get what they want anyway.'
'You can't do anything like that here. They're illegal right throughout the country.'
'You could go across to France, couldn't you?'
'Some people do.'
'Then why don't you?'
Nick said, testily, 'Look, I'm not interested in guns! lt would never occur to me to do that.'
'OK, calm down. I'm sorry.' She glanced around the room, which at this early hour of the evening was still empty. An early hour, but she had already drunk three large bourbons. She was bored with being in Bulverton, and in spite of all the work she had done she was beginning to feel she was wasting her time. 'I'm just making conversation.'
'Yes.' He picked up two empty beercrates. 'I have to bring some stuff up from the cellar.
Excuse me.'
He left the bar. She wished she had ordered another drink before he went, because her glass was nearly empty. She had come down to the bar this evening with only one thought in mind: to get wiped out as fast as she could, then fall into bed.
She was, though, still sober enough to realize how she must be sounding, and didn't like it.
What on earth had possessed her to start in on him about guns? She clenched her left fist, digging the nails into the palm of her hand. All her life she'd been saying the wrong thing; all her life she had been resolving to be more careful with what she said. Here, of all places! Are you into guns, Nick? Oh yeah, ever since that maniac blew away my parents, and everyone else. Bigmouth American's in town. She felt her neck and face prickling with embarrassment, and she sat rigid, praying that Nick wouldn't return until she was back in control of herself She need not have worried. For whatever reason, he was staying down in the cellar longer than she expected, so she had plenty of time to sweat away her mortification.
She remembered a control technique she had sometimes used: make a list in your mind, straighten your thoughts.
What had she done in the town so far? Local newspaper accounts: done. National newspapers: some done, but the
a lot more on hand, but she found that most of it had already been shown on CNN and the other US networks.
Witnesses. Ellie Ripon's vagueness about where Steve could be found was explained: he was in Lewes Prison, remanded in custody on a charge of burglary. His lawyer had told Teresa she was hopeful she could get him out on bail when he was taken back to the magistrates the following week. Teresa hoped to interview him then. Her second attempt to talk to Ellie Ripon had been as unsuccessful as the first. She had interviewed Darren Naismith, Mark Edling and Keith Wilson; Grove had been drinking with them before the shooting began. Margaret Lee, the cashier at the Texaco filling station, would not agree to be interviewed, but Teresa had on video a long interview the young woman had given last year to a TV reporter, so that didn't matter too much. Tom and jennie Mercer, the parents of the grievously injured young girl Shelly, had agreed to meet her the following day. She had located and interviewed about a dozen eyewitnesses of the shootings; again, many of them had been reluctant to speak, but Teresa had managed to piece together a fairly good descriptive account of what had happened in the streets. She was still trying to locate Jamie Connors, the little boy who had been trapped in his parents' damaged car, and had watched the last stages of Grove's spree in Eastbourne Road.
Locale: Teresa had covered all the ground of Grove's tragic adventure, from the seafront area of the town to the picnic site in the woods near Ninfield, to the Texaco filling station, and back through the streets of Bulverton itself She had identified and timed every known incident.
There were anomalies she had yet to resolve: there was an unexplained gap in the timing, and an apparent overlap, but she knew that more investigation would probably resolve these.
Amy walked through the bar on some errand or other,
and gave Teresa a nod and a smile. It was the signal of being busy, or at least not wanting to be delayed. As Amy was about to pass out of sight Teresa called after her.
'Amy, may 1 have another drink?'
Without a word the other woman returned, went behind the counter and mixed her a bourbon highball.
'Will you be having a meal with us this evening?' Amy said.
'I haven't decided yet,' Teresa replied, swirling the glass between her fingers, and reflecting that in the Bureau some of the drinking men would say she was already halfway through the main course.
Amy wrote down the price of the drink on Teresa's account, then without saying anything continued with what she had been doing.
Teresa, left alone again, wondered what she had done to offend Amy. They both seemed to be avoiding her. She felt more and more like the loudmouth American, intruding, clumping around insensitively, offending everyone she spoke to. Maybe it was this kind of thing, the undercurrents of unsaid Britishness, that had made her leave England in the first place? No, it wasn't that. She was just a kid then. Wouldn't have known. She drank the whiskey, stopped when she was about halfway down the glass, and put it on the counter in front of her.
She wished she hadn't started drinking so early in the evening. She wished more customers would come into the bar. She wished she was somewhere else.
With the car fights slipping past the frosted panes in glistening blurs, the streaks of rain on the plain glass above highlighted by the streetlamps, and the bright central room light overhead, virtually unshaded, the bar felt bleak and lonely. Thinking that music might change things, she walked across to the jukebox and dropped in a coin, but nothing happened when she tried to make selections. She remembered Nick doing something to disable the instrument when he closed the bar at night, but when she peered behind the machine she could see no obvious switch.
The empty, silent bar was oppressing her, confusing her. She knew she had already drunk too much,
