‘Like that, is it?’ Harry chuckled. ‘And when were you thinking of?’
‘Sooner the better,’ Rob said hopefully.
After arranging to meet up with Harry later that evening, Rob went back to the living room.
‘Everything all right?’ Suzie asked, looking up at him with concern in her eyes. ‘It wasn’t that crazy bitch again, was it?’
‘No, it was a bloke about a job,’ Rob grinned. ‘I didn’t tell you this morning, ’cos I didn’t want to get your hopes up, but I applied for something while you were out – when you asked if I’d been using the laptop – and they want me to go for an interview.’
‘That’s great.’ Suzie smiled. ‘When?’
‘Six.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yep, so I’d best start getting ready,’ Rob said, glancing at the clock. ‘Fingers crossed, eh?’
‘You don’t need luck, you’re bound to get it,’ Suzie said. ‘Where’s the interview being held?’
‘Wythenshawe,’ Rob lied. ‘It’s a bit of a trek, and I’ll have to switch buses a few times so I might be back late. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ Suzie said without hesitation. ‘I know how important this is for you after losing out on the rig thing.’
‘It’s important for us,’ Rob corrected her, planting a kiss on her lips. ‘’Cos if I get this we’ll be quids in, and you can forget about the agency and let me look after you for a change.’
He winked at her before leaving the room and jogging up the stairs, not noticing the flicker of a frown that crossed her brow as she watched him go. He knew she thought of herself as an independent woman, but now they were back together, he was fucked if he was letting her take her clothes off in front of another man – or woman – again.
36
Rob hadn’t been to Oldham in years, and he remembered why he’d been in no rush to return when the bus trundled past row after row of boarded-up shops and scruffy houses at six that evening. Although it was within ten miles of Manchester, the atmosphere was so alien to him it might as well have been another planet. And the feeling of uneasiness increased the closer he got to his destination, so that by the time the bus driver told him he’d reached his stop, he was beginning to regret not asking Harry to meet up on his turf instead.
Reminding himself that he’d done it this way so that he could kill two birds with one stone and try to make contact with the killer while he was up here – providing Harry knew who it was – he squinted when he stepped off the bus and the wind hurled a swirling cloud of dust into his eyes. He was standing at the end of a long narrow road of two-up two-down terraced houses, at the far end of which he could just about make out the dully lit sign of the Dog and Partridge pub where Harry had asked to meet. A squat single-storey building, it sat alone in the centre of its deserted car park, and dark wasteland stretched out into the distance behind it.
Looking up when he heard the dull thwack of a football hitting concrete, Rob picked out the shadowy figures of several small boys playing footie at the end of the road. The sky was already dark enough to make them look like they’d stepped straight out of a Lowry painting, and he wondered if he’d made a mistake choosing the designer leather jacket and trainers he was wearing. He had bought them off a junkie shoplifter for fifteen quid apiece, but they were probably worth more than any of the tatty cars that were parked along the road, and it showed. Still, he could hardly go and get changed now, so he lowered his head in an effort to make himself inconspicuous as he set off along the road.
As he neared the boys, he instinctively ducked when he saw the football flying towards his head out of the corner of his eye.
‘What d’ya do that for, dickhead?’ one of the boys spat when it glanced off his shoulder and smashed into the door of a house. ‘Me dad’ll kick your fuckin’ ’ead in if you’ve woke ’im.’
Rob felt like belting the lippy fucker, but he was out of his territory, so he decided it would be wiser to keep his mouth shut and walk on. Jaw clenching when the ball whizzed past his head again, followed by raucous laughter from the boys, he strode across the road and pushed through the pub’s paint-peeled door.
The strong scent of weed smacked him in the face, and he tried not to breathe too deeply as he looked around the pub’s dingy interior. Three burly, hard-faced white men who were propping up the bar turned their heads and eyed him with suspicion, as did the group of black lads who were openly flouting the smoking ban by sucking on fat spliffs at the pool table in the far corner. Two women, who looked to be in their fifties but obviously thought they looked much younger in their sparkly low-cut tops and plastered-on make-up, had been cackling loudly at a table in the centre of the room, but they both went quiet and stared at him.
Again regretting his decision to insist on meeting Harry on his turf, Rob was about to skulk away when he heard the growl of a high-powered motor pulling into the car park behind him. Stepping aside so the door wouldn’t smack him in the back when he heard two sets of footsteps approaching, he was relieved when he saw that it was Harry and a young woman.
Harry rasped a greeting to the other customers, and Rob, noting the respectful way they all acknowledged him, guessed that he had as much clout on the outside as he’d seemed to have in the Strange, where no one, not even the
