Not Just for Christmas Ch. 14-16

"Claire," he pleaded, "please don't make a scene here. We can meet her somewhere more private."

She relaxed. "OK, don't worry. I won't shout and scream, but I do want a word. Come with me."

Cheryl and her friend got their coffees and found a table which fortunately was a table for four. Claire took her coffee and cake, and Mike followed with his.

"Mind if I join you?" Claire said, sitting down without waiting for a reply.

Cheryl looked surprised. Mike studied her face and there was no sign of guilt or fear there, only surprise and even a smile. Mike sat on the only remaining chair. The photographer was baffled; he smiled at them and sipped his coffee.

"Hi Claire, Mike," Cheryl said, continuing to smile cheerfully. "What can we do you for?"

Mike could see that Cheryl's smile annoyed Claire: 'the look' was returning.

"Why can't you leave us alone?" Claire asked her.

"I'm sorry?" Cheryl's smile disappeared and she looked really puzzled.

"You know what I mean," Claire snarled. "I can't believe I fell for that phoney apology when we got back from honeymoon. Mike said you were playing games and I defended you!"

"I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about," said Cheryl beginning to get annoyed in her turn.

Mike realised she really hadn't. He placed a hand on Claire's arm, and she glanced questioningly at him.

"Cheryl," Mike said quietly, "someone tried to frame me. Someone sent a collection of photographs and a note to Claire accusing me of having a fling with another woman. The aim was to try to break us up. After what happened before we got married we wondered if you had anything to do with it. I can see you don't know what we're talking about."

Cheryl smiled. "Well, Mike, you could always read me. I remember when I was cheating on you, you knew. You're right, I don't know anything about any photographs. And Claire, I really meant what I said. I missed my chance and made a balls-up of my relationship with Mike."

Mike turned to the photographer. "Great article on our display in Brighton; you take the photos? Very flattering of Ingrid!"

The man looked a little flustered.

"No," he replied. "Steven was down there anyway and took the chance to photo your firm's stand. Glad you liked it."

"All good publicity," Mike joked, "and we didn't have to pay for it; that's the best sort."

Claire looked a little sullen as they left them to their coffee. They returned to their table.

"Claire," Mike said firmly. "Cheryl really doesn't have a clue about it. I know her and I can tell when she's lying; she lied for a couple of years while we were married you know."

She was disappointed. "It means we're no further forward."

"I wouldn't say that. We know Steven the photographer was down there. I'd be willing to bet he took the photos of Ingrid and me. When we get Cheryl alone, without her attendant photographer, there's the little question of the photos of Bryony and me. I'm sure she was in on that. I'll bet Steven took those photos as well. And there's something else."

She waited.

"The police haven't been to see Cheryl yet or she would have said so."

"So?"

"So I suspect she'll be in touch when she does hear and then I can get her for the other photos."

Claire smiled. "You're a lot more devious that I am. I really should keep my mouth shut and leave things to you."

"No comment," was Mike's smiling reply, which was in fact a comment and merited an elbow in his ribs, which he had to admit was richly deserved.

Over the evening meal with the children, a habit Claire and Mike wanted to maintain as long as possible, Claire suggested that she would invite Julie round for a girls' night in, and would Mike welcome a night out with Tom on the town. Mike wondered whether Tom would welcome a drinking partner who was no longer in the market for picking up totty.

As it turned out, Tom said he felt like a woman-free weekend and a fairly early night, so they agreed to meet at a more local pub rather than the usual club in the city.

It proved fortuitous. No sooner were they ensconced at their table, than Cheryl waltzed in with her friends Ann and Dara. They got their drinks and found a table and were at once deep in conversation. It was a while before Cheryl noticed Tom and Mike.

Immediately she left her friends and came over. As she arrived Mike gestured to the empty chair and she sat down.

"What's all this about you being attacked?" she said, launching in straight to the point. "The police came to the paper asking questions about it, as if I'd know!"

"Don't you?" Mike asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Mike, you know I love you," she said, exasperated. "Why should I want to attack you?"

"You made a pretty good job of it with Gary," he retorted.

"Please, Mike, I never expected him to attack her and you were incidental when you intervened with Siobhán. I wouldn't want you to suffer harm."

Mike nodded and then attacked. "OK, Cheryl. Let's consider some photos."

She looked puzzled.

"Go back a bit," he said patiently. "Before Claire and I married, Tom and I were in the usual club in town. I was with Bryony, and Tom with Sharon. Tom saw you with a photographer, I think it was Steven, and later I took Bryony to my favourite room at the Majestic Hotel. You know it, we used it often enough before we married.

"I think you and Steven got a room across the street and took some photos of Bryony and me having sex."

Mike stopped and waited for her to deny it. She didn't and her face showed she remembered.

"Why, Cheryl? Why go to that trouble? Fun? Porn sideline for Steven?"

She sighed.

"All right, Mike," she said dolefully. "I knew Claire was with you before I came round that day asking for a bed - your bed. I suspected that you and she were lovers and by then I wanted you back. I hoped I could find something to turn her off you. I had the photos with me when I visited you but never got a chance to show her them. But I don't understand what this has to do with your attack."

"Neither do I, but those photos came with a note which tried to frame me as an unfaithful husband. So perhaps you could work out how they came to be used that way. I'd be grateful."

As they walked home, Tom was thinking. "Those photos could only come from Cheryl, directly or indirectly. Right?"

"Right." Mike agreed.

"So that means, apart from her, anyone who lives with Cheryl, or Steven the photographer."

"Right." Mike repeated.

"Is Bob still with her?" Tom asked.

"I don't think so," Mike said thoughtfully. "She only went with him to push him towards Claire."

"Hmm," he replied, obviously unconvinced.

Mike wondered if Cheryl would come up with Bob's or any other names, or if she'd get back to him at all.

-

The children were by now well trained in Saturday morning behaviour. Siobhán kept a watching brief over the two younger ones while Claire and Mike 'had a lie in'. That Saturday their 'lie in' was truncated at the moment when his penis was at the entrance to nirvana and about to knock and enter.

"Dad! Mum!" Siobhán's yell would wake the dead or wilt the ardour. "It's the police."

He was about to shout that they were not doing anything illegal when Claire's elbow dissuaded him.

They struggled into loose clothing and made their way downstairs. There, with a wide knowing grin which chanted, 'I know what you're doing!' was the young policewoman.

They all sat in the living room.

"I have to tell you how the investigation into your attempted murder is progressing." She sat and opened her file, taking out a sheet of paper.

"I'm afraid that actually there isn't much to tell you," she said, now looking apologetic. "The baseball bat he hit you with has no fingerprints on it. Thankfully no one touched it until we arrived, but professional hit-men don't leave prints, and there's no DNA evidence on it either, apart from yours, so we're not really any further forward. Now if the pictures from your CCTV were clearer? But very few are high definition and he was wearing a crash helmet. If it were a full-face helmet even the CCTV would be useless. So there we are."

Her mention of pictures triggered something in Mike's mind.

"A few weeks ago," he said as she was putting everything away, "someone tried to break up our marriage by sending faked photos of me with another woman. I wonder if the two incidents are connected. Might there be fingerprints on the photos?"

The policewoman nodded. "We can test them, though anyone you know who's touched them will need to be eliminated. Of course it won't get us nearer to the assault, unless one of the owners of the prints confesses to organising it or even carrying it out. That's highly unlikely."

Mike got one photo from each set and gave them to her. She asked for a list of people who had touched the photos, and he gave her Tom, Claire and himself. He also told her that Steven's and Cheryl's prints may be on them as well.

When the policewoman had left, Mike phoned Cheryl to alert her to the police interest in the photos and the need for her to be eliminated and also Steven. Mike asked if anyone else might have touched them, but she reckoned they were the only two, since the Bryony pictures were digital photos on glossy printer paper.

Later that day they traipsed down to the Nick and had their prints taken. Cheryl and Steven had already been, the newspaper offices being a few yards from the police station.

It was Monday when Mike received a call at work from their tame policewoman.

It turned out that the Bryony photo had all the prints except Cheryl's, and the Brighton one did not have Cheryl's or Tom's. He remembered that Tom had only moved the Bryony photos into the new order for Claire. Steven's were on both sets. That was interesting.

In addition there was another set of prints on both photos. She was not allowed to say whether the police knew to whom they belonged, because of the Data Protection Act.

He sat and thought. So Cheryl was telling the truth; she did not know about the Brighton photos. That left Steven. He had taken both sets it seemed. Did Cheryl know that? He phoned her mobile.

"Cheryl, the police have been on. Your prints weren't on the Bryony photo nor on the other one."

"Other one?" she asked. "What other one?"

"Thanks," he said. "I didn't think you knew about the other photos. There were some of me in Brighton with Ingrid, who's one of my work colleagues, all in public places, but could be seen as incriminating. Your prints were not on them but Steven's were on both sets."

She paused then, "The bastard!"

"Cheryl, hang about; don't blow this open yet. Listen, Steven took both sets but he's got no reason to undermine my marriage to Claire, has he?"

"No. He really doesn't know you. He took the Bryony ones because he was trying to get into my pants."

Mike bit his tongue to prevent him asking if the photographer was successful.

He continued instead. "So someone else is involved who's probably paid Steven for the Brighton ones, and if Steven knew what the pictures were for he might have remembered the others: more cash for him. Let's face it, the Bryony pictures are more incriminating by far. There is another set of fingerprints on both sets. Is there anyone else who might want to get their hands on the photos? Do me or Claire damage?"

Silence.

"The only one I can think of is Gary," she said reflectively. "He hates you for taking 'his' woman, but he's safely out of the picture in Strangeways Nick, if they haven't moved him somewhere else."

"Thanks Cheryl," Mike said. "Can I ask you not to say anything to Steven for now? I don't want him covering his tracks."

"The least I can do," she said, and he could have sworn there was an air of wistfulness in her reply. "By the way, Steven hangs out at the Rose and Crown."

Mike was starting to revise his opinion of Cheryl. When she met him for the first time she was very young, nineteen, and he knew she was interested in him for his money and the lifestyle it could bring.

There was lust there, and he thought love as well, though it was a shallow thing. She was really too young to settle down. Now she'd been knocked around a bit she was different. Perhaps they could be friends after all.

-

In an ironic twist, Claire was now convinced Cheryl was behind the photos and perhaps even the attack, while Mike was more inclined to believe his ex. had nothing to do with it. He was sure that at least she wouldn't have wanted him dead. That was not Cheryl.

Tom and Mike drank at the Rose and Crown that night, and the following nights. It was not until Friday that Steven turned up. Claire had been getting annoyed at Mike's continual boozy evenings out.

They allowed Steven to settle down at a table, he and the woman he was with, and then wandered over.

"Hello, Steven," Mike said coldly. "D'you know me?"

He looked surprised and began to shake his head.

"Well," Mike said with some aggression, "I'm surprised at that. You've taken enough photos of me, some of them in the nude."

Then the penny dropped and he had the decency to look guilty and perhaps a little bit scared. Tom could look quite threatening and he was standing at Mike's shoulder.

The man was not saying anything, so Mike continued.

"Steven, you've caused me a lot of trouble and I think you could be in the market for a conspiracy charge. It was good of you to give your fingerprints 'for elimination purposes'."

"Don't get you," he tried to bluster. "I don't know nothing about no photos."

Mike mentally counted the negatives and it came out right (two negatives make a positive but he used three. OK, so Mike was a bit a pedant). He knew Steven was trying to tell Mike he knew nothing.

"Oh dear!" Mike exhaled, "and there was I thinking you were going to be helpful. OK, Steven. How does accessory to attempted murder strike you?"

"What?" he croaked. It was a bluff but Mike had got through to him.

"Someone attacked me, baseball bat then knife. He was disturbed."

"You're lying," Steven perked up. "We'd have heard about an attack like that."

"No," Mike said doggedly, "it's still under wraps, though the police have been to the paper asking Cheryl about it. We don't want to hurt you," and here he was telling a blatant lie, "but you can avoid the conspiracy charge by giving us a little information."

"What d'you want to know?"

"Who commissioned you to take the photos of me and a certain young woman in Brighton?" Mike asked with as evil a smile as he could manage.

"Brighton?" he asked. Then he saw Mike's expression and 'remembered'.

"Oh Brighton! You mean that bit of totty you were screwing. Got you into trouble?"

"Listen, toe-rag, someone booked you to take them. Who?"

"You know Bob French?"

Bingo!

"Yes," Mike said quietly and with menace. "I know Bob. And the other photos, he paid you for those as well?"

Steven nodded, "Bob knew I was going to Brighton, and that you were as well, don't ask me how. He asked me to try to get some photos of you that could be misunderstood, you know, if you were chatting with some pretty bint on your stall, photoshopped to put you in a bedroom.

"When I saw you with that blonde tart it was a gift from heaven. Then I remembered who you were and I that I still had the ones Cheryl had me take. Those were quite fruity, so I thought he could use them as well. He paid a lot extra for those."

For a second time, Mike thought he might have ruined the chances of a fun night for his victim. The woman Steven was with looked at him with distaste and as Mike and Tom left, she was leaving his table, deaf to his entreaties.

"Well," said Tom, "we can be pretty certain who's the owner of the other fingerprints."

It made sense. Mike thought he had definitely got up Bob's nose when he took Claire from him. Knowing the man, Mike could see him trying to break up the marriage. Bob had been living with Cheryl, and Steven probably told him about Brighton which gave Bob his chance.

However Tom thought that Bob wanting Mike dead was taking things a little too far. Bob couldn't be the author of that attack. Tom thought that it looked as if Mike's assassin was an expert. Nevertheless he told Mike they should tackle Bob about the photos.

Claire was pleased that they'd found out who had tried to subvert the marriage, but like Tom, she did not think Bob had it in him to murder anyone. However she still thought that Cheryl was behind what Bob did. They agreed to differ; they were getting better at that.

Claire also told him in measured tones that he had neglected his family in the daily beery quest for answers and the weekend belonged to his children. Who was he to disagree?

As it happened, Claire's injunction to stay with her and their children seemed in the event to be a plea to spend more time with her alone. Siobhán was away from lunchtime on Saturday at a sleepover with a girlfriend in her old neighbourhood, safe now that Gary was behind bars, and the other two were at two different parties on the Saturday afternoon.

The pair of lovers were where they most liked to be, naked in bed that afternoon after a strenuous sexual work out, thoroughly satisfied in every way.

"Mike?"

"Yes?"

"I'd like to go off the pill. I want your baby."

He didn't know what to say. He'd been so wrapped up in the problems they'd faced over the previous year that he'd not given having a child a thought; after all, he had a ready-made family.

"Mike?" Claire asked, worried at his lack of response.

"Sorry, it's a bit sudden. Sort of came out of the blue."

Then he realised it was what Claire desperately needed to set the seal on their relationship. The younger children brought her pain and suffering from Gary, so now she needed to feel the opposite from Mike with another child.

Mike had always wanted his own child as well. Perhaps it would also be a boy. He needed reinforcements in this heavily female household, not that any of the females were individually heavy!

"Sweetheart, are you sure you want this? I mean we've been through so much and this attempt on my life is not resolved. What if they are successful?"

"If that happened," she said resolutely, "I would have something, someone, to remind me of you. Yes I want this, but only if you want it as well."

"Yes, my darling," he said, "I would love it if you had our baby."

Another milestone or was it only another step? It felt like a milestone. Anyway, Claire hugged and kissed him and initiated another round of lovemaking as if they were already embarking on the task of extending the family. Mike was not grumbling about that; he was absolutely sure they needed as much practice as possible as he spewed his seed into her clasping vagina for the second time that afternoon.

On Sunday evening Mike begged a hour to visit his friends at the Home, and Siobhán asked if she could go as well. Claire looked doubtful but nodded.

Siobhán was a revelation to Mike. She immersed herself in the place and rapidly made friends with those residents who were open to her, which turned out to be most of them. She noted the two who were dissociated and sat and talked with them even though there was no reaction.

She told Mike on the way home that she remembered when Claire had her mini-breakdown. She then wondered out loud whether she might go in for medicine, and he told her that she certainly had the intelligence for it but would need the highest grades, especially in sciences. She nodded.

Claire came to the study later that evening after they'd put the young ones to bed and done their part-reading with them. She looked contented and happy. She told him of her conversation with Siobhán and how happy she was that her daughter had such compassion on those less fortunate. They hugged and there was a peacefulness about the evening together. Life was good.