myself; instead, I took my phone from my pocket and pressed the ‘menu’ key. I found Mia’s number on the illuminated keyboard and called her. ‘Hi,’ she murmured, and at once I felt warmer. ‘Twenty to eleven. The light’s still on and I’m still awake. Are you close?’
‘I’m the best part of two hours away.’
‘But are you coming?’
I considered my options. Go home to an empty house. Crash out in the office. Call Alison and probably cry on her shoulder, since she would understand why. Go to Mira’s starving, exhausted and shell-shocked, and let her see me at my worst. Why the hell not? I decided. As good a way to start as any.
Martin made good time, but even at that, it was almost twelve thirty by the time I arrived, after I’d picked up the Discovery from Fettes. The gate in the garden wall creaked, a curtain twitched, and before I could ring the bell, the door opened and she pulled me inside by the lapels of my jacket. She closed it again, with her foot, put her arms around my neck and kissed me. Fortunately, I’d refuelled on Lucozade and sandwiches from a filling station just short of Belford, and swallowed an entire box of Tic Tacs afterwards, otherwise God knows how I’d have tasted.
She looked up at me as we broke off. ‘Poor man,’ she murmured. ‘Have you had a rough night?’
I hugged her again and let myself relax against her body, feeling hours of tension leave me, and realising that she was wearing a silk robe and nothing else. ‘The strangest of the strange,’ I murmured. ‘The queerest of the queer.’
‘Hey, I played that this afternoon,’ she whispered. I knew that; I’d heard her. ‘Remember how it ends? “You can touch me if you want.” Well, do you?’
I let her lead me into her bedroom. It was lit by at least a dozen candles. The silk whispered as it fell to the floor, and her bare skin seemed to shimmer in the flickering light as she slipped my jacket from my shoulders. When I was naked too, she stood back and appraised my body, running her fingers over my pectorals, my abdominals, and then down. ‘How old are you?’ she asked.
‘Thirty-six, for a few weeks more.’
‘You’re in pretty good shape,’ she conceded, ‘for an old guy… although that shape is changing by the second.’
She had found the condoms in my jacket. I let her put one on me, and then I let her do everything else too, lying on my back, looking up at her as she straddled me and moved, very, very slowly, smiling, until she stopped smiling and began to moan, a sound that grew in intensity until it became a howl of pure pleasure, tailing off and ending in a long soft sigh.
‘Ooooh,’ she whispered in my ear as she stretched her body out along the length of mine. ‘It’s been a while, Bob, since I’ve been with someone properly; it’s been a while.’
I couldn’t say the same, so I said nothing. Instead, I rolled over, easing her on to her side.
‘Is that better?’ she murmured, as I disposed of the evidence. ‘I could see the pain in your eyes when you came in. Was it bad where you were?’
‘Mmm,’ I admitted. ‘I went down there to a double homicide; it turned into three, and the last one… fuck! You know, I’ve spent the last five days looking at dead people. Even in the job I do, that’s a hell of a lot.’ And then I recalled something that had gone out of my mind entirely, a highly relevant fact. ‘But if you want the good news,’ I continued, ‘the three tonight were the ones who killed your brother.’
As soon as I’d spoken, it was as if the good imp had jumped on to my shoulder and said, ‘What the hell did you tell her that for? You don’t mix personal and professional, Skinner.’ But the bad imp didn’t hang about; he was straight in there, shoving him off.
She sat up, her eyes wide. ‘Really?’ she exclaimed. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh yes, I’m certain. Two did it, the third was involved.’
She blinked, and shook her head as if she was trying to clear it. ‘That’s incredible,’ she gasped. ‘So… so… so who killed them?’
‘Don’t ask me that, love.’
‘But you must have an idea. Please, Bob.’
I sighed. The waters were lapping around my chin and rising. ‘Your mother’s fancy man has to be a possibility, although I don’t believe that. If not him, then unless they were involved in something else, something on Tyneside that the cops there know nothing about, then it has to be the person who hired them. But we do not have one clue who that is, and the trail is freezing cold.’
‘It was probably my mum,’ she whispered.
That was a possibility that had crossed my mind. I’d set it aside. Even if I was wrong and Bella Watson did have the stuff to take out two big thugs, alone and unaided, she’d been looked after by Lennie Plenderleith over the weekend, and as far as I knew she still was. Plus she wouldn’t have had the faintest idea of where to find them.. . any more than would Manson, I supposed.
‘Enough,’ I said. ‘Forget about that, Mia. It’s my other life and it doesn’t belong here. By the way, Alex says thanks for the CD. You’re right; those girls will do well for themselves, until the next craze comes along.’
She settled back down beside me, and kissed my forehead. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she murmured. ‘I haven’t had a man in my bed for a long time. I was beginning to think that there was some sort of curse hanging over me.’
I laughed. ‘You have to be kidding, don’t you? You’re one of the most… the most desirable… yes, that’s a more dignified word than shaggable… women that I’ve ever met.’
She grinned, wickedly. ‘Is that so?’
‘Absolutely,’ I murmured. ‘As a matter of fact…’
Some time later, I fell asleep.
Fourteen
Normally I will roll into wakefulness like waves on to a beach, steadily, in small advances, until my tide has risen and I’ve emerged from the last episode of whatever dream I’ve been having, from wherever I’d been during the night.
But not that morning. My sleep-bound adventure wasn’t drawn from my imagination: it was a full colour replay of the previous evening, beginning with the struggle to escape from Martin’s MX5 in the car park outside the cruddy hotel in South Shields, then taking me, step by step, back along the way, until I was standing once again in Winston Church’s kitchen, staring at his ravaged body on the table.
When his intestines started to move like snakes, that’s when I came to, in a hurry. Only I didn’t, not completely. I sat up, eyes wide open but taking nothing in. I was awake, but my consciousness remained in that bloodbath in Morpeth. I recall shouting something. Whatever it was, it made Mia reach up and take hold of my left arm. But I didn’t know it was Mia, did I? So I wrenched it free, violently, then slammed it across her chest and twisted round, forcing her down on to the bed and pinning her to it as my right hand gripped her throat.
‘No,’ she screamed. ‘Bob, no! It’s me, it’s Mia, it’s all right.’
That was enough… thanks, God, for that one… to bring me back. If it hadn’t been, I might have crushed her windpipe. I saw the fear in her eyes, and took my weight off her, then gathered her into me. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ I whispered. ‘Bad dream.’
She wriggled in my grasp, trying to free herself. I let her go and she pulled away from me, staring at me as if she’d woken up with the Blagdon Amateur Rapist. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, again. ‘I thought I was. ..’ I smiled, weakly, hoping to reassure her. ‘Call it a Stephen King moment, eh?’
‘Call it nothing!’ she shouted. ‘You scared me. I thought you were going to kill me. Is this normally what happens after you have a bad day at the office?’
‘No,’ I retorted, unreasonably irked, ‘but I don’t usually sleep with anyone, so maybe I wouldn’t know. Calm down. I had a nightmare, okay?’
She put her fingers to her throat; I could see the red marks that mine had left. ‘No,’ she moaned, on the verge of tears, ‘it’s not okay! This is not how I wanted it to be. I don’t need violence in my life! I’ve had enough of it. Men!’ The ferocity of her sudden scream took me by surprise. ‘You’re all the fucking same! All bastards. Go, will
