‘Maybe.’
Her lemonade is finished. I offer to buy her another one but she refuses. The wet cold from the open doorway makes her shiver.
‘I must go, Alice. It’s been nice meeting you.’
She nods.
I smile but my eyes are focused on the dance floor where her mother clinging to her new male friend who bends her backwards and nuzzles her neck. I bet she smells like overripe fruit. She’ll bruise easily. She’ll break quickly. I can taste the juice already.
21
The phone is ringing in my sleep. Julianne reaches across me and lifts the handset from its cradle.
‘Do you know what time it is?’ she says angrily. ‘It’s not even five o’clock. You’ve woken the whole house.’
I manage to pry the handset from her fingers. Veronica Cray is on the line.
‘Rise and shine, Professor, I’m sending a car.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘We have a development.’
Julianne has rolled over, pulling the duvet resolutely under her chin. She pretends to be asleep. I begin dressing and struggle to button my shirt and tie my shoes. Eventually, she sits up, tugging at the front panels of my shirt and drawing me closer. I can smell the soft sourness of her sleepy breath.
‘Don’t wear your corduroy trousers.’
‘What’s wrong with corduroy?’
‘We don’t have enough time for me to tell you what’s wrong with corduroy. Trust me on this one.’
She unscrews my pill bottles and fetches me a glass of water. I feel decrepit and grateful. Melancholy.
‘I thought it would be different,’ she whispers, more to herself than to me.
‘What do you mean?’
‘When we moved out of London- I thought things would be different. No detectives or police cars or you thinking about terrible crimes.’
‘They need my help.’
‘You want to help them.’
‘We’ll talk later,’ I say, bending to kiss her. She turns her cheek and pulls the bedclothes around her.
Monk and Safari Roy are waiting for me outside. Monk opens the car door for me and Roy guns the car around the turning circle outside the church, spraying gravel and mud across the grass. God knows what the neighbours will think.
Monk is so tall his knees seem to concertina against the dashboard. The radio chatters. Neither detective seems ready to tell me where we’re going.
Half an hour later we pull up in the shadow of Bristol City football ground, where three brutally ugly tower blocks rise above Victorian terraces, prefabricated factories and a car yard. A police bus is parked on the corner. A dozen officers are sitting inside, some of them wearing body armour. Veronica Cray raises her head from a car bonnet where a map has been spread across the cooling metal. Oliver Rabb is alongside her, bending low, as if embarrassed by his height or her lack of it.
‘Sorry if I caused any marital disharmony,’ the DI says, disingenuously.
‘That’s OK.’
‘Oliver here has been a busy boy.’ She indicates a reference point on the map. ‘At 19.00 hours last night Christine Wheeler’s mobile began “ping”ing a tower about four hundred yards from here. It’s the same phone she left home with on Friday afternoon but it hasn’t transmitted since the signal went dead in Leigh Woods and she began using a second mobile.’
‘Someone made a call?’ I ask.
‘Ordered a pizza. It was delivered to the flat belonging to Patrick Fuller- an ex-soldier. He was discharged from the army for being “temperamentally unsuitable”.’
‘What does that mean?’
She shrugs. ‘Your area not mine. Fuller was wounded by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan a year or so back. Two of his platoon died. A nurse at a military hospital in Germany accused him of feeling her up. The army discharged him.’
I glance at the grey concrete tower blocks, which are like islands against a brightening sky.
The DI is still talking.
‘Four months ago Fuller lost his licence for DUI after testing positive for cocaine. Wife walked out on him around that time, taking their two kids.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Thirty-two.’
‘Does he know Christine Wheeler?’
‘Unknown.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘We arrest him.’
The tower block has internal stairs and a lift serving all floors. The service entrance smells of disembowelled bin bags, cat piss and wet newspapers. Patrick Fuller lives on the fourth floor.
I watch as a dozen officers in body armour climb the stairs. Four more use the lift. Their movements are choreographed by months of training yet it still seems overblown and unnecessary when considering the suspect has no history of violence.
Maybe this is the future- a legacy of 9/11 and the London train bombings. Police no longer knock on doors and politely ask suspects to accompany them to the station. Instead they dress up in body armour and break the doors down with battering rams. Privacy and personal freedom are less important than public safety. I understand the arguments but I miss the old days.
The lead officer has reached the flat and presses his ear against the door. He turns and nods. Veronica Cray nods back. A battering ram swings in a short arc. The door disappears. The arrest party suddenly stops. A snarling pit bull terrier lunges at the closest officer, who rocks back and stumbles. All fangs and fury, the pit bull hurls itself at his throat but is held back.
A man in baggy trousers and a sweatshirt has hold of the dog’s collar. He looks older than thirty-two, with pale eyes and wispy blonde hair combed straight back. Screaming accusations at the police, he tells them to fuck off and leave him alone. The dog scrabbles on its hind legs, trying to wrench itself free. Guns are drawn. Someone or something is going to get shot.
I’m watching from the stairwell. Officers have retreated halfway along the corridor. Another group are twelve feet on the far side of the door.
Fuller can’t get away. Everyone should settle down.
‘Don’t let them shoot him,’ I say.
Veronica Cray looks at me derisively. ‘If I wanted to shoot him, I’d do it myself.’
‘Let me talk to him.’
‘Leave this to us.’
Ignoring her, I push through shoulders. Fuller is twelve feet away, still screaming above the snarling and frothing of his dog.
‘Listen to me, Patrick,’ I shout. He hesitates, sizing me up. His face is working relentlessly, writhing in anger and accusation. ‘My name is Joe.’
‘Fuck off, Mr Joe.’
‘What seems to be the problem?’
‘No problem, if they leave me alone.’
I take another step and the dog lunges.
