I’m sure they have credit cards in Holland. But whatever you do, make sure you get her back to your place and keep her there. Understood?’
‘For how long? That is the problem, man. How long am I meant to be keeping her for? And why? I still don’t understand what this is all about.’
‘You don’t need to understand. And it isn’t going to be for long. A couple of days at most. I’ll be round first thing in the morning to let you know what’s going to happen next.’
Tino started to say something else but Stegs heard the sound of movement behind him and finished off the conversation by telling the Dutchman to do what he was instructed and leave it at that. He then flicked the phone off and turned to see his missus coming out of the back door. She was holding Luke’s baby monitor in one hand, a pack of Silk Cut in the other. Smoking. It remained the missus’s only vice. Everything else had been consigned to the dim and distant past, but, like so many people, when it came to the dreaded weed she’d been unable to break the habit.
She put the monitor down on the rickety patio table, then lit one of the cigarettes. Stegs noticed that she was wearing the red clogs she’d bought recently, and he gave an inward cringe. He was obsessed with clogs. To him, they were one of mankind’s worst fashion abominations, something that, like Tino, he could never quite forgive the Dutch for. And what was more, it seemed they were now a real clothing accessory among the local brood of mothers with whom the missus seemed to be spending more and more time. Some had even taken to wearing them with socks in what Stegs could only assume was a full-on bid to keep their husbands away from them in the bedroom. He had no doubt that it worked.
‘Who was that on the phone?’ asked the missus, a suspicious look in her eyes.
‘Work,’ he answered, taking a lug on his Marlboro Light.
‘It didn’t sound much like it.’
He wondered how long she’d been listening but didn’t let it bother him, retaining his casual stance. ‘One of my snouts,’ he told her. ‘He’s setting up a sting for me. It’ll go down well on my record.’
She sighed. ‘You always tell me how well you’re doing, but you’re still a DC after all these years, even though you seem to work every hour under the sun. That bloody mobile’s never off, Mark. But you’ve been stuck at the same level for what? How long is it now? Ten years?’
Her criticism hit him hard, not only because it caught him off guard as well as being essentially true, but because it wasn’t delivered in her usual whiny rant, but in much more even, pitying tones, as if she no longer felt sorry for herself being stuck with a dead-beat husband, but felt sorry for him instead. Which was far worse. He’d show her. One day, he’d show her that he was more than just a bog-standard copper doing what he was told day in day out for pitiful amounts of cash. For now, though, he needed to keep his mouth shut.
‘It’s not always going to be like this,’ he said, but he could hear the doubt in his own voice.
‘Really? What is it going to be like, then? Are you going to go to work one day like Paul Vokerman and not come back? Leave me and Luke on our own with nothing more than a feeble widow’s pension to keep us going? Everyone’s life’s moving forward, Mark, except ours. Is that what you want?’ Again her voice was calm, as if she’d been thinking about this for a long time.
‘Of course it’s not what I want.’
‘Or are you just going to keep on going like this? Treating this place like a hotel where you can come in drunk like you did today and put your head down, not putting anything into the relationship, either with me or your son?’
‘It’s not like that,’ he said, his voice a forced whisper in case the neighbours heard them.
‘It
He felt a pain in the pit of his stomach, a grim realization that she no longer loved him. And the thing was, he’d never even spotted it.
‘What are you saying, love?’
‘I’m saying, either buck up your ideas and accept your responsibilities or move out. Understand?’
What could he say? Half of him felt like telling her to ‘fuck it, he’d walk,’ but there was another part — one that had been dormant for a while but which had showed itself briefly the previous day when they’d been at Odds Farm — that thought that maybe having a wife and kid wasn’t such a bad way to live after all. And it was that part that was beginning to make its presence felt again now.
‘I understand,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll be better, I promise. I know things have been difficult, and that I haven’t been at my best, but there’s been a lot of pressure on, especially with what happened with Vokes.’
‘I know, but that ought to make you think whether it’s all worth it. Because, to be honest with you, Mark, I don’t think it is.’
He finished his cigarette, stubbed it underfoot, then put the butt on the table. It was their rule. The butts went on the table, and were then cleared away at the end of the night, and the table wiped. The missus finished hers and repeated the operation. Then she yawned.
‘I’m off to bed. I’m shattered. Are you going to sleep in the spare room tonight?’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘Well, if you’re late you can. I don’t want to be woken up. At least not by you.’
‘OK,’ he said, conscious that he sounded sheepish. As if he’d been put in his place.
She said goodnight and disappeared inside. Stegs waited until the light came on upstairs, then he went into the kitchen, pulled a beer from the fridge and went back out to the table with it, lighting another cigarette. He was going to have to do something about his drinking, he knew that. He also knew the missus was right. The job was destroying him.
He wondered at that point whether he still loved her, and concluded that he wasn’t sure. Then he wondered whether he hated himself and what he’d become. He took a swig from the beer and wished he had some more speed, even though a good night’s sleep would do him the world of good.
No, he thought, I don’t hate myself.
It’s just all the other bastards.
21
It was ten to six by the time we got back to the incident room. Tina had already received the list from Harrow and was going through it. Malik and I got coffees and sat down and helped her. It was a long, boring job, but by seven o’clock when we’d checked and double-checked a dozen times, we were all forced to conclude that none of the registered owners of Meganes appeared on the list of those who’d bought the suits.
Tina was disappointed. ‘All that work. For nothing.’
‘Life would be too easy without setbacks,’ Malik told her, with a reassuring smile.
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s get a drink. We’ve all earned one, and it’s Rich Jacobs’ leaving do over at the Roving Wolf.’
Rich Jacobs was a DC who’d been at the station for four years and was now emigrating to Australia, where his wife came from. He’d got a job with the police in Perth, and was young enough to make a good go of it. A lot of people at the station were saying that they’d like to have done the same thing, and on my bad days I was inclined to agree with them. Having had a car wheel almost park itself on my head only a few hours earlier, I was counting today as one of the bad ones.
The do had already started by the time Tina and I got over there, Malik having declined our offer to join us (‘I can’t go to the leaving party of a guy I wouldn’t even be able to pick out in an ID parade’ being his fairly reasonable excuse), and there were a good twenty CID in the place, including DCI Knox. As I bought us both drinks, and put one in for Rich, I managed to persuade Tina that there was no point getting down about what had happened, and she took me at my word, sinking five G and Ts in the first hour, and sinking her blues with them. For a while I watched her as she immersed herself in various conversations, more often than not the centre of attention within them, then decided that maybe I was being too obvious about gawking at her, and got involved in my own conversations with colleagues I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk with in a while.
In the end, it turned out to be a good night, made all the better by the relief I felt at having avoided serious
