Delaney put his hand on Wendy’s arm as she opened the door. ‘Are you really doing okay, Wendy?’
She smiled, and his heart fluttered again as he could see his dead wife’s lovely smile echoed in it. ‘I’m mending, Jack. It’s what we have to do, isn’t it?’
Delaney nodded, leaned in to kiss her on the cheek and hugged her – carefully though, as if she were made of tissue paper. ‘Come and see us soon.’
Delaney closed the door and walked up the steps back into the kitchen. He looked at his watch and then went into the lounge. A fire was roaring in the clearview log-burner that Kate had insisted he buy, the dancing flames clearly visible through the glass screen, but the house still felt colder somehow, much colder now that his daughter and Wendy had left.
He pulled out his mobile phone, flipped it in his hand a few times and then sighed and punched in some numbers. After a few rings the familiar smoky voice answered.
‘Speak to me.’
‘Hi. It’s Jack.’
‘Hey, cowboy, what can I do for you?’
Delaney looked at his watch again. ‘Thought it might be time for another go.’
‘You going to pay me this time?’
Delaney smiled. ‘I’m certain sure we can come to some sort of arrangement.’
‘When do you want it?’
‘Right now.’
‘You better get your riding boots on and saddle up, then, cowboy.’
‘Oh, and one last thing.’
‘What’s that?’
Delaney’s voice was suddenly all business. ‘You don’t tell anybody about our little arrangement.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I mean it, Stella, nobody! None of your friends, none of your colleagues.’
‘You got it, Jack.’
‘Good. I’ll see you in twenty.’
He closed the phone and looked at the fire, the reflection of the flames dancing in his eyes like tiny elementals.
*
Roger Yates was a man accustomed to getting his own way. Since childhood he had lived a privileged life and whereas others might have felt some guilt in being born with a silver spoon in their mouths, the idea never even once crossed his mind, certainly not at boarding school and not even at university when he’d been forced to rub shoulders with people from all manner of backgrounds. He wasn’t a snob, though – he didn’t look down on poorer people, just didn’t allow their worries to trouble him. In fact, he had shagged quite a lot of working-class women at university. He had found their vulgarity of expression in times of intimacy extremely arousing, had encouraged it, in fact, directing their outbursts like Mike Leigh would direct an improvisation in one of his working-class films that his wife seemed to enjoy so much, although he saw little point in them himself. If you wanted to look at drab lives, pop down the laundromat or listen to the inane conversation between people on a London bus. So Roger Yates didn’t bother with the poor people. There are those who have and those who have not. That is a simple fact of life.
Or it was.
Roger was pacing in the long hall, gripping his mobile phone hard in his right hand as he held it to his ear. Whisky sloshing in a glass held in his left. A flush was rising in his face and he loosened his collar. ‘Everything is in hand, trust me on that,’ he said, as stridently as he could manage. ‘And I’ll take care of him as well, believe me. He won’t be a problem for much longer.’ He loosened his collar a little more, then took a swallow from his glass. ‘Like I said, there really is no cause for concern.’
He started as the door opened and Siobhan burst into the hallway, singing.
‘One two three, my granny caught a flea, she roasted it and toasted it and had it for her tea.’
‘Can you keep the bloody noise down!’ Yates shouted to Wendy as she followed her niece into the house.
‘Yeah, all right, Alex Ferguson, wind your neck in,’ Wendy snapped back, far from impressed.
‘I’m on the telephone here – it’s business!’
‘Go on upstairs; I’ll be up in a minute,’ Wendy said to Siobhan, who pulled a guilty little grin and scampered up the stairs, singing again quietly when she reached the last step. Wendy took off her coat and hung it on the coat- stand that stood by the large Victorian door of their hallway. She looked across, concerned, at her husband as he finished his call.
‘Like I say, it’s all in hand, you have my word on it.’ He nodded. ‘Okay, goodbye.’ And he hung up.
‘What’s up, Roger? This isn’t like you.’
Roger spun round and glared at her, holding his glass of Scotch forward.
‘You want to know what’s wrong? You’re what’s wrong, Wendy! You and that niece of yours upstairs, and particularly that black bog Irish brother-in-law of yours! That’s what’s wrong!’
‘Roger, what are you talking about?’ Wendy asked, perplexed and not a little worried for him.
