“Would it bother you if I were?”
“What? Gay?”
“Mmm.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I was tired. I hadn’t thought out my arguments. Or my feelings. “I don’t know. It just wouldn’t,” was the best I could manage.
The button came off in her fingers and she gave a tiny snort of dismay. “They don’t make them like they used to,” I said.
“It’s been loose all night,” she replied.
“You could’ve had that coffee, and I could’ve sewn it back on for you.”
The smile came back. “Role reversal,” she said. “I’m all in favour of that.”
“They teach you to sew buttons on in the SAS,” I told her.
“Were you in the SAS?”
“Mmm. Under twelve’s branch. They threw me out because I wouldn’t wear the oblong sunglasses.”
She laughed, just a little, and called me a fool. And Charlie. “You are a fool, Charlie” she said, in the nicest possible way.
“Thank you for a pleasant evening, ma’am,” I said, opening the door. “Don’t be late, in the morning.”
“What time do you want picking up?” she asked.
“God!” I exclaimed, pulling the door closed again. “My car’s still outside the nick, isn’t it. Um, in that case, whenever.”
“About twenty to eight?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. If I can get up. I think I’m slightly pissed.”
I opened the door just enough for the interior light to come on. Annette said: “For the record, yes, he is a good bloke.”
“Your friend in York?”
“Mmm.”
“Does he deserve you?”
“I think so. He’s a schoolteacher, and has two daughters, seven and nine.”
“Divorced?”
“Widower.”
“Rich?”
“He’s a schoolteacher.”
“Right,” I said. “Right.” I felt hollow inside. A schoolteacher I could deal with. I’d ask the local boys to waste him and arrange for the coastguard to drop his weighted body off the edge of the continental shelf. Not the girls, though. I couldn’t be that much of a bastard.
“Annette…” I began.
“Mmm.”
“Would you be willing to…you know…make allowances for my intoxicated state if I…sort of…transgressed, type of thing?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied, warily. “What do you have in mind?”
“Um, well, I was just wondering, er, if there was any chance of, um, a goodnight kiss?”
She leaned over and gave me a loud peck on the cheek, completely catching me off guard. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but it was a start. “There,” she said.
“Thank you,” I told her, pushing the door wide.
“Charlie…”
I twisted back to face her. “Mmm.”
“You should get pissed more often.”
Friday morning I put eggs, bacon and tomatoes from the fridge out on the worktop, together with corn flakes, bread, marmalade, a tub of Thank Christ It’s Not Butter, the frying pan and the toaster. It was my attempt at humour, but Annette waited in the car for me. I finished my coffee and went out.
“Another day, another collar,” I said, winding myself into the Fiat’s passenger seat. Italian cars make no concessions towards the different body shapes of their European neighbours. Short legs and long arms — take it or leave it. “Thank you, Ms Brown. The office, please.”
But there were no collars to feel, that day. Some of the team were out looking at burglary scenes, others, me included, caught up with paperwork and reading. Dave went out for sandwiches at lunchtime, and brought me hot pork in an oven bottom cake, with stuffing. They don’t do them like that in M amp; S. And at a fraction of their price.
In the afternoon the remains of Jamie Walker, loosely arranged in some sort of order, were buried with full Christian pomp. His mother prostrated herself on the coffin, for the Gazette’s photographer, then repeated the scene, with sound effects, when local TV arrived. Practice makes perfect. He was a good son, she told them: everybody loved him and his mischievous ways. This wouldn’t have happened if the police had been more firm with him, and she was considering taking legal action against them. Nobody from the job went to the funeral, under orders, but we all caught it on TV later that evening.
Last phone call before I left work was from Bob, the Somerset DS. “We’ve traced Michelle Webster,” he told me. “She married and changed her name, but she’s now divorced and has reverted back to her maiden name.”
You can’t revert forward, I thought. “Have you spoken to her?” I asked.
“No, Mr Priest. She’s living in Blackpool, would you believe. Our chief super’s making noises about expenses and thinks there’s no need for us to see her ourselves. He said to let someone local interview her. He wants to wait until after the inquests then issue a statement saying that we are not looking for anybody else, and that would be the Caroline Poole case cleared up.”
“Which would please the relatives, I suppose.”
“That’s what he said.”
“How would you feel if someone from here nipped across and had a word with Michelle?”
“No problem, Mr Priest. That’s partly why I’m ringing you. You’re a couple of hundred miles nearer to her than we are.”
“Call me Charlie, Bob. Everybody else does.”
“Oh, right.”
“Give me the address. I’ll try to send someone next week, and let you know the outcome.”
“We’d appreciate that, Charlie. Thanks for your help.”
“My pleasure.”
And it would be, too. Blackpool might be the last resort, but a day there with Annette sounded a good way of adding the finishing touches to the Latham case. I straightened my blotter, washed my mug and went home.
Jamie’s funeral, on TV, made me angry. “You should get pissed more often,” Annette had told me. No way. I’d staggered down that road a long time ago, and didn’t like the scenery. My Sony rasta-blaster holds three CDs. I chose carefully, then carried it into the garage where the unfinished painting leaned against the wall. I laid the tubes of colour out in the same order I always use and screwed the caps off. Yellow ochre, to start with, I decided. I squeezed a six-inch worm of it onto the palette and dipped a number twelve filbert into the glistening pigment.
The knock on the garage door came about halfway through the second playing of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. The neighbour was standing there with his little dog. I stared at him, brush in one hand, palette knife in the other.
“Um, er, your radio’s on a bit loud, Mr Priest, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
It was. That’s how you listen to Mahler. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know you could hear it outside.”
“Well you can, and it’s keeping Elsie awake.”
“I really am sorry,” I repeated, because I was. I like to consider myself the invisible neighbour. “I was painting. What time is it”
