The last person he wanted to see usually turned out to be whoever came to see him – a moveable feast. The real last person he wanted to see finally arrived. Anna, less than a week after Woodbridge’s statement.
Troy stood. He had the memory of her power over him, her life sentence. To sit seemed to give away too much. He let her kiss him and ask after his health like a friend and pronounce on his health like a physician.
‘You’re looking better. That’s a very good sign. Bit of colour in your cheeks.’
This to Troy sounded as medically precise as reading the weather in seaweed and bunions. He had no idea whether he was better or not – a regime that froze him with fresh air and stabbed him with hypodermics left him little sense of his own wellbeing. He stood in the conservatory window. Half looking at her, half not.
‘And you,’ he said, not caring what she said as long as she did not talk about him. ‘What about you?’
She slipped one hand into the other, twisted the rings on her fingers like changing the combination on a safe.
‘I hardly know where to begin. There’s been so much happened. Tommy Athelnay died, you know.’
‘No. I didn’t know.’
Catesby read obituaries, he was sure, but never out loud, never to him. Some things there were that never crossed the generations.
‘Heart. Died last Thursday. Poor old Tommy. I think this whole damn thing finally did for him. And then there’s Fitz, of course. They’re hounding him, you know.’
‘The press, well . . . he’s asked for that. He should never have agreed to talk to them in the first place.’
‘No. Not the press. The police.’
‘Which police. The Yard?’
‘Chap called Blood. A chief inspector. In the Vice Squad.’
‘I know Blood. He’s in Special Branch, not Vice.’
‘He told meVice.’
‘You?’
‘He’s been talking to most of Fitz’s friends. Harassing them would be a better word. He came to see me in Harley Street. He asked me about Fitz and Tony. I said I was not at liberty to discuss the relationship between my partner and one of his patients. I was well aware that appealing to the conventions of confidentiality was wasted on him, so I said something that perhaps I shouldn’t. I said, “On the other hand Tim Woodbridge is a patient of mine and so’s Commander Troy – perhaps you’d care to discuss their medical histories instead.” Did the trick though – shut ’im up. He’d nothing more to say after that. I didn’t hear from him again. He pestered a lot of Fitz’s patients, and I’m not at all sure how he worked out that they were Fitz’s patients. But he left mine alone and he left me alone. I’m sorry, I used your name to scare him off.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘But he won’t be scared off. He’s wrecking Fitz’s practice just trying to get something on him. He’d talked to old Tommy. Tommy might be alive now if he hadn’t.’
She came up behind Troy. One hand upon his shoulder. Trying to break the illusion of indifference he tried so fiercely to maintain.
‘Look, I’ve never asked this before, and I wouldn’t be asking now if it weren’t such a bloody mess. Fitz has done nothing wrong. You told me so yourself. Couldn’t you get that through to this Blood chap? He’s looking for a scapegoat. Couldn’t you tell him not to?’
‘I don’t run the Branch. It’s wholly separate.’
‘He’s Vice. Really he told me he was Vice.’
‘I don’t run that either.’
‘I thought Vice was C section?’
‘It is, but Onions took it away from me not long before he retired. It’s had its own deputy commander for quite a while.’
‘But you could have a word, all the same.’
‘No I couldn’t.’
‘Troy, they’re persecuting Fitz!’
‘If he’s done nothing wrong, he’s nothing to fear.’
‘How many times have you told me the opposite? That the law is an ass, that justice isn’t blind, it’s blind drunk?’
‘There is nothing I can do.’
‘I mean it’s not as if—’
‘I know what you mean and I cannot do it. I’m on sick leave. I am stripped of all responsibility. Those bastards at the Yard are cockahoop, because they think I’ll never make it back. I’m on sick leave, I’m out of it. I’m not at the Yard, I’m here, waiting for death. I’m here where you put me. I have no more power! It’s all used up! I’m on the sick list where you put me!’
‘Couldn’t you just—’
Troy took her face between his hands, his fingers spread to the temple, the palms flat across her cheeks.
‘Do you know what you’ve done to me? Do you know?’
He squeezed. She did not move. He knew he was hurting her and he held her in his grip, and as the tears rippled silently down her cheeks, he said again, ‘Do you know what you’ve done to me? Do you know?’
She was looking straight into his eyes, hers dark and glistening, his black and cold. She did not move, did not flinch, did not try to escape.
Her tears were hot beneath his hands, and still he held and still she cried. He let her go, wondering if he had not crushed the spirit out of her, and might she not fall at his feet, but she rubbed one eye with her knuckles, picked up her handbag and left without looking back.