He glanced up. His heart looped the loop again. ‘Nice and noisy,’ he commented.
‘I started with the Bs,’ she admitted. ‘And it couldn’t be Brahms, Beethoven or Bach.’
‘No, I can see that,’ he said. ‘Too emotional.’
Her face cleared. ‘You understand. You know a lot about – well, stuff, don’t you?’
‘I did stuff at A Level.’
She watched him chop for a moment. ‘Can I help?’
‘Thanks, but there’s not really room in here for two.’
‘You like to cook?’
‘I like to eat, so there’s no alternative. Yes, I like to cook. I hope you like pasta. It’s just the quickest thing I’ve got ingredients for.’
‘I love pasta,’ she said. The cats had oozed past her into the kitchen and were winding themselves sinuously round his ankles, making suggestive remarks. ‘If you’ve got something to twiddle I’ll keep them out of your way. If you’re sure I can’t help.’
‘You can lay the table when the time comes. Thanks. There’s a catnip mouse on a string somewhere – probably under the sofa. Most things end up there.’
‘I see what you mean,’ she said a moment later, and brought out a sock and the inside bit of a toilet roll as well as the mouse. She was a good twiddler and the cats were soon absorbed in one of their monotonously ferocious games. ‘Your boss seems nice,’ she called out.
‘He is,’ Atherton replied. ‘He’s the best.’
‘That’s what Joanna said. She’s nice too.’
‘He’s the only man I can think of who deserves her.’
‘We had a good long talk in the canteen. She’s very sympathetic.’ She whipped the mouse across the room again and it disappeared under a writhe of cream fur. ‘She told me about this Bates person. Is he really dangerous?’
‘It’s hard to say. Usually these threats are only meant to frighten, but Bates was a pretty hard case.’ The chopping sounds stopped and he appeared in the doorway. ‘I don’t want you to think that anything will come in the way of your father’s investigation.’
‘I know,’ she said, looking up from her position, crouched on the floor. ‘But it occurred to me that I could help you. With two things going on you must be stretched, and I’m sure you never have enough staff. You read about it in the papers all the time, about the police being short-staffed. Obviously,’ she forestalled him, ‘I couldn’t do police things, I know that. But I could do research for you.’ He still looked at her doubtfully, and she urged, ‘I’m really good at that. It’s my job – a large part of it, anyway.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you are. I mean – yes, obviously you must be. You couldn’t use the police computer system, of course—’
‘I know that, but there must be lots of information in the public domain that might be useful to you. And then there’s all Dad’s paperwork to sort through. That’ll take a lot of time, if you don’t have enough people.’
‘I’ll have to ask Bill,’ Atherton said, ‘but, if you really want to get involved, I’m sure there’s something you could do.’ He smelled his onions catching and hurried back to the stove.
The pasta didn’t take long, and soon they were sitting down at the table with their bowls and a bottle of wine. He had a block of fresh Parmesan and leaned over to grate some for her.
‘This is really nice of you,’ she said. ‘To go to all this trouble.’
‘I told you, I like to eat.’
‘I didn’t mean only the food, but everything. It would have been hideous going to an hotel.’
‘That’s what I thought. Wine?’
‘Yes, please. I don’t want any risk of not sleeping tonight.’ She watched him pour, idly caressing the gold locket, something he guessed she did all the time and wasn’t aware of.
‘Nice locket,’ he said, sitting down. ‘Unusual. Is it old?’
‘Not to me – Dad sent it to me for my birthday last week. But it is antique, I think.’
‘It looks heavy.’
‘It is. Dad said it’s very valuable and warned me not to lose it, so I wear it all the time. It has his picture in it.’ Her eyes filled suddenly and dangerously with tears. ‘I can’t get used to the idea—’
‘I know,’ he said, getting up again, meaning to go round the table to her, but she shook her head, putting her hand up in a defensive gesture to stop him. He paused, awkwardly half up and half down, and she got out another tissue from her sleeve and blew her nose.
‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Please, sit down.’ He sat, watching her anxiously, and she said, ‘Will you tell me about you? I don’t want to talk about me because it will make me think about things, and I don’t want to think just now.’
‘Well, if you like,’ he said, feeling oddly shy about it. He had talked about himself often enough to women, but it was usually a seduction ploy – and they usually knew it as well as he did, so no-one was actually listening. But to tell her, really tell her, about himself would be – well, at the very least a novel sensation. ‘If you’re sure you want to know. It isn’t that interesting.’
‘I bet it is,’ she said.
It occurred to him that he had never seen anyone look more tired in his entire life. So he talked.
When they had finished eating, it was obvious that she was finished. ‘Would you like a bath?’ he offered.
‘I had a shower at the police station. I don’t think I’ve got the strength for any more washing.’ The wine and the gin had done their work – her eyes were closing as she spoke.
‘OK. You go in the bathroom and clean your teeth while I make the bed up, and then you can just fall in.’
It didn’t take him a minute to whip on a sheet and a duvet cover. She came back from the bathroom as he was doing the second pillow. He switched on the bedside lamp and said, ‘I hope you sleep all right. If you need anything in the night, I’m just across there. Call out and I’ll hear you.’
She nodded, seeming not to have the strength even to say goodnight. He backed out and closed the door, and went back downstairs.
In the middle of the night he woke with a start to the realisation that someone was in the room with him, and was half out of bed before he remembered that Emily was in the house; then she advanced to his bedside and he could see her dimly in the light filtering through the curtains from the street lamp outside. She was wearing an outsize tee shirt which presumably did service instead of nightclothes, and he could see the gleam of the locket hanging against her chest. So she really did wear it all the time.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘I can’t stop shivering,’ she said in a low tone. Her arms were wrapped round herself and she was hunched as if in pain.
‘Can I get you another blanket? An aspirin? A hot drink?’
‘No. Thanks. Can – can I get in with you for a bit? Just for the company? I can’t—’
That sentence didn’t seem to have anywhere to go. Silently he opened the bed to her and she climbed in, and he lay down and took her in his arms. She felt icy cold and was quivering and rigid with it. He held her quietly and gradually she warmed up and the quivering grew less. And then she started to cry.
It was like a summer storm, short and violent. He held her, cradling her head against his shoulder while she wept as if it were being torn out of her, and the hot tears soaked his neck. At last the tears eased and the sobbing died down, like thunder retreating. When she was quiet, breathing steadily, he thought she had fallen asleep.
Very gently, he kissed the crown of her head, and felt things stirring in him that he had never felt before, emotions he had never thought to feel.
After a while she moved against him, almost languorously, and turned her face up to him. He moved his head back to look down at her and see what she wanted. He saw the gleam of her half-open eyes. She reached and took his hand from her back, brought it round and placed it on her breast, at the same time craning upwards and placing her lips against his. He resisted, afraid on so many levels it was bewildering. But she murmured, ‘Please. Please,’ against his mouth, holding his hand to her. He kissed her, tentatively, feeling his body getting away from his control. But her response was urgent, and she was pressing her body against him, kissing him as though it might save her life.
Well, who knew but that it might?
