person, as a guest, into his home. He’d assisted the police with their enquiries. They’d had a nice cup of tea and a nice chat and the old man had felt useful again. What could be more normal than that?
Being treated as an equal by a police Inspector, an important man who sought his opinion, his help. Suddenly he was a member of society again and could make a contribution to a community from which he’d felt ever more alienated. For a short, wonderful moment he was a human being not a shuffling relic, not a lonely, desperately sad old man who would have opened his arms to death every day, had not a tiny kitten given him the unquestioning love and companionship he needed to keep him going.
Mac closed his eyes and his hands around the money. Twenty pounds for self-respect. Bargain.
Brook turned to leave. He turned back at the sound of the old man’s voice.
‘We have a saying in the army.’ Mac stared at the floor, gazing at his own headstone. ‘Life’s like a gunshot wound. When it stops hurting is the time to worry.’
Brook hurried to his car. What was he doing? Out of nowhere he was taking an interest in other people’s lives, other people’s pain. Years of living behind the barricade of his thoughts had been replaced by pity for the plight of others. Why?
He was throwing cash around like Scrooge on Christmas Day. He could afford it but it was the kind of scattergun palliative of which he’d always disapproved and which, as he’d just witnessed, could do as much harm as good.
Then suddenly he knew and it hit him hard. An old man in a hovel, clinging to the illusion of life and companionship, only a cat to care whether he lived or died. Mac was The Ghost of Christmas Future. Brook had dropped in on his own barren existence, twenty years on.
The next morning, New Year’s Eve, Brook staggered to his door under the weight of two heavy boxes. He fumbled with his keys, balancing both boxes on his left thigh and let himself in. He stepped into the kitchen and snapped on the harsh strip light. He placed the boxes on the kitchen table and trotted back out to the Sprite for his shopping bags.
When he returned he opened the fridge. It was empty save for a carton of milk. A moment later it was full of comestibles, most of which he wouldn’t eat but that didn’t matter. For the first time in a long time, appearances were important. Appearances mattered. Not to Brook maybe but to everyone else, and it was stupid pigheadedness to put himself at such a disadvantage where human relationships were concerned. If his life were to be retrieved, he had to start where other people started-first impressions.
God forbid that anyone should walk into his flat again and see it as defeated and empty as old Mac’s. Small wonder he hadn’t seen Wendy for dust after that first night. What must she have thought?
Later that evening, Brook had set up his brand new TV and VCR-not without difficulty-and was able to put in the first of the tapes from the station CCTV. He settled down with the remote control and a ready meal chilli, briefly amused to have stumbled upon the nation’s twin pillars of obesity, after a lifetime of emaciation.
It was dull going, so after the first half hour, he put it on fast-forward but this made it too difficult to pick things out, so he abandoned the experiment and decided just to leave it running. If he missed something, so what? Unless Sorenson danced across the footbridge in a bloodstained boiler suit waving a scalpel around, Brook knew this was a waste of time. They still had nothing.
He decided to ring Amy again, see how she was getting on. He’d rung her the day after getting back to Derby on some pretext or other and it was obvious she’d been crying. After he’d pressed her to confide in him she’d told Brook of Tony’s departure.
She’d seemed composed. But when she read Brook the note, the tears had begun to fall.
Brook had kept her talking until she cheered up. He didn’t usually have that effect but then he rarely made the effort. They’d had a few laughs about the early years, making sure to skirt difficult areas. Maybe she just needed someone, anyone, to talk to, but Brook was still pleased to detect a note of affection in her voice he’d not heard for many years.
This time Amy picked up on the first ring.
‘It’s me again, darling. How are you today?’
‘And Terri?’
‘Have you told her about Tony yet?’ There was a long pause at the other end. ‘Anything wrong, Amy?’
Brook heard her take a deep breath.
‘What is it?’
‘Tell me what’s wrong…’
The line went dead. Brook replaced the receiver.
At that moment Vicky hopped from the bottom step of the footbridge. The same flash of blue denim that Brook had first seen standing across the road in the cold a couple of weeks before, the same quilted coat, the same flash of blonde hair.
He checked the date on the display. It was the day before Brook had met her outside his flat.
He watched her progress across the concourse. It was difficult to make her out, the cameras in the main station were high in the vaulted roof, but she seemed to be waving at someone off-camera, someone waiting by the entrance. She quickened her step.
Then a hand reached out from beyond the fixed camera position and Vicky swung her carpet bag into it as she walked off-screen. Brook surmised that a girl wouldn’t offer to carry another girl’s luggage. Vicky must have been met by a man.
Chapter Twenty-four
Brook sauntered down the corridor, grinning inanely at the tide of revellers washing the other way. ‘Happy New Year,’ he mouthed for the thousandth time, doing his best impression of a bon viveur. He was tired and would have preferred to slink off to his room, but there was work to do. He’d left Derby after sifting through all the CCTV tapes, searching in vain for a better view of Vicky’s rendezvous, and had set off for London later than was wise, catching all the traffic rushing round to New Year party venues.
‘You’re going the wrong way, darling.’ A plump woman, mid-forties, in a French maid’s outfit barred his way with a generous show of bosom. ‘The party’s this way,’ she slurred, fixing Brook with her swaying proposition. ‘Come with me.’ She locked a flabby arm onto his and gripped him with her profiterole fingers. ‘I won’t see you all po-faced on the best night of the year. Molly’ll show you a good time, handsome.’
‘Well thanks, Molly. But I’m not allowed to drink…’ ‘Nor me, darling. But what’s one little drinkie on New Year’s Eve?’
Brook smiled. Belle Vue certainly wasn’t severe on its patients. Their wishes, or rather their money, seemed to override any consideration of clinical need. The place was little more than an expensive hotel, dressed up as a clinic to justify the kind of charges that hoodwinked guests into believing they were being treated. And at this time of year, peak time for self-loathing, the sky was the limit for fools and their money.
Brook himself had been relieved of?3,000 for a three-night stay. This included the fancy dress costume of his choice and a seven-course New Year dinner, with copious champagne. Carrot juice was available for those with a ‘problem’. Not that anyone was checking.
