grandparents, somewhere like that?’
‘No,’ Saxon said. ‘I kept well out of it. Thought it best.’
‘And now?’
‘What do you mean, and now?’
‘You still think it was for the best?’
The mug cracked across in Saxon’s hand and tea spilled with blood towards the floor.
‘Who the fuck?’ he said, on his feet now, both men on their feet, Saxon on his feet and backing Elder towards the door. ‘Who the fuck you think you are, coming in here like you’re some judge and fucking jury, some tinpot fucking god. Think you’re fucking perfect? That what you think, you pompous sack of shit? I mean, what the fuck are you here for anyway? You here to question me? Arrest me? What? There was some fucking crime here? I committed some fucking crime?’
He had Elder backed up against the wall, close alongside the door, the sweat off his skin so rank that Elder almost gagged.
‘Crime, Gerry?’ Elder said. ‘How much d’you want? Three murders, four deaths. Two boys, four and six. Not that you’ll be losing much sleep over them. I mean, they were just a nuisance, an irrelevance. Someone to mess up this shit heap of a home.’
‘Fuck you!’ Saxon punched the wall, close by Elder’s head.
‘And Lorna, well, you probably think that’s a shame, but let’s face it, you’ll soon find someone else’s wife to fuck.’
‘You bastard!’ Saxon hissed. ‘You miserable, sanctimonious bastard!’
But his hands fell back down to his sides and slowly he backed away and gazed down at the floor and when he did that, without hurrying, Elder let himself out of the house and walked towards his car.
He and Joanne were sitting at either end of the settee, Elder with a glass of Jameson in his hand, the bottle nearby on the floor; Joanne was drinking the white Rioja they had started with dinner. The remains of their take- away Chinese was on the table next door. Katherine had long since retreated to her room.
‘What will happen?’ Joanne asked. It was a while since either of them had spoken.
‘To Saxon?’
‘Um.’
‘A bollocking from on high. Some kind of official reprimand. He might lose his stripes and get pushed into going round schools sweet-talking kids into being honest citizens.’ Elder shook his head. ‘Maybe nothing at all. I don’t know. Except that it was all a bloody mess.’
He sighed and tipped a little more whiskey into his glass and Joanne sipped at her wine. It was late but neither of them wanted to make the first move towards bed.
‘Christ, Jo! Those people. Sometimes I wonder if everyone out there isn’t doing it in secret. Fucking one another silly.’
He was looking at Joanne as he spoke and there was a moment, a second, in which he knew what she was going to say before she spoke.
‘I’ve been seeing him again. Martyn. I’m sorry, Frank, I-’
‘Seeing him?’
‘Yes, I-’
‘Sleeping with him?’
‘Yes. Frank, I’m sorry, I-’
‘How long?’
‘Frank-’
‘How long have you been seeing him?’
‘Frank, please…’
Elder’s whiskey spilled across the back of his hand, the tops of his thighs. ‘How fucking long?’
‘Oh, Frank… Frank…’ Joanne in tears now, her breath uneven, her face wiped clear of colour. ‘We never really stopped.’
Instead of hitting her, he hurled his glass against the wall.
‘Tell me,’ Elder said.
Joanne foraged for a tissue and dragged it across her face. ‘He’s
… he’s got a place… up here, in the Park. At first it was just, you know, the odd time, if we’d been working late, something special. I mean, Martyn, he wasn’t usually here, he was down in London, but when
… Oh, Frank, I wanted to tell you, I even thought you knew, I thought you must…’
She held out a hand and when Elder made no move to take it, let it fall.
‘Frank…’
He moved quickly, up from the settee, and she flinched and turned her face away. She heard, not saw him leave the room, the house, the home.
It wasn’t difficult to find out where Martyn Miles lived when he was in the city, a top-floor flat in a seventies apartment block off Tattershall Drive. Not difficult to slip the lock, even though stepping across the threshold set off the alarm. ‘It’s okay,’ he explained to an anxious neighbour, ‘I’ll handle it. Police.’ And showed his ID.
He had been half-hoping Miles would be there but he was not. Instead, he searched the place for signs of what? Joanne’s presence? Tokens of love? In the built-in wardrobe, he recognised some of her clothes: a dove-grey suit, a blouse, a pair of high-heeled shoes; in the bathroom, a bottle of her perfume, a diaphragm.
Going back into the bedroom, he tore the covers from the bed, ripped at the sheets until they were little more than winding cloths, heaved the mattress to the floor and, yanking free the wooden slats on which it had rested, broke them, each and every one, against the wall, across his knee.
Back in the centre of the city, he booked into a hotel, paid over the odds for a bottle of Jameson and finally fell asleep, fully clothed, with the contents two-thirds gone. At work next day, he barked at anyone who as much as glanced in his direction. Maureen left a bottle of aspirin on his desk and steered well clear. When he got home that evening, Joanne had packed and gone. Frank — I think we both need some time and space. He tore the note into smaller and smaller pieces till they filtered through his hands.
Katherine was in her room and she turned off the stereo when he came in.
Holding her, kissing her hair the way he didn’t think he’d done for years, his body shook.
‘I love you, Kate,’ he said.
Lifting her head she looked at him with a sad little smile. ‘I know, but that doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘What do you mean? Of course it does.’
‘No. It’s Mum. You should have loved her more.’
Two weeks later, Joanne back home with Katherine, and Elder in a rented room, he knocked on the door of the Detective Superintendent’s office, walked in and set his warrant card down on the desk, his letter of resignation alongside.
‘Take your time, Frank,’ the Superintendent said. ‘Think it over.’
‘I have,’ Elder said.
SMILE
Soho, Manchester, Birmingham — why was it that Chinatown and the gay quarter were in such close proximity? Cantonese restaurants, pubs and bars, Ocean Travel, the Chang Ving Garden, City Tattooing, Clone Zone, the Amsterdam Experience Adults Only Shop and Cinema. Kiley turned down an alley alongside a shopfront hung liberally with wind-dried chickens and within moments he was lost amidst an uneven criss-cross of streets which seemed to lead nowhere except back into themselves. When he had stepped off the London train less than thirty minutes earlier and set off on the short walk down from New Street station, it had all seemed so simple. Instead of the dog-eared copy of Farewell, My Lovely he’d brought to read on the journey, a Birmingham A-Z would’ve been more useful.
