Part Eighty
As George drove towards St. Mary's to pick Kay up after her day teaching medical students how to cut up bodies, she didn't know whether to cry or be angry. It had stunned her into temporary speechlessness to see Connie lying on that sofa in John's arms, and she was still reeling from the shock of it. John had looked horror-struck, as though he really regretted hurting her in this way, though this was far more likely to be a regret at being caught. Thank god, she thought suddenly, thank god that it hadn't been Jo to walk in on John, because that would have knocked Jo completely over the edge. George was worried about Jo, because as she'd said, it really wasn't in Jo's nature to get drunk in the middle of a very important trial. Her thoughts strayed back to that weekend last year, that weekend when Jo had first kissed her. When they'd talked the next day, Jo had confessed to an occasional leaning towards alcoholism. She hadn't used that highly emotive word, but the meaning had been there. Was she about to go through something similar now because of the stress of Barbara's trial? George badly hoped not, but she was forced to admit that it was a possibility.
As she sat in the rush hour traffic jam, she pressed play on the CD player, and the words of the song that greeted her, seemed almost too appropriate for her current situation.
"If I had just one tear rolling down your cheek, maybe I could cope maybe I'd get some sleep. If I had just one moment at your expense, maybe all my misery would be well spent."
Why couldn't John feel her suffering at what he'd done? Why couldn't he experience just a little of her hurt and her anger?
"If your love could be caged, honey I would hold the key, and conceal it underneath the pot of lies you've handed me..."
It wasn't his love she needed to cage, but his lust, his lust and instant arousal for beautiful women. Weren't she and Jo enough for him? Didn't he get all the love and passion from the two of them that he could possibly need? But then she hadn't exactly been very forthcoming with his favourite pastime lately, had she? George knew this was partly due to her distinct lack of sexual interest, and her fear that he would find her lump and confront her about its origin. She could feel the tears prickling behind her eyelids as this thought struck her. Connie Beauchamp had been so nice, so understanding, so practical. But now all of that concern had been shattered into a thousand pieces. What could she, George, possibly do about any of it? Her lump, John and his infidelity, Jo and her drinking?
When she cruised to a stop in the hospital car park, round the back by the entrance to the morgue, she kept the engine on and the windscreen wipers furiously trying to keep the pouring rain at bay. She had been so angry with John, but now she simply felt tired and hurt. She fervently tried to stem her tears, not wanting Kay to see her in such a state, but the effort was futile. When she saw Kay dashing across the car park, a medical bag in one hand and a briefcase in the other, George rummaged in her handbag for a tissue, trying to scrub the evidence of her crying from her face. Opening the car door, Kay dropped her belongings on the backseat, and slid into the passenger seat beside George. "Are you all right?" She asked in greeting, seeing the visible tear tracks on George's cheeks. "Fine," George replied dully, fixing her eyes on the moving windscreen wipers in front of her. "Would you like me to drive?" Kay asked, thinking that they might be safer if she did. George looked at her in slight surprise. "Yes, perhaps that would be better," She said, a watery smile just touching her face. Hurriedly swapping places in the still pouring rain, Kay got behind the wheel and George backtracked the CD to play that song again, the song that put all her feelings into one simmering cauldron.
"Could you cry a little, and lie just a little? Pretend that you're feeling a little more pain? I gave, now I'm wanting something in return. So cry just a little for me."
George laughed bitterly. "Men don't ever feel pain when they deserve it, do they." "No, not often," Kay agreed regretfully, remembering how Benton had sometimes been towards her before his supposed death. Kay moved carefully through the rain filled streets, making sure that she kept on the correct side of the road. London was virtually gridlocked at this time of day, reminding Kay fleetingly of New York City. The atmosphere in the car was thick with the pain that Kay could feel coming off George in waves. Something had obviously happened, something that had cut George to her core. But Kay didn't probe. She hadn't had the best of days today, having been forced by circumstance to revisit one of her most terrifying nightmares.
When they reached home, George went upstairs for a long, hot shower, hoping that the comforting spray would wash away some of her feelings of utter despair. But all the hot shower did for her, was to encourage her tears to start up again, and steadily come faster and faster, making her gasp for breath at their intensity. Realising that they had both had something of a difficult day, Kay poured herself a scotch, and George a glass of Martini. Ice clinking as she walked up the stairs, Kay could hear the shower running in George's en suite. As she moved on silent feet into George's bedroom, and put the glass down on the dressing table, she heard the sharp, slightly suppressed sobs that made her own eyes prickle in sympathy. Kay had no idea what had happened with George today, but perhaps she might try and find out later.
When George had calmed down somewhat and emerged from her shower, she found the glass of Martini on the dressing table, and smiled at Kay's thoughtfulness. When she went downstairs, Kay had changed into jeans and a thick blue jumper and had stoked up the fire. She was sitting in the armchair smoking a cigarette. "Thank you for the drink," George said, joining her. "I figured we both could do with it," Kay replied kindly. "Has your day been as rough as that as well?" George asked, reaching for her own nicotine fix. "Part of my job, whenever I come over here," Kay explained. "Is to teach young medical students how to process a crime scene, and how to preserve every shred of evidence that a dead body may hold. As well as giving them the usual lectures and demo autopsies, it sometimes involves me taking a group of them to a scene, and getting them used to the realities of a working life spent at the bedside of the dead rather than the living. Today was one of those days. I introduced them to a train death, something they will have to get used to if they decide to work in this particular city. A man in his early twenties had jumped in front of a Circle line train, one of the most desperate ways out I think I've ever heard of. There's very little left for any relative to identify after something like that, and every student who saw it today will probably have nightmares for the next week or so. But if they want to go into forensic pathology, then that's what life is all about." Kay became quiet, as though realising that her diatribe had gone on a little too long. "Gault was killed by a train, wasn't he," George said quietly, being careful to say when Gault was killed, rather than when you killed Gault. Kay's eyes widened in surprise. "Yes, he was," She replied flatly. "Or at least partly." After taking a long drag of her cigarette, she said, "It took me quite a long time to go anywhere near a train death after Gault was killed. I used to drop any that appeared on my desk on my Deputy Chief's. Gault was very beautiful in his own way, with almost white blonde hair, and the sort of piercing blue eyes that seem to see right through you. I remember once when I saw him in a shopping mall. Gault had seen me looking at him, and as I ran to my car and drove like the devil back down the interstate, it was his eyes that haunted me. That man today had blonde hair, well, what you could see of it." "Do you ever dream about Gault?" "More times than I care to count," Kay said bitterly. "I dream about all three of them from time to time, but Gault most of all."
As she watched the multitude of expressions playing across George's face, Kay realised that George had fairly successfully managed to make her forget about George's earlier distress. "George, what happened today?" Kay asked after a relaxed, contented silence. "That would involve an explanation of possibly the weirdest relationship on the planet," George said dryly. "Are you sure you're ready for it?" "Try me," Kay challenged her, thinking of the years she'd spent thinking that Benton was dead and gone. "Jo, John and I, are involved in a sort of three-way relationship. It does usually work fabulously, and it took us years to realise that this was what we ought to be doing." "If it works, why worry?" Kay said simply. "We originally began something akin to this relationship," George explained. "Because John has a tendency to pick up random flings. He has hurt both Jo and I more times than I care to remember. You see, Jo was his lover on and off for years after John and I divorced. Anyway, the original agreement, before Jo and I discovered how we felt about each other, was that John would restrict himself to us and only us, and that he would stop helping himself to every passing bit of skirt who just happened to catch his eye. He's always loved Jo, ever since he met her, but part of him hasn't really stopped loving me. John has had the occasional lapse, one of which last year gave both Jo and I Chlamydia." "Oh dear," Kay said in sympathy. "Yes," George replied bitterly. "I don't think I've ever been quite as angry as I was then. However, I should say that what happened today made me come pretty close. After catching up with Barbara before they took her back to prison after court, I went upstairs to John's chambers, just to get a hug after a hard day, something that is totally forbidden between Judge and appearing barrister, but at five o'clock in the evening I was prepared to take the risk. When I walked in barely without knocking, I found John, lying in post-coital afterglow, with one of the prosecution witnesses." "Which one?" Kay asked, her eyes widening. "Connie Beauchamp," George said venomously. "Oh," Kay replied, the identity of the woman not remotely surprising her. "You don't sound at all surprised," George observed. "I've been forced to listen to Zubin going on about either her hospital politics or her lack of virtue for two days now," Kay told her. "So no, I'm not all that surprised. She's apparently slept with half the registrars in the hospital. It seems to be part of her policy of making them progress to a higher level." "I suppose that even after all these years, I didn't expect John to be cajoled into a quickie in chambers quite so easily."
As Connie worked her way through her evening theatre list, two heart bypasses and a bone marrow transplant, her thoughts kept returning to her assignation that afternoon. God, but he had been good, certainly making it an afternoon she wouldn't forget in a hurry. But the look on George's face couldn't help but haunt her as she worked, the look of combined hurt, anger and resignation making her wonder if she really had done the right thing in sleeping with that Judge. Connie hadn't known that there was anything remotely sexual between the defence barrister and the judge, she couldn't have known, because their act in court was without doubt perfectly manufactured. But this wasn't the only thing to distract Connie's mind from its tasks. Did John know about George's lump? Did he have any idea that his lover was incubating breast cancer? Connie simply didn't know.
Later that evening, as Kay and George ate some defrosted homemade soup in front of the fire, neither of them feeling much like eating, the phone rang. Putting her bowl down on the coffee table, George went to answer it. When she returned, she handed the cordless phone to Kay. "Captain Pete Marino for you," She said, smiling at the look of fondness on Kay's face. Switching the phone onto hands free so that she could continue eating her soup, Kay said, "Marino?" "Yo," Came the big, gruff voice over the wire. "It's me. How are you?" "Sick and tired of medical students who can't stomach the realities of a very difficult postmortem," Kay told him bluntly. "Hey, go easy on them, Doc," He told her calmly. "You were like that once." "I wasn't that bad," She insisted. "Anyway, what's been happening with you? Lucy told me about the woman in New York." "Yeah, I just got back from there. I sure hope we catch this squirrel soon, because I'm sick to the back teeth of hopping from one major city to another. Talking of which, did you get through customs all right with your piece?" "Fine," Kay told him with a smile. "Only then I managed to frighten George stupid by not telling her that I'd brought it with me." "She the posh chick who answered the phone just now?" Marino asked, making George laugh quietly. "Yes, Marino, that was her," Kay replied, giving George a lopsided grin. "George," Marino ruminated thoughtfully. "What kinda name's that for a woman? She another doctor lawyer Indian chief like you?" "No, I'm not," George told him with a smile, finally breaking in on the conversation. "I'm a plain and simple barrister." "Doc, you didn't tell me this conversation was being overheard," Marino said in disgust. "Well, I'm trying to eat, so I put you on hands free," She told him, thinking this a perfectly reasonable explanation. "I forgot to ask," Marino said, neatly changing the subject. "Did you find the CD I left in your briefcase?" "Yes, I did," Kay said sternly. "Marino, how on earth did you work out the combination lock to my briefcase?" "Hey, Doc, no offence," Marino began with the weight of an approaching bombshell. "But anyone who uses their DOB as their burglar alarm code, is probably gonna be dumb enough to also use it on their briefcase." George laughed at Kay's fiery blush. "Point taken," Kay replied dismally, seeing her reputation going up in smoke quicker than the logs on the open fire.
A good while later when they were both heading up to bed, George suddenly asked, "How busy are you tomorrow?" "I don't have to give a lecture until the afternoon," Kay told her. "Why?" "Fancy coming to court with me and watching me make mincemeat of Mrs. Beauchamp?" Kay's eyes widened. "You really are going to do a hatchet job on her, aren't you?" "I should say she deserves it," George said dismissively. "I didn't think witnesses who hadn't yet been on the stand were permitted in the public gallery." "Oh, they're not," George said airily. "But I suspect I can smuggle you in somehow." "Then yes, I would be interested to see your idea of revenge being put into practice."