he spoke, the more she began to
identify inconsistencies in his pronunciations and inflections, and to her ear, attuned by a couple of years of drama school,
his accent sounded suspiciously put on.

He kept checking his rear-view mirror, and eventually Jasmine twisted in her seat and looked through the Land Rover’s back
windscreen. It was a left-hand drive model, indicating that Ingrams had acquired it overseas, and she found it a little disconcerting
to be in the right-hand seat without a steering wheel in front of her, particularly when they passed oncoming vehicles. She
could see a black Audi A4 behind them, driven by a bloke wearing a baseball cap. In her experience, such attire worn
inside
a vehicle did often mean ‘wanker’, and Ingrams might well have reason to be wary of some imminent act of highway stupidity,
but he seemed to be giving it undue attention.