“And how do I find Wenceslas Street?”
“Well, now’ he rubbed his jaw thoughtfully ‘by far the easiest way is to hang around for half an hour till the end of my shift. I’ll take you.”
She laughed.
“And what would your girlfriend say to that?”
“A ruddy mouthful. She’s got a tongue like a chain-saw.” He winked.
“I won’t tell her if you won’t.”
“Sorry, sunshine. I’m shackled to a husband who hates policemen only marginally less than he hates toy-boys.” Lies were always easier.
He grinned.
“Turn left out of the station and Wenceslas Street is about a mile down on the left. There’s an empty shop on the corner. The Sergeant’s restaurant is bang next door to it. It’s called the Poacher.” He tapped his pencil on the desk.
“Are you planning to eat there?”
“No,” she said, ‘it’s purely business. I don’t intend to hang around.”
He nodded approval.
“Wise woman. The Sergeant’s not much of a cook. He’d have done better to stick with policing.”
She had to pass the restaurant to reach the London road. Rather reluctantly she pulled into its abandoned car park and climbed out of the car. She was tired, she hadn’t planned on talking to Hawksley that day, and the young constable’s lighthearted flirtation depressed her because it had left her cold.
The Poacher was an attractive red-brick building, set back from the road with the car park in front. Leaded bay windows curved out on either side of a solid oak door and wist aria heavy with buds, grew in profusion across the whole facade. Like St. Angela’s Convent it was at odds with its surroundings.
The shops on either side, both apparently empty, their windows a repository for advertising stickers, complemented each other in cheap post-war pragmatism but did nothing for the old faded beauty in their midst. Worse, a thoughtless council had allowed a previous owner to erect a two-storey extension behind the red-brick frontage, and it gboomed above the restaurant’s tiled roof in dirty pebble-dashed concrete. An attempt had been made to divert the wist aria across the roof but, starved of sunlight by the jutting property to the right, the probing tendrils showed little enthusiasm for reaching up to veil the dreary elevation.
Roz pushed open the door and went inside. The place was dark and deserted. Empty tables in an empty room, she thought despondently.
Like her.
Like her life. She was on the point of calling out, but thought better of it. It was all so peaceful and she was in no hurry. She tiptoed across the floor and took a stool at a bar in the corner. A smell of cooking lingered on the air, garlicky, tempting, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten all day. She waited a long time, unseen and unheard, a trespasser upon another’s silence. She thought about leaving, unobtrusively, as she had come, but it was strangely restful and her head drooped against her hand. Depression, an all too constant companion, folded its arms around her again, and turned her mind, as it often did, to death. She would do it one day. Sleeping pills or the car. The car, always the car. Alone, at night, in the rain. So easy just to turn the wheel and find a peaceful oblivion. It would be justice of a sort. Her head hurt where the hate swelled and throbbed inside it. God, what a mess she had become. If only someone could lance her destructive anger and let the poison go. Was Iris right?
Should she see a psychiatrist? Without warning, the terrible unhappiness burst like a flood inside her, threatening to spill out in tears.
“Oh, shit” she muttered furiously, dashing at her eyes with the palms of her hands. She scrabbled in her bag for her car keys.
“Shit! Shit! And more bloody shit! Where the hell are you?”
A slight movement caught her attention and she lifted her head abruptly. A shadowy stranger leant against the back counter, quietly polishing a glass and watching her.
She blushed furiously and looked away.
“How long have you been there?” she demanded angrily.
“Long enough.”
She retrieved her keys from the inside of her diary and glared at him briefly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged.
“Long enough.”
“Yes, well, you’re obviously not open yet, so I’ll be on my way.” She pushed herself off the stool.
“Suit yourself,” he said with supreme indifference.
“I was just about to have a glass of wine. You can go or you can join me.
I’m easy either way.” He turned his back on her and uncorked a bottle.
The colour receded from her cheeks.
“Are you Sergeant Hawksley?”
He lifted the cork to his nose and sniffed it appreciatively.
