It was the slightest missing, a constant and distinct preference for the pleasure of his company, abnormal in her to resent time spent alone, and it stemmed from her impatience with the ever unfamiliar sharp edges of this streamlined house. Squinting through the window, she could see Isobel Eastwood toiling past the house on the way to her own, laden with carriers. Oh, goody, I wonder what she's bought today. Where on earth do they put everything she carries into that house? Ducking below the windowsill, Helen avoided the necessity of a wave, which was the closest she and Mrs Eastwood ever came to communication.
Helen and Bailey had become gleeful gossips, discreet but avid in their curiosity about other people's lives. They were both unused to visible neighbours and found them the fascinating source for hours of comfortable speculation, their own amazement and observation never diminished. Now he had been called to a dead body, he had said on the phone, no self-importance in the announcement, just a statement of fact; he would be away until late, possibly all night, but at least they could spice the usual enjoyable daily accounts with something more substantial to discuss. In the knowledge of that, and the sudden lack of necessity to clear the kitchen now rather than later, Helen abandoned the attempt, gave herself a generous measure of gin, and purred with contentment in the first sip.
Bet they're all pouring drinks, she thought, looking beyond the window at her vista of new brick.
It was an equally sound bet that none of them would invite her to share. The inhabitants of Invaders Court, Branston, were empire builders rather than sharers, and besides, their vague knowledge of the unmarried status and respective professions of Geoffrey Bailey and Helen West did not encourage them to warmth. 'What do you do, Mrs Bailey? I suppose we call you Mrs Bailey?'
`No,' Helen had said cheerfully, 'you call me Helen West. I live with Geoffrey, but we are not married. And I'm a solicitor. No, I don't do conveyancing; I'm a prosecutor. No, we don't have any children, and no, this is not our house, we've borrowed it.'
Oh. And what does Mr Bailey do?' they persisted, beaming in benign, slightly wavering curiosity.
`He's a detective chief superintendent. In the police.' She could never keep a note of defensive pride out of her voice when describing Bailey, not for his rank, just because he was Bailey and she could never cease to honour him, in public at least, but she had watched the faces fall.
Mental head count of delinquent children, out-of-date road tax, and unpaid parking fines, end of conversation. 'Well, my husband works in the city.'
Helen's understanding of this reserve was complete. She knew it to be as natural as breathing, not indicative of malice or stupidity, simply a withdrawal capable of reversion if their other interests had been more communal. As the woman of the piece, like all the other women, it was her role to make the social effort, but chatter died on her like the end of sudden rain. She did not despise domestic bliss, but, having ploughed the furrow of thoroughly professional life for a dozen years, remained puzzled why anyone with choice settled to anything else.
There was so little to discuss: she and Geoffrey had no children, no company car and, although the details of their identical houses would be enough to fill conversational hours, she did not, as they did, love or treasure her home. It was rented for twelve months, half of them gone. She would never have bought it in a million years and would never have filled it with these fat, hard, uncomfortable, but ludicrously expensive things chosen by her young and absent landlords who were pursuing the upward path of their success on foreign territory.
Helen did not feel like a successful woman, didn't expect she ever would, wondered what it was like. Her own environment, lost for this experimental year, reflected only what she liked, rich colours, plentiful pictures, and an element of disorder. In Helen's mansion, it would take at least a year to mend a broken object; here, anything flawed would have hit the reject heap and been replaced within hours. The pale harmonies of the walls, grey carpets, cream sofa, jarred on her, also the lack of anything middle-aged, let alone old.
She sat on the offending sofa and thought that if it had been taken out of context, it would have been quite nice. The same sort of thin description would apply to Branston itself.
A village that was not quite a village, one of a series of villages, this one in particular was caught in a time warp of house prices because of the triangle of motorways and trunk roads that had somehow isolated it with a few miles of protected woodland.
But it was still not a real village, because the heart went out of it every day when three-quarters of its occupants remembered it was only an outpost and pushed themselves into taxis and trains. Well, thought Helen, cheerful at the alternative prospect, at least I don't do that. I get in my clapped-out car, drive it to the office as rarely as possible, then to magistrates' courts in Cheshunt and Epping where I prosecute the daily list of thieves, burglars, and even, occasionally, poachers, all at snail's speed to suit the magistrates, saying everything twice.
It was in that respect that the contrast was most marked – the pace of it, the deliberation behind decision, the endless repetition of facts. What would have been allowed half an hour in front of a tetchy stipendiary magistrate in Bow Street or Tower Bridge took half a day here, with somewhat dissimilar results. Here they were swifter in sending the offenders to prison, heavier on fines, and inclined to hang them for careless driving, but she had to confess that law and order prevailed after a fashion, not unjust, not innovative either.
Less bark, slower bite, more civilized.
Nor did she mind the subtle demotion that her move from central London had involved. Helen was not designed to succeed on the crude hierarchical ladder of the Crown Prosecution Service, or in any branch of the uncivil service, had never progressed far in grade, owing to an embarrassing frankness in interviews and a deliberate ignorance of whom she should please and flatter. Securing further promotion was a Machiavellian exercise demanding paroxysms of sycophancy for which she had no stomach.
Bailey's similar indifference had propelled him through the ranks of the police like a secret missile, but Helen's had kept her still and, in the old office, rewarded in a way she had preferred. She had skills beyond those of her superiors. They recognized and exploited her skills by a division of work that took advantage of them, leaving Helen with a host of difficult and dangerous cases.
Here in the outback, her sheer competence, the experience of murder, mayhem, drugs, and fraud, unnerved her employers more than slightly and they tried to bar her from the mainstream as far as possible. It was Cheshunt, Epping, and the juvenile court for Miss West.
Keep her out of the office; she knows too much. Helen smiled and defeated them further by genuinely not minding. There was a purpose to this beyond career, after all: she had only wanted to stay alive and to see if she and Geoffrey Bailey could make a success of living together. Nothing was more important, nothing more absorbing than that. If some of her remained unused material, it would have to wait.
Oh, damn.' For the second time in an hour she had gone to the wrong cupboard.
Freudian slip, the product of undiscussed homesickness, making her behave as if she was in her own home. Which she wished she was, even with all the attendant arguments – your place or mine? – that had bedevilled the last year. What an unlikely pair of lovers they were, policeman and lawyer, too scared, the pair of them, too suspicious, and far too independent to begin to decide which house should be home, miserable apart, tricky together.
She had thought of abandoning it, could not contemplate that; thought of marriage, could not contemplate that, either. A marriage of true minds, all right, but pulling in opposite directions. Then Bailey was moved to this parish; this very house fell vacant for rent. They would try it for a year, borrowed premises, borrowed time, no commitments. Helen as housewife, the idea made her choke, but there was a nice novelty to it. So far so good in this isolation, though it would have been better if he liked it less. Bailey, after all, hailed from the East End; he might have the same aspirations for a better life. Helen hailed from nowhere and believed in very little.
`We may as well go home,' said Superintendent Bailey. 'If we search in the dark we may ruin the chances. The doc will be here shortly after five a.m. So shall I.'
I've left Smith and Peters here to peg out the area. All that.' And shoot foxes,' Bailey added, smiling.
`With what, sir? It's the ghosts worry them.' The inspector grinned, comfortable with Bailey as few were, grateful for the pragmatism that was going to allow some of them to sleep instead of messing around all night, talking about it until daylight revealed anything they would miss if they moved now.
`Seal off the footpath and the carpark, will you?'
Will do, sir. Bowles will do that. Funny thing is, it was only opened again yesterday.
Been resurfaced, out of action for weeks. They've all been taking their cars elsewhere.'
`Good. More chance we'll find traces of whoever put that body in there.'
