The cloud thickened. 'Let's just say it put an end to their relationship.'
`What a shame.'
Aye, it were indeed. Still, it all worked out in the end; for him at any rate.'
She leaned down and kissed him again. 'Would you like another drink? I may not take it, but I do keep it. There's some white wine. I'll have a Pepsi.'
Aye, that'd be nice. I'll get it. In t' fridge, is it?'
When he returned a few minutes later with the bottle, in a cooler, a Pepsi and two glasses, she was leaning against the headboard smoking a cigarette. 'Want one?'
`You know I don't, apart from the odd cigar. What the 'ell are those things anyway? They smell pretty strong.'
`They are. They're Turkish. I buy them from time to time I got to like them when I was a student. I don't smoke for effect, boy. I smoke for… nicotine!' She laughed at his frown.
He poured his wine and her Pepsi, then slipped back into be beside her. She offered him the cigarette. He took an experimental puff, and felt his head swim as he inhaled'
Quickly, he handed it back to her. 'Bloody hell! I'll stick to cigars.
She sipped her Cola. 'So how are your interviews going?'
`Well enough, but we're not finished yet. We're going to see Ariadne Noble tomorrow.'
Ariadne Tucker QC, you mean,' said Shana. 'Remember; she's particular about that.'
`Do you know anything else about her, other than what you told us?'
`Like what?'
`Like whether she 'as a bit on the side.'
She shrugged her shoulders, doing fetching things with her breasts once more. Adam leaned over and nuzzled them with his forehead. She laughed. 'Down boy. Time enough.
You are staying, aren't you?'
`Yeah, why not. I've got nowt better to do.'
`Bugger.' She dug him in the ribs with an elbow.
Sipping more Pepsi, she leaned against him again. 'It was a bomb that caused the crash, then,' she said, suddenly serious. 'I saw that Scottish policeman on the news. What was his name again?'
`Bob Skinner.'
She grinned again, briefly. 'He looks quite dishy.'
`His wife thinks so.'
She took a curl of his chest hair and wrapped it round her index finger, tugging gently.
'Adam?'
`You made a big deal of asking about the Red Box. That doesn't mean that you think the bomb might have been hidden in it, does it?'
`No. It means we know that it was hidden there.' Her wrist lay against him, and he felt the pulse at the base of her thumb quicken.
`Joseph did confirm what I told you, about how the box was packed, didn't he?'
He smiled. 'Of course he did. You can relax on that score: She sighed with relief. 'Thank you, Allah, for that. What a nightmare.'
Of course,' said Arrow, 'we can't account precisely for the box before it was packed.
Suppose the device was already in there? Suppose you'd put it in earlier? Would Webber have known that?'
She sat up straight. 'He was standing beside me when I packed it. He'd have seen it!'
She glared at him, not smiling now, not teasing. 'Are you serious?'
He stared back at her, poker-faced. They sat there for several silent seconds, like naked brown statues.
`No,' he said at last, a huge smile creasing his broad features.
Adam, you little bastard!' she said, grinning in spite of herself. She grabbed a handful of chest hair and tugged as hard as she could.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Skinner dozed, and dreamed of mud.
They had returned from the restaurant just after midnight, their taxi having first dropped Andy and Alex at the West End. Having checked that Jazz was sound asleep, Sarah had gone straight to bed, but Skinner had remained downstairs, padding around barefoot, sucking idly on yet another bottle of beer.
Finally he settled down on the settee to replay a video tape of the evening's televised football. Motherwell had been his boyhood team, and thus had retained his lifelong adherence, yet he watched their resounding victory over Rangers with a strange apathy.
He had lived up to his earlier announcement by consuming a substantial quantity of alcohol, yet he could feel no effect, not the slightest trace of exhilaration, not the slightest fuzzing of his thought process. What he felt instead was restlessness, an almost overwhelming urge towards physical activity, and driving wakefulness.
The tape had run out, to be replaced by yet another screening of The Devil Rides Out, when Sarah appeared in the doorway, Wrapped in her white towelling robe.
`Bob, its gone one-thirty. I'd like to sleep, but I can't knowing that as soon as I've dropped off you're liable to come up and Plant your big feet in my back! Come to bed, please.'
He sighed, deeply. 'I just don't feel sleepy, but to please you, okay; He had lain there beside her in the dark, listening as her breathing slowed and smiling at her occasional soft snores but resolutely awake himself. Finally he had switched on his reading light and picked up his bedside novel, a piece of Terry Pratchett fantasy which he was reading for the second time.
He had enjoyed perfect sight all his life, but he was reaching that point in early middle age where tiredness at the end of a long day was beginning to take its toll of his eyes.
Gradually, the script became fuzzy; gradually he had held the pages further away, to try to retain focus; eventually the book had slipped from his fingers.
Skinner dozed, and dreamed of mud.
He was back in the field, staring across its flat grey acres, standing in his muddy-trousered uniform amid the jetsam of the crash. The unclothed, disjointed doll was at his feet. Unthinking, he bent and seized it by an arm, to pick it up. It hung awkwardly in his grasp, the limbs flopping unnaturally, the head lolling backwards.
It was quite a large doll, and strange in the way it was put together. Probably very expensive, he thought, remembering the model which he had bought for a friend's newborn daughter. The ball-sockets joining limbs and head to the trunk were remarkably lifelike, with no sign of the rubber bands which showed when most of the cheaper types were twisted to this extent. The touch of it, too. In his hand it didn't feel like plastic, as had his purchase. This one felt almost..
He dropped it, with a shriek of horror…
… and woke in the same instant, his lips still drawn back in the shape of his dream-scream.
This time Sarah woke with him. 'Bob, honey! What is it?' She took him in her arms.
It's okay,' he mumbled. I'm sorry.'
'What was it? What were you dreaming about?'
He shook his head. 'Nothing. It was nothing.'
It was hardly nothing, man. You're in a lather.' It was true, he realised, conscious of the cold sweat on his body,
'It was just a bad dream, love. You remember, I had them for a while after that business a couple of years back, when I got shot.'
`Sure I remember. But you didn't wake up screaming then.'
'No? Well, maybe it's only now that the full impact's coming home to me. Don't worry about it, it's just a one-off. The cold sweat's probably just the booze working its way out.
Now go on, get back to sleep. I'm fine now.'
