with a fairly hefty financial gain.”
The professor pursed his lips, deep in thought. He has a face like a dessicated cowpat, but always looks as fresh and clean as a newly bathed baby. His talcum smelled of roses or some other garden flowers. “It’d be a bugger to prove, Charlie,” he concluded. “Let’s wait and see what the DNA says, eh?”
We thanked the prof. and drove away in silence. I wasn’t equipped to have a meaningful conversation with an attractive woman about the merits of rough sex, so I kept my thoughts to myself, but Annette had no such inhibitions. “Why do men — some men — want to do that?” she asked.
“Um, do what?” I enquired.
“Inflict humiliation. Why isn’t the sex act enough in itself?”
“Good question,” I said, stalling for time. “It’s probably something deep in our psyche, in our genes.”
“You mean all men are like that?”
“Well, um, I wouldn’t say all men. I don’t know, perhaps we are. At a very subconscious level. Most of us have never recognised it in ourselves, but it’s probably in there, somewhere.”
“Really?” She twisted in her seat to face me and nearly drove into the kerb.
“Put it like this,” I said, checking my seatbelt. “Most men, I’m sure you know, find a woman in her underwear sexier than a woman in a bikini. Why do you think that is?”
“No idea. It’s a mystery to me.”
“Well, most men wouldn’t know, either, if you asked them. But it could be because a woman in her underwear is at a disadvantage. You’ve caught her partially dressed. However, the same woman in a bikini is fully dressed and completely in charge of the situation.”
“Gosh! I’d never have thought of that.”
“Whereas most men,” I pronounced, holding my hands aloft, “rarely think of anything else.”
There was a pub called the Anglers Rest about half a mile down the road, with an A-board outside saying that they did two-for-the-price-of-one meals before six o’ clock. We’d missed that, but it reminded me that I was starving.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Ravishing,” Annette replied, and giggled.
“I can see that,” I told her. “I asked if you were hungry.”
“Mmm. Quite.”
“Fancy a Chinese?”
She looked across at me. “Yes. That sounds like a good idea.” Her cheeks were pink again.
“Take us to the Bamboo Curtain then, please,” I suggested, and settled back into the seat feeling uncommonly content. Things were moving along quite nicely, and the enquiry wasn’t going too badly, either.
I ate with chopsticks, to show how sophisticated I am, and we drank Czech beer, which I insisted in pouring into glasses. A glass is essential if you want to experience the full flavour of the drink. Itsy-bitsy sips from the bottle are a waste of time. I insisted on Annette doing several comparisons, and she politely conceded that I might have had a point. Drinking from the bottle, I told her, is an affectation encouraged by the brewing industry to save them the trouble and expense of washing glasses, that’s all. Apart from that, the bottles have been stored for months outside some warehouse, and the security man’s dog probably cocked its leg over them several times each night as they did their rounds. She smiled and humoured me.
Women in the police have a hard time. Be one of the lads and you get a reputation as a slapper; stay aloof from all that and you’re a lesbian. Times are changing and a new breed of intelligent, confident women are coming into the service, but old attitudes take a long time to be pensioned off. I like working with women, and they make good detectives. Traditionally we’ve always given them the jobs with an emotional content — child abuse, rape, that sort of thing — but they can be surprisingly hard at times. Harder than a man. Stereotypes and prejudices, I thought. The more you work at them, the deeper the hole you dig for yourself.
As far as anyone knew Annette had never been out with another copper, so the inevitable whispers had gone round the locker room. I’m as guilty as all the rest, and wouldn’t have been surprised to learn they were true. Disappointed, but not surprised. We talked about the case, the job and the E-type, but steered clear of personal chat. We’d both considered teaching when we were younger. I had a degree in Art and she had one in Physics.
“A proper degree,” I declared, sharing out the last of the beer.
“That’s right,” she agreed across the top of her glass, holding my gaze.
Mr Ho, the proprietor, brought me the customary pot of green tea, on the house, and I asked him for the bill. Annette produced a tenner and slid it across to me.
“Is that enough?” she asked.
“It’s OK,” I said. “I’ll get these.”
“No, I’d rather pay my way,” she insisted. Men handle these things much better than women. Any of the male DCs would have said: “Cheers, I’ll get them next time,” but they wouldn’t have spent all evening analysing my every word, waiting for the boss to proposition them.
“I’ll arm wrestle you for it,” I said.
“Please?”
“If you insist.” I reached for the note and put another with it. “That’s a one pound sixty tip,” I said. “Alright with you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
It was a short drive back to the station, where my car was parked. No opportunity for an invitation in for coffee there. She parked the Fiat behind my Ford, without stopping the engine. Eyes would be upon us from within the building.
“That was very pleasant, Annette,” I told her, opening the door.
“Yes, it was. Thank you,” she replied.
They say the moon was formed when another planet strayed close to the fledgling Earth and its gravity tore a great chunk from us. I know the feeling. The car door was open, beckoning, and this beautiful lady was eighteen inches away, her face turned to me, her perfume playing havoc with my senses. I felt lost, pulled apart. Salome was dancing, but was it for me or was I in for the chop?
Just a kiss. That’s all I wanted. Just a kiss. A simple token of affection after a harrowing day. No harm in that, is there? The scientists don’t know it, but there’s one force out there in the universe far more powerful than gravity. It’s called rejection. I wrenched myself away, saying: “See you in the morning.”
“Yes,” she replied. “See you in the morning. Boss.”
Chapter Five
It was no big deal. I drove home and collected the mail from behind the door. Six items, all junk. I put the kettle on and hung my jacket in the hallway. It wasn’t nine o’ clock yet but I was tired and felt like going to bed. There’d be no red faces in the office tomorrow, no mumbled apologies as we crossed paths in the corridor. We’d be able to continue working together as a team, and that was a big consolation.
I had loosely promised myself to clean the microwave oven tonight, but it could wait. There’d been a slight accident with an exploding chicken Kiev at the weekend, and the kitchen stunk of garlic, but I couldn’t face pulling on another pair of rubber gloves and setting to work with the aerosol of nitric acid, or whatever it was I’d bought for the job. I was sure it said self-cleaning when I bought the oven, but it isn’t. You just can’t believe anything these days.
I made a pot of tea — more tea — and settled down with Dylan on the turntable, unaware of the fiasco being enacted in the town centre. Last night I danced with a stranger, but she just reminded me you are the one. Spot on, Bob. Spot on.
Dick Lane stretches down to the canal in a part of the town that has been heavily redeveloped. Legend has it that the street gets its name from a worker in the woollen industry who could carry bigger bales of wool than anybody else. Twenty-five stones, or some other mind-boggling figure. More mischievous sources say the name is
