of blood. Her toenails were painted with chipped purple enamel and a ring encircled the little toe of her right foot. She wore other pieces of jewellery: a plain silver stud through her tongue, a plain silver bracelet, and a leather thong that threaded a small grey pebble around her neck. He found it hard to concentrate on that.
There was also a burn around her throat, a rope burn, inflicted post-mortem.
“What’s the fucking point of that?” Sean asked nobody in particular. “She was fucking dead already. Why strangle a fucking dead girl?”
“Come on, Sean,” said Sally, picking her way through the scrum of uniforms. “Fresh air.”
He let his partner hoist him to his feet and lead him outside. Watery sunlight dribbled across slates glossed by the previous night’s rain. Neighbouring windows were filled with folded arms, nighties and hair in rollers. Vans from BBC, ITN, and Sky were clustered on the allotted parking spaces; sodium light bathed pancake faces with unreal colour as on-the-spot reports were filed. A phalanx of reporters turned Sean’s way. He heard the words: “– officer who made the gaffe...” and then Sally was telling them to piss off while she bundled Sean into the squad car. He covered his face as the photographers blazed away at him and Sally took off through the estate.
“How did they find out so quick?” Sean asked, looking back at the scramble. “How did they find out at all?”
“Find out about what?”
“That I fucked up,” he replied.
“We both fucked up. Don’t worry, we’ll blag it.” Sally drove south through Catford, winding through dead, monotone streets for twenty minutes before parking opposite a pub – The Gnarled Fiddler – on the Bromley Road.
“A snifter is in order,” Sally said. “I’m buying.”
Udney, the landlord of the Fiddler, tossed them some keys from the upstairs window. “Help yourself, Sally, Sean,” he said. “I’m busy stuffing an old bird.”
They entered the pub to the sounds of muffled laughter. It might have been from the ghosts of the previous night’s excesses. Sally moved around to the serving side of the bar, her feet catching in the tacky layers of spilled booze. She poured a pint of Guinness for Sean, loosing too a hefty glug from the Jack Daniel’s optic. She slid the drinks across to her partner.
“What are you drinking?”
“I’m driving, soft lad. It would look great, the two of us suspended on the same day, wouldn’t it?” She poured herself a glass of cola.
“It’s twenty past seven in the morning, Sally. This isn’t healthy.” Sean nevertheless sank a double gulp from his pint and picked up the short, which he swirled between his fingers.
“Healthier than sitting in bed looking like a human colander. Arses skywards, mate.” When she had taken a swig, she saw he was still staring into his glass.
“What?” she said.
Sean downed the spirit and closed his eyes against its heat. “I knew her,” he murmured. “I used to go out with her.”
Sally misread the situation. “The lass upstairs?” she asked. “The one Udney’s up to his nuts in right now?”
Sean held her gaze.
“Oh shit,” Sally said. “I’m sorry.”
“Not half as much as I am.”
They contemplated their glasses until they were empty, and Sean watched as Sally refilled them.
“What will you do? Will you tell Rachel?”
“I don’t know what I’ll tell Rachel. I don’t even know how I should look at Rachel these days.” He sighed and took another long drink of his pint. It was making him feel better and he felt sick for that. “I’m finished.”
“No you’re not,” Sally urged, reaching out to grasp his arm. “I told you, we can work this out.”
“I don’t want it worked out. Sally, this is just the first of a long line of cock-ups if I don’t get lost now. I’m not happy with the job–”
“But you’re a good copper.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not happy. And if you’re not happy, if your heart isn’t in the work then your head isn’t in it either. That’s when mistakes happen. I should have done more. I should have asked that bastard who he was and then got him to prove who he was. I should have asked to see the woman who lived in the flat.”
Sally shook her head. “Hey, I didn’t ask either. That puts me in the same shit-sack as you.”
Sean aped her movements. “All that proves is I’m a bad influence. You need a new partner.”
“Like I need a third eye,” she spat. “We work well together.”
“That’s just it, Sally,” Sean said, so gently that she had to lean in to catch it. “I’m not working.”
HE GOT BACK to his flat at noon, already suffering from a hangover. Looking out of his bedroom window at north London’s sprawl, hangdog and feverish beneath a caul of drizzle, he drank a mug of tea and listened to his telephone messages. Rachel had left two, despite knowing which shift he was working and the number of the station where he could be contacted. She wanted to know what he was going to do. The first message was stiff and demanding, the second weepily imploring. It summed her up, these Janus calls. He had never known anybody with such a volatile personality; it was as if in her thirty years she had been unable to nail down the person she believed she was, as if – even now – she were still riffling her own character deck in an attempt to pick out the right Rachel card.
The substance of her entreaties to him, no matter the emotions in which they were couched, remained the same. An ultimatum: move in with her or it was over. He replayed, through the steam of his tea, some of the countless arguments and discussions they had conducted, trying to thrash out what was, it now seemed, an insoluble problem. In none of them had the suggestion been made that they were fundamentally ill-matched. On virtually every front – bar sex – their needs clashed. And because everything else refused to gel, so their physical compatibility had been the unifying element to go first. Now it was transparent that there was nothing holding them together and they were both confused, still making attempts to solidify something that had no base upon which to build.
“I want children.” Her voice, reedy and distant on the tape, as though coming at him from another world, another time. “I want us to work.”
CHAPTER THREE: BLUE ZONES
WHAT A DAY. Sean knew things were likely to happen that would change his life, but prior knowledge had not served him with the tools to deal with them. He had woken before six and for a lunatic moment he thought he was back home in Warrington, his mum pottering around in the kitchen preparing sandwiches for his dad before he went out to work. But the potterer – too loud, obviously designed to wake him – was Rachel. He had given up on his original plan of writing to her and caught a cab over. The weather had worsened during the night as they talked and by two a.m. gales were battering the house. Inside too, Sean had thought, as he watched Rachel fighting inner storms. He wondered which of her numerous personae might reveal itself to him and had prepared for the most vicious. But when she spoke, it was clear that any fury she might have been cultivating had grounded itself on the rocks of his logic. They finished the night promising to rebuild the friendship that had existed before they became lovers. Her invitation to stay had clearly run its course however, and Sean had dressed hurriedly, hoping the
