Picture of Innocence Read online

  ‘Why?’ asked Curtis, mystified.

  ‘He don’t want me. All he wants is to get me pregnant.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Curtis again.

  ‘He wants someone to pass the farm on to.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Nicola?’

  ‘She’s a girl. She’s not even in his will. He wants a son, and he’s sowin’ seed every chance he gets. If he don’t do it when he comes to bed, he’ll most likely wake me up at three, four in the mornin’ for it.’

  ‘But it’s not every night, is it?’

  ‘Near enough. Don’t take a lot out of him. Don’t reckon he even enjoys it.’ She smiled. ‘He’d be happier just freezin’ it and injectin’ me with it like the cows.’

  Curtis smiled too at the little joke, but it sounded awful. ‘I thought farmers needed their sleep,’ he muttered.

  ‘He don’t do no farming. Not real farming. Most mornings he don’t leave the office. Won’t come out to answer the phone or the entryphone or nothin’, not if I’m there to do it. Just sits and does all his paperwork till I get him his lunch, and then he drives round with Steve, checkin’ up on everything. So he’s got lots of energy left over for me.’

  ‘Can’t you tell him no? Does he hit you if you won’t?’

  She shook her head. ‘It don’t bother me. It’s what I agreed. I didn’t know it’d be like it is, but …’ A little shrug. ‘ It don’t matter.’

  ‘Then why do you want to slip him a Mickey Finn?’

  ‘Because he’s started askin’ me how come I’m not pregnant when he’s doin’ it to me all the time. If I could put something in his whisky, he’d fall asleep downstairs, and it wouldn’t be all my fault I wasn’t gettin’ pregnant.’

  ‘Is that why he hits you? Because you’re not pregnant?’

  She looked over her shoulder at the drugs again, then turned back to him. ‘Reckon there’s enough there to put him to sleep every night for weeks,’ she said, kissing him, pushing him gently down until he was sitting on the bed, and she was kneeling at his feet.

  ‘Mm,’ said Curtis.

  ‘Maybe even enough to put him to sleep for good.’ She reached up to kiss him, her tongue teasing his tongue as she spoke.

  ‘Yes,’ said Curtis, slipping his hands under the towelling as she reached for the bedside lamp, and they were in darkness.

  ‘You could have me to yourself, then,’ she said, covering his chest once more with little licking kisses. ‘I could sell the land to McQueen, and you could have me. And we’d have all that money.’

  ‘Who needs money?’ Curtis was happy just having a job he loved and this wonderful creature making love to him. The desire for money that kept her married to that violent, stone-faced statue baffled him.

  ‘How much would it take?’ she asked.

  ‘How much would it take to do what?’

  ‘How much of that stuff would it take to kill him?’

  ‘I don’t know’ He had thought she was talking about money. ‘It’s just a sedative.’

  ‘You said it could kill him.’ Her voice was accusing, between the tiny kisses.

  ‘I said it could. I didn’t say you could.’ It wasn’t easy to be masterful when someone was licking your ribcage. ‘ You’d be the first person the police suspected.’

  ‘They’d have to prove it, though, wouldn’t they?’ she said. Slowly. Sexily. From somewhere near his navel.

  ‘They’d prove it,’ he said. Briskly. Sternly. From the intellectual high ground.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m making a television programme – that’s not exactly a secret, is it? Chloral hydrate is the star of the show – they would notice that I had had access to it. Like I said – it’s not a very common drug. And Nicola caught us at it this afternoon in the cowshed.’ He felt embarrassed again at the memory, glad of the darkness for the second time that evening as he felt himself flush again. ‘ You’re best placed to poison his whisky. The police can put two and two together, you know.’

  The lecture might have carried more weight had she not unzipped his fly while he was speaking, her subsequent activities causing the pitch of his voice to be less than secure on the last sentence.

  He heard her chuckle, and laughed at himself for taking her seriously, if only for a moment. He shifted a little, the better to allow her to remove his jeans, then swung his legs up as she joined him. She knelt beside him, and he pulled away the tie of the bathrobe, opening it, slipping it off her shoulders, and drew her down to him. He didn’t know how many times he could make love to her when he had all night, but he intended finding out.

  ‘The police didn’t put two and two together about Mr Big,’ she said. ‘Did they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So they’re not so clever.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have to be clever.’

  Bailey had called her the wife, and Curtis’s mental image of her had in no way prepared him for what he had seen when he had finally met her. She had told him frankly that she thought her husband was mad not to sell; on camera, she had said that she was behind him, whatever he wanted to do. Curtis had found her entirely convincing both times.

  ‘Maybe someone else’ll kill him,’ she said. Her delivery was still tantalizingly slow, even when her breathing was quickening. ‘He is gettin’ death threats, after all.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Bet you could do it without gettin’ caught,’ she said, her voice husky now.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You ran rings round Mr Big,’ she said. ‘ And the cops.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He let her ego-boosting words wash over him, muttering hopefully appropriate responses as she produced almost unbearable sensations in him. She was quite able to carry out the two proverbial activities at once and always did; he wasn’t so good at the talking part. But Rachel talked; she talked all the time, her voice growing whispery and breathless as her excitement mounted, sexier than ever. The idea of those loveless, wordless couplings with Bailey appalled him.

  ‘Bet you could do anythin’, if you put your mind to it,’ she said, the words coming in little gasps. ‘Bet you could kill him so no one’d ever know it was you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘No.’ He was no longer able to give the conversation his undivided attention.

  ‘Would you kill for me?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, the word just a groan. ‘Oh, yes.’

  On the day they had met, he had told her about Mr Big in an attempt to impress her, but there had been no need; they had both known what was going to happen. She had taken him into the cowshed, and it had been good. It was always good. But this was better than it had ever been, and he kept it going for longer than he had ever done, before the agonizing tension in his body found glorious, ecstatic release in hers.

  But when his pulse rate and breathing had returned to normal, when the subsequent inertia had worn off, when the twin triumphs of the night had begun to assume some proportion, Curtis considered the situation in which he found himself in a rather more rational light. Had he at some point in the proceedings agreed to kill Bailey?

  He sat up, switching on the light, and turned his head to look at Rachel, to see if she had just been teasing him, if she was laughing at him for taking her seriously yet again. She lay facing him, eyes closed, perhaps asleep, the bathrobe pulled loosely round her once more. Curtis frowned, and leaned over to pull it aside. There were the inevitable bruises, some very recent, some not so recent, but that wasn’t what she was hiding from him; he expected them, had grown, like her, almost used to them.

  It was the old bruises that made his eyes widen in horror and disbelief. The faded, yellow bruises that covered her torso from her shoulders to her hips. Masses of them. On her breasts, her ribs, her midriff, her back, her thighs, her buttocks. At some time during his enforced absence from her, she had been given a sadistic, systematic, merciless beating by that bastard, and still she hadn’t left him.

  She opened her eyes. ‘Didn’t want
you to see them straight off,’ she murmured. ‘ Said he’d keep on doin’ it if I didn’t get pregnant. Was goin’ to do it again today, so I told him I was.’

  Curtis stared at her. ‘But what’ll happen when he finds out you’re not?’

  She moved her shoulders in a shrug.

  ‘You have to leave him, Rachel,’ he said. ‘You have to.’

  ‘I’m not givin’ up. Not now.’

  She had to leave him, he thought, as he stared helplessly at her battered body. She had to. But he knew she would never leave him, not without the money, not if it was important enough to her to put up with that sort of abuse. And it was. He knew it was.

  ‘Come away with me,’ he had said as they had got their breath back after that first time.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Anywhere you want. My place. Leave him and come and live with me.’

  She had smiled. ‘Can’t do that,’ she had said. Because Bailey had money?

  She had agreed, readily, candidly. What had he got? she had asked.

  A future, he had told her.

  ‘Can’t buy shoes with a future,’ she had said.

  He gathered her up, and held her in his arms, tears in his eyes. She would risk that again, he knew she would, and he couldn’t let her do that. She had asked if he would kill for her, and his answer would have been the same, whatever the circumstances of the question.

  Yes. Oh, yes.

  Summer

  Chapter Three

  It had been a stupid, wicked thing to do, and he hadn’t meant to do it. It had just happened.

  Mike McQueen hadn’t been able to sleep, because the conscience that so many well-meaning conservationists did not believe he possessed had troubled him too much. He had risen with the sun at five-thirty and had worked on his plans for the second phase of the development, but his heart hadn’t been in it, and his thoughts kept returning to what he had done, to what the consequences of his actions might be. He didn’t know where she was; there was no way he could warn her.

  Two hours later he was looking out of his study window at his trees, now in their summer livery, the sun glinting on the leaves, and wishing with all his being that he could call back one moment of time.

  Yesterday’s promised anti-road demonstration hadn’t materialized; he had had high hopes of dozens of professional agitators swarming all over Bailey’s farm, setting off his alarms, making rude gestures at his cameras, threatening him with violence and vandalism. And it might, had it happened, have frightened Bailey enough to reconsider the stand he was taking that was exciting all this hostility. But it hadn’t happened. The day had passed sunnily and peacefully, with no sign of any marchers, any protesters.

  It was the last week in July. There was no more time left, and the road would have to go through the woodland. Shirley had gone away for a long weekend to her sister’s before he made the announcement, not wishing to be around when the villagers heard that their wood was doomed, when the protesters came to try to stop it. But nothing had happened. Nothing at all.

  And last night, he had gone to see Bailey, and he had done something dreadful. He had just felt so … frustrated. So let down. His allies had all failed him. It had been a stupid, stupid thing to do, and it had been truly wicked. Bailey’s threat still echoed in-his head, and he had looked as though he had meant it. Shirley was very fond of Rachel; if anything happened to her, she would never forgive him.

  It had been a stupid, wicked thing to do.

  Rachel had croissants and coffee, flirting mildly with the head waiter, who was trying to persuade her to have the full English breakfast. ‘Ees good,’ he enthused. ‘Eggs, bacon, sausage, fried bread, mushroom, tomato …’

  Rachel smiled, shook her head. ‘I couldn’t eat nothin’ like that,’ she said. ‘I could manage another cup of coffee, though.’

  ‘Hey, José! Some more coffee for Mrs Bailey!’ he shouted to a passing waiter, his hand gestures wildly exaggerated.

  He probably comes from Clapham, thought Rachel.

  ‘Your ’usband … he ees not breakfasting this morning?’

  ‘He had to go back last night,’ she said.

  ‘He left a beautiful woman like you alone in London?’

  She smiled. José arrived with the coffee, and the head waiter went to greet some other old friend that he’d known for two days.

  This weekend was the first time she and Curtis had been together since the night in the flat. Even if she could have got away, it would have been no good, because once Curtis had handed over his haul of drugs and the tapes of the meetings, the flat had been crawling with police, and they had made it out of bounds until they finally made their arrest and decided they had finished with it. It was still on lease to Aquarius, sitting there doing nothing as Curtis had predicted.

  He had been at the farm at the beginning of June, but he had been helping set up the closed-circuit TV, so he had been with Bernard all the time, not her. She had planted her death threats after the first ramblers of summer had made their appearance, but it had been some woman they had sent from Aquarius 1830, not Curtis, because he had been tied up with filming on Mr Big. There had been no point in trying again.

  With the rumours of an anti-road demonstration, the television had come back, as had Curtis, and they had snatched a moment to talk. She had told Bernard that she didn’t think she ought to stay, if there might be trouble, and he hadn’t been abietto pack her off fast enough, in case any harm should come to the baby.

  She finished her breakfast, such as it was, and left, nodding to the American couple she and Curtis had chatted to in the bar on Friday afternoon when they had arrived, both wishing they could just go through to the suite, but having to exchange pleasantries about the weather, about London, about anything and everything before they could leave. When they had finally made it to the suite, they hadn’t emerged until Saturday morning.

  Curtis had stayed here before, but Rachel had never seen anything like it. She couldn’t get over having a suite. And Curtis had tried to look as though he was unimpressed, but even he hadn’t been in this part of the hotel before. It was small, but the idea of having what amounted to a whole little luxury flat right inside a hotel tickled Rachel, and she didn’t care who knew it. Sitting room, bedroom, bathroom, and Curtis had made love to her in them all. It was, as she had pointed out to him, a bit of a step up from the cowshed.

  It was on the ground floor, in a part of the hotel called the Executive Wing, which had three little suites like these. It even had a private entrance from outside, for which guests were issued with a plastic card, like the ones for the rooms. You got a new one every day for the outside door, though. She pushed through the swing doors to the corridor which led to the Executive Wing, and let herself into the sitting room.

  Bernard had paid for it all, of course, getting the money from somewhere. Paid for the huge double bed they had gone to as soon as they had got away from the other couple, paid for the shopping they had done on the hot, busy Saturday. She had had her purchases delivered to the hotel, and then had taken a long walk along the river before going back for a late à la carte lunch, after which they had collapsed on to the sofa and fallen asleep. They had woken up in the late evening; Curtis had made love to her on the sofa in the dark, and then they had gone to the bar and got mildly drunk before going back to bed.

  Sunday had been a little more subdued. Curtis had had the full English breakfast, which was how Rachel had known that she could never face it, then they had talked, had a quickie in the shower to complete the set, and had dinner sent in. Curtis had had to go back to Bartonshire, but she hadn’t gone with him. The rumours had said that the demonstration was going to be held on Sunday and that they would be going to the farm.

  She hadn’t wanted Curtis to go; he had had physically to detach himself from her in order to leave. She hadn’t’ slept until daylight; at half past three in the morning she had called room service for tea, grateful for the contact, however fleeting, with
another person. She had been afraid to go to bed; she wasn’t sure if she had ever before slept on her own. She had slept crowded into a van with too many other people, she had slept outside in a makeshift shelter, other bodies close to hers for warmth; she had shared sleeping accommodation when she was living-in on farms; slept with men during brief liaisons and during longer, but just as doomed, relationships; always, always, with someone else in the room, if not in the bed, and the idea of sleeping entirely alone had frightened her.

  But when she had finally gone to it, that big bed had seemed even more luxurious, with no Bernard lying immovably beside her, no apparently tireless Curtis making love to her every time he opened his eyes; she had discovered that she liked it much better that way.

  All her life, men had used her. To cook their meals, to wash their clothes, to muck out their barns, to warm their beds. And it wasn’t until she had been conned by one who had failed to mention that he had a wife that it had been pointed out to her that she had the wherewithal to use them. His wife had said that someone like her could have any man she liked, so why had she taken someone else’s? And Rachel had realized then that she just about could have any man she liked. Most men couldn’t wait to get her between the sheets, and that was power, of a sort, if you learned, as she had, to give them what they wanted once they got you there. The problem was that she had never met one that she did actually like, so now she had settled for using them instead.

  Curtis thought he loved her, but he didn’t. He wanted to possess her, physically, emotionally. She was some sort of prize that he had won, and when the day came that he discovered he couldn’t take her home and put her on his mantelpiece, what he thought was love would just evaporate.

  And her brief holiday was over; now, she had to pack her suitcase, and get all the stuff she had bought into the car, and go back to the farm. And Bernard. She sighed, until she remembered that she didn’t actually have to do either of the first two things. She rang for someone, and it was all done for her. Half an hour later, she checked out of the hotel, and the car was brought to her, the stuff much more neatly stowed away than she would ever have managed.