You're nearest as the crow flies, hence the visit. Simply a chance you might have seen something or know who she is. Which is more than we do.'
A body? Oh, my God,' said Bernadette, sinking her weight into a chair, suddenly breathless, patting hair and chest as if to see that she was still alive herself, shooting a venomous glance at Harold, accusing him of every foul deed, including this. 'Really dead?'
`Very dead. Since a few days. Beyond artificial respiration.'
Bernadette crossed herself rapidly, last remnant of expensive Catholic education long since forgotten in her language, remembered in her fear of hell. 'Poor soul,' she said. Bailey liked her for being shocked, and for expressing pity before irritation.
`But why,' asked Harold, always the calmer but sooner provoked to suspicion, 'why are you asking us? Why should we know anything about it?'
I don't imagine you do,' Bailey replied with casual patience and the smile that creased his face from forehead to chin. 'But you're the nearest building, and I simply thought if I gave you a rough description it might trigger something. She might have been a customer here. You might have seen a couple in here having an argument, oh, a week or ten days ago. Woman of about forty, dark hair, good figure. I'm only boxing in the dark. Maybe someone depressed.'
Oh,' said Bernadette, brightening, 'was it suicide, then?'
`No,' said Bailey, 'not unless she buried herself, too.'
There was a little silence, sun streaming through spectacularly dirty windows on to Harold's pale skin. An innocent silence, pregnant with the desire to help, or so Bailey sensed it, not the hesitation of guilty confusion, but not a productive interlude, either. Unless this victim had sprung into the communal mind immediately it would be useless to expect either party to this soured but engrossing union to remember what happened the day before, let alone the week. Unless blows had been struck or walls collapsed.
Harold giggled. 'Only dark-haired lady comes in here is your wife,' he said, adding out of malice, 'sometimes on her own, too.'
`Yes I know,' said Bailey, 'but she'd resent the description of fortyish, you know. She's got a few years to go before that. Almost as many as I have the other side.'
`Couples,' said Bernadette suddenly. 'Couples. We never have women on their own unless they sit quietly and read a paper like Mrs West. Think of couples, Harold, you git.
There's one or two of the definitely over-the-side kind, always looking at the door in case they're going to be spotted, sitting in a corner pawing each other. Disgusting – well, sweet, really, in a way. Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn't it, Harold darling? One respectable pair – I mean, not kids – used to come in here, woman about thirty-eight, but not for a while, or at least not regular. Maybe last week, maybe not, I don't know, why should I? Only remember her because I tried to chat once, asked her name, and she wouldn't say. 'What's it to you?' she said. 'Suit yourself,' I said, but I like asking names.
Maybe last week, maybe not.'
Bailey could imagine some clandestine mistress recoiling from the suggestion she supply her credentials, especially to a request barked like the cross-examination Bernadette used in lieu of small talk to customers, smiled at the thought. 'Anyone else?' he asked mildly.
The Featherstones sat at their long kitchen table amid the crumbs of breakfast, their faces a study of concentration.
Across the wooden floor of the bar came footsteps and a calm but carrying voice. 'Is your mother in?' A muttered response, heavier footsteps thudding upstairs, Amanda Scott pushing open the door with a pleasant hello on her face, fading as she encountered the glower from Bernadette, all at odds with the leer from Harold. `May I come in?' she said prettily. 'Your son said you were here.'
William, son and heir. Bailey had forgotten him; he had a sad naivete about children.
William, listening at the door, poor daft child, a lifetime of listening at doors. Bailey had a vision of the boy -Harold's pale skin on a vacant face, none of Harold's cunning or vapid good looks, clumsy and lonely. A door slammed in the distance; a thump upstairs as the boy threw himself on to his bed. Found out, careless, bored.
Bernadette spoke rapidly, words addressed to Bailey while keeping her eyes and savage expression fixed on the face of Amanda Scott as if she would like to throw a blanket over that immaculate presence. 'Don't speak to William, will you, Geoffrey? Not today if you don't bloody mind. He's in one of his moods.'
Bailey watched Amanda, sensed her waiting in vain for some sign of authoritative insistence from himself, replied calmly, 'No, of course not, if you would rather I didn't. May have to another time once we know more, perhaps not. When it suits him.'
Bernadette relaxed and recovered. 'Who the hell are you, then, Miss Squeaky-Clean?' she asked Amanda in a deliberate attempt to embarrass. 'His bit on the side?'
Even Bailey could not suppress a hidden grin at the brief spasm of furious indignation on that smooth face. He added quickly, Amanda is the privilege of another, Bernadette. Miss Scott is my detective constable.
Arrives in time to stop me drinking.'
Amanda was mollified slightly, but, as Bernadette intended her to be, uncomfortable, anxious to get on and out, mystified by the aimless chat that followed, disgruntled by Bailey's lack of desire to allocate tasks. There's been a murder, for God's sake, she said to herself, and you stand chatting in dirty kitchens. Not even insisting on seeing that lunatic thug who was listening at the door. Suspect if ever was, known for inclination to violence.
Come on, Superintendent, please, come on. I don't like it here, and they don't like me.
There are days when I do not care for you or admire you as much as others do, however handsome you are. There is nothing here, there never is. Come away, please, before I doubt you. Stood silent and smiling instead. Bernadette disliked her quite intensely.
The feeling was mutual. Bailey was sorry for the discomfiture of both.
Upstairs, half on, half off his unmade bed, William listened with his ear to the floor and his heels drumming quietly on the wallpaper, his head uncomfortably full of blood and little else. William had chosen this small and unpromising room five years ago on the eve of his twelfth birthday, stuck in it ever since although he had outgrown both bed and furniture, and in this Edwardian barn he had the choice of other rooms far more dignified.
There was a theory that most of the seven bedrooms were reserved for guests, but few stayed, only the odd misguided travelling salesman who failed to return, or the even odder couple whose passion could not withstand the discomfort, the breakfast, the inquisition, or William listening at the door. William liked the intrusion of the kitchen smells, ignored the noisy accompaniments, or turned the noises into rhythms inside his head, anticipating the next change of pace or silence.
He particularly liked the whirr of the washing machine, which made his room vibrate, and he liked the childish chest of drawers, diminutive wardrobe, all ordered for a boy who was now the size of a man – a man five feet ten inches tall, equipped with huge hands, swollen genitals, the mind of a ten-year-old child, and hearing as sharp as an owl's.
They had gone. William heaved himself back on the bed, all anxiety banished. They had been talking about nothing, and whatever they had said would keep the peace. He knew the words of the conversation, could not always establish the links. Grown-ups were always talking about nothing. What took them so long never to remember anything important he never knew. And he would not be lectured for listening at the door, not today at least. They never noticed, Mum and Dad, never noticed at all, all those people who came and went, fiddled about, drank, got drunk, laughed, shouted, all that stuff. He was dimly aware of the limitations of his mind, conscious of the superiority of his eyes and the refinement of his senses, which found all others foolish, his own absorbing.
Spreadeagled on the worn candlewick bedcover, his bare feet grubby from padding back across the garden at dawn, William regarded his domain, still listening to the polite departing voices. He was the only Featherstone who relished his own being.
The washing machine downstairs began to rumble.
William scratched his groin idly, unzipped his jeans slowly, and began a quicker massage, fingering the thing he had always called his stump, for the second time that morning. Donkey William, they had called him at school, an unkind if accurate reflection on the size of his penis as well as his brain power. Silly William, happy as a baby in a sand pile, eyes closed, hands busy, his face in a grimace of repose, shooting stars.
