“I’m not asking for dodgy favours. Just get the pressure taken off.
Give me a breathing space.”
“How?”
“You could start by persuading the Inspector to back off.”
“And that’s not dodgy?” His mouth turned down.
“Anyway, I’ve tried. He’s not playing. He’s new, he’s honest, and he doesn’t like anyone who bends the rules, particularly policemen.” He tapped ash on the floor.
“You should never have left the Force, Hal. I did warn you. It’s very lonely outside.”
Hal rubbed his unshaven face.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if my erstwhile colleagues didn’t keep treating me like a criminal.”
Wyatt stared at the remains of the steak on Hal’s plate. He felt very queasy.
“Well, if it comes to that, you shouldn’t have been so damn careless, then they wouldn’t have to.”
Hal’s eyes narrowed unpleasantly.
“One of these days you’re going to wish you hadn’t said that.”
With a shrug, Wyatt ground his cigarette against his shoe and tossed the butt into the sink.
“Can’t see it, old son. I’ve been shitting my backside off ever since the Inspector rumbled you.
It’s made me ill, it really has.” He pushed back his chair and stood up.
“Why the hell did you have to cut corners instead of doing it by the book the way you were supposed to?”
Hal nodded towards the door.
“Out,” he said, ‘before I rip your two-faced head off.”
“What about that check you wanted me to run?”
Hal fished in his pocket and removed a piece of paper.
“That’s her name and address. See if there’s anything on her.”
“Like what?”
Hal shrugged.
“Anything that will give me a lever. This book she’s writing is too well timed.” He frowned.
“And I don’t believe in coincidence.”
One of the few advantages of being fat was that it was easier to hide things. Another bulge here or there passed unnoticed and the soft cavity between Olive’s breasts could accommodate itself to almost anything. In any case, she had noticed very early on that the officers preferred not to search her too diligently on the rare occasions when they thought it necessary. She had assumed at first that they were frightened of her, but she soon came to recognise that it was her fatness that inhibited them.
Politically correct thinking within the prison service meant that while they were free to say what they liked about her behind her back they had to guard their tongues in her presence and treat her with a modicum of respect. Thus the helpful legacy of her anguished tears during strip-searches at the beginning, when her huge, repulsive body shook with distress, was a reluctance on the part of the screws now to do anything more than a perfunctory running of their hands down the sides of her shift.
But she had problems. Her small family of wax figures, absurdly cheerful in their painted cottonwool wigs and strips of dark material which she had wound around them like miniature suits, kept softening against the warmth of her skin and losing their shape. With infinite patience, she set her awkward fingers to re moulding them, first removing the pins which skewered the wigs to each of the heads. She wondered idly if the one of Roz’s husband looked anything like him.
“What a ghastly place this is,” said Iris, gazing critically about the bleak grey walls of Roz’s flat from her place on the vinyl sofa.
“Haven’t you ever felt the urge to liven it up a bit?”
“No. I’m just passing through. It’s a waiting room.”
“You’ve been here twelve months. I can’t think why you don’t use the money from the divorce and buy yourself a house.”
Roz rested her head against the back of her chair.
“I like waiting rooms. You can be idle in them without feeling guilty.
There’s nothing to do except wait.”
Thoughtfully, Iris put a cigarette between her brilliant red lips.
“What are you waiting for?”
“I don’t know.”
She flicked a lighter to the tip of her cigarette while her penetrating eye-lined gaze fixed uncomfortably on Roz.
“One thing does puzzle me,” she said.
