Poet in the Gutter – complete novel

chapter

 1      

          There was this freak in the men’s group.  Well, Jesus they were all freaks, including Sam Turner, but there was this one stood out.  Terry Deacon he was called, and he stood out from the rest because he didn’t wear an ear ring.  He’d just turned forty.  The time when all the guys who were younger than him were just going out and having it done, he’d been wondering if it was too effeminate.  Then a few years later after he’d missed the boat, he was thinking he’d really like to wear an ear ring but if he had it done now people’d think he was trying to be younger.  Sensitive sort, that was Deacon.   He was also rich.  And that made him stand out.

          Anyway, it was him told Sam Turner about Hemingway and the first true sentence which got Sam reading again.  And after Hemingway he read Chandler, and they became his favourite dead writers.  His favourite living writer was Elmore Leonard.  He was only interested in class stuff.

          Sam went to the men’s group because it was winter and cold in the flat, and because he was off the booze, and because another marriage had gone bust.  There’s this place runs groups of all kinds, every night of the week.  It cost ninety pence to get in, and that particular night Sam had the choice of Esperanto or the men’s group or going back on the booze.  He walked in on them and sat down in the circle.

          They were talking about fairy stories and Iron John and about how women were in touch with the earth and men in the twentieth century were alienated.  Sam thought about switching to Esperanto or walking fifty yards down the road for a beer and chaser.  But he stayed put.

          Two of them were gay, or playing with the idea, and bought their earrings together.  That night they were wearing tiny silver and black guitars, but other nights they would wear large hoops or love hearts or a couple of J’s.  They were called John and Jeffrey.  Most of the others wore small gold rings, except for Deacon who didn’t wear anything, and a guy called Bock who had nine rings in one ear, three in the other, and two up his nose.  The guy looked like a Christmas tree.

          Before they started they all said their name and what they did for a living.  When it came to him Sam said he was called Sam Turner and he was a private detective and they all said that was really interesting.  What Sam thought was interesting was where the name came from because he’d just plucked it out of the air some years before, while travelling round California.  The bit about being a private detective was nearly true.  He’d been thinking about it all his life.  It was a song he knew well, no reason not to sing it.

          The only Iron John Sam’d ever known had been in Hull Prison, serving twenty years of a  life sentence for a cop killing.  When Sam told them this they stopped talking about fairy stories and turned their earrings to him.  This was really interesting, they thought.  Their little eyes lit up like sparklers.  What was he like?  Did he show remorse?  And the Hull Prison, what were the conditions like?  Jesus Christ these guys were unbelievable.  Forty five minutes and Sam had them eating out of his hand.

          Like the man said, you’ve got to serve somebody.

          He went to that place nearly every night.  Monday he went to AA.  Tuesday was a Solo Club.  Wednesday the Men’s Group.  Thursday another Solo Club.  And Friday an Electronics user group.  When you’re on the waggon you can’t afford to stop.

          Sam thought the Solo Clubs would help him keep up his sex life without much effort, but they were really hard going.  People frightened of getting hurt again.  Jesus, where’ve they been?

          Brenda, his last wife, she used to say, If it don’t hurt a bit it’s not worth having.  She found a guy running a Merc and three houses and it was love at first sight.  Sam told her he wouldn’t stand in her way, and she said: “Who’s asking you?” and went.  He still couldn’t remember all the best things she said.    Living in Tadcaster with the Merc guy.  But he didn’t mind too much.  Life soon went back to normal.  He drove to Sainsburys and spent a hundred and seventy pounds on their good whiskey.  He packed a tent in the car and drove up to the moors, pitching about a mile and a half above the Blakey Head pub.  Then he drank himself unconscious.

          Next day he walked to the Blakey and got a beer with a chaser.  He stayed there until closing time and went back to the juice in the tent.  It took about three weeks altogether.  He lost twenty pounds, and stopped dreaming about Brenda.

          Back in York he was dry for a month, then three weeks on the hard stuff.  He was dry again.  Hitting it again.  Still managed to get a flat together, ground floor job of course, save himself breaking bones when he was on the juice.  He’d go dry, feed himself up, take all his clothes to the launderette.  He’d stock the cupboards with food, clean the carpets, do a month’s washing up, start shaving again.  Then he’d be in a bar with a glass in front of him and he might sit there all night and not touch it until closing time.  The next time he looked in a mirror he’d have lost several weeks.  After a year he woke up one afternoon in a pool of spew and said to himself:  You’re worth more than this.

          That’s when he went to the AA and the Men’s Group and. . .

 

 

 

chapter

 2      

          Deacon rang him one night as he was going out to the Solo Club.

          “I think I’m going to need your services,” he said.  Deacon spoke quietly, rhythmically.  He was a composer and a Buddhist as well as a successful businessman.

          “What?” said Sam.  He didn’t have a clue what the guy meant.

          “It’s my wife,” Deacon explained.  “I think she’s having an affair.”

          “Dump her,” Sam told him.  “A woman starts an affair, she’s finished with you.”

          “I don’t know for sure,” Deacon said.  “I’d like you to check it out.”

          “Oh, I see.”  Sam did a double take into the telephone.  He sat down and reached into his pocket for tobacco, papers.  “Detective work.”

          “Yes.  I know you do commercial work.  But I thought you might be able to help out.”

          “Sure, Terry,” said Sam, rolling with one hand, lighting up, thinking fast.  “I’m a bit tied up at the moment, but I think I can fit you in.  When were you thinking?”

          “Now,” said Deacon.  “It’s happening now.  Can I come see you?”

          “I’m doing a surveillance job at the moment,” Sam said, still thinking.  “I could meet you tomorrow.  I’ll be in Bettys about two.  And Terry?”

          “Yes?”

          “This isn’t going to be cheap.”

          “Oh, I know,” said Deacon, eager to smooth over any misunderstanding.  “I didn’t mean. . .  I hope you didn’t think I was asking. . .”

          “Don’t worry,” said Sam.  “I won’t break you.  But I have to make a living.”

          “I really wasn’t,” Deacon continued. “I really wasn’t expecting you to work for nothing.  I’m very happy to pay the going rate.  I hope you don’t think. . . “

          “It’s Okay, Terry.  Don’t worry about it.  Bettys at two.  Don’t be late.”  Sam rang off and stubbed his cigarette in the ash tray.  He looked at the phone. 

          He’d been great.  He’d handled it smoothly.  Bettys  was a nice touch.  Bettys was a wonderful touch.  Just the sort of place Deacon would fall for.  Quiet, mirrors everywhere,  waitress service, good strong coffee.  And it would be money for old rope.  Just following some woman about all day.  Sam reckoned Deacon must be good for forty a day.  Plus expenses, of course.  You have to be professional about these things.  He’d always known that life was ups and downs.  This was the beginning of an up.

 

* * *

 

          At the Solo Club Sam concentrated on Wanda.  He couldn’t believe her name, had real difficulty disassociating it from the fish film.  But she’d shown some interest over the last couple of weeks, enough to make it worth pursuing.  She was a red head, like Brenda.  That didn’t put Sam off.  He wasn’t superstitious.  Wanda had been divorced for two years.  She had two kids, both girls; the youngest was two and the eldest four.  She drove her own car, a two year old Rover with leather upholstery, and she had her own house somewhere on the outskirts of town.  This woman was not going to be any kind of drag.  She wasn’t looking for someone to support her.  She was doing very nicely as it was.  And tonight she was coming on strong.

          Sam had spent several years in California when he was younger, and Wanda had been quizzing him about L.A.  She’d been there herself with her ex husband, shortly after they were married.  Sam had spent most of his time there in Santa Monica, which Wanda had never visited, and she’d stayed in Corona del Mar, which Sam had only driven through once.  So they talked about vegetation instead:  towering eucalyptus, graceful pepper trees, tropic palms, rubber trees, giant bananas, yuccas, and the wonderful growth of roses, heliotrope, calla lilies in hedges, orange trees, jasmine, and giant geraniums.

          “Christ, stop,” said Sam.  “It just makes me want to go back.”

          “Me too,” said Wanda.

          They smiled at each other.  Wanda looked away then looked back at him again.  She lowered her voice and said something he didn’t catch.  “Say it again,” he said.

          “The children are away this weekend,” she told him.

          “So you’ll be out on the town.  Living it up a little?”

          Wanda smiled.  She smiled a lot, but usually the smile was a stick on job.  This smile was different, it came from inside.  “No.  I don’t go out much in the town.”

          “What’ll you do, then?” asked Sam.  “Sit at home and watch the box?”

          “Nothing on Saturday night,” Wanda said.  “Sunday I’m going on the walk.”  The Club had organised a hike in the Dales on Sunday.

          “We could go together,” Sam tried.  “If we go in one car we’ll save petrol.”

          “Okay.  I’ll drive.  Get to my place about ten, I’ll be ready.”

          Sam wanted to fix her up for Saturday night.  But he needed more encouragement.  Wanda wasn’t the kind of woman you could rush.  Well, maybe it would work, but Sam liked things better when they were on the edge.

          “I’ll give you a ring on Saturday night,” he said.  “I think I’m tied up, but I’ll give you a ring.  Make sure everything’s okay for Sunday.”  He wasn’t doing anything Saturday night, but it wouldn’t harm to let her sweat a little.  Wondering what he was up to.

 

 

 

chapter

 3      

          Sam took his camera along to Bettys, bought a pocket book and a pen from Smiths on the way, and installed himself with a cup of coffee by the window. Watched the tourists going by, Americans and Japanese, groups of Scandinavian teenagers with enough Nikon cameras to fill a truck.

          Deacon arrived ten minutes later, waving as he passed the window.  He joined Sam and pushed his briefcase under the table.  Nice leather job.

          “Hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he said.

          “Don’t worry,” Sam told him.  “I’m on a job.  Been here an hour.”  Sam glanced at a table across the room from them.  Deacon followed his gaze, and took in two women, obviously a mother and daughter, and a young man who could have been the brother of the younger woman or her lover.  “Don’t make it obvious,” said Sam.

          “Oh, sorry,” said Deacon, quickly looking away.  “I didn’t mean. . . “

          “No damage done,” said Sam.  “I have to keep my eye on them, but you’ve got my full attention.”

          The waitress took their order for coffee.  Sam ordered a big one with cream, Deacon settled for a small one with milk.

          “Where do I start?” asked Deacon.

          Sam picked up his pen and opened the notebook towards the end.  “I need personal details,” he said.  “Name, address, date of birth, and a photograph would be useful.”

          She was called Jane Deacon, and they lived together in a large house in Bishophill.  They had been married twelve years.  Recently Jane had been going out twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, ostensibly to her friend’s or sister’s house.  But Deacon knew she didn’t go to either.  He didn’t know where she went.  He thought she had a boyfriend. 

          From the photograph Sam thought it would be very nice for the boyfriend, whoever he was.  Jane Deacon wasn’t in the first flush of youth, but she was a looker nevertheless.  If she was on the menu, he would’ve skipped the soup, get to the main course quick.  Sad eyed lady. . .

          “Why would it be a boyfriend?” he asked.

          “Because she dresses up,” Deacon explained.  “I bought her a suit.  It’s blue, cashmere.  She looks really good in it.  She always wears that, and she fixes her hair, wears make-up.  She makes a real effort.  Why would she do that if it wasn’t a man?”

          “You a detective, or what?”  said Sam.

          Deacon didn’t get the joke.  “I can’t cope with the uncertainty,” he said.  “I can’t do my meditation any more.  My work is suffering.  I’m short with people.”

          “Forty pounds a day,” Sam told him.  “Plus expenses.”

          “Yes.  Whatever.  I want to get it sorted.”

          Sam waited.  Thought maybe he was too cheap, should have asked for fifty a day, maybe sixty.  He glanced across at the other table.  The young woman got up and went to the ladies.  “I’ll need something up front,” he said.

          “Oh, of course.”  Deacon reached for his wallet.

          “Say two hundred,” said Sam.  “I’ll keep records.  Give you a detailed invoice.”

          “I don’t carry that much around.  Will a cheque be all right?”

          Sam bit his lip.  “I could use some cash,” he said.

          Deacon inspected the contents of his wallet.  He gave Sam sixty in cash and a cheque for a hundred and forty.

          The younger woman returned from the ladies and her mother and brother stood to leave.  Sam closed his notebook and reached for his camera.  “I’ve got to go,” he said.

          “When will I hear?” Deacon asked him.

          “Give me a week,” said Sam.  He pointed at the empty cups.  “Pick up the tab for this will you?”

 

 

 

chapter

 4      

          Frances went to the supermarket.  She bought one of those Kellogg’s Variety Packs, a mixture of individual boxes of breakfast cereals.  Some cartons of yoghurt.  10 eggs, and a pack of bacon.  She bought a small cake.  A treat.

          Her house in Clifton was small, but warm, being in the middle of a terrace.  In the kitchen she put her purchases on the shelf neatly.  Yoghurt, eggs, and bacon in the ‘fridge.  There was also an onion in there, on a plate; and some left over lasagna.

          The neighbours were nosey, but she ignored them.  Frances kept herself to herself.  She didn’t need neighbours poking around.  Frances didn’t need anybody.  She had work to do.

          She was a big woman, thickly set.  Thirty four years old.  There was a smell in the house, somewhere in the kitchen.  Frances put an apron on and filled a blue plastic bucket with hot water from the tap.  She got on her hands and knees and scrubbed the floor, going over it twice, putting all her strength into each sweep of the brush.  Then she refilled the bucket with clear water, and went over the floor again, rinsing it until it gleamed.

          In the sitting room she took down Graham’s loose leaf folder of poems, opened it at random, and began to read.  She could hear Graham’s voice in her head.  That slight New Zealand twang he’d never lost.  She looked at the words and Graham’s voice spoke in her head.  That’s how it worked.

          Half of the poems were about her.  Love poems.  Poems Graham had stayed up nights with, he beavered away at them, bringing them to her in the morning.  She liked those poems.  They were a fitting memorial to Graham.  To her as well.  To their relationship.

          The other half of the poems were about other people.  People she didn’t know, or hardly knew.  They were about bastards and tarts.  People who’d used and tormented Graham.  People who’d ruined his life before she met him.

          Frances still sent some of Graham’s poems to magazines.  They usually came back with a rejection slip.  But occasionally one would be published.  Some day she would arrange for the whole collection to be published in a book.  That’s what Graham would have done.  That’s what Graham wanted above everything else.

          The thought made Frances smile.  She listened to Graham’s voice inside her head, and at the same time she felt the smile breaking out over her face.  It didn’t come often these days, that smile, but when it did come, at times like these, when she was alone with Graham, it was the same old big, big, smile he used to love.

 

 

 

chapter

 5      

          He rang Wanda at five on Saturday afternoon.  He had Desire on his tape deck, and let it play while he punched the numbers.  She picked up the ‘phone and repeated the number he’d just dialled.  Her voice was not unlike Brenda’s.  She didn’t waste words.

          Sam waited a few seconds before speaking.  He could feel her at the other end of the line, getting tense.  “How’re you doing?” he said.

          “Sam?” she said.  “Goodness, I thought it was a breather for a minute.”

          “Do you get them?” he asked.

          “No.  I never have.  But you hear about them.”

          “I could breath for a while if you like?  Talk dirty?  Whatever you fancy.”

          Wanda laughed.  A high pitched laugh, embarrassed but interested, a little frightened maybe.  “That’s no way to speak to a lady,” she said.

          “Really?  I must’ve met the wrong ones.”

          “You probably do, in your line of work.”

          “Yeah,” he said.  “I meet all sorts.  Have your kids, I mean your children, have they gone?”

          Wanda laughed again.  “About an hour ago.”

          “So what you doing now?”

          “Nothing.  Talking to you.  I had a bath.”

          “What you wearing?”

          The laugh came down the line.

          “What you wearing?” Sam asked again, getting into the spirit of it.

          “Do you mean it? she said.

          “I’ve asked you twice.”

          “It’s a kind of robe,” she said.

          “A bath robe?  What colour?”

          “No.  It’s silk.  It’s a red silk dressing gown.”

          “Short?”

          “Long.  Down to my ankles.”

          “Sounds nice,” he said.  “Wish I was there.”

          “Yes.”  Her voice turned the corner into wistfulness.  “If you weren’t such a busy man?”

          “Shall I come now?” he asked.

          “No.  Later,” she said.  “I’ll cook some food.  Come about eight.”

          “Just don’t change your clothes,” he said, and hung up.  He slapped the wall with his open hand.  “Yes,” he said.  “Yes.  Yes.  Yes.”

 

* * *

 

          Sam drove a very old Cortina.  It reminded him of Brenda every time he looked at it.  Like her it succeeded in screwing up his day every morning.  He had to pet it, tread around it warily, feel out what kind of mood it was in.  He took comfort from the fact that, like Brenda, it wouldn’t last the rest of his life.  Words in his head. . . and she was once a true love of mine.

          He threw his Parka and hiking boots in the back of the beast.  It sounded like Wanda would want him to stay the night, and he might as well be ready for the walk tomorrow.

          He drove round to Bishophill and parked 50 yards up from the Deacon house.  It was a cul-de-sac, cars parked on both sides.  Sam would have to reverse out.  He adjusted the mirror so that he could see the gate, rolled up a cigarette and waited.  Just after six Jane Deacon  turned the corner in front of him, loaded down with parcels and plastic carrier bags.

          She was a real looker, better than the photograph.  Short blonde hair and blue eyes.  A mean little mouth to add some excitement to the face.  And legs going all the way up to her bum.  If she had found herself a new boyfriend, Deacon was really going to miss her one of these days.

          She passed the car and Sam watched her rear view through the mirror.  She was good to watch.  She was very good to watch.  “I’ll see you on Tuesday,” he said to himself as she turned into the gate of the big house.  Very big house, like in the magazines at the Doctor’s.

 

* * *

 

          Wanda opened the door in a little black number with a single thread of pearls at her throat.  “You’ve changed,” he said.

          “I was cold.”  She led him into a spacious living room.  At the far end the dining table was set for two.  Candles.  Wine glasses.

          “You look like a million dollars,” he said.

          “A girl has to try.”

          “Some harder than others.  You don’t have to do much.”

          She served up a roast and poured wine into his glass.  “Say when?” she said.

          Sam said nothing.  Burgundy’s okay, in his time he’d hit harder stuff.  Only you can manage wine if you try, believe you’re the strongest man in the world.  The trick is not to have more than one glass, never let her fill it up again, and never let it get empty.  Never worry about it.  Sip it.  Let her have the rest of the bottle if she wants.

          He picked up the glass and caught her eye.  “To us,” he said.

          “I’ll drink to that,” said Wanda.

          After the cheesecake she made coffee and they sat at the table for an hour while she told him her life story.  It was an average story for a red head.  Lower middle class beginnings in the West Midlands, secretarial college, married the boss, moved to York, got pregnant twice in succession, divorced him and came out of it with a house and a car and a settlement that kept her comfortable.  Fascinating stuff.  Sam couldn’t help it if he was lucky.

          She suggested they move to more comfortable chairs, and they left the table, went to the other end of the room where Sam stood with his back to the fire.  She stood closer than she’d ever been before.

          “You’ve led such an interesting life,” he told her.

          She smiled.  She didn’t think so.   She said, “Are you going to stay?”

          Sam said, “If you want me to, yeah.”

          She moved towards him and he reached for the long zipper at the back of the black dress.  Over her shoulder he noticed there was still half an inch of red wine in his glass.

 

 

 

chapter

 6      

          Frances washed her breakfast bowl and scoured the sink and draining board.  As a child she had been the youngest and the apple of her fathers’ eye.  No one had expected Frances to do mundane or domestic chores.  She had been cared for, loved by her father.  “My princess,” he would call her, “My cuddly little princess.”

          Those had been secure days, when she was the baby, letting everyone else take on the responsibility.  Frances had known then that life would not be simple when she grew up.  She always said that she didn’t want to grow up, that she wanted to remain a child for ever.  But they wouldn’t let her.  No matter how passively she acted, slowly, inevitably, her body grew.  Frances remained a child inside that body, somewhere inside her she was still her father’s princess.  But she didn’t talk about that to anyone.  She kept it inside.

          She sat at the empty kitchen table and took out the butchers’ knife from the drawer.  She placed it on the table in front of her and watched the blade gleam in the sunlight from the window.

          She took an A4 sheet of paper from Graham’s folder, holding it with her nails,  and read the message on it.  Then she placed it back in the folder, and put the folder neatly on the shelf.

          She took her coat from the peg and draped it round her shoulders.  She opened her handbag to check the car keys were inside, and walked through the kitchen to the door.  As she passed it, she patted the knife, and she said:  “Soon.  Soon.”

 

* * *

 

          Frances drove the black Panda to Bishophill and left it by the side of the road.  She walked to the cul-de-sac, and then walked down it on one side, and up again on the other.  The Deacon’s house looked quiet at this time of day.

          She walked back down the cul-de-sac again, but this time took a footpath at the blind end and followed it into town.

          During the course of the day she returned four times.  The second time she saw Jane Deacon coming out of the house.  She followed her for a while, but gave up when Jane Deacon met another woman and stood gossiping on the pavement. 

          The fourth time Frances returned to the cul-de-sac she saw Terry Deacon returning home from work.  His car was filthy.  He didn’t care for anything.  He didn’t take care of anything.

          “I’ve seen him,” Frances told the knife when she got home.  “He’s disgusting.”

 

 

 

chapter

 7      

          On Monday, during the AA meeting, Sam took stock.  Life was really looking up.  He had money and a woman, and he was a private detective.  He didn’t have to bullshit any more.

          The evening of Tuesday he was waiting for half an hour before Jane Deacon came out of the gate in her little blue cashmere suit, got into her white Peugeot, and drove slowly along the street, over the sleeping policemen.  Sam put the Cortina in gear and followed at a reasonable distance.

          It was not a long journey.  She drove out on the Hull road and pulled in the driveway of a house with a double bay front, 386a.  The house was detached, and not as old as its neighbours.  Sam thought maybe a couple of the older houses had been pulled down, and this one built in the space left behind.  He drove on past, turned around and came back, stopping on the opposite side of the road.  All rooms on the ground floor were lit.  Only one of the upper rooms.  Sam waited nearly two hours.

          It would be nice, if the cash keeps coming in, to trash this car and get something a little better.  Nothing ostentatious, though.  Something people wouldn’t notice, but with more oomph.  And maybe a stereo system, to pass the time.  Play all his Dylan tapes.  No, maybe not.  Some bastard’d steal it.

          The surprising thing was, when she came out, she was shown out by a woman.  A middle aged woman, no distinguishing characteristics.  White Anglo Saxon Protestant.

          And, surprise, surprise, Jane Deacon got into her white car and drove straight home to her Buddhist husband.

          A mystery, Sam wrote in his notebook.  A real mystery.  Somebody better investigate.

 

* * *

 

          Wednesday he checked out the Electoral Register in the library.  386a Hull road was occupied by David and Ellen Watson.

          He knocked on the door of 386, but there was no answer.  At 387 a woman came to the door and opened it before he had time to knock.  She looked like the lady who knew everyone in the neighbourhood, the one they all avoided.

          “Mrs Watson?” said Sam.

          “No.  You want to be next door,” said the woman.  “She’ll be at work, though.  He might be in.  But he doesn’t always answer the door”

          “Oh, dear,” said Sam.  “I wanted Mrs Watson.  When will I get her?”

          “She’s usually back about six,” said the woman.

          Sam put on his worried look.  “It’s rather urgent,” he said.  “Does Mr Watson work at home?”

          “He’s usually there,” said the woman.  “His studio’s upstairs.  I don’t know if he can’t hear the door, or if he doesn’t want to.”

          “Studio?”

          “Yes.  He’s a painter.  Paints portraits.”

          “That’s right,” said Sam.  “Yeah, I’d heard that.  He’s a painter.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

          There was an ad in the Yellow Pages:

 

 

          “Jesus,” said Sam.  “She’s having her fuckin picture painted.”

 

 

 

chapter

 8      

          Jane Deacon had driven fairly slowly on Tuesday evening, aware that the red Cortina with Sam Turner was still behind her.  She didn’t want to lose him.  That would be impossible.  He acted like a professional tail, keeping his distance at all times, sometimes three or four cars between him and her.

          Jane was happiest when she was in control, and this evening she felt good.  Things were beginning to happen now, she was making them happen, not just leaving them to chance.  When Jane was a child, a small child of six years, her mother had died.  Just like that.  One day she had been there, mothering, the next day she was gone.  That was chance, that was what chance did, took the world away from under your feet.  Since then Jane had been working at being in control of her world.  Not letting it get away.

          The car was a liability though, the Cortina.  It was so old you had to notice it.  Hope it’s reliable.  Don’t want it to break down.  After all, Mister Sam Turner was her alibi.

          Jane felt good tonight.  She’d had a bath, fixed her hair, and she knew she looked good in this suit.  You could look for clothes for ever and not find something as good as this.  Fits everywhere, good expensive material that takes the strain exactly where it’s needed, and the colour was perfect for Jane’s complexion, her hair, her eyes.  She glanced in the mirror to check he was still there.  Yes, two cars back.

          It was a pity she didn’t know what he looked like.  If he was anything like his car he wouldn’t be up to much.  She had a picture of him as a grubby little man, maybe someone who rolled his own cigarettes, nicotine stains on his fingers.  She knew he wouldn’t be like that in reality, because Terry wouldn’t know anyone like that.  But he’s like that inside, she thought.  Nicotine stains on his mind.

          After the sitting he was still there, doing his job really well.  He didn’t pull away from the kerb straight after her.  If she didn’t know what he was up to there would be no way of suspecting it.  Probably had a little note book or a tape recorder, was speaking into it now, saying something like: “Suspect left the house at nine thirty p.m.  Am now in pursuit.”

          Get it right, Mister Turner.  We don’t want you making any mistakes.

          He stayed behind her all the way home.  Parked his junkie Cortina and watched her go into the house.

          Terry was waiting when she got inside.  “You all right?” he asked, kissing her on the cheek.

          “Yes, your detective friend was with me all the way.”

 

 

 

chapter

 9      

          Sam didn’t go to the Men’s Group on Wednesday.  He sat at home brooding.  His ground floor flat consisted of three rooms, sitting room and kitchen combined with separate bedroom and bathroom.  Apart from the table where Sam sat to eat, there was a battered sofa and an arm chair had once been part of a suite, several bookcases and a black metal rack which housed his stereo equipment.  He had lived there so long now it felt like home, and one day he was going to fix it up good.  Needed something on the walls, pictures.  He’d never got round to the walls, not liking posters, and being unable to afford a really good picture. 

          Tonight, even Blonde on Blonde didn’t work.  Everything had been going right.  For a few days things were coming together.  Now there was no case.  He didn’t want to go to Deacon and tell him his wife was sitting for a portrait, probably for his – Deacon’s – birthday.

          Hell, matrimonial cases were the pits, everyone knew that.  You followed a broad around for a week or two, took photographs of her and her lover in compromising situations.  You spent most of the time sitting in a car waiting.  And all for peanuts.

          But on your first case in the whole universe, to end up with no guilty party, after only one night’s work.  That was bad luck.  That was enough to make a man drink.

          Sam wanted the case to be solid.  Okay, he could go out and buy a bottle.  It was easy.  He’d done it before, a thousand times.  By tomorrow Deacon and his beautiful wife could be a hazy memory.  Not even that.  They could be blotted out.

          Only one thing kept him away from the bottle.  One tiny possibility.  Jane Deacon could be screwing the painter.  Okay, it was not probable.  But it was ever so faintly possible.

          Sam slept badly, and on Thursday he spent the afternoon in the Snooker Hall at the Stonebow.  He hustled a couple of games with Gus, an old friend, now working here as the barman.  Sam won one and lost one.  He read no significance in the scores.

          It looked more and more like Jane Deacon led a blameless life.  Tuesday and Thursday evenings at the painter’s house was the only time she had to play around.  During the day she worked in the same office as her husband, running the family business, manufacturing and marketing children’s toys.  They both put in an average of around fifty hours a week.  Getting richer all the time.  Still, Sam felt something was going on.  He didn’t know what it was, but when he sat still there was something nagging away inside him.  Something that wouldn’t go away.

          By the early evening he sat in his car outside the Deacon’s house and waited for the blonde lady to make her move.

          It was exactly the same procedure as Tuesday.  She drove out to 386a, parked in the drive and went inside.  Two hours later the middle aged WASP woman saw her out, and she got back into her white Peugeot and drove home.

          Sam drove into the cul-de-sac behind her and parked on the opposite side of the road.  He watched her lock the car and turn into the gate.  She seemed to hesitate a moment, then carried on toward the door of the house.

          Sam felt for his keys in the ignition, glanced in his rear-view to make sure the way was clear to reverse.  Fuckin cul-de-sacs; fuckin portrait painters.

          The starter motor turned over and died.  He tried again and the engine coughed but struggled on.  He gave it a little burst of revs, which it seemed to like, and eased the choke out about a quarter of an inch.  It purred like a cat.  “I’ve got your number,” Sam told it, swinging the wheel round to miss the bumper of the car in front.

          Jane Deacon appeared in front of him in the middle of the road.  Her blue cashmere jacket was open, showing a high necked white blouse, brilliant in the lights of his Cortina, fastened at the neck with a brooch the size of a fist.  Get tangled up in blue cashmere.  Good way to lose your first customer.

          Sam turned the engine off, and let the car slide backwards into the kerb.  He hit the light switch and wound down the window as the blonde came around the car.

          “Mr Turner?”  she asked through her little mouth.

          “Yeah,” said Sam, wondering how she’d rumbled him.  “Call me Sam.”

          “The door’s open,” she said, motioning towards the house.  “I didn’t go in.  I called, but I think somebody might be inside.”  Her hand was shaking.  She gripped the side of the door, and her knuckles were blue.

          Sam opened the door and got out.  “Wait here,” he said.  “I’ll take a look.”  He walked towards the house and looked back at Jane Deacon stood by his car.  “Get in,” he called.  “Sit down for a minute.”

          Mister Turner!  She even knew his name.  Okay, Sam wasn’t a trained surveillance operator, but he’d kept a fair distance between the cars.  If this woman was really bright she might have twigged someone was following her, but how did she know his surname?  No one called him Mister Turner.

          The door to the house was ajar.  Sam stood inside the hallway and listened.  Nothing.  No movement.  “Terry,” he called.  And then again: “Terry.”  There was no reply.

          What the hell was this?  The guy says he wants his wife tailed, then when Sam’s out tailing her the guy does a bunk and leaves the house open.  Was Terry Deacon supposed to be here?    Jane Deacon hadn’t said, just: “I think somebody might be inside.”  What’re you looking at here, Sammy boy, a burglary or what?

          Terry Deacon was in the front room.  There was a piano behind the door.  There was one of those plushy sofas like Wanda’s. And Deacon was in the space between the piano and the sofa.  He might have been pissed, but the blood seemed to indicate something more radical.  The first client and by default, one of the founding fathers of the Sam Turner Detective Agency had been stabbed repeatedly in the upper chest, neck, and face.  There was a real look of surprise on his face.  He was lying on his back with his arms and legs akimbo, and carefully placed on his stomach was a sheet of A4 paper with a message:

 

 

          The corpse had slippers on and looked very lonely.  Correction, the corpse had one slipper on.  The left slipper was on the other side of the room, by the curtains.  Over in a corner the television was on, the sound turned down.  Sam watched the newscaster smiling as he introduced the weatherman.  But it was patently obvious which way the wind was blowing.

 

 

 

chapter

10     

          Sam checked the other rooms in the house, all of them empty.   He returned to the car and got in the front passenger seat next to the blonde.

          “What did you expect to find in there?” he asked.

          “Terry.”  A note of hysteria had taken possession of her.

          “Look,” he said, taking her hand.  “I’m not good at this.  I don’t want you to go in the house.  Terry is. . .  well, he’s had an accident.”

          She moved to get out of the car, but Sam kept a grip of her.  “What?” she said.  “Tell me what’s happened.”

          “He’s dead,” said Sam.  “He’s been murdered.”

          She was very still.  She didn’t move for almost a minute, Sam felt like something inside her was curling up or fading away.  He squeezed her hand, something to reassure her or himself, or maybe to provoke some kind of response from her.

          She said in a quiet voice, almost a whisper:  “With a knife?  And a note?”

          “Yeah.  How did you know. . ?”  But Jane Deacon passed out while he was talking.  She slumped forward over the steering wheel, cracking her forehead.

          Sam pulled her back.  She was out of it.  He left the car and dialled 999 in the ‘phone box on the corner.  Then he went back to the car and held her hand until the cops arrived.

          She came around just before the police car turned into the street.  “Don’t leave me,” she said.

          “Okay.  Sit tight.”

          “No,” she gripped his hand.  “I want you to promise.  Don’t leave me.”

 

* * *

 

          Sam sat in the car and watched the police operation.  By midnight they had taken Jane Deacon some place.  Chief Inspector Delany had spent one minute with him.

          “Did you make the call?” he asked.

          “Yeah.”

          “Were you in the house?”

          “Yeah.”

          “Did you touch anything?”

          “No.”

          “Stick around.  I’ll need to talk to you.”

          Delany had been in the house nearly three hours.  The forensic boys had been and gone.  A police surgeon or doctor or whatever they call them had been and gone.  An ambulance arrived and took the body away.  One of Delany’s henchmen had taken a statement from Sam.  He told it straight.  Everything he knew.  How he had found the body.

          At 2 am Delany asked Sam to go to the police station with him.  “I want my car,” Sam told him.  “I’ll follow you.”

          Delany came into the interview room with Sam’s file.  He threw it on the desk.  “Is this true?” he asked.

          Sam nodded.  It was getting late.  He’d had a full day.

          “Did you kill him?”

          “No.  You’ve got the statement.  That’s all I know.”

          “You’ve done time.”

          “For dealing pot,” said Sam.  “And you buggers planted that on me.  I hardly even used it before I went inside.”

          “Did she kill him?”

          “I don’t think so,” said Sam.  “When did he die?”

          “About an hour before you rang in.”

          “She can’t have,” said Sam.  “She was having her picture painted.  But you must know that by now.”

          Delany smiled.  “Just checking,” he said.  “What was to stop you leaving her at the painter’s house and driving back to top her husband?”

          “I’d have to be crazy,” said Sam.  “The guy was paying me.”

          Delany picked up the file.  “Okay,” he said.  “You can go.  But don’t leave town.  I’ll need to talk to you again.”

          Sam stood.  “Is that all?” he said.  “I wait three fuckin hours, and you want the answer to a question you already know?”

          Delany turned at the door.  “There is one other thing,” he said.  “Have you ever been to Sweden?”

          “No,” Sam told him.  “I went to Paris once.  Real nice town.  And wandered through rubble in the streets of Rome.  You ever been to Amsterdam?” 

 

 

 

chapter

11     

          It was easy.  Frances had seen Jane leave the house on Thursday evening just like she did every Thursday evening.  Poncing off in her little blue suit in her little white car.  Earlier she had seen Terry Deacon come home from work.  He wouldn’t leave the house again, and Jane wouldn’t return for a couple of hours.  Frances had all the time in the world.

          Only one thing different.  The Cortina, and the man in the Cortina.  He had arrived fifteen minutes before Jane was due to leave.  He had sat in the car, and then when Jane’s little white car had pulled out of the cul-de-sac, the Cortina had taken off after her.

          Graham’s voice calmed her.  “Do the job,” it said.  “Do the job for Graham.”

          When the street was quiet she walked up to the house, and knocked on the door.  There was the sound of a piano playing inside.

          Deacon answered the door in his slippers.  So cozy.  “Yes?” he said.

          Frances smiled.  “You don’t remember me?” she said.  “It’s Frances.”

          “Oh, my goodness.”  Recognition on his face.  “Come in.  It’s been such a long time.”  He showed her into the sitting room.  “Graham’s not with you?”

          “No,” Frances said.  “Is Jane at home?”

          “Out I’m afraid,” said Deacon.  “You missed her by about half an hour.”

          “Never mind,” said Frances.  “I’ll catch her another time.”

          Deacon was embarrassed.  He’d never liked Frances.  Always thought she was bad news.  The feeling was mutual.  Frances had never liked him.

          There was a silence.  Deacon didn’t know why she was there. Why should he?  Frances let him stew.  She wasn’t there to cheer him up.

          “What can we do for you?” he asked eventually, rubbing his hands together.  He always did that when he was embarrassed, rubbed his hands together.  “Or was it just a social call?”

          “No.  Not at all,” said Frances.  “I’ve got something for you.”  She opened her handbag and took out the knife.  Deacon looked at it.  He looked at Frances.  He looked at the knife again.  Like it was a present, a gift, or maybe something she’d borrowed once, and was now returning.  It was when he looked back at Frances for the second time that she stabbed him in the face.

          He said something.  He didn’t call out.  He said something indistinct, then he moved his hand up to his face and away again.  He looked at the blood on his hand.

          Frances stabbed him again.  In the throat, and then twice in the chest.  He fell to the floor and she knelt beside him, giving him the point of the knife until he stopped breathing, made that gurgling sound she’d heard before.

          She took the note from her bag and placed it on his stomach.  She checked her watch.  She still had an hour to wait until Jane came back.

          Frances sat on a chair and waited.  She could do that, simply block the body out, even though it was there in front of her.  She could do that because she had been loved, by her father, and by Graham.  Frances’s father had always let her win when she was a child.  They played monopoly, or card games, whatever it was he would let her win.  He couldn’t help himself, he loved her so much. 

          She heard the car arrive outside, the car door slam.  Jane Deacon didn’t come in.  Instead she stood in the doorway and shouted:  “Terry.”

          The front door was open.  Jane shouted a couple more times.

          Frances went to the front door.  Jane Deacon had already gone.  Frances saw her running along the cul-de-sac.  And there it was again.  The old Cortina with the man.  He had followed her back.

          Frances left the house and took the footpath at the blind end of the cul-de-sac.  Life was like that.  Frances was patient.  She would take them one at a time.  She would not be tempted to rush anything.  Patience was its own reward.

 

 

 

chapter

12     

          The blonde rang him Saturday morning.  “Is it Mr Turner?”

          “I don’t relate to that name,” he said.

          “It’s Mrs Deacon.”

          Didn’t she know he was a detective?  “How’re you doing?”

          “I need to see you,” she said.  “Is it possible?”

          “At your place?”

          “No.  I’m staying at Terry’s brother’s.”

          “I could come this afternoon.”

          “No.  Not here,” Jane Deacon said.  “The whole family’ll be here, and. . .”

          “Bettys,” Sam told her.  “At two.  Real nice coffee there.”

 

* * *

 

          She arrived in the blue cashmere suit, something black and shiny under the jacket.  Her eyes were swollen, but she had hold of herself.  Sam called the waitress and got her a coffee.

          “I need help,” she said.

          Sam looked straight into her eyes.  “You’re calling the shots,” he said.  “I’m unemployed.”

          “Terry’s. . . death.  I think it was supposed to be me.”

          “Terry gave me the story about you having an affair, because he wanted me to keep an eye on you?”

          “Yes.”

          “He knew about the portrait?”

          “Yes.”

          “Why?  If you need a bodyguard, hire a bodyguard.  Tell the man what the job is, then he can do it.  If I’d known I was a bodyguard I’d have been prepared.  I might’ve got someone else to watch the house.  Kept you both covered.  Maybe you’d still have a husband.”

          She looked down at the table.  Took a handkerchief out of her sleeve and dabbed her eyes, though there was nothing coming out of them.  Sam touched her arm.  “I don’t want to be hard,” he said.  “But you been giving me the run-around.”

          Jane Deacon took a breath and pursed her little mouth.  “I’ll tell you the whole story,” she said.  “Everything.”

          “Somebody better,” said Sam.  “I’m on the dark side of the road.  At the moment I don’t know fuck.”

          “I had a friend,” said Jane.  “A Swedish girl, called Lotta Jensen.  It’s a long story, you’ll have to bear with me.”

          “I’m not going anywhere,” Sam told her.

          “About ten years ago we lived in a communal house.  There were six or seven of us, mainly young professionals.  Terry was there, but it was before we married.  There was this young New Zealander called Graham, Graham East.  He was okay at first.  He didn’t have any qualifications, and I suppose we all thought he was simple minded.  We patronised him, but he did a lot of work in the house, and he became part of the fixtures.  He seemed to be good hearted.”

          Sam rolled a cigarette and offered one to Jane.  She shook her head and reached into her handbag for a packet of straights.  “God, I knew there was something I needed,” she said.  He lit his own and passed the flame over.

          “Most people had paired off before Graham arrived.  I wasn’t with Terry then, I shared a room with someone called Steve.  And Terry, he lived with another girl.  Everything was fairly harmonious.

          “When Lotta arrived things started to go wrong.  It wasn’t her fault.  The main reason she came was to learn English, she hardly spoke a word.  Graham suggested he give her lessons in English, and she teach him Swedish.  That seemed fine, except about ten days after she arrived, Graham announced he was in love with her.

          “Lotta didn’t want to know.  She already had a boyfriend in Sweden who was giving her a hard time.  Graham was just an extra burden.  He was hopeless.  Mooning around all the time.  Big eyes.  He would knock on the door of her room, and when Lotta opened it he would just stand there looking at her.  He wouldn’t speak.  He would just stand there and look.

          “One evening he attacked her in the sitting room.  He had her on the floor, and he was shouting and crying, saying he was going to kill her.  We had to pull him off.

          “He went away for a while, and Lotta returned to Sweden.  Graham seemed better when he came back.  He was full of remorse.  And things settled down again for a while.

          “Then when Steve and I broke up, Graham fell in love with me.  It was the Lotta story all over again.  I didn’t give Graham any encouragement.  I didn’t want anything to do with him.  But we were back to him mooning about all over the house.  The big eyes treatment.  He told everyone in the house how he was prepared to die for me.  It was terrible.  The only way I could deal with it was to keep out of his way.

          “He burst into my room one morning before light.  Literally knocked the door down.  ‘Don’t throw it in my face,’ he said.  ‘Love is precious.’  There were a couple more incidents with other women.  In the end we asked him to leave.”

          “What’re you telling me?” asked Sam.  “I mean, it’s an interesting story about some nut, but you can’t be saying Graham killed your husband.”

          “About two months ago Lotta was murdered in Gothenburg.  I couldn’t find out much about it.  I got a letter from her mother.  She was stabbed, and there was a note pinned to her body.  Written in English.”

          “What did it say?” Sam asked.  “What was written on it?”

          “I don’t know.”

          “Why did you think it was Graham?”

          “I didn’t at first.  I haven’t seen Graham for years.  He lived here for a while, and he had a girlfriend, Frances.  She was strange as well, but she loved him.  I heard they went back to New Zealand.  But a week or so after Lotta was killed I saw them in the town.  And I realised they were back.  Then I got frightened.”

          “This could all add up to nothing,” said Sam.

          “Except for Terry,” Jane pointed out.  “And the knife, and the notes.”

          “Have you told the police?”

          “They weren’t interested in a murder in Gothenburg.  Inspector Delany was more interested after Terry was killed.  He said they’d try to find Graham.  I gave him a description.”

          “What he looked like ten years ago?”

          “I suppose so,” said Jane.

          “What do you want me to do?” asked Sam.

          “I’m frightened,” she told him.  “I want a bodyguard.  I don’t want Graham bursting in on me in the middle of the night.  The police still haven’t found him.  I want him found.  I want you to stop him.”

          “Okay,” said Sam.  “Can you finance it?”

          “Forty pounds a day,” she said.  “It’s better than dying.”

          “Plus expenses,” Sam told her.

          Walking back to the car park Sam noticed a homeless boy on the other side of the street, he had one shoe off and was trying to pad it with newspaper.  He had a sign in front of him on the pavement “Hameless and Hungry.”  There had been a time when Sam had seen the world from a similar position.  It was difficult to find a way up from that far down.  Without some kind of help it might even be impossible.

          He watched the people passing by, the kid’s head moving from side to side like he was at Wimbledon.  Sam felt himself getting angry.  He knew he was angry at himself, at his own impotence, his inability to provide a solution.  But the anger came bubbling up nevertheless.  When Sam himself had been on the street things had looked different.  Then, everyone who walked past had looked capable of a helping hand.  He walked over the road and dropped all his loose change into the kid’s lap.

 

 

 

 

chapter

13     

          Funny how things turn out.  You take on a matrimonial case and find you’re tracking an international serial killer.  Only problem is, where do you start?

          Sam had the names and addresses of the people who were involved in the communal house.  There was a possibility that one or the other had kept in touch with Graham.  It was also possible one of them had a photograph of the guy.

          Jane Deacon was going to stay on at Terry’s brother’s house until after the funeral.  Then she would move back to the cul-de-sac.  Once that happened Sam would have to stay close to her, so now was the time to try track Graham East down.

          Well, not exactly now.  Saturday night a man needs to relax a little.  And wandaful Wanda had palmed the kids off on her husband again.

          Volume Two of Biograph was playing loud on the tape deck as Sam shaved.  He watched the lathered face in the mirror singing along with it.  Visions of Johanna. 

          By the time he’d finished splashing after-shave around the man had drowned all memory and fate and Sam was punching numbers on the telephone keypad.

          “How’re you doing?” he asked Wanda when she repeated the number.

          “I thought you weren’t going to ring.”

          “I’ve been working,” he told her.  “Just got in.  What’s the landscape like?”

          “Clear.  What’s the music?”

          “Dunno, some Jewish guy,” he said.   “I’m on my way,”   Sam hung up as his doorbell rang.

 

* * *

 

          “Yorkshire TV, Calendar,” the guy said.  “You Sam Turner?”

          “Yeah.”

          “I understand you found the body the other night.  Can we talk to you?”  The guy motioned behind him, and Sam took in the van and two other guys unloading camera and sound equipment.

          “You gonna pay me?” Sam asked.

          The guy smiled.  He was short, flabby.  Wearing a five hundred pound suit.  He had a wide tie, striped, seemed to cover most of his chest.  “We didn’t think that would be necessary,” he said.

          “Who’s we?”

          “We’re covering a news item.”

          “I’m going out,” said Sam.

          The guy with the tie smiled again.  “Would payment keep you at home?” he asked.

          “Not for long,” Sam said.  “Depends how much you’re thinking.”

          “Two hundred pounds?”

          “How about four?”

          “Three.  I don’t think we’ll do better than that.”

          “Try three fifty,” said Sam.  “It might be your lucky day.”

          “I think you’ll stay home for three,” the guy said.

          “Cash?”

          A nod.

          Sam shrugged.  “You know what?” he said.  “You read me like a book.”

          They brought the gear into his room.  Lights, cameras, moving furniture around.  The tie guy told him what questions he was going to ask, listened to Sam’s answers.  The whole thing took two hours.  Wanda rang in the middle of it and Sam told her to hang on, he was making money for Christsake.  Course he was coming, soon as he could get away.

          Towards the end the doorbell rang again.  This time a reporter from the local news.  Sam told him to wait in his car.  “Count your money,” he said.  “I’m doing TV at the moment.”

          The tie guy gave Sam three hundred.  “Thanks,” he said.

          “Yeah,” Sam told him.  “Tell me something.  How’d you get my address?”

          “Police contact.  Somebody I know.”  He laughed.  “This man works in the police station, calls himself X.  Real cloak and dagger stuff.”

          “What else he tell you?  This X guy?”

          “Not a lot,” said the tie guy.  “But if anything develops I’ll hear about it.”

          “That kind of info would be good to know,” said Sam.  “Can I buy into it.”

          The guy scratched his chin.  “You’re going to stay on the case?”

          “All the way.  I’m retained by the widow.”

          “So if you come up with anything I’d get to know about it?”

          “Sounds like a deal,” said Sam.

 

* * *

 

          The guy from the local news had been joined by a tall lanky Liverpudlian from the Daily Express.  Sam picked up another hundred from each of them.  Answered their questions, posed for photographs.  By the time he was through Wanda was on the blower again.

          “I’m doing my best,” Sam told her.  “I just have to see these guys out and I’m on my way.”

          “I’m lonely,” she said.  “I keep thinking you won’t come.”

          “Christ, I wanna be there,” Sam said.  “Listen to what I’m saying.  I’m earning.”

          “The food’s ruined, Sam.  I was all ready hours ago.  Now I’m sweaty.”

          “Fuck.  What can I tell you?” he said.  “I’ll eat it, whatever it’s like.  I don’t care if you’re sweaty.  I like a woman who sweats.  Christ, Wanda, I’m on my way.”

          He hung up.  The reporter from the Daily Express said:  “You got a heavy night ahead.”

          “Nothing I can’t handle,” Sam told him.    “If I ever get out of here.”

 

* * *

 

          Wanda was stomping mad when he got there.  “I shouldn’t even let you in the house,” she said.  “The way you treat me.”  Mascara had run a little, but her make up had turned to war paint like she was ready for a fight.  “Look at this.”  She pointed to a casserole of chicken breasts, butter congealed on the top.

          “Hell, just warm it up,” he said.  “I didn’t eat all day.”

          “You could at least apologise.”

          “I’ve been apologising all night,” he said.  “Christ, you run around all day.  You end up playing nursemaid at this time, whatever it is.”

          “Eleven fifteen,” she said, clenching her fists.

          “We got all night then,” he said, taking his jacket off and sitting on Wanda’s plush sofa.  He held his arms out.  “Come and tell Sam all about it.”

          Wanda waited a few moments in the doorway, Sam could see it was a touch and go situation.  Then she walked slowly over and sat next to him.  “You’re not as nice as I thought,” she said.

 

 

 

chapter

14     

          “When you think about it,” Delany said to his sergeant.  “They could have done it between them.  The widow and Turner.”

          “What about the Swedish bird.”  Delany’s sergeant was forty five years old.  He wore a suit with pin stripes, wide turnups.  He believed in procedure.  Statistically, he liked to say, Statistically, plodding gets you there in the end, more often than other methods.

          “Her as well,” Delany told him.  “Sam Turner could have done her as well.  Scam to take us off the scent.  Get us chasing this Graham East character.”

          The sergeant picked up the fax of the note found on Lotta Jensen’s body.  “Whoever chopped Terry Deacon did this one as well,” he said.  “This note is identical.  Same size paper, same writing.  Look at these D’s.”  He pushed the fax in front of Delany.  The wording said:  Lotta Jensen Deserves to Die.  The two D’s were distinctive, a large scroll at the top of the letter.  “Exactly the same as the one we took off Deacon.”

          “I don’t like this Sam Turner character,” Delany said.

          “We could bring him in again.  Lean on him a little.”

          “We’ll have to if nothing else turns up,” said Delany.  “What about Graham East’s girlfriend?  What’s she called?”

          “Golding.  Frances Golding.  No, she doesn’t know where he is.  He disappeared six months ago.  She’d say if she knew.  She’s going to look out a photograph. Destroyed them all when he left, but she’s going to look anyway.  She hasn’t even had a letter from him.  Thinks he’s back in New Zealand. “

          “Oh, yes,” said Delany.  “He just flew over to top Terry Deacon.  Have you checked with the New Zealand police.”

          “No, sir.  You said you would.”

          “No I didn’t.”

          The sergeant stiffened.  “I’m sorry, sir.  But you did say you wanted to do it yourself.”

          Delany sighed.  “Okay.  Get them on the line.  Auckland, wasn’t it?”

          “Wellington, sir,” said the sergeant, picking up the ‘phone.  Then, into the mouthpiece:  “Can you put a call through to New Zealand.  For Chief Inspector Delany.  The Wellington Police Department.  Homicide, I think they call it.”

         

* * *

 

          “We’re looking for one of your nationals,” Delany told his opposite number in Wellington.  “Name of East, Graham East.”  He gave the address that Frances Golding had given his sergeant, Graham’s parents’ house.  “He’s wanted in connection with a murder enquiry.  We don’t think he’s in New Zealand now, but you might be able to come up with an address.  Even a photograph would help”

          “Who’d he kill?” asked the New Zealander.

          “We’re not sure he killed anyone,” said Delany.  “But we do want to talk to him.  A woman in Sweden, and a man here.  Both knife jobs.”

          “We had one here as well,” said the voice in Delany’s earpiece.  “A woman called Sarah Dunn, about six months back, with a note pinned to the body.”

          “Jesus,” said Delany.  “Sara Dunn Deserves To Die?”

          “Something like that,” said the voice.  “How do you know?”

          “We’re dealing with a global killer,” Delany told him.  “Somebody leaves a corpse in every country he visits.”

          “Don’t jump the gun, old son,” said the voice.  “I’ll get back to you on Graham East.  Name doesn’t mean anything at the moment.”

          Delany hung up the ‘phone and looked at his sergeant.  The sergeant said:  “You’re joking?”

          “I wish I was,” said Delany.  “Send a fax of our note to Wellington, and get them to send a fax of theirs back here.”

 

* * *

 

          Two hours later, Clive Desmond, reporter with Calendar News for Yorkshire Television, received a telephone call.

          “X,” said the voice.

          “What have you got?”

          “Something very strange,” said X.  “The guy, whoever it was killed Terry Deacon, he also killed a woman in Sweden.”

          “No,” said Desmond.

          “Yes, and that’s not all.  He killed another woman in New Zealand.  Name of Sarah Dunn.”

          “This is turning into a very interesting case,” Desmond told him.

          “Got to go,” said X.  “I’ll keep in touch.”

          Clive Desmond put the ‘phone down and took his notebook out of his pocket.  He dialled a number and waited.  After a few moments he said:  “Sam?  Sam Turner?  Have I got news for you?”

 

 

 

chapter

15     

     Frances watched the cul-de-sac.  The house was unoccupied.  She would have to wait until Jane came back.  But in the meantime there was plenty to do.  A trip to London possibly.  Yes, why not?  She could buy that hat she’d been promising herself.  Kill two birds with one stone.

          The policeman was a fool.  Frances had wound him round her little finger.  That’s why there were so many crimes.  The police didn’t know what they were doing.  Underfunded?  Yes, of course they were.  And they should have much wider powers, of course.  Terrorists going around with bombs.  Juveniles stealing cars.  Some of the kids in this street had been hanging around her car.  When she went out of the house they watched her.  If she didn’t make it absolutely secure they’d be off with it.  No one was safe.

          Even when criminals were caught they were treated with kid gloves.  Videos in their cells.  Frances had seen a programme on television.  Thugs, muggers, rapists being encouraged to paint.  Given modelling clay and allowed to cast great ugly statues in bronze.  Anything they wanted they could have it.  All at the taxpayers’ expense.

          Graham had come last night.  While she was asleep.  He came to her in dreams, when she was dreaming.  He could join in her dreams, because he was a poet.  Last night was a celebration.  He was so happy about Terry Deacon.  The world felt much better now.

          Frances was worried about her car.  She went out every hour during the evening to check it.  She’d told the policeman about it, and he’d agreed that no one was safe.

          “Why don’t you do something?” she’d asked him.

          “If it was up to me, Ma’am,” he’d said.  “I’d lock them all up and throw away the key.”

          Frances laughed at that, and the policeman, he liked it when she laughed.

          He was a fool, but he was a pleasant fool.  She loved the way he called her Ma’am.  A lot of people these days called her Miz.  She only had short change for them.  Ma’am was a treat.  A real treat to hear.

          She went to the cupboard and took down the shoe box of photographs.  Graham composing a poem at his desk.  Frances at the seaside with bare feet and legs.  Frances giggling at one of Graham’s jokes.  Graham looking out to sea.  “Sometimes I think I can see New Zealand in the far distance,” he had said.  And then wistfully, “Or maybe it’s heaven.”

          There was a small one of Graham taken in a booth.  He looked uncertain in it, as if he wasn’t sure when the flash would come.  It didn’t look like him at all.  Frances put it on one side and returned the shoe box to the cupboard.

          She took the black Panda and drove to the police station.  The street kids watched her every move as she unlocked her car.

          “I’ve found a photograph,” she told the sergeant when he came to the front desk.

          “Oh, that’s a break,” he said.  “I’d almost given up on you.”

          “I’d like it back when you’ve finished with it,” said Frances.  “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

          “You still haven’t heard from him, Ma’am?”

          “No,” said Frances.  “I read about the murder.  I’m sure Graham couldn’t have done anything like that.  He isn’t that kind of man.”

          “Well, Ma’am,” said the sergeant, “we don’t know one way or the other at the moment.  We do need to speak to him, though, if only to eliminate him from our enquiries.”

          “He wouldn’t,” said Frances.  “I just know he wouldn’t.”

          “You’ll let us know if he contacts you?”

          “Of course,” said Frances.

          “And Ma’am.  Thanks for the picture.  I’ll get it copied and let you have it back.”

          Frances drove home via Bishophill.  She didn’t stop the car at the cul-de-sac, but drove slowly past.  The house was still in darkness.  The Cortina wasn’t there either.  The man in the Cortina,  he wasn’t there.

 

 

 

chapter

16     

          Sam talked to a nice homely old lady called Miss Allison.  She had been friendly with the people who lived in the communal house and specially friendly with Graham East.  She remembered Graham well.  “He was a sad boy,” she told Sam.  “He couldn’t really manage the world.”

          “Who can?”

          “None of us, really, I suppose.  But Graham was a special case.  He needed help.”

          Sam took a ginger biscuit from the silver cake stand.  “D’you mind if I dunk?” he asked.

          Miss Allison laughed.  A good laugh, ringing out of her wiry little throat.  The best laugh she’d had in a long while.  It did her real good, eyes coming alive and shining at Sam now.  If she had any spirits in the house, booze of any kind, Sam had a silent bet with himself, she’d be getting them out.

          But maybe Quaker ladies didn’t drink anyhow.  Except in secret.  Sam didn’t know.  They sure made good tea though in fine china cups with handles too small to get your finger through.  Or if you got it through you got it stuck there, maybe need an operation to get free again.  Be easy enough to snap the handle off, but Sam wouldn’t do that.  Ruin the old biddy’s life.

          “I’ll join you,” she said, taking a ginger biscuit from the tray and dunking away.  Sam thought it would take a heavy goods vehicle to get that smile off her face now.  Grinning away like a speed freak.  One more good joke she’d be dancing a jig.

          “Did you like him?” Sam asked.

          “Graham?  He was a nice boy,” she said.  “He wanted the world to be different.  He would have been happier with a genteel world.  He was a conservative, a kind of eighteenth century aristocrat.”  She glanced at Sam.  “I’m not giving you a very good description?”

          “I’ve got a picture of some guy in a wig and tights,” he said.  “Patent leather shoes with high heels and a buckle.”

          That laugh again.  Jesus, better slow down here.  Don’t wanna give her a heart attack.  Yeah, there you go,  have a sip of tea.  Don’t get no fuckin crumbs stuck.

          “He was an odd ball,” Miss Allison said.  “In a class of children he’d be the one everyone picked on.  He’d be a scapegoat; he’d be bullied.  He’d say the wrong thing, or he’d say the right thing in the wrong way.”

          “Could he have killed someone?”

          “No.  Not in cold blood.  He had a temper.  A bad one.  He attacked one of the girls in the house once.  I think anyone could kill on the spur of the moment.  But he couldn’t plan it.  Do it like that.  Not Graham.”

          “People change,” Sam said.

          “Do you think so?”  Miss Allison’s eyes sparkled.  “That’s not my experience.”

          “You brood about something a long time,” Sam said.  “It gets to play on your mind.  You need to free your head.  Doctor Freud and all that.”

          “I’ve never been too impressed with Doctor Freud,” said Miss Allison.  “According to his theories women like me should be psychotic.  But I feel all right.”

          Sam looked hard at her.  He knew what she was saying.  “It could happen,” he said.  “People sometimes go over the edge.”

          “It’s a theory,” said the old lady.  “Yes, it could happen.  But you ask me if I think Graham East, the Graham East who stayed with me, was capable of planning and executing cold blooded murder.”  She looked at the palms of her hands and shook her head.  “I have to say no,” she said.  “I can’t believe he was capable of it.”

          “You knew everybody who lived in the house?”

          “Fairly well,” she said.

          “Okay.  You tell me.  Which one done it?”

          “I’m not Miss Marple,” she said with a grin.  “They were all nice people.  Motivated.  Idealistic.  I don’t think any of them were capable of that kind of crime.”

          “It has to be one of them,” said Sam.  “Three murders, and the only link is the communal house.”

          “Not quite,” said Miss Allison.  “The link is not the house, it is Graham.”

          “You just said it wasn’t. . . “

          “I said Graham wasn’t the murderer, but I didn’t say he wasn’t the link.  This woman in New Zealand, for instance.  She had no link with the house, but I’m fairly sure she had a link with Graham.”

          “Sure, they both come from the same country.”

          “More than that,” said Miss Allison.  “They come from the same town.  Listen, I’ll tell you something else.  When Graham was an adolescent, I think he was fourteen or fifteen, he was seduced by his next door neighbour.  He used to come home from school and she would invite him into her house.  I don’t know if she was unhappily married.  She might have been a paedophile, is that what it’s called?  When people prefer children? Anyway, it was a messy affair.  He never told me her name, but she was much older than him, a married woman.  She used him.  There was a scandal, and Graham and his parents had to leave the area.  I think you’ll find that the dead woman is the same woman who seduced him.”

          “You just convicted the guy,” said Sam.  “If he didn’t do it himself, maybe he paid somebody else to do it.”

          She shook her head.  “That doesn’t sound like Graham, either.”  She leaned forward and poured more tea into Sam’s cup.  Liver spots on her hands.  You’d think she was ready for the knackers yard, but her brain was on a fast track.

          “What about his girl friend?” asked Sam.  “You ever meet her?”

          “No.  Frances, was it?  I never did.  That was after my time.  I saw her once with Graham in the town, and I heard a little about her from Steven Bright.”

          Sam consulted his list of names.  Steven Bright had lived in the communal house, but Sam didn’t have a current address for him.  “You got his address?”

          “Yes, and you should talk to him.  Graham and Steven were close at one time.  Graham could talk to Steven.  Confide in him.”  She stood and walked to an antique bureaux, coming back to her chair with a purple address book covered in something like velvet.  “He’s an architect.  Lives in London.”  She gave Sam the address and a telephone number.

          “There’s a couple more people I can’t contact,” he told her.  “Jean Granger and Bob Blackburn.  Know what happened to them?”

          Miss Allison shook her head.  “I have the feeling they were together, you know, lovers.  Bob was American.  Jean, she was South African Indian, beautiful young woman, all the young men chasing her.  I don’t know what happened to them.”

          Sam stood to leave.  “It’s been a real treat,” he said, meaning it. 

          She smiled at him, eyes dazzling away like little jewels.  “The ginger biscuits, you mean.”

          “No.  Everything.  I don’t meet many real ladies.  Not many who can think.  And laugh.  And look like a million dollars.”

          “You’re a clever man,” she said.  “You know flattery will get you everywhere.  You must come back again.  You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

          “I’ll do that,” he said.  “You invite me and I’ll come.  We could talk about something else.  Sex, maybe.”

          That got the laugh pumping away, skinny arms flapping like a penguin.  Sam planted a quick kiss on her cheek.  “Oh, my goodness!” she said, clapping her hand to the cheek to keep the kiss in there, not letting it get away.  “Oh, my goodness, Mr Turner, you’re irrepressible.”

          “Guess so,” he told her.  “And call me Sam.  Okay.”

          “Okay,” she said.  “Sam it is,” and reached up with her thin lips to plant one on his cheek.  It landed on his nose, but Sam gave her a point for trying.  “You call me Celia.  I’ll ring you next week,” she said.

          “Don’t forget,” said Sam, stepping out the front door.  “I’ll wait for the call.  Give me an alibi to spend some time with you.”

 

 

 

chapter

17     

          Frances walking down the street, consulting her watch.  Thinking, still time to get to the West End, buy a hat before catching the train home.  Heading for The Angel.  A day out in the big city.  Sunshine, too.  Feeling good.

          Remembering the time with Graham when they booked into a bed and breakfast opposite King’s Cross Station.  Graham paid the money before Frances looked at the bedroom, and when she saw where they were going to sleep she cried.  The room was no bigger than the bed, and the sheets hadn’t been changed.  They hadn’t been changed in a long time.  Graham went straight down to the woman and demanded his money back.  The landlady wouldn’t give it though.

          Graham got their bags and took Frances by the hand, led her out of there and booked into The Great Northern, en suite bathroom, a little bar in the room.  A kind of honeymoon.

          He could be masterful sometimes.  Masterful and creative and sensitive.  Frances had given up everything for Graham.  Her husband and three children, her respectability.  Her status.  And she didn’t regret it.  He was her man.  Her destiny.

          Turning into The Angel Frances stopped and walked back the way she had come.  It was him, coming out of the station, and walking behind her.  The man.  The man in the Cortina.  Had he seen her?  Was he following her now like he had followed Jane?

          Frances never panicked.  She crossed over the road and stopped at a shop window.  She watched his reflection in the window.  He walked on by, never giving her a second glance.

          Frances knew where he was going.  She felt that big big smile coming on.  Sam Turner, that was his name.  She’d seen him on the television.  Thought he was a private detective, but he was a public fool.

          She watched him take the same route she herself had taken an hour before.  When he turned the corner and was out of sight, heading for Arlington Way,  Frances entered a ‘phone booth and rang 999.  She spoke in a gruff voice and attempted a foreign accent, not very successfully, something between Scottish and Texan.  Graham had always laughed when she tried to speak with a New Zealand accent.  She came out of the ‘phone booth smiling.  That would fix Mister Sam Turner.  She had to laugh again at the accent.  Graham would have thought it was wonderful.

 

* * *

 

          Frances changed to the Victoria Line and rode through to Piccadilly Circus.  There was a little hat shop somewhere around here, she had visited once with Graham.  Hats changed Frances, she had the kind of face that disappeared under a hat, was transformed by it.  Lots of women, when they wore a hat they looked like they always looked, but with a hat on.  Frances, when she changed her hat she changed her personality.

          This was it, yes.  Little side street.  Grubby kind of shop from the outside, tiny windows, but when you opened the door, oh, she remembered the bell, two chimes, it was brightly lit, larger than you expected, and hats everywhere.

          The woman as well, an old lady milliner, who spoke absolutely correctly.  Called Frances Madam, and was forever moving the steps around to get different hats from the shelves.  Nothing was too much trouble for her.

          Frances loved the unpredictability of hat shops.  The whole experience was an adventure for her.  You never knew beforehand what you would end up with.  You went into a hat shop with some kind of idea, but after an hour or two you came out with something completely different.

          She was fairly sure she was looking for something with a brim today, even a broad brim; but here she was heading for the underground carrying a box with a brimless hat.  Black it was, circular, with an imitation veil and a thin strip of synthetic animal hide running all the way round.

          “Sophisticated,” is what the old lady had said.  “It makes Madam look very sophisticated.”

          Frances knew she was right.

 

 

 

chapter

18     

          Sam Turner had lived in Islington for two years with his first wife, knew his way around.  Felt like old times on the Northern Line.  A whole day without the Cortina, which would never have made the trip.  Sitting around on trains drinking crap coffee and cracking those little pork pies out of their cellophane.  The sun shining like a foreign country, feeling younger.  The smell of Islington brought back a stream of memories.  Donna and her brothers.  Donna walking round the flat in a mini skirt.  Donna pregnant.  No point in getting morbid, though.  Stay in the present.  Stay on the job.

          The Angel!  Jesus.  Donna legless, sat on the bottom step.  “Take me home and fuck me, Sam.”  And then taking her home, carrying her home over his shoulder, putting her to bed.  Tucking her in, leaving a bucket by the side of the bed just in case.  Sitting downstairs with a bottle, while she sleeps like a baby up in his room.

          Donna coming down in the morning in her knickers, white as a ghost.  Covered in ribs.  Reminding him of everything he ever wanted with her warehouse eyes.  “Did you do it to me?”

          “No.”

          “D’you wanna do it now?”  Desperate to lose her virginity.  Get rid of it.  Get free.

          Donna.  Donna.  Where are you today?

          Sam shook his head free of it all, walked out of The Angel and took a left, following the directions Steven Bright had given him over the ‘phone.  Bright had been easy to talk to, yes he remembered Graham East very well.  Hadn’t seen him for years though.  Gloomy type.  Bright thought Graham was the type might kill himself.  Could imagine that more than him killing somebody else.  He knew Frances too.  She was crazy about Graham, possessive.  Big woman, muscular, like a man, except she had a woman’s mouth.

          “One time,” Bright told him on the ‘phone, “she came round to my flat looking for Graham.  It was while I was living in Leeds.  Graham used to call round occasionally, two, three times a year.  Just chew the fat.  Anyway, Frances turned up on the doorstep.  She was worried about Graham, she said.  He’d been depressed.  She couldn’t lift him out of it.  I invited her in and we had some coffee.  Somehow in the conversation I mentioned Graham had been round a couple of months before.  Then Frances did a double take:  ‘When was he here?’ she wanted to know.  ‘He never told me he came here.  He’s always doing that.  He just lies to me.’

          “She was really agitated.  One minute she was calm, then the next she was a nervous wreck.  I couldn’t figure her out.  ‘He’s not reliable,’ she said.  ‘I put everything into this relationship, and Graham, he carries on writing his poetry and dreaming his life away.  How would you like it, living with someone you can’t trust?’

          “She was paranoid.  They were both paranoid.  They’d both been kicked about so much, they didn’t know where they were.  They had each other, that’s all.  And that was a kind of mixed blessing.”

          Sam turned into Arlington Way and counted the houses down to 102.  Fairly quiet street, a pub on one side with the door open, three guys and a woman perched at the bar, one of the men legless already.  102 was just another house in the row.  Didn’t look like an architect’s house.  Sam knocked on the door.

          No sound or movement from inside, but the guy was expecting him.  Sam thought he might have slipped out for something, or maybe he was sleeping.  He knocked again, then stood back and looked at the upstairs windows.  Drapes.  Nothing to see.

          Hell, he’ll be back in a minute.

          Okay, he knelt down on the pavement and pushed the letter box open.  A car was coming down the street fast.  Sam looked into a dark hallway, a little light coming from the opposite end, probably a kitchen window.  Nothing else, except. . .

          The car screeched to a halt behind him.  Sam looked round to see both doors open and two cops getting out, all their eyes on him.  Tall one with a moustache and a smaller sidekick.  Both of them moving fast, like they wanted to run him through the wall.

          “Turn round, face the wall.”

          “Okay.”  Sam did as he was told.

          “Hands on the wall.”  One of the cops kicked his feet apart and frisked him.  Then they turned him round and the one with the moustache said:  “What you doing?”

          “Being abused,” Sam told him.

          “Smart bastard,” said moustache, and pushed Sam in the chest so his head banged against the brick.

          Sam rubbed his head.  “See what I mean?” he said.

          “You live here?”

          “No.”

          “What you doing here?”

          “I’m visiting,” said Sam.

          “What’s your name?”

          “Sam Turner.”

          “I.D?”

          “There’s a driving license in my back pocket,” said Sam.  “But if I reach for it you’ll crack my head on the wall.”

          “Too fuckin right,” said the cop.

          Sam half turned and the cop took his wallet out of his back pocket, flipped it open and looked at the driving license.  “Who lives here?” he asked, looking at the house.

          “Guy called Steven Bright,” said Sam.  “But he’s not altogether at home.”

          “Don’t be smart with us, Mister,” said moustache.  “You been in there?”

          “No, it’s locked.”

          The other cop pushed the door to check.  He nodded to moustache.  The door was locked.

          “We’ve proved it, then,” said Sam.  “Can I go now?  Got to see my dentist.”

          The moustache twitched like the guy behind it was going to laugh, but it was a false alarm.  “We come down the street,” he said, “you’re kneeling at the door.  What’s that about?”

          “I’m a Moslem,” Sam told him.  “Eighteen minutes past eleven every morning I have to open a letter box and say my prayers.”

          Moustache made to shove him again but Sam intercepted the man’s arm, gripping him tight by the wrist, leaning forward.  Sam hissed through his teeth.  “Don’t push me about,” he said, holding eye contact, speaking through tight lips.  “I’ve taken enough shit from you.”

          The cop shook his hand free.  When he spoke again there was some kind of begrudging respect to his tone.  “We’ve had a report of a murder,” he said.  “Or attempted.  Caller said somebody called Sam Turner was trying kill a guy named Bright.”

          “Bright’s dead,” said Sam.  “Or it looks like it.  Sam Turner had nothing to do with it.”

          The eyes on both the cops widened.  The little one, his mouth opened as well, his face in a kind of formation dance.

          “Look through the letter box,” Sam told them.  “That’s what I did.”

          There was a moment when both cops tried to look through the letter box at the same time.  It didn’t last more than a second, just a push and a shove, before the little one gave up and left it to moustache.  “I can’t see anything,” he said.

          “Other end of the passage,” Sam told him.  “There’s a shoe on the floor, left hand side.”

          “Yeah, I got that.”

          “It’s attached to a leg.”

          “Jesus,” said moustache, standing and going for the car.  “Better get on to the station.”

          “Don’t try anything,” said the little cop to Sam, squaring his shoulders now he was in charge of the prisoner.

          “Yeah,” said Sam.  “Or you’ll blow me away.”

 

* * *

 

          They waited in the car until reinforcements arrived, then they broke the door down.  It was Steven Bright’s shoe, foot, leg, and badly mutilated body, complete with note, just like the others. 

          Two other cops, younger, took Sam to the Met.  He drank coffee from paper cups for two hours.  Time to think.  Wanda had been a mistake.  She seemed like a fair bet, but she was too greedy.  Ringing him all the time.  Time to pull out of that one before it got too complicated.  If it wasn’t too complicated already.

          You never could tell.  There was that point at the beginning of a relationship where you had to make a leap of faith, go for it or leave it.  And all you had to go on was a hunch.  What women called intuition.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  Like a black ball game it can go either way.

          It was time to unload that lady.  Real pity though, because physically she was there.  The red hair, the willingness to play.  But she also needed carrying, and Sam couldn’t carry.  A woman would be nice, but she would have to be independent.  Something like Celia Allison, only thirty years younger.  Maybe Jane Deacon?

          Leave it alone, Sam.  You’re sitting in the Met, they’re gonna lay God knows what on you, and all you can do is think about women.

          Islington’s a good old town.  Everything happens there.  You meet a girl and fight her family.  You start a family of your own and lose it.  You come back years later and find a dead man.  Someone’s got it in for you.

          Sam’s head was awash with caffeine when they came for him.  They took him to an office where a Chief Inspector Wilkinson was playing Aida on a tape deck.  “Thought you worked in Oxford,” Sam told him, taking the only available chair.

          Wilkinson hit the stop button, removed the tape and replaced it with another.  “Got any Grateful Dead?” Sam asked.  “More my style.”

          The telephone rang and Wilkinson picked it up.  He listened for a while, then said:  “Send them up,” and put it down again.  He leaned his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands together under his chin, looking at Sam but saying nothing.   After a moment Sam leaned his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands together under his chin.  He looked back.

          Wilkinson smiled.  Sam smiled and said:  “I’m getting to you, aren’t I?”

          A few moments later there were footsteps in the corridor, a knock on the door, and Delany and his sergeant were shown into the room.  Wilkinson and Delany shook hands and introduced themselves.  The sergeant stayed in the background.

          “I told you not to leave York,” Delany said to Sam.

          “You asked me,” Sam told him.

          “Murder follows you around, Turner,” said Delany.  “You’ll have to come up with some pretty smart talking to squirm out of this one.”

          “You think I killed Bright?”

          “Who else?  You were at the scene.”

          “They should make a film of this,” Sam told him.  “Me stabbing a guy to death through a letter box.”

          Delany looked at Wilkinson.  “He was at the scene?”

          Wilkinson shook his head.  “He was outside the house.  Door was on a Yale, though.  He could have been inside.”

          “Were you inside?” Delany asked Sam.

          Sam shook his head.  “I had an appointment with the guy.  Got there too late.”

          Wilkinson turned to the tape deck.  “I want you to listen to this,” he said.

          “Not the fuckin opera,” said Sam.

          Wilkinson hit the play button.

          A strange voice began speaking.  Not hurried.  Calm, with some kind of impossible accent.  A horse, throaty voice.

          “Listen,” it said.  “I’m only going to say this once.  The address is 102 Arlington Way.  Sam Turner is there now, with a knife.  He’s going to kill Steve Bright.  You’ll have to hurry.”

          There was a click.  Wilkinson hit the stop button.  “That call came in just after eleven,” he said.  “My officers apprehended Sam Turner at the scene at fourteen minutes past.”

          “When did Bright die?” asked Delany.

          “He was still warm,” said Wilkinson.  “He’d been dead less than an hour.  Much less.”

          “That voice,” said the sergeant.  “Anybody recognise it?” 

          They all looked at Sam.

          “Closest I could get,” he said, “would be Hercule Poirot.  Either him or that guy Sherlock Holmes was always chasing round.  What’s he called?  Morifuckinarty?”

          “Funny man,” said Delany.  Then to Wilkinson:  “You gonna hold him?”

          “No,” Wilkinson said.  “No prints, nothing to connect him except the tape.  Might want to see him again though.”

          “I might have made the call,” said Sam.  “Put you off the scent.”

          “You ain’t got the wit,” said Delany.  “That call must have been from Graham East, and I know a way to check it.”

          “Frances Golding,” said the sergeant.  “She’ll recognise the voice.”

          Delany nodded.

          “Can I go home?” asked Sam.

          “Yes,” said Wilkinson.

          “Don’t suppose you’re going in my direction?” Sam asked Delany.

          Delany smiled.  “You know what?” he said.  “We’re going the other way.”

          “Cheers.”

          “And, Turner?” Delany continued.  “Get off the fuckin case.  If we find you at even one more murder scene, or anywhere near it, you’ll do time.”

          “I’m retained by Jane Deacon,” Sam said.  “I’m going to see it through.”

          “Give it up,” Delany warned.  “I don’t want to see you again.  I especially don’t want to see you again on television.  Do you read me?”

          “I’ll consider it,” Sam said, “if you give me a lift home.”

          “Go on the fuckin train.”

          They left Wilkinson’s office, and Sam followed Delany and his sergeant out of the building.  The two cops turned towards the car park, and Sam began walking towards the underground.  “Hey, Turner,” Delany shouted.

          Sam stopped and walked back towards them.  This Delany had second thoughts, perhaps.  Give him a lift back to York.

          “You ever been to New Zealand?”

          “What is it with you, Delany?” Sam asked him.  “You spend your life dreaming of far away places.  Maybe you should take a holiday.”

 

 

 

chapter

19     

          Terry Deacon’s body was released on the Monday, and the funeral was the following Thursday.  Sam went along to pay his respects to a past employer, see who was there, and confer with the widow.

          There were several groups stood around the church.  All the men from the Men’s Group stood close to the church door.  Sam nodded at them as he walked over to Celia Allison.   “You heard about Steven Bright?” he said.

          “It’s a terrible business, Sam.  Did you manage to talk to him?”

          “I was fifteen minutes too late.  Celia, is there anyone here I should talk to?”

          “Yes,” said the old lady.  “The woman over there in the strange hat.  I’m sure that’s Frances, Graham’s girlfriend.”

          Sam had a quick word with Clive Desmond, the Calendar reporter.  “There were two people lived in the communal house we haven’t been able to trace,” he said.

          “Yes,” Desmond said.  “An American called Bob Blackburn and a woman name of Jean Granger.”

          “The most likely event is that one or the other of them contact the police,” said Sam.  “You don’t know if that’s happened?”

          “I know it hasn’t,” said  Desmond.  “The police are still looking for them.”

          “I’d like to talk to them,” said Sam.

          “We’ve got a deal,” Desmond told him.  “Soon as I hear anything you’ll know about it.”

          Frances Golding was standing with Delany and his sergeant.  She had a hat on Sam couldn’t believe.  Little round job with a strip of leopard skin.  He walked towards her, nodding at Delany and the sergeant as he passed.  They both ignored him.

          Frances’s face was a mask Sam couldn’t read.  “I’m Sam Turner,” he said, extending his hand.  She wore black gloves, and gave a strong handshake.

          “Yes.  Frances.  Frances Golding.”

          “I’m working for Jane,” he told her.  “She suggested I talk to you.”

          “I saw you on the television,” said Frances.

          “Right.  I love your hat, by the way.”

          Something happened to her face.  A kind of colourless blush, perhaps.  She looked ridiculous.  Delany and his sergeant moved away.

          “Did they play you the tape?” he asked.

          “Yes.  It wasn’t Graham.”

          “Can you be sure?”

          “I know it wasn’t him.  It didn’t sound anything like him.  Graham isn’t a murderer.”

          “Did it sound like anyone you know?  Anyone connected with Graham?”

          “I don’t know who it was,” said Frances.  “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

          Sam changed tack.  “I’d like to come see you,” he said.  “Graham was a poet, right?”

          Frances nodded.

          “Have you got any of his poems?  Anything he wrote?  I’d like to know how he thinks.”

          “He took everything,” said Frances.  “I found a photograph I gave to the police.  But that’s all.”

          “Yeah,” said Sam.  “I saw it in the paper.  But I’d still like to talk.  You might find something.”

          “If you think it will help,” she said.

          The funeral cars arrived in the church yard.  Jane Deacon got out of the first one with Terry’s brother and his family and went into the church.  Other family members and friends began filing in after them.

          “We’d better go inside,” Sam said.  He looked hard at Frances again, glancing at the headgear.  “It really suits you,” he said.  “How does it feel to have your head under something like that?”

 

* * *

 

          Jane Deacon had thought about the funeral service.  The preacher was kept out of it as much as possible.  Terry Deacon’s brother gave an address, and then another one was given by a friend, Sam didn’t catch the man’s name.  It was short on sentiment and Sam was moved despite himself.  When they followed the coffin out of the church Tom Waits sang Sailing Away.  The widow looked like a million dollars.  Used notes, but who’d turn it down?

          They put Terry Deacon in the biggest hole Sam had ever seen in his life.  Must’ve gone down four metres.  A cul-de-sac.

 

* * *

 

          Back at home Sam opened a large envelope from Yorkshire Television.  There was a note inside from  Clive Desmond, the reporter, saying:  We get more mail for you these days than we get for us.

          The envelope was full of mail addressed to Sam Turner, or Sam Turner Private Detective, or the Turner Detective Agency.

          Sam opened them one after the other, read them, and then set them aside.  About a third of the way through the pile he stopped and stuck the tape of  World Gone Wrong into the deck.  Listen to the Bluesman.

          When he’d read all the letters, he sorted them.  Two were anonymous, both death threats.  Five were offers of marriage, all from nutters, except one Sam hoped was sane because she turned him on already.  The remaining sixty two were offers of work.  The majority of them matrimonial cases, but several others from firms, including two local solicitors who were dissatisfied with their present arrangements.

          Sam turned the volume up and did a little dance round the room.

 

* * *

 

          The snooker hall was empty apart from the two of them.  All the other tables dark.  The bar in a pool of light, abandoned.  Gus had lined the reds up in a straight line down the centre of the table, the colours on their spots.  When Sam arrived he had potted the reds around the blue and was starting on the pink.

          “How’re you doing?” Sam asked him.

          “Thirty eight,” said Gus, missing the pink.  “Fuck.  Look at that, talking when I’m down on the ball.”

          Sam laughed.  “Real hive of industry, here,” he said. 

          “Thursday’s crap,” Gus told him.  “Sometimes think I’ll go mad.  Shall I set them up?”

          “Yeah.  Only one frame though.  Busy.”

          The snooker hall was in a cellar in the centre of the town.  In the evenings, sometimes during the late afternoon, the place was humming with players of all ages, mainly men, though women had started coming in greater numbers during the last few years.  Sam sometimes found the bar a problem when he was here, especially after a game when people would sit around drinking.  Usually he paid for his table and left.

          It was run under tight management and though from time to time a table of drunks would start shouting and whooping, like they were in a western saloon, usually the place was quiet.  Everyone concentrating on potting that one ball and leaving the cue ball in a good position to pot the next one.  The game was about self-discipline and intuition, required insight and enlightenment, a meditative atmosphere, the western equivalent of a Zen temple.

          “You found the axe man yet?”  Gus racked the reds and rolled the brown down to the balk.  Sam collected it and put it on its spot.

          “No,” Sam told him.  “Look, I’m getting more work.  Gonna need some help.”

          Gus walked down to Sam’s end of the table sanding his cue.  “How much?  And what do I have to do?”

          “How much they pay you here?”

          “Twenty a day.”

          “How about thirty?”  Sam got down on the table and broke up the reds.  The cue ball skimmed the blue on its way back to the balk, finished up three inches from the cushion.  A red hovered over the left hand corner pocket.

          “When do I start?” Gus asked him, feathering the white.  He was younger than Sam, maybe thirty years old.  Tall and skinny, wearing Levi’s with a maroon waistcoat, a days growth of beard on his face.  He potted the red.  The cue ball collided with the black and knocked it into the pack.  “Why did that happen?” he said.

          “Too much side,” Sam told him. “Jane Deacon’s gonna go back to the house tomorrow.  One of us will have to be with her most of the time.”

          “Twenty four hours?” asked Gus, taking on a long blue, missing it by a mile, but fluking the cue ball into a safe position.

          “No.  She’ll be at work during the day.  But evenings and all night.”  Sam picked out a route for the cue ball through a tangle of reds, left it tight behind the green.

          “I saw her photograph,” said Gus.  “Real nice.”  He got down on the ball, stood up again and chalked the end of his stick.  “All night?  In her house?”

          Sam smiled.  “She’s newly widowed,” he said.  “She’ll be nervous.  You’ll have to be nice.”

          Gus played the ball, missed the reds by a whisker and hit the blue.  “Fuck,” he said.  “I am nice.  I was just thinking.”

          Sam nodded, going to the table.  Can’t blame somebody for thinking.  You look at Jane Deacon you start thinking right off.  She’s that kind of woman, makes you think when you look at her, and when she’s gone you just carry on thinking.  “You’ve got a woman, anyway,” he told Gus.

          “Sure I’ve got a woman,” Gus said.  “You think somebody’s got a woman they stop thinking?  Go brain dead?”

          Sam picked a plant out of the pack and made it, finishing straight on the black.  “It happens,” he said.  He potted the black and went on to a twenty seven break.

          “What else I have to do?” Gus asked.

          “Lot of matrimonial cases coming in,” Sam said.  “You follow the husband or wife about.  You write down what they do, who they meet.  Take photographs.  You make a report.”

          “Piece of piss,” said Gus.  “I get a company car, or I drive that heap of shit you use?”  He fluked a red and pushed the pink over the middle bag.  “Sorry,” he said.

          “We do it right,” Sam said, “the money comes in, we both get company cars.  In the meantime we use mine.”

          Gus potted the pink, split the reds, and settled into a break.  “It’s cool,” he said.  “Great car when it starts.”

          “You’re talking about a friend of mine,” Sam told him.

          When he left the Snooker hall Sam almost tripped over a homeless boy sat on the pavement outside the entrance.  It was the same kid he’d seen before, hollow eyed and unkempt and he was still trying to stuff his shoe with newspaper.  Sam walked past and then walked back again.  He took a tenner out of his wallet and handed it to the boy.  The kid looked at it for maybe half a minute.  Sam watched his eyes wondering for a moment and then walked off.  As he got to the corner the kid shouted after him, “Hey, mister, thank you.”  Sam carried on  walking, raised his arm in acknowledgment, but kept going to the car.  Before driving away he adjusted the mirror, caught his own reflection.  “Conscience money,” he said.  He rolled a cigarette and lit it before looking back at his reflection again.  “Hell, what you want me to do?  Take the kid home?”

 

 

* * *

 

          He got to Celia Allison’s house early evening.  The table was set for two, the smell of beef stew and dumplings oozing from the kitchen.  “My mouth’s watering,” he told her.

          “It’s going to be a few minutes,” said Celia.  “Sit down and read the newspaper.  Make yourself at home.”  She went back to her kitchen.

          The local Press had a photograph of Delany looking like a detective who’d lost his way.  Chief Inspector Delany, the officer in charge of the investigation, it said, was attending an international conference in London.  The conference, to be attended by investigating officers from New Zealand and Sweden, as well as representatives from the Metropolitan Police, had been organised to collate and share information.  “We need to computerise everything we know about the killings so far,” Delany was quoted as saying.  “This man has got to be stopped.”

          “With you on his tail,” Sam told the photograph.  “Guy must be shitting himself.”

          “Let’s eat,” Celia said, placing a large pan of stew on the table.

          “We should get married,” Sam told her after the first mouthful.  “A woman cooks like this shouldn’t live alone.  It’s immoral.”

          “I thought you’d appreciate it,” she told him.  “When was the last time you cooked a meal?”

          “I don’t cook much,” Sam confessed.  “Rice sometimes, potatoes, I grate cheese over them.  I buy those tight lettuce and cut slices off when I need them.  Make Brenda’s salad dressing and dunk the lettuce in.  Survival rations.”

          Celia shook her head.  “Don’t worry,” she said.  “I’m not going to mother you.”

          “I get along okay without a mother,” Sam said.  “What I need right now is a typist.  More like a secretary.”

          “I know,” said Celia, an ironic twinkle to her eye, “the story of my life.  I offer a man food, home comforts, the traditional things he’s supposed to need.  He wants me to type a letter.  Is it letters?”

          “There’s a lot of work coming to me,” said Sam.  “Paying work.  I don’t want to screw up on the admin.  You’ve got a word processor.  You probably write good.”

          “I taught English for forty years.”

          “That’s what I mean,” said Sam.  “I write a letter I’m three quarters of an hour in the dictionary.  When it’s finished it doesn’t say what was in my head.  Lady like you can do the same thing better in ten minutes.”

          “All right.  Let’s give it a try.”

          “You can work from home,” Sam told her.  “I want some cards saying Sam Turner Detective Agency, with your telephone number as well as mine.  People can’t reach me they get through to you.  Can you handle that?”

          “Let’s say we’ll give it a try.  If it works for both of us we’ll carry on.  If one of us feels it’s not working, or it’s too much, we’ll call it a day.  I suspect you’ll need your own office sooner or later.”

          “What I’d like,” said Sam.  “Is an office somewhere in the town.  Maybe down by the river.  Second floor job with the name on the door.  And the same name on the window facing the street.  I saw a film once, it’s late afternoon or early evening and a client is sitting in the office.  The sun is coming in the window, catching the lettering on the window, and masking it on the client’s chest:  ‘Philip Marlow.’”

          “Romantic.”

          Sam laughed.  “Tender as a chicken,” he said.  “Hard on the outside, inside I’m all jelly.”

          “I don’t think so,” said Celia.  “You’re not that simple.”

          “You flattering me, Celia?”

          “Why not,” she laughed.  “You do it to me.  Everyone needs a little flattery.  It stops us gnawing away for a while.”

          Sam finished his stew and pushed the plate away.  “Were you ever married?” he asked.

          Celia shook her head.  “Only to the job,” she said.  “The job and my mother.  I took care of her until three years ago.”

          “She died?”

          “Yes.  Ninety Seven years old.  It was a great relief.”

          “No men?  No love affairs?”

          She shook her head.  “There was a suitor when I was young, but I wanted to teach.”  She laughed.  “I let him get away.  Then there was a teacher, a widower, a couple of years before I retired.  He wanted me but he didn’t want my mother as well.  Who could blame him?  So there were no men really.  I had a love affair with English, with teaching.  A passionate affair with music.  Lots of little promiscuous affairs with Italy, Paris, Shakespeare, the cinema, religion.  You?”

          “A love affair with Donna, my first wife.  Brenda supplied more passion than I could cope with.  Lots of little promiscuous affairs with Linda, Joyce, Irene, Stella, and the bottle.  Some other names don’t mean much now.”

          “We’ve got a lot in common, Sam?”

          “You know what, Celia?  I think you’re right.  Anybody else told me that I’d think they were crazy.  But it sounds like we’ve been chasing the same shadows.”

          “Not been, Sam.  Are chasing them.  When you stop it’s time to lay down and die.”

          “I’m not there yet,” said Sam.  “Still got some way to travel.”

          “I’m going to read Chandler again,” said Celia.  “See if I can get into this detective business.”

          “I’ve got all them books,” Sam told her.  “I’ll bring them round.”

          “I’ve got a couple myself,” she told him.  “I’ll read those first.  Then I’ll call you.”

 

 

 

chapter

20     

          “You’re sure you want to go back to that house?”

          Jane looked at her brother in law.  He was not unlike Terry, three years older, already greying at the temples.  His wife, Dorothy, stood behind him as always, had the same concerned look on her face.

          “I feel I have to,” Jane told them, thinking at the same time, Hell, you think I could stay here with you?

          “If it’s too much,” said Dorothy, coming forward now and touching Jane on the arm, “You can always come back.  We’d be only too pleased.”

          Jane tried a tentative smile, first for Dorothy, and then for Donald.  “I know that,” she said.  She kissed each of them on their cheeks.  “You’ve both been absolutely marvellous.”

          And it’s been a real pain being here, she thought.  They were not real family.  They were not her dead mother.  Since Jane’s mother had died when she was six years old, Jane had longed to be held by her.  She couldn’t remember her mother ever holding her.  She was sure she had, but she couldn’t remember it.  Whenever that came up, when people talked about three wishes, or when they said, If you could have anything, one thing, what would it be?  Jane always thought, what I’d like is just for my mother to hold me.

          As a child she couldn’t wait to grow up, to be an adult, to get rid of all those childish feelings like wanting your dead mother to hold you.  She’d been precocious, acting like a mother herself to her younger sister, learning early to manipulate others, to be the leader whatever the cost.  If it meant lying or cheating, which of course it did, then that was all right.  The main thing was to be in control.  Make sure you happened to the world, and the world didn’t happen to you.  But still it was there, a long time after the child had disappeared, no matter how hard Jane tried she would never be able to make her mother hold her in her arms.

          Dorothy and Donald had been stage one, the simple part of the operation.  Stage two was dealing with Sam Turner once she got back to the house in the cul-de-sac.  He was more than interesting.  Not at all the grubby little man she’d expected him to be.  He was being led though.  Being led by Jane, which was the most important thing.  All the time he was with her, looking after her, he wouldn’t be out in the world where he might find things that Jane wouldn’t want him to know.

          He’d nearly got to Steven Bright before Frances.  Only a few minutes difference and he would have talked to him.  Steven could have told him about Jane and Frances.  And that would have blown everything.  But Steven wouldn’t be talking to anyone now, and no one else knew about her and Frances.  Things were moving along.

          She’d seen Sam Turner talking to Frances at the funeral as well.  But Frances had handled it.  Frances and Jane, when they had a secret they wouldn’t tell anyone.

          Important to remember though, Jane told herself again, Sam Turner was not at all a grubby little man.  He was much sharper than she had imagined.  The best policy was to keep him as busy as possible.  As busy as possible looking in the wrong places.

          Maybe that blue cashmere suit would come in for a little more work with Sam Turner.  That would keep his eyes in the right direction, for a few weeks at least, which is all the time Jane needed.

          Sam was a lady’s man, anyone could see that.  And Jane, she was a real lady.  He was a gentleman as well, in his way, he would respond to her predicament, her obvious distress.  Slowly, but surely, he would do what she wanted  him to.  He was a man, and men were like that.

 

 

 

chapter

21     

          A day for sorting things out.  Get an assistant and a secretary.  Start to line up jobs for the future.  Work towards that office in the sky.  Keep on keeping on.

          Sam locked the door to his flat and walked to the car.  The flat above his was vacant again, the guy had only been there a month.  Three different people had stayed there this year.  Some of them you don’t even meet before they’ve gone.  Start of the year had been a woman running away from her husband.  But the guy had found her and come round every night, shouting up at the window.  “Joan.  Joanie.  I’m sorry, Joanie.  It won’t happen again.”  Knocking on the door, sitting on the doorstep.  In the end she’d believed him, or just caved in under the pressure.

          After Joan there was a guy Sam never met, used to play a trumpet or cornet, something like that, long blue notes in the middle of the night.  The last guy was an Irishman working black sites, never changed out of his working gear.  Dermot, moved to Manchester where “the big money is.”

          Driving to the wandaful Wanda’s house to tell her she’s too wonderful.  She deserves something better.  End the day with a bummer.  Tomorrow buy a gun.

          Hell, you think it’s okay with a woman and it never works.  You cross the line, dive in there and thrash about, listen to the life story, imagine it, and you think it’s okay, that’s all, just okay.  You’ve got a woman in your arms, on your arm, leading you on, and you’re still looking for a woman.  You know it’s not going to work.  Only thing to do is tell her and then sit back and listen what kind of shit you are.  How you can’t commit yourself to anything.  How you’ve got an attitude.  How you’re a little boy who never grew up and you can’t treat people like that forever.

          And you say sorry but it’s better to be honest, and duck another cup aimed at your head.  And you know something’s happening, and you know exactly what it is.  You’re fuckin out of it is what.  You’re fuckin nowhere.

          Celia Allison has all the advantages.  It’s fairly easy to ditch Florence when you’re sick of it, but unloading Wanda is a whole ‘nother problem.  It should be easy, like telling her you’re an alcoholic and you don’t want to screw up her life.  ‘Cept with Wanda, you tell her you’re an alcoholic she just loves you more.  She’s got so much love she can cure you.  With the Wanda type you tell them anything negative about yourself, they think you’re being altruistic.

          The only thing certain about the whole episode is that you come out of it feeling like a shit.  But you have to go through it because if you stay in there you know you’ll come out of it eventually anyway, only then you’ll feel like a bigger shit.

          This is where she lives.  She doesn’t know you’re coming.  You haven’t written a speech.  You switch the engine off and hope it’ll start again if you have to make a quick getaway.  You sit behind the wheel and smoke a cigarette.  Put it off a few more minutes. 

          Walk the path to the front door.  Dying in every footstep.

          “Sam,” she says, surprised.  Maybe thinks you’re so keen you couldn’t stay away.  “Come in.”  The lush sitting room.  Central heating way too high.  “You should have rung me.”

          “You wouldn’t have liked it on the ‘phone,” said Sam.  “It’s not the kind of thing to say on a ‘phone.”  He watches her eyes dilate.  She knows what’s coming now, only she wants to hear it.  She wants to have it spelled out.  Otherwise she won’t believe it.

          “Have you met someone else?”

          “No.  But I haven’t stopped looking.”

          “Oh!”  She doesn’t want that.  She wants it straight on the chin.  She glances into the mirror, touches her cheek with her forefinger, sits on the edge of a chair.  Her hands are all over.  She rubs her chin, fiddles with the hem of her dress.  “I’m not prepared for this, Sam.  I don’t know what you’re saying.”

          “I’m saying you and me, us being together, it’s not working for me.  It was. . . it is a mistake.  I want to finish it.”

          She doesn’t blink.  Her eyes are like laser beams.  She looks directly into Sam’s brain.  “And is that it?” she asks.  “Just ‘I want to finish it’, and off you go?  Don’t I even get an explanation?”

          “Wanda, what can I say?  It doesn’t work for me.  There’s no point in prolonging it.”

          “Is it something I’ve said, something I’ve done?”

          “No.  It’s not you.  It doesn’t work for me.”

          “Something’s put you off, Sam.  You were keen enough at the beginning.  I must have done something?”

          “Look,” said Sam.  “I don’t want to criticise you.  Anything I say it’s not a criticism, it’s just that you and me don’t jell.  I need more freedom in a relationship.  I want a relationship which leaves me completely free.”

          “Excuse me,” said Wanda.  “Am I interfering with your freedom?  I hardly ever see you.”

          “You ring me all the time,” said Sam.  “You hassle me.”

          Wanda began to cry.  Big tears rolling down her face.  Sam wanted to go to her, put his arms round her.  Whisper.  Tell her a joke.  He stood on the other side of the room.

          “I don’t want to lose you, Sam,” she said.

          “Wanda,” he said quietly, “there’s nothing to lose.  You never had me.  It’s was just a dream.”

          “To you,” she said.  “It was real to me.  I thought we had something going.”

          “I hoped we had,” he said.  “But it’s not enough.  And it’s too much.”

          “Sam, I won’t ring you again.  I’ll never ring.  We could give it another go.  I’ll leave you free.”  Wanda wiped another gush of tears from her face.

          Sam shook his head.  “I don’t want to, Wanda.  I want to finish it.”

          “That’s the crux of it, isn’t it?” she said.  “You don’t even want to try.  You just want out.”

          “Yeah.”

          “And to hell with me.  My feelings don’t matter.  It’s all what you want.”

          “Yeah.  It’s just about me.”

          “Fuck off, then,” she said, still sitting on the edge of the chair.  “Go on, fuck off.  Get out.”

          “Okay.”  Sam made for the door, opened it and walked outside.

          “Sam,” she shouted as he was closing the door behind him.

          He hesitated.  Almost free.  “What?” he said as Wanda walked into the hallway, her face so close to him now he could reach out and touch it.

          “You’re a complete bastard,” she said, and slammed the door in his face.

          He started the car and drove home.  During the journey the question began formulating itself in his head.  He parked the car by the side of the road and found his key.  Inside the flat he looked at the marriage proposals he had received in the post.  Read the death threats.  He pushed Desire into the tape deck and cut a slice of bread to toast.

          While the bread was burning the question came fully formed into his mind, and he said it out loud.  “Shit, what have I done?  She was a really nice woman.”

 

 

 

chapter

22     

          The new estate on the ring road had a company called Lotza Bullets, and that was Sam’s first stop the following morning.  He pushed the door to go inside and found it was locked.  There was a sign said:  OPEN.  Ring for Admission.  Sam rang the bell.

          A tall clean cut character with rimless glasses came to the door and let him in.  “I’m on the ‘phone.  Be with you in a minute.”  Sam browsed the gun cabinets while we was waiting.  Several of the names out of pulp fiction hit him in the eye.  Magnum, Smith & Wesson, Mauser, Walther, they were all here laid out before his eyes.  They didn’t look as good as they sounded, Sam thought.  The names were magic, but the reality of the objects themselves was coarse.  They had little style.  They boasted of a utilitarianism that was crass.

          Sam moved on to a cabinet filled with hunting knives.  Perhaps the kind of knife Graham East used was amongst them?  They were certainly an evil looking collection of weapons.  There was a huge Special Forces Bowie could have cut a man’s head off, and just below it something else called a Black Jackal Hunter with a serrated edge and a nasty little twist to the point.  Designed to put you off ever wanting to be a Black Jackal.

          Sam read a notice on the wall advertising the Shooters’ Rights Association, which was an organisation dedicated to protecting shooters from police and official harassment.  Everybody thinks they’ve got rights these days.

          The guy on the ‘phone was talking about muggers.  “What you gotta remember,” he said into the mouthpiece.  “Your average thug is always aware of your hands.  He’s streetwise.  When he sizes you up he’s looking for two things.  First he needs to see both your hands, second he doesn’t want any kind of eye contact.  You’ve gotta gun or not, you see the thug walking towards you, even if there’s two of them, you make eye contact with the biggest one and you put your right hand into your jacket pocket.  Ten to one the mugger will back off.”

          Sam couldn’t hear what the party on the other end of the line was saying.  “Eliot,” the gun shop proprietor said, “if he doesn’t back off you take your gun out of your pocket.  And if he still doesn’t back off you shoot the fucker.”  He put the ‘phone down and came out of his office.

          “What can I do you for?” he said, smiling like there was lead in his mouth.

          “I want a gun,” Sam told him.

          “What kinda gun?”

          “Some kind of pistol.  I need something not too heavy, fit in my pocket.  But big enough, or ugly enough to put people off.”

          The proprietor looked at Sam sideways.  “You gotta license?”

          Sam shook his head.  “No.”

          “You putting me on or what?”

          “No,” Sam told him.  “I need a gun.  Show me the way to the license.”

          “You haven’t got a license, you won’t get one,” the proprietor said.  “You a member of a gun club?”

          “I go to two Solo Clubs,” Sam told him.  “That do you?”

          The man didn’t laugh.  “I know your face don’t I?”

          “Maybe on the TV,” said Sam.  “Or the local paper.”

          “Yeah, you’re the one’s after the knife man.  I seen you on the news.  What you gonna do when you find the guy?”

          “I need a gun,” Sam told him.

          “Or some fast running shoes, eh?”  He laughed at that.  Sam thought he must’ve never heard it before.  The proprietor got a chair from the corner of the room and took it into his office.  “Come and sit down,” he said.  “I’ll put the kettle on.  Tell you how it is.”  The joke had worked wonders on him

          Sam followed him into the office.  Bits of gun scattered all over the place.  Boxes of ammunition.  Stacks of paper targets.  A large notice on the wall said:  Dignity, Courage, Virtue, Chastity, Honour.  The Age of the Wimp has forced these words into disrepute.  On the man’s desk was a frame with another quotation:  Without hunting, man becomes cut off from nature, adrift in the unpleasant sea of the human condition.   Jose Ortega y Gasset.  Sam looked around for a Swastika but couldn’t find one.

          “You want a gun,” the man said, “you have to be a full member of a gun club.  You apply for membership, you attend regularly, after six months they make you a member.  Then you can apply for a license.”

          “I don’t have six months,” said Sam.

          “You apply for a license,” the proprietor continued, ” the police come and interview you every day.  You got any kind of record they’ll turn you down.  You have to prove need.  You have to show you have a place to use it.  Personal protection is not regarded as need.”

          “Look,” Sam told him.  “Every day somebody gets blown away.  Seems to me like anybody can get a gun.”

          “Not legally.”

          “Who cares if it’s legal or not?”

          “I do,” said the proprietor.  “I’m a licensed fire arms dealer.  I sell you a gun without a license they’ll close me down.”

          “Hell,” said Sam.  “I only want a little one.”

          The guy nearly smiled.  “I’d like to help,” he said.  “But my hands are tied.”

          “What about the black market?”

          “Booming,” the proprietor told him.  “The legal trade’s in deep recession.  The black market’s thriving.  Villains don’t buy legal guns.”

          “Look,” said Sam.  “I need a gun.  I don’t give a shit where it comes from.”

          The proprietor pushed a pad and pen across the table.  “I can’t help you,” he said.  “Leave your name and telephone number in case I think of something else.  I could help you, I would.  But I don’t do illegal firearms.”

 

* * *

 

          The telephone was ringing when Sam got back to the flat.  “I heard you’re in the market,” said a voice he didn’t recognise.

          “Where?” Sam asked.

          The voice directed him to a lorry drivers’ cafe on the A64.  “It’ll have to be today,” the voice said.  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

          Sam found the place easily.  Bigger than he had imagined.  There were a couple of trucks parked outside.  Inside there was one driver tucking into a plateful of thick cut bacon and eggs, while another one played a one arm bandit.  A middle aged waitress stood by a till at the end of the self service counter.  She looked towards Sam when he came through the door, but continued biting her nails.

          Sam bought himself a mug of tea which looked like hot orange juice and took it to the end table in the smoking section.  He had a sip of the tea, gagged and pushed the mug away.  Lit a cigarette and waited.  The only sounds were from the one arm bandit, an incessant bleating, and from the tea urn an almost rhythmical expulsion of steam.

          Ten minutes passed before the door opened and a young driver came in.  He wore a khaki bib and brace overall with a checked shirt and black boots.  Long greasy hair tied back with a rubber band.  He got a coffee and walked over to Sam’s table.  He had a plastic bag with the name of a butcher on it.  “You the guy?” he asked.

          “Well, I guess.”

          The driver sat opposite him.  His shirt was open almost to the waist, thick black body hair pushing the folds apart.  The shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing a tattoo which said the guy’s best friend was his mother.  Sam thought the guy’s mother might like him to shave more often.  Or maybe she had a tattoo of her own.  Mothers these days, they ain’t like what they used to be.

          “It’s a Walther,” the driver said, nodding towards the plastic bag.  “Called a PPK.  Fairly old, but in good nick.  Enough ammo for a hundred shots.”

          “Where’s it from?”

          “I know nothing,” the driver said.  “Drivers bring them back from Poland, East Germany.  Mainly Kalashnikov’s, too big for you.  Big trade since the Soviets shut up shop.  I’m not the guy.”

          “I look in your eyes,” Sam said, “I know you’re not the guy.”

          “You give me two hundred notes,” the driver said.  “I walk out of here and leave the piece behind.  You want to haggle I pick up the bag and leave.”

          “I heard one hundred,” said Sam.

          “You heard shit,” said the driver.  “I can’t buy at that.”

          “But you’re not the guy,” said Sam.

          “One fifty’s the best I can do.”

          “One twenty’s the best I can do,” Sam told him.

          “I told you I don’t like haggling.”

          “Don’t haggle,” Sam told him.  “Just sell me the gun.”

          “Fuck,” said the driver.  “One forty.”

          “If I say one thirty,” said Sam.  “Will we be able to compromise?”

          “Yeah.  Okay.  Gimme the money.”

          “How do I know it works?” Sam asked him.

          “You don’t.  You just believe in it.”

          “Where do I get more ammo?”

          “You don’t know anything,” the driver said.  “I think about it I’ll ring you now and then, see if you’re in the market.”

          Sam pushed the money over the table.  The driver palmed it and tucked it away somewhere inside his shirt.  “I’m walking out of here,” the driver said.  “You wait ten minutes before leaving.”

          Sam rolled another one, lit it and waited five minutes.  Then he picked up the butchers bag and left.

 

* * *

 

          He drove along the A64 towards town.  He stopped at a layby and took the Walther out of its bag.  When there was a lull in the traffic Sam wound down the window and took aim at a tree about thirty feet away.  He squeezed the trigger and recoiled violently at the explosion.  Shit, it worked.  The tree didn’t fall over or scream out in pain.  Just stood there, stoical, like it had a motto, “Suffer and Grow.”

          Sam put the Walther back in the bag and rammed it into the glove compartment.  Got out of there quick, singing:  Motorpsycho Nightmare at the top of his voice.  I dig farmers, don’t shoot me, please.

          On the way into town a voice in his head, a voice which came occasionally, totally uninvited, said:  “Why pick on a tree?”

 

 

 

chapter

23     

          Frances was going to see Graham.  Burn a candle for him.  Like in his poem,  Eternal Flame of Love.

          But the man had turned up.  The Cortina man.  Asking questions.  Interfering in other people’s business.  Wanting to know everybody Graham had ever met.  Wondering if she’d found any of his poems? Turned up more photographs?  Writing it all down.  Writing slowly in big letters, printing them as if he hadn’t had a proper education.

          “I’ve got to go out soon,” Frances told him.  “I’ve got an appointment.”

          “I won’t keep you much longer,” Sam said.  “What about his clothes?  Did he take everything?”

          “No, there were some things left.  Things he didn’t normally wear.  I threw them all out when I moved here.  I thought, even if he comes back he won’t want that old red shirt, the boots that needed mending.”

          “Don’t you think it’s strange the police haven’t found him?”

          “No,” said Frances.  “I think he’s in New Zealand.  He wouldn’t go back to Wellington.  He could be anywhere there.  When he left Wellington the first time he travelled about.  He visited all the initial settlements, lived with old timers, people who could tell him about the early days.  I think that’s what he’s doing now.”

          “Some kind of research?”

          “You don’t understand Graham,” Frances said.  “He’s a poet.  He’s a dreamer.  You carry on thinking he’s a killer, and you’ll never find him.  He told me once, if you ever need me and you can’t find me, look for a single flower in a large desert.”

          “What does that mean?”

          “He thinks  the world is an alien place.  The desert, the flower, these are things he can relate to.  Animals, plants, the earth itself, these are worthy.  People are the enemy.  Nature is undermined by people.  By people and by thinking.”

          “So he’ll be in the countryside someplace?”

          “He hated it in Leeds,” Frances said.  “For a long time he never went out of the house.”

          “Did you have neighbours there?  Someone he might have known?  Talked to?”

          Frances shook her head.  “We kept ourselves to ourselves.”

          “Okay,” said Sam.  “Sorry to keep you.  I have to cover every angle.”  He stood to leave.

          Frances collected a keyring with three keys, and a candle from the table and put them in her bag.  “I’ll come out with you,” she said.  “I’m late.”

          She saw the man get in his car.  When she pulled away from the kerb in her little black Panda he seemed to be having trouble starting his Cortina.

 

* * *

 

          Frances drove to Leeds.  The house close to Potternewton Park looked bleak.  She had had the windows boarded up.  Squatters were a problem in the neighbourhood.  These people believed that everything belonged to them.  Even the legitimate neighbours were quite capable of breaking in, taking anything they wanted, smashing up everything else.  Frances visited at least once a week to make sure everything was all right.

          She set the car alarm.  Fixed the steering wheel lock.  Took her bag and went to the house door with her keys.  A locksmith had fitted three locks to the door for her.  Charged her sixty five pounds and said she was a wise lady.  She let herself in and closed the door behind her.

          Most of the rooms were bare.  There were a few sticks of furniture here and there.  The odd cardboard box filled with rubbish.  Nothing that meant anything to Frances.  Nothing important.

          She lit the candle, opened the trap door to the cellar, and descended the rickety steps.  The floor of the cellar sloped away into one corner, and that corner was flooded with a few inches of water.  At the higher end of the cellar was a table and a chair.  Frances put the candle on the table and sat on the chair facing the brick wall.

          She sat in silence for several minutes, then she said:  “Well, Graham, my darling, everything’s going to plan.”

          But the wonderful thing about being with Graham was that he did all the talking, he did all the thinking.  He knew everything.  He even knew about the man in the Cortina.  Knew about that, though it had  happened less than an hour ago.

          Insight, that’s what Graham had.  Insight and sensitivity.  He was the gentlest man who ever walked the earth.  A man who carried terrible burdens, but who carried them with dignity.  Frances would always be with Graham.  So long as she lived no one else would mean as much to her as he did.

          He was caring and constant.  He loved her and she meant everything to him.

 

 

 

chapter

24     

          Sam kept a good distance, but followed the Panda all the way to Leeds.  He had intended going to see Gus this afternoon, but the sight of Frances Golding putting a candle into her bag to keep an appointment had changed his mind.  Why would she need a candle?

          Hell, some women preferred candles to men.  Some of the guys Sam had met, he could understand why, but this woman was supposed to have an appointment, so why did she need a candle?

          The black Panda took the M62 to Leeds.  It travelled fast, easily cutting in and out of traffic.  Once it hit the city Sam had to close the gap to make sure he didn’t lose her in unfamiliar territory.  Her destination in Chapeltown was, in the event, not that unfamiliar.

          He managed to pull in to a side street when she stopped.  He left his Cortina by the side of the road and walked back to the corner in time to see Frances unlocking the door of a boarded up house.  This must be where she had lived with Graham?  Sam had assumed that this place was finished with.  He had not imagined it still existed, or if it did exist he had not imagined that Frances still had access to it.  Did the police know about it?

          She was inside for an hour.  Burning the candle, of course.  The house wouldn’t be connected to the mains.  But what does a woman do in an empty house for an hour?  Was Graham East in there?  Was Frances sheltering him?  But if that was what was happening why hadn’t she taken any food inside?

          The questions were coming at him so fast Sam had to start jotting them down.  All of a sudden Frances began to be a whole lot more interesting than she had appeared.  As far as Sam knew she didn’t have a job.  So where did her income come from?  If she owned this house, why didn’t she let it out or sell it?

          The answers to all his questions must be inside.  He would have to find a way of getting into the house without arousing Frances Golding’s suspicions.  But from this distance the place looked like a fortress.  When Frances came out Sam counted her locking the door with three separate keys.

          She was a willful woman.  She turned from the door and walked straight to the Panda, never glancing to right or left.  She unlocked the car, fiddled around with security devices inside and drove off at speed.  Sam followed.  He would have a look at the house another time.  More important now to stay on this lady’s tail.  See what else she got up to.

          Only there wasn’t much to see.  Frances drove straight back to her house in York, made her car safe, and went inside

          Sam waited for half an hour, but she didn’t come out again.

 

* * *

 

          “I read through all the notes,” said Gus.  “You know what strikes me about it?”

          Sam potted the pink and tried to move the black off the side cushion, missing it by more than a foot.  “Tell me,” he said.

          “That was a really crap shot,” Gus said, shaking his head.  “Christ, there’s kids of twelve come in here can play better than that.”

          “I can still pot it,” Sam told him.  “No harm done.”

          “If you pot it from there,” Gus told him, “it’ll be a fluke.  No one would try to pot a ball from that position.”

          Sam got down on the ball and eyed a long impossible black.  “Bottom right,” he said.

          “I don’t believe this,” said Gus.

          Before the shot Sam saw the black going into the pocket.  Sometimes life is like that.  It’s an impossible shot, but that’s why he takes it on.  The cue ball struck the black thin, sending it down the cushion towards the bottom right pocket.  “Well, fuck me,” said Gus.

          The black wobbled around the pocket, hesitated for a second, and gave up.  “Serves you fuckin right,” said Gus, going to the table.  He potted the black himself, briskly, then glanced over at Sam with his world-weary look.

          “It should have dropped,” said Sam.

          Four other tables were occupied, dotted around the room in pools of light. A group of men and two women were talking at the bar.  There was a glass partition between the bar and the playing area and although the drinkers looked loud and animated it was not possible to hear what they were saying.  They were distracting though, and Sam found himself looking over at the group, feeling irritated.  Looking at them surrounded by photographic portraits of professional players.

          “Another one?” Gus asked.

          “Quickie,” said Sam.  “You were telling me about the case.”

          “Yeah.  This Graham East character.  Everybody who ever knew him says he couldn’t be the guy.  Everything points to him, but nobody believes he’s capable of it.  What do you make of that?”

          “First I think he’s changed,” said Sam.  “We know he’s got a temper.  We know he’s capable of violence.  Maybe he’s changed.  Whatever it is makes people think he’s incapable, that part of him dies, and the violent bit develops.”

          “It’s not likely though,” said Gus.

          “Then I think, what if he’s not working alone?  Say Frances has got him cooped up in this house in Leeds.  Maybe the guy’s flipped.  Like Jekyll and Hyde.  Part of the time he’s a wimp, next day he’s a knife man.”

          “How do we get into the house?”

          “I want to watch Frances, see if she has some kind of pattern.  If we can get into her house in York, get the keys for the Leeds house, it’ll be easy.”

          “Oh, yeah,” said Gus.  “Specially if you meet a slavering maniac inside.”

          “It’s all right,” Sam said.  “I can make it.”

          Gus laughed.  “That’s what you said about the last black.”

 

 

 

chapter

25     

          The Cortina wouldn’t start.  Sam and Gus took turns until the battery went flat.  “This is supposed to be one of the perks,” said Gus.  “My first day and the one and only perk evaporates.  Jesus, if this is rock and roll I want my old job back.”

          “I’ll get it fixed,” Sam told him.  “Jesus, fuckin machinery.  Never trust it.”  Sam got his butchers bag out of the glove compartment, locked the car and left it.

          They walked through the town dominated by the old Minster, dodging tourists, late shoppers, retail people leaving work and hurrying home to their normal lives.   The weather had turned and a sharp breeze was coming from the North.  Sam turned up the collar of his jacket.  Cutting through the Coppergate Centre three doorways in a row housed homeless people, two of them with homeless dogs.  “Didn’t used to see that,” said Gus.

          “Nobody gives a toss,” said Sam.  “They starve to death, freeze to death, the government won’t even notice.”

          “You need more employees,” said Gus.  “You know where to come.”

          Sam stopped.  “We do.”

          “Hang on,” Gus said.  “It was a joke.”

          “Not funny, though,” said Sam.  “The kid in the doorway, it’s like he’s been haunting me.  Every time I go out I bump into him.”

          He walked back to the last occupied doorway, Gus following.  The guy in the doorway was about eighteen years old going on twelve, had a puppy with him.  A scrap of card by his leg said, Hameless and Hungry.

          When Sam stopped in front of him the guy held his hand out.  His face was streaked with dirt and his eyes bulged.  “You wanna job?” Sam asked him.

          “Got fifty pence, pal,” the youth said.  It was a Geordie accent.

          “No.  I asked you something else,” Sam said.  “Do you remember me?”

          “For a cup of tea?”

          Sam crouched in front of him.  “Do you want a job?” he asked.

          The youth pulled his legs up and shoved himself backwards against the door.  “I’m hungry,” he said.

          “You can earn some money,” Sam tried again.  “I could give you a job.”

          The youth looked right through him.  “I couldn’t sell Barney,” he said.  “He’s my friend.”

          “Jesus,” said Sam, standing up.

          Gus took his place, touched the youth’s arm.  “The man’s offering you a job,” he said.  “You could earn some money.  Buy some food.”

          The youth said:  “I can’t defend myself.”

          Sam walked off and then came back.  He threw a handful of coins into the doorway.  “Come on,” he said to Gus.  “We’ve got work to do.”

          “The guy’s a hospital case,” said Gus.

          “What did you expect?” Sam asked him.  He stopped and kicked the window of the Viking Museum.  A middle aged American couple started running down the road.  “Jesus,” said Sam.  “Nobody can make a profit out of you, they shove you in a fuckin doorway.  If you’re really lucky you get a dog called Barney.”

          Gus took his arm and got him walking again.  “You kick all the windows in,” he said.  “It’s not going to help him or the dog.  You wanna be a social worker you find better tactics.”

          Sam spat in the gutter and walked on, grim faced.  As they approached Bishophill he lightened up.  “I’ll just introduce you,” he said.  “Then you can go.  Come back and relieve me about two.”

          He knocked on the door and the blonde let them in.  The puffy eyes had gone.  She was all smiles.  Dressed in a maroon business suit, tight skirt, white blouse, collar like a ruff.  “I thought you’d be earlier,” she said.

          “Sorry,” said Sam.  “The car broke down.”

          “Oh,” she said.  “You can use Terry’s if you like.  The police had it, but I got it back today.  It’s too big for me.”

          “The Volvo?” said Sam. 

          Gus’s face broke into a smile.  “Would be very useful,” he said.  “Until we get ours back on the road.”

          “This is Gus,” Sam said.  “My associate.  He’ll be here some of the time.  He’ll be here when you get up in the morning.”

          Jane Deacon gave Gus her hand.  “Pleased to meet you,” she said through her tiny mouth.

          “Yeah,” said Gus.  “Pleased.”

          “Okay,” said Sam to Gus.  “See you later.”

          Gus walked to the door, then turned round and came back.  “Have you got the keys?” he asked.

 

* * *

 

          “How’re you doing?” Sam asked her when Gus had gone.

          “Not too bad,” she said.  “After the funeral it was difficult.  I feel better now.”

          “What’s it like coming back here?”

          “Strange.”  She smiled, then became thoughtful.  “Not as bad as I expected.  I’ll manage.  I think I can get used to it.”

          Sam made eye contact for the first time.  “You wanna talk, I’m here,” he said.

          “Thank you.  I probably will.  I’ll try not to get in your way.”

          Sam laughed.  “A lady like you gets in my way,” he said.  “That’s a good day.”

          Did she flush?  Sam couldn’t tell.  No, hell, she’ll have guys coming on to her all the time.  Brush them off like flies.

          “Can I get you anything?” she asked.  “I thought I might make some coffee.”

          “Real coffee?”

          “Filter coffee.  That’s all we. . . I’ve. . .  got.”

          “Yeah,” said Sam.  “I can’t drink the instant stuff.  Tastes like p. . .   well, I can’t drink it.”

          Jane Deacon smiled.  “You can say piss if you like,” she said.  “I’m not going to smack your hand.”

          Sam shrugged.  “Piss,” he said.  “And you ever feel the need to smack my hand, you only have to ask.”

          “I think we’re going to get along fine,” said Jane.  “I’ll make the coffee.”

          “While you do that,” Sam said, “I’ll have a look round the house.  You don’t mind, I’ll wander round?”

          “Fine, go wherever you like.”

          He went to the third storey, start at the top and work his way down.  Two rooms on the top, both with single beds.  Twin beds with matching covers in separate rooms.  Must be guest rooms.  Nothing in the wardrobes or chests of drawers.

          Second floor front was her room, had been their room not so long ago.  Carpet you could lose your feet in.  Kidney shaped dressing table with three mirrors, perfume bottles, mascara, pink tissues, small bottle of three star cognac.  Wardrobe with the door open, blue cashmere jacket poking out, two dozen other dresses inside, and must be fifty pairs of shoes.

          Terry Deacon’s wardrobe stuffed with suits and jackets, only twenty pairs of shoes, modest man.  One of those little racks to keep ties on.

          Bedside tables with lamps and books.  On his side Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet, which he would never finish.  On her side John Fowles Mantissa.  Sam picked it up and opened it at the marker.  Still perched on an arm, he read, she runs a hand gently down his chest, and makes a little smoothing circle round his navel.   Sam placed the book back on the bedside table.  She wants to read rude novels, who cares, it’s a free country.  Least it used to be.  Or so they say.

          The central room on the second floor was a study.  Large antique desk, personal papers, unanswered letters.  Two fountain pens.  Company stationary, envelopes.  The walls covered with box files, company records all neatly labelled.

          The back room was a bathroom and toilet.  Huge blue bath.  Separate shower.  Radiator spanning the length of the room.  Piles of towels in primary colours.

          “Coffee’s ready,” Jane Deacon shouted up the stairs.

          “Coming,” said Sam.  “Just inspecting the bathroom.”  He went down to join her in the kitchen.

          “There’s hot water all the time,” she said.  “You can use it if you like.”

          “On the way here,” Sam told her, “we passed a guy living in a shop doorway with a dog.”

          “Oh, dear,” she said.  “It shouldn’t be allowed.”

          Sam took the coffee and added a drop of milk.  He couldn’t work out if she meant the guy should be moved on, or homelessness should be abolished.  He decided to leave it.  “I might try the shower one time,” he said.

          She showed him where coffee and tea were kept, the bread bin, the fridge.  “Take anything you need,” she said.  “You might get hungry during the night, fancy nibbling on something.”

          Sam smiled but kept it to himself.

          “We’ll use the front room,” he said, “if that’s all right.”  He went to the door of the kitchen, which led out to a garden.  It had a good lock and bolts at top and bottom.  “No one’s going to come in this way.  Can we keep this bolted?”

          “I only ever use it to get to the garden,” she said.  “Weekends, during the day.  There’s no access to the street.”

          “I need to talk finance,” Sam said.  “Don’t know how long this is going to take, but the expenses are mounting up.  Gus costs.  I don’t have the capital to carry it.”

          “It’s not a problem,” she said.  “I feel better with you around at the moment.  They’re talking about a management buyout of the business.  I’ll end with half a million, maybe more.”

          “Christ,” said Sam.

          “And there’s the insurance.  Terry left me very well provided for.”

          “Sounds like it,” Sam told her.  “You ever think of getting married again I’d like to put in a bid.”

          She smiled, fingered the edge of the table for a moment.  “I’d have thought somebody would have claimed you by now?”

          “I’ve had offers,” he said, “but nobody who could really afford me.”

          “You’ve been married?”

          “From time to time.  I never learned how to do it.  Keep getting it wrong.”

          “Is that why you joined the Men’s Group?”

          “You want my life story?”

          “I’m sorry.  I’m being pushy.”

          “I didn’t think that,” he said.  “I spent a lot of time thinking I was getting it right, then more time knowing I was getting it wrong.   I joined the Men’s Group because I wasn’t sure how to pronounce Esperanto.”

          “You don’t find it interesting, people’s lives?”

          “Yeah, I do.  Other people’s lives.  I find it interesting when people change patterns.  I didn’t manage to do that yet.  I’m still trying.”

          “I can see you are,” she said.

          Sam didn’t know what to say to that.

 

* * *

 

          She went upstairs to bathe, change her clothes.  Sam continued his inspection of the house.  The front room he’d seen before.  Last time it had a body in it.  Now there was a rug where Deacon had lain.  He looked underneath it, make sure the body had gone.  There was a stain somebody had scrubbed at, but the trace of it would remain forever.  It was a big room, piano with a photograph of Deacon on it, television, stereo equipment.  Three shelves of CD’s.  Classical, early music.  The man’s Greatest Hits.  Some Beatles.  Not a lot to while the night away unless he wanted to educate himself.  Okay, he’d done it before, could do it again.  Next time he’d bring some of his own tapes.  He stashed the Walther PPK behind the stereo system.  No point in letting Jane see it.  Don’t want to freak her out.

          The middle room was for sitting in.  Bookshelves taking up the whole of one wall, books meticulously arranged in alphabetical order.  Some Hemingway.  Agatha Christie by the barrow load.  Simenon might be worth a try.

          Back in the kitchen Sam took a mouthful of coffee from his cup.  Stone cold, he spat it back again, threw it in the sink and rinsed the cup.  Trouble with looking at CD’s, books, who knows which are hers and which were Deacons?  Who knows which one played the piano?

          Sam couldn’t make the blonde out.  He looked at her, this woman who’d lost her husband, few days ago for Christ’s sake, and it’s like she’s already stopped grieving.  When Brenda walked out it had taken Sam months, most of them in an unconscious daze, and she was still walking about inside his head.  Donna he would never get over.  So what was that?  People are so different?  Can this woman with the body and the small mouth shrug it off after a few days, bottle it all up somewhere inside and start treading the footlights?  The show must go on.

          Sam shook his head.  She’s back at work.  She’s already counted the cash.  Even put a rug over the fuckin blood stains.  Had she been in love with her husband?  Must’ve been one of these back to back arrangements, Cosmopolitan gutless marriage, each partner deposit their feelings in a stainless steel bucket right after the ceremony.  Either one of them ever go near the bucket again gives the other one grounds for divorce.

          He heard Jane Deacon come out of the bathroom and pad down the hall to her bedroom.  Some minutes later she moved to the middle room, do her accounts or something.  Make sure she was getting the market price for the business.

          Sam realised he was getting a downer on Jane Deacon and told himself to stop.  He didn’t know shit about her.  She might be straight up, just good at hiding it.  If that was the case it’d show.  She’d break down sooner or later, let it all spill out.

          She came down about ten.  Full length plain dressing gown touching the floor, slippers without heels.  Under the dressing gown something looked like green silk.  She wore no makeup and looked even better.  Slightly dark under the eyes, not sleeping properly.  Waking up in the night.  Waking up in the past, then remembering it’s not the past, it’s the ever present.  Switching the light on and knowing immediately that it’s better in the dark.

          “Are you okay?” she asked.  “I didn’t realise what time it was.”

          “I should apologise,” Sam said.  “I gave you a hard time before.  I shouldn’t have done that, sometimes my negativity gets out of hand.  Sorry.”

          She pursed her lips together, frowned, then let it go.  “I didn’t take it personally,” she said.  “You’ve a right to your privacy.  Since Terry’s death I’ve been trying to take stock.  I’m seeing my whole life from a place I’ve never been before.  It’s difficult to recognise myself sometimes.  When I asked about you I was really asking about me.”

          “I know,” Sam told her.  “I should let you get away with it.  Next time I’ll be more open.”

          She hooked onto his eyes while he was speaking.  Sam looked back.  There was a movement in the contact between them.  It started out with her listening to him, him telling her he would be more open.  A moment or two later it was her telling him something, though she didn’t speak, and him telling her the same thing back.  Sam faltered, looked away for a fraction of a second, and when he came back the moment was dead.

          Jane opened her mouth and felt around for something to fill the void.  “I should get to bed,” she said.  “Busy day tomorrow.”  Her arms were loose by her side, and while he watched she clenched her fists and let them go.

          “Yeah,” he said.  “Tomorrow.”

          She went up the stairs.  Sam waited about half an hour expecting her to come down and tell him something, but it didn’t happen.  He turned to Simenon.

 

* * *

 

          About midnight he cut six slices of bread and made sandwiches of cheese and ham he found in the fridge.  Chutney on the cheese.  He found a freezer bag and put the sandwiches into it.  Then he read more of the Simenon until Gus arrived at two.

          He showed Gus where the Walther PPK was stashed.  “Somebody comes to the door, I shoot them?” said Gus.

          “Use some discretion,” Sam told him.  “Might be the milkman.”

          “You wanna take the Volvo?” Gus asked, dangling the keys.

          “I’ll walk,” Sam told him.  “Might need it tomorrow, though.  You take it home I’ll collect it if I need it.”

          Clear night, okay if you walked, but a bit of a nip in the air if you were in a shop doorway.  Sam walked to the Coppergate Centre and found the doorway with the Geordie and his dog.  Both of them huddled together.  Sam leaned down to place the freezer bag with the sandwiches between them.  Four eyes watched him.  Neither the dog nor the boy moved, but their eyes never left Sam for a second.

          “Something to eat,” said Sam.

          There was no recognition of the fact that he was there, that he had said anything, just the eyes.  “Okay?” he said.  “Hope you like chutney.”

 

 

 

chapter

26     

          Sam woke to the telephone ringing just after eight.  He swung his legs out of the bed and answered the telephone in the nude.  “What?”

          It was the TV man, Clive Desmond.  “Got some news for you,” he said.  “The missing couple have turned up.  Living together in Leeds.”

          “Just a minute,” Sam said.  “I’ll get a pen.”

          He wrote down the address of  Jean Granger and Bob Blackburn, who were now called Mr and Mrs Blackburn.  “Have you seen them?” he asked Desmond.

          “Yes, but we’re not allowed to broadcast anything.  The police think they’ll be in danger if Graham East gets hold of their address.”

          “Police are sometimes right,” said Sam.  “I’ll go see them today.”

          “You heard they’re putting it on Crimewatch UK?”

          “Yeah,” Sam told him.  “I did a bit of recording for it.  Voice over for that and for the same programme in New Zealand and Sweden.  It would be nice to hear what kind of response they get.”

          “Don’t worry.  I hear anything I’ll let you know.  Oh, and something else,” said Desmond.  “I’ve got more mail for you.  You’re getting a lot of business out of this.”

          “Can you drop it off?  Or shall I collect?”

          “I’ll send it round,” said Desmond.  “Might have to hire a delivery van.”

 

 

* * *

 

          Jean Blackburn answered the door.  Tiny olive coloured woman, hair so black it was almost blue.  Sam told her he was working for Jane Deacon and she let him into a cluttered living room.  Two huge loudspeakers dominated the room and a charismatic voice was speaking from them, something about the unity of all things, the invisible thread that emanated from all beings in the universe, connecting the whole to the one, the one to the whole.  Smell of dope.  A roach in the ashtray.  Sam didn’t do dope at all now.  But there had been a time.

          Jean Blackburn switched the tape deck off.  “That’s our Guru,” she said.  “Barry.  Magic voice don’t you think?”

          “Should I know the name?”

          She shook her head.  “You do now,” she said.

          “I thought Gurus were all Indian,” Sam said.  “Names like Maharishi, Bhagwan.  Never heard of anyone called Barry before.”

          “He’s Australian,” she said.  “Enlightened, though.  Do you follow any teaching?”

          “I watch parking meters.”

          She did a double take and said, “You’re joking?”

          “I’m a laugh a minute,” Sam admitted.

          “The police have been twice,” she said.  “I don’t know what I can tell you we haven’t already told them.”

          “If you don’t mind going over it again,” Sam said.  “There might be something useful.”

          She told him to sit.  “We haven’t really kept contact with anyone from the communal house,” she said.  “We found a different path when it all broke up.  Bob discovered Barry, and he’s become our whole life.  We try not to think about the past.  There is only the present.  The past is a burden which stands in the way of personal progression.”

          “I can go with that,” said Sam, quick snapshots of Donna and Brenda.  Wanda with tears in her eyes.  “This place is only half a mile from where Graham East lived with his girlfriend.  D’you ever see them?”

          “No.  Bob saw Graham once, about a year ago.  But Graham didn’t recognise him.  We went to see Barry in Australia, three months ago.  We didn’t know anything about all this business until we got back.”

          “When was that?”

          “You should be more careful,” Sam told her.  “You let me in, you don’t know me from Adam.”

          Jean Blackburn smiled.  “You get a feeling about people,” she said.  She put her hand on her solar plexus.  “You felt all right.  Barry was speaking on the tape deck.  If something’s wrong I feel it inside, right here.”

          Sam sat forward.  “This Barry,” he said.  “He’s psychic?”

          “He’s enlightened,” Mrs Blackburn said.  “He’s in touch with himself.”

          “Yeah, but he knows everything, right?”

          “Oh, he certainly knows,” she said.

          “So you could ask him where Graham East is?”

          “I don’t think Barry would be interested in playing those kind of games.”

          “Games?”

          “Cops and robbers,” she said.  “Something like that’s just a diversion.”

          “Exactly,” said Sam.  “That’s what we’re trying to do.  Divert the guy.”

          She looked off into the far distance.  “You don’t understand.”

 

* * *

 

          Bob Blackburn arrived home looking tired, but he smiled easily when Sam was introduced.  He was a tall man with a distinctive American accent that Sam immediately placed in Ohio. 

          “You’re close,” Blackburn told him.  “Kentucky, actually.  You must know the country?”

          “Not that well,” Sam admitted.  “I was there about eight years.  Three in L.A., a year travelling round, then I spent the last four years in San Francisco.”

          “Frisco!  Jesus, I was there a couple a years,” Blackburn said.  “Lived just off Fillmore.”

          “I was in a squat in Berkeley the first year,” said Sam.  “Then we moved over to Oakland.  Great climate?”

          “Yeah,” said Blackburn.  “We used to sit by the window and watch the fog trying to get in.”

          Sam laughed.  He remembered something Mark Twain was supposed to have said, something along the lines that the worst winter he’d ever spent in his life had been in San Francisco in July.  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.  “Great banks of fog coming off the Pacific, eating up the city in chunks.  When were you there?”

          “Late seventies,” said Blackburn.  “Just before I came over here.  You?”

          “Bit earlier than that,” said Sam.  “The Campus shootings.”

          “You saw it?”

          Sam shook his head.  “I heard it though,” he said.  “Made me think again about the land of the free.”

          “There’s no such place.”

          Sam looked at Blackburn.  “You ought to be careful,” he said.  “Maybe get some kind of chain on the door.  When I arrived Jean just let me in, no questions.”

          Blackburn looked over at his wife.  “Yeah,” he said.  “We’ll talk about it.  I don’t believe Graham wants to kill us though.”

          “Neither did Deacon,” said Sam.  “Or Bright.  Their convictions didn’t do much to keep them alive.”

 

* * *

 

          You don’t understand!  Shit, Sam had wanted to tell her, You sound like a fuckin stereotype wife.  Three people left alive in this case and two of them are voluntary zombies.  Graham East, or whoever is committing these murders finds out where the Blackburns live, all he has to do is use a deep voice.  He sounds convincing enough, they’ll kill themselves.  This is Barry speaking, listen, I want you to stab yourself in the eye.  Oh, sure Barry, any particular spot?

          One thing Jean Blackburn had said was worth following up.  When the communal house broke up, she said, we found a different path.  So what path was the communal house into.  Terry Deacon had been a Buddhist, and now these two into some kind of New Age thing.  There was a possibility that the killings were cult related.  What if Graham East was a Guru spurned?  Seeking revenge on his disaffected followers.

          Every lead, Sam told himself.  Every lead is worth following.

          The Volvo handled like a dream.  Little touch on the pedal and he sailed past the tourist coach in front.  Sixty or seventy bored Germans watching him go by, on their way to a medieval fort.  It would be hard going back to the Cortina after driving this beast.  Just sat behind this wheel is what living in the moment is all about.

          People live in such impossible dreams.  Living in the moment, refusing to face the past, the creed of every guru since day one.  Sam lived in the moment when he first saw Donna.  Donna stood at the top of the escalator, Donna coming down, walking down as well as being carried down.  Donna skinny, Donna pregnant, Donna dead.  Sam lived in moments when every moment he ever lived came crowding down into the present moment.  Twelve years old hanging from a tree.  Thirty years old hanging from a bottle.  Sam saw a million Sams from all the stages of his life all cramming themselves into the same moment.  He could see himself laughing until he thought his sides would split; screaming with pain and incomprehension at the blind totality of destiny; snarling like a cornered animal and striking out with head and fist; weeping with joy at the touch of his daughter’s hand, a twist of fate.  And it was all in the moment.  The fury of the moment.

          People like Jean Blackburn, Sam would shake them to pieces.  Come on woman, man, fuckin machine, whatever you are, open your stubborn eyes and see.  This is not the way you dumb shit, this is a cul-de-sac.

 

* * *

 

          Quick call at the garage confirmed the Cortina had made its last journey.  Something else to get used to.

          Celia Allison was inconsolable because she couldn’t offer Sam a biscuit.  “Celia,” he said.  “I don’t like biscuits.  I liked the ginger biscuits with tea because we dunked them and it reminded me of my childhood.  Every time I come here I don’t want to be reminded of my childhood.  Okay?  Now can we drop it?”

          She gave him a stock of cards for his wallet:  Sam Turner Detective Agency.  And showed him the matching stationary she’d designed.

          “I’ve replied to about half the people who wrote in,” she said.  “And I’ve set up a couple of interviews for you.  One of the solicitors is desperate for a new investigator.”

          “You don’t hang about, Celia.  I knew you’d be good.  I heard earlier there’s a lot more mail”

          “Bring it round” she said, “I’ll sort it.  The telephone, what I’ve done is arrange that all calls come through to your number.  If you don’t answer they are diverted to me.  That way anybody who needs to contact us are sure to get an answer.  Four calls today, all from a lady called Wanda, desperate to see you.”

          “I don’t need to see her.”

          “She sounded nice,” Celia told him.  “A little disappointed.”

          “I used to know her.”

          “She’s not finished with you, Sam.”

          “She’s okay, Celia, but she hassles me.  Always ringing up.”

          “You know your business better than me,” Celia said.  “But I think I’d give her another chance.”

          “Well, maybe.”

          The old lady smiled.  “Tell her exactly what you want and what you want to give.  She can make up her own mind.”

          “After this case,” Sam told her, “I’m gonna take you out for a good meal, then we go on after that and do a little dancing.  How’s that grab you?”

          “Oh, my goodness, Sam.  You are a one.”  Her face like a smiling garden.  “I haven’t had such excitement for years.  The meal sounds lovely, but we could miss the dancing.”

          “Tell you what,” he said.  “There’s a place in the town you can do both.  We eat first, have a little drink, you not me, then after the coffee we take in a waltz or two?  You a bit rusty I’ll give you a refresher course.”  He put his arm round her waist and waltzed her round the floor.

          “Goodness me,” she said, looking up into his eyes, “I’ve gone back twenty, maybe thirty years.”  She closed  her eyes.  “A man named Grey.”

          “When you dance with Sam Turner,” said Sam.  “You don’t muse on about old boyfriends.  Okay?”

          Celia stopped the waltz and pushed him away.  She wagged her finger at him, still with the gleam in her eyes.  “I don’t know,” she said, “but I suspect it’s against my religion, dancing in the afternoon.”

          “I have to go anyway,” Sam told her.  “But, Celia, next time?”

          “Yes, Sam.”

          “I’ll expect biscuits.”

 

* * *

 

          Sam dropped the Volvo off at Gus’s house and walked to the Coppergate Centre. 

          The young Geordie had already claimed his doorway.  He was staring out at the passers by, his dog Barney sat by his side, partly obscuring the Hameless and Hungry sign.

          “You wanna job?” Sam asked him.

          “Spare a copper, pal?”  The response was immediate, unconscious.  Sam didn’t reply and the youth looked up at his face, about to repeat his question.  There was a gleam of something, could have been recognition.  It hovered for a moment as they stared at each other and then vanished.  “D’you want sex?”

          Sam shook his head.  The Geordie picked up Barney and held him close to his face.  The pup licked him around the eyes and nose.  Sam felt in his pants pocket and rattled some change.  He dropped a couple of pound pieces into the Geordie’s lap.  “I’m gonna keep on asking until I get a sensible answer,” he said.

          As he walked away he heard the Geordie say, “I wouldn’t be any use to you.”

 

chapter

27     

          Sam let himself into the house in the cul-de-sac and checked the downstairs windows and the back door.  Looked at the Walther, make sure it hadn’t been discovered, disappeared,  or been tampered with.  He was checking the upstairs rooms when Jane got home from work.  She came into the house singing something Sam recognised, Billie Holiday number, Foolin’ Myself.  Imitating the Holiday voice, that slightly squeaky all the way vulnerable sound.

          “Good day?” Sam asked.

          “Yes,” she cut into the song to answer him, then went back to finish the line:  “I may pretend, but in the end, I’m just foolin’ myself.”

          “It’s a nice song,” Sam said.  “You sing well.  Like you mean it.”

          “It was on the radio in the car,” she said.  “It took me back.”

          “Halcyon days?”

          She grinned at him.  “You’ve been around a lot, haven’t you?”

          “Here and there.  I’ve been to Leeds today, see an old friend of yours.  Jean Blackburn, used to be Jean Granger.”

          “Oh, so she married Bob in the end.  How did you find her?  How was she?”

          “I got a tip,” he said.  “She was nutty.”

          Jane laughed.  “She always was a bit nutty.  People don’t change, do they?  Both her and Bob were into peace and love like it was a mission, in the same way the astronauts must have thought about a moon landing.  Slightly frustrating.”

          “They’ve got a guru, somebody called Barry.”

          “Don’t know him,” said Jane.  “They had a guru before.  In fact they had two gurus.  One each, different brands.  There was always a question about whether they’d stay together.”

          “This house you lived in,” Sam asked, “was it a religious commune?”

          “Not really.  Yes and no.  We were supposed to be working towards a combination of spiritual and social endeavours.  But it never really got going, lasted about eighteen months.  We argued all the time.”

          “About?”

          “Religion, sex, people changing partners.  We were nearly all professionals, we argued about commitment.  We were young.  Jean and Bob were faithful to their gurus; Terry was getting more and more interested in Buddhism; Graham was into some kind of esoteric Christianity.  Everybody had a different angle.”

          “What was yours?”

          “A loose kind of theosophy, I suppose.  I thought we should try to be a bridge, some kind of structure where different disciplines could cross over and meet each other.”

          “Idealistic,” said Sam.

          “Yes.  We were very young.”

          “And what do you believe now?”

          “Nothing,” she said.  “Terry did that for both of us.  He used to talk about Buddhism sometimes, I can relate to that in a way, but I’m very much of the world.  I can’t easily withdraw, don’t meditate.  How about you?”

          “Some of the people I’ve known,” Sam told her.  “Some of the dead ones, I’d like to think we’ll get together again some time.  I can’t believe it’s over, what we had, what we could have had.”

          “Is that your wife?”

          Sam nodded.  “Among others,” he said.

          “Do you want to talk about it?”

          Sam shook his head.  “Not now,” he said.  “Maybe sometime.  Need to talk about cars, though.  Mine’s gone to the graveyard.”

          “Oh, just use the Volvo.  I don’t need it.”

          “I’d like to make it more formal than that.”

          “You want to buy it?”

          “I want to, yes.  But I don’t have the readies.”

          “I’ll give you the papers,” she said.  “Pay me when you can.”

          “Just like that?”

          “You had something else in mind?”

          “No,” Sam told her.  “I thought it was impossible.”

          “Look, Sam, I’m not short of cash.  You need the car, just take it.  When you’ve got some money you can pay me.”

 

* * *

 

          She came downstairs about one in the morning,  that dressing gown touching the floor with the green silk thing underneath.  Sam was playing Another Side on her tape deck, volume turned down low.

          “Couldn’t sleep,” she said.  “Who’s this?”

          “Jus’ a tape,” he said.

          “Cocoa?”

          “Yeah, if you’re making.”

          She padded through to the kitchen.  Sam laid back in the chair, listened to the tape with the chinking of cups in the background, heard her open and close the fridge door.  Cocoa!  Jesus, it must be years.

          “Is this folk music?” she asked, coming back with a mug in each hand.  She handed one to Sam.

          “Somethin’ like that.”

          She sat on the couch opposite him, one side of the dressing gown falling open, exposing her legs encased in the thin green stuff.  Shiny green legs.  She listened to the whole of My Back Pages without moving.  When the song was finished she looked up at him.  Sam thought she might speak, or maybe she expected him to say something.  When the next track started she continued looking at him.  Sam looked back.  The song disappeared into the background.  Sam was happy to see it go, it reminded him of Brenda.

          Jane said nothing and said everything.  Sam hoped she’d follow through, come over to him or maybe pat the sofa next to her, invite him over there.  She just looked.  Looking for a lead, maybe?  A leader?

          Tonight Sam wanted to be led.  Neither of them moved and gradually the songs on the album came back into the foreground, a barrier and a bridge between them.  A barrier neither tried to overcome, a bridge neither would use.

          Go away from my window, leave at your. . .   She was nodding, her eyes closing right through the last track.  When the tape stopped she was asleep, her head fallen over to the left.  Melted back into the night.  The green silk thing was pyjamas, wide trousers like culottes.  One of her backless slippers had come off, the left one.  She no longer wore a wedding ring.  Sam let her sleep while he made sandwiches for the Geordie and his dog.  Then he woke her, touched her on the shoulder, shook her a little.

          “It’s quart to two,” he said.  “Gus’ll be here soon.”

          She was confused for a few seconds.  “The music,” she said.  “Must have made me nod off.”

          “You’ll sleep now,” he told her.  “Jus’ get into bed.”

          She turned at the door for a last look.  “Good night.”

          “Sleep well,” said Sam.

 

* * *

         

          Geordie and Barney were flat out but wide awake.  Sam put the sandwiches down and looked at their eyes.  “Ham and pickle, cold beef and cucumber, cheese and chutney,” he said, enunciating each word carefully.  “Four chocolate biscuits, two each.  Okay.”

          Geordie nearly smiled.

          “You absolutely sure you don’t want a job? said Sam.  “Earn some money, make your own fuckin sandwiches?”  He felt in his pocket and found two pound coins.  Placed them on top of the packet of sandwiches.

          He walked back to the flat and let himself in.  The place upstairs was still empty.  On his doormat a note from Wanda.  Please contact me.  I won’t hassle.

          Sam tucked the note into his pocket, undressed and got into bed.  Cold beef and cucumber, for Christ sake.  Is that edible? 

          He fell asleep dreaming of green silk culottes.  Warm ones.

 

 

 

 

 

chapter

28     

          “Come on, you can’t sleep here.”  Geordie felt someone kicking his foot.

          The same copper as the night before, the night before that.  He scrambled to his feet and tucked Barney under his arm.  “Don’t leave rubbish behind,” the copper said.

          Geordie collected the packet of sandwiches the guy had left and walked along the path.  “Don’t let me catch you here again,” the copper said after him.

          The next spot was down by the river, through a hole in the fence and into the park.  Bit colder than the Coppergate Centre.  He opened the sandwiches there and made Barney beg for his share.  The little dog sitting up on his hind legs, his tongue hanging out.  The dog had followed Geordie one day.  Just followed him everywhere he went.  A homeless dog.  Join the club.

          They settled down on the steps of the Film Theatre, but it was beginning to get light, and Geordie couldn’t sleep.  The guy made good sandwiches, the best for a long time, if not ever.  But what did he want?  No one had ever offered Geordie a job, no one except the guy in Manchester who wanted beating on the bare arse.  Call that a job?  Ten quid’s worth of red stripes on the guy’s arse.  Other men had wanted straight sex, and Geordie had done it too, when he was hungry enough.  He had said he wouldn’t do it, but then felt differently about it after not eating for three days.  Not eating for a while made you think about a lot of things differently.  Nothing was free.  That was absolute.  Nothing was free.

          So what did the guy want?

          Geordie didn’t want to trust him.  Geordie didn’t want to trust anyone.  Fuck, your mother runs off with the landlord, leaves you alone in the house.  They take you into care, and nobody cares about you.  Even your own brother joins the Royal Navy and never comes back, never sends a postcard from foreign.  You run away and they bring you back and you go again and don’t get far.  Then one day you go and they don’t find you.  You get into a lorry and just keep going and end up in Wales.  And still no one gives a fuck.  No one ever cares at all, unless you’re sleeping in their doorway.  Then they care enough to call the cops.

          You learn fast.  You find out where the handouts are, where the restaurants dump the leftovers.  You go into a charity shop when it’s snowing they might give you an overcoat.  Even a hat and gloves.  That happened once.  Wool gloves, nearly like new except for the hole in one of them.  Life savers, those gloves.  Best gloves in the whole world.  Could use them now, even if it wasn’t snowing.

          So what does he want?  The man?  The sandwich man?  Another fuckin pervert probably.  Likes little fat boys.  Feed Geordie up on cold beef and cucumber, chocolate biscuits, make him fat enough to fuck.  Only what he doesn’t take into account is Geordie’s not going to let anyone fuck him if he’s not hungry.  The guy’s going the wrong way about it.  Something wrong with his head, like those meths drinkers in Micklegate, shouting at the traffic, pissing themselves.  One of them threatened to eat Barney.  Sick fuckin cannibal bastards.

          They’re everywhere.  Every town you ever go, you find them.  Even in Sunderland.  Geordie went back there one time, look at the house where he used to live with his mother and brother, before it started to go wrong.  There was a whole family in that house now.  Little kids, one boy and lots of girls, running in and out as though they owned the place.  No sign of his mother.  Geordie thought there might be a card from his brother in foreign, but he didn’t go to the door and ask.  They might call the cops.  Who wants a card anyway?

          The sun came up.  Clear sky.  Nice to feel the sun warm you through.  Barney stood and shook himself, went to a bush to have a pee.  Then he came back, looking enquiringly at Geordie.  What we doing today?  Begging?

          “No need,” said Geordie.  “The guy left us two quid.  Still got cheese and chutney to eat.  We get hungry we can buy some soup.”  Geordie picked Barney up and found a sunny spot on the grass.  Still wet, but when was it not?  “Go to the drop-out centre later,” he said.  “See if we can get you a bone.”

          The derelicts came round the corner and walked over to where Geordie and Barney were sitting.  One of them had a bottle sticking out of his pocket.  “Got any drink?” he said.

          “No,” Geordie told him.  He wasn’t the one had threatened to eat Barney, but Geordie had seen him before.  A mad man.

          “Gis a fackin’ drink,” he said.  The other one laughed a toothless laugh.  “Gis a fackin’ drink will yus?”

          “I haven’t got anything,” Geordie said.

          “Yus fackin’ lyin’,” the derelict said.  He took the bottle out of his pocket and smacked it across Geordie’s head.  Geordie didn’t even see it coming.  He fell to the side and cracked his head on one of the ancient stones in the park.  He tried to scramble to his feet, but both of the men were on top of him, ripping his pockets.  They found the sandwich and tore it out of its wrapping, throwing it to one side.

          Geordie put his hand in his trouser pocket to protect the two pound coins, but the derelict kicked him in the neck and then stamped on his back.  Geordie went to sleep.

          When he woke up the derelicts had gone.  Barney was licking his face.  Geordie couldn’t move much, only enough to see that the money had gone.  “Jesus, Barney,” he said, “you’re supposed to be looking after me.”

 

 

 

chapter

29     

          Jane was happy at work today.  There wasn’t a lot to do any more.  Her lawyer had said the management buy-out was now going through smoothly, another month should see it completed.  Lovely, then she could be off.  See the world.  Do all the things she’d never been able to do when Terry was alive.

          She’d found Terry’s gun at last.  Very difficult to look for anything in the house with Sam being about all the time.  But there it was, still in the box with cartridges and instructions.  Top of his wardrobe, wrapped in that frilly dress shirt he’d only worn once.  She hoped she wouldn’t ever have to use it, didn’t even know if she would be able to.  But still, it was good to find it, to know it was there.  It might be necessary.

          There was a little part of her was getting very attached to Sam, though.  She hadn’t had to do anything to make him see her.  He’d seen her from day one.  The man was all eyes.  Very slow, but if he followed his eyes he would find her sooner or later.

          This wasn’t love.  She wasn’t falling in love with the man.  That would be easy to do, but would complicate everything.  Jane didn’t want a complicated life.  She’d had that before.  Now she wanted everything to be simple.  Lust was fine.  A noble emotion.

          Sam wouldn’t have any problems with that.  None at all.

          Jane had even toyed with the idea of taking him with her, but she somehow couldn’t imagine him on a white beach.  He’d probably want to take a tape deck with him and play his silly tapes all the time.  Not that she minded his music, if he liked it that was his affair, but he was too rough and ready for the life Jane had envisioned for herself.  Maybe they could just keep in touch, get together whenever she was in England.

          In the meantime it was important not to dream too much.  Sam was a potential danger.  She had to divert him, especially from Frances.  It had not been too difficult up to now, and Jane was confident she could keep it up.  Even though Frances was a little unpredictable.

          Frances had telephoned Jane only a few minutes after she had stabbed Graham to death, and Jane had helped her bury the body.  The stupid man had had an affair with some little floozie and then come home and told Frances all about it.  Frances had always been somewhat unpredictable, emotionally volatile.  Graham was her whole world.  When he told her about the affair she destroyed him.

          But even before they buried the body Frances had begun reconstructing the event.  She had blocked out the bloodiness of the murder, started calling it a mercy killing.  Now she was well on the way to deifying Graham.  Sometimes it was as if she was him, as if the two of them had united together, spiritual avengers.  But most of the people Frances saw as the culprits were dead now.  Once they were all eliminated Frances would kill herself, join her Graham in the great unknown.  Jane’s main task was to keep Sam Turner occupied until Frances was finished.  And Jane, she knew how to do that.

          The thing with a man like Sam was to get him into your bed.  Once he was there he would forget everything.  Forget his own name.

          “And I might forget my own as well,” Jane said to herself.

 

 

 

chapter

30     

          Gus sat  in the Volvo, two blocks down from Frances Golding’s house, checking yesterday’s notes.  She had come out of the house at nine fifteen then driven into town and walked around the shops.  She went into Next and Waterstones, bought nothing in either.  Then drove home again for ten thirty five.  Bored lady.

          He checked his watch, eight fifty, and waited.  Nine fifteen passed, but at nine twenty five she came out the front door and got into her car.  “Where we going today?” Gus said to himself, turning the key in the ignition.

          Similar routine.  Frances followed the road into town, parked opposite the Castle Museum and walked to the town centre.  She wandered along Parliament Street and went into the Electricity Showrooms, looking at washing machines, opening and closing the hatches, reading the advertising blurbs, passing on after a while to cookers.

          After that she walked round to Liberty and tried on a few coats.  Obviously doing nothing.  She crossed the river and ended up in the Co-op canteen.  Got a small chocolate log and coffee, sat by herself in a corner.  Seemed to be talking to herself for a while, but Gus was too far away to hear what the conversation was about.

          He followed her back to the car park, watched her get into her car.  This time she took a different route, driving through Bishophill instead of going straight home.  She slowed at the cul-de-sac but didn’t stop.  Gus saw her looking down there, though, real interested, pumping the break and changing right down into first gear.

          She arrived home at eleven ten, fixed all the locks and alarms on her car, and went inside.  Gus finished writing up his log and waited.

          Sam arrived at one thirty.  He opened the passenger door of the Volvo and got in.  “Sorry,” he said.  “You tired?”

          “Nodding off,” Gus told him.  He passed the notes over to Sam and waited until he’d read them.

          “Similar to yesterday,” Sam said.  “Some people go running in the morning, Frances walks round the town.”

          “Not for long, though,” said Gus.  “If we’re gonna break into her house it doesn’t give us much time.”

          “We’ll have to be quick,” said Sam.  “But give it a few more days.  Make sure we know what she’s doing.”

          “The drive through Bishophill was interesting,” said Gus.

          “Yeah.  She slowed right down at the cul-de-sac?”

          “Sure, I thought she was gonna stop.”

          “Why’s she interested in that?” said Sam.  “We’re missing something, Gus.  Some connection.”

          “If she’s hiding Graham in the Leeds house, maybe she cases the victims first.  When she’s sure they’ll be at home alone, she picks up Graham from Leeds, lets him do the job, then drives him back again.”

          “Yeah, maybe,” said Sam shaking his head.

          “You mean I’ve cracked it?”

          “I don’t think it’s going to be that clean or that simple,” Sam told him.  “But the only way to be sure is to have a look at the Leeds house.  We’ll watch Frances a few more days, then make our move.”

          “Something else,” said Gus.  “Two of us isn’t enough to cover everything.  We’re already stretched, we get more cases coming in we won’t manage.”

          “I’m working on that,” said Sam.  “But something else for you.  Had a visit from the TV reporter this morning with the forensic report on the notes.  Complete copy of it.  One set of prints they assume are Graham East’s.  The notes were all written at the same time, about six years ago, with the same pen.”

          “Six years!” 

          “Yeah, six.  And all the notes have been stuck on a wall with blue tack.  The guy wrote the notes, decorated his room with them.  Lived with them for six years and then started acting on them.”

          “We’re dealing with a complete looney,” said Gus.  “Why would he do that?”

          “The answer my friend,” said Sam, “is blowing my mind.”

          “But if he had them on a wall in his house,” Gus said.  “Frances must have seen them.  She must have known they were there.”

          “Unless she wore a very big hat,” said Sam.

          “So what does she say about that?”

          “I’m going to ask her,” said Sam.  “Now.”

          Gus yawned.  “I’ll come with you.”

          “You better go home get some sleep.  I’ll fill you in later.”

         

* * *

 

          Frances was scrubbing the inside of the cooker when the door bell rang, far too expensive to buy a new one.  She rinsed her hands and looked through the curtain.  The detective, man who thought he was a detective but couldn’t write proper writing, printed everything.

          She let him in, still drying her hands on the towel.  Gave him a seat in the kitchen, a hard one at the table, sat opposite him, make sure he didn’t get too comfortable.

          “I wanted to ask you about the notes,” Sam said.

          “Notes?”  What notes does he mean?  Frances wasn’t ready for him.  The man looks you in the eye and you look back but there’s nothing there.  He’s a blank.

          “There was a note left on Terry Deacon,” said Sam.  “Another one on Steven Bright.  All the bodies had notes, the same notes.  Have you seen them?”

          “The Inspector showed me one of them, wanted to know if it was Graham’s handwriting.  I told him it wasn’t.”

          “Are you sure?”

          “Graham used a fountain pen, fine nib.  The note I saw was written with felt tip.”

          “So you’re not sure?”

          “I never saw Graham using a felt tip.”

          “And the note,” Sam said.  “Had you seen it before?”

          “Before the Inspector showed me it?  No.  How could I?”  The man is devious.  He knows more than he’s saying.  Frances pulled open the table drawer a crack, saw the knife inside.

          “The notes are all the same,” Sam told her.  “They’ve all been hung on a wall somewhere.  Got Graham’s prints on them.  Written years ago.”

          “How do you know they’re Graham’s prints?”

          “I don’t for sure.  But let’s assume they are, and that he wrote them.  Where would he hang them?”

          “Why should I assume that?” she asked.  “I don’t believe they are Graham’s prints.  Everybody wants to blame Graham, but I knew him, I lived with him, and I’m telling you he couldn’t have done it.”

          “Because if they are his prints, the only place he would have hung them on the wall is the place he lived,” said Sam.  “And if you lived there as well, you must have seen them before.”

          “What is this?” said Frances.  “You’re not the police.  I don’t have to talk to you.”  Coming in here, telling her how it was.  Who does he think he is?  How can he know things like this, anyway, the man’s not exactly intelligent.  Smiling at her now.

          “No,” said Sam.  “You don’t have to talk to me.  I just wondered what you thought about it.”

          “I don’t think anything about it,” said Frances.  “It’s a crackpot idea.  If Graham had hung things like that on the wall I’d have taken them down.  He’d have to be mad.”

          “Yes, he would, wouldn’t he?”

          He gave her the long stare.  “And he wasn’t,” she said slowly.  “He was as sane as you or me.”

          “Hell,” said Sam.  “That sane?”

          Frances wanted to kill him.  Stop him insinuating.  She could easily pull the drawer open, get the knife and stick him right in the eye.  Just stick him and stick him till he stopped talking, stopped moving.  It would be worth the mess in the kitchen just to shut him up.  See his face when she pulled the knife out.  See what kind of a man he was then.  He’d be like all the others, helpless when it came to the point.

          “You’re deep in thought,” said Sam.  “Did I say something?”

          The doorbell rang.  Frances stiffened, pushed the drawer closed with her thumb.  “Who’s that?” she said.

          “Search me,” said Sam.

          Frances went to the curtains and saw the Inspector at the door.  She let him in and showed him through to the kitchen where the stupid detective was still sitting at the table.

          “What you doing here?” Delany asked Sam.

          “Investigating.  How about you?”

          “He annoying you?” Delany asked Frances.

          “I was just going to ask him to leave,” she said.

          “Look,” Delany said.  “The man’s got no credentials.  You don’t have to talk to him.  If he’s annoying you, you can bring charges.  Just give me the word I’ll lock him up.”

          Sam stood to leave.  “I’m going anyway,” he said.  “She doesn’t know anything about the notes.  Never seen them before; least ways that’s what she’s gonna tell you.”

          Sam walked out of the kitchen and down the hall, pulling the door shut behind him.  Frances turned to the Inspector and motioned to the same chair the stupid detective had vacated.  The Inspector didn’t seem to notice her at first.  He was stood in the middle of the kitchen clenching his fists, his mouth in a grim set.  Looking like he might explode.

 

 

 

chapter

31     

          Sam drove home in the Volvo.  He could imagine the two of them back at the house, Frances and Delany.  Delany going through all the same questions Sam’d just put to her, wondering how the hell Sam knew about the notes.   And Frances, for a moment there, just before the doorbell rang, she’d got herself quite rattled.  If Delany hadn’t turned up at that moment she might have let something slip.  When she’d gone to let Delany in Sam had been tempted to pocket the three keys in the fruit bowl.  Keys to the Leeds house.  It would have been so simple, except that she’d have noticed.  Instead he removed the lock from the kitchen window, make it easier to break and enter.

 

* * *

 

          Sam dropped the new stack of mail off at Celia Allison’s house.  It was similar to the last bunch, three death threats this time, only one proposal of marriage.  He didn’t fancy any of them.  About forty possible jobs.  Celia wasn’t at home, so he left them on the back porch, scribbled a little note saying,  See you later Alligator, gone to hire an army of detectives.

          Wanda’s house looked deserted as well, but she answered the door as soon as he knocked.  She was wearing jeans, something he’d not seen before.  She always wore a dress or skirt.  She seemed calm.

          “Good to see you,” she said.  “Glad you came.  Come and meet the girls.”  She took him upstairs to the children’s room and introduced her two daughters.  The eldest was a four year old called Samantha, flaming red hair like her mother, seemingly superglued to an enormous teddy bear.  The youngest was a little blonde two year old called Kelly, already destined to be a heart breaker.  Samantha didn’t speak, though she smiled sweetly from behind the teddy bear.  Kelly shook hands and asked Sam if he liked chocolate.  When he said he did, sometimes, she asked him if he had any with him.

          “I’m going to talk to Sam downstairs,” Wanda told them.  “If you’re good I’ll bring some juice and cake upstairs.  You can have a picnic.”

          “They’re great kids,” Sam told her when she’d delivered the picnic.  “You’re lucky.”

          Wanda smiled.  “More hard work than luck,” she said.  “The picnic won’t last long.  I wanted to apologise.”

          “Hell,” Sam said.  “What you got to apologise for?  Anything you said I gave you good grounds.”

          “I don’t like to lose my temper, Sam.  Being abusive.  It doesn’t help.”

          “And sometimes it does,” he said.  “I’m not holding anything against you.”

          “You caught me off guard,” Wanda said.  “Coming in the house and laying all that stuff on me.  I just reacted.  After you’d gone I had time to think about it.”

          “There’s not a lot to think,” Sam told her.  “I still feel the same.  If we go on like before we’ll get into a mess.”

          “Sam, I think you like me.”

          “I’ll go along with that.”

          “And I like you.”

          “But it’s not enough, Wanda.”

          “It’s all we’ve got,” she said.  “Two people like each other, they have some things in common, they make mistakes at first but eventually they learn to respect each other’s space.  There’s nothing wrong with that.”

          “I respect your space,” he said.  “It was all those fuckin telephone calls.  I can’t be crowded when I’m working.”

          “I know that,” she said.  “I was wrong about it.  I’m sorry.  It won’t happen again.  Or if it does I’ll be sorry about it again.  I don’t want to crowd you.”

          “I don’t know. . . “

          “Sam, you dump me one day not because of what I’ve done, but because of your own hangups.  You think if you’re not committed to me in some way you should let me go.  You think I’m looking for commitment.  You judge me.  I’m not looking for commitment.  I only want to get to know you better.”

          “I’ve heard this kind of thing before,” Sam told her.  “Open relationships don’t work.  Not for me, anyway.”

          “It’s not an open relationship, Sam.  It’s just me and you.  We see each other sometimes because we want to.  The alternative is that we never see each other again because you’re frightened.”

          “You sound like you’re talking sense, Wanda, but there’s a part of me doesn’t want to listen, feels like I’m being led astray.”

          “Think about it,” she said.  “Not now, when you’ve got the time.  But you know I’d like to see you.  You want to see me, give me a ring.”

          “It won’t be for a while,” he said.  “I’m working hard at the moment.

          “Whenever you’re ready.”

          “See, that’s the kind of thing I don’t want to hear,” he said.  “Whenever you’re ready.  It’s like you’re just sitting here waiting, being compliant, every minute I don’t ring you I’m being a shit.”

          “No, Sam.  That’s in your head.  I’m not sitting here waiting.  I’ve got two daughters upstairs, downstairs, all over the house.  I’ve got relatives, friends, I go to the Solo club.  I’m not sitting here waiting at all, I’m living my life.  All I’m saying is you can break into it occasionally if you want.  Is your life totally fulfilling?”

          Sam smiled.  “Only when you tell me off.”

          “But you understand what I’m saying?”

          “Yeah.  You’re getting through.  We can be friends.”

          “We can be anything.  Sam, you’ll ring me one time, if you ever get round to it, I’ll be doing something else.  I’ll just tell you, sorry I’m doing something else.  I won’t be lying.  I’ll be doing something else.  If I’m not doing something else I’ll do it with you.”

          Sam realised he’d been smiling for several minutes.  “I needed someone to tell me,” he said.  “I just didn’t think it would be you.”

          “People surprise you sometimes.”

          “Women’ve been surprising me since the day I was born.”

          The two girls came tumbling downstairs and into the sitting room for more cake and juice.  Wanda walked to the door with Sam, kissed him on the cheek.  “Celia sounds nice,” she said.  “We had a long chat on the telephone.”

          “About me?”

          “Yes, we compared notes.”

          “And the verdict?”

          “You’re one of the good guys.”

          He walked through the doorway and then turned back to her.  “You look really great in jeans,” he said.

          She laughed, closed the door, went back to her daughters.

 

 

 

chapter

32     

          One time Graham had been a poet and a lover.  Frances used to think of him then as a big intelligent bear.  He was quiet, he knew how to listen, and that’s what Frances needed then, someone who could listen.

          Frances’s marriage and the birth of her three children had reduced her to a skivvy.  When she met Graham at the Chapeltown Carnival it soon became obvious that they were meant.  That’s what Graham had said.  “You and me, Frances, we were meant.”  Looking back now Frances couldn’t imagine how she had walked away from her family.  Simply given up everything and followed him.  But that’s what she did.  During the first year she would sometimes watch the children being collected from school, keeping herself hidden.  But since then she had not seen them at all.

          Bernard, her husband, had remarried and moved away.  She didn’t know where.  Never tried to find out.  Slowly Graham had filled all the spaces in her life.  She knew he would, and he did, because they were meant.

          He was a big bear, a virgin.  Technically he was not a virgin because of the brutish woman who had seduced him when he was a boy, but emotionally he was a virgin.  He didn’t know women.  He knew poetry and he knew how to listen, but he didn’t know women.

          Graham knew Frances.  He said he had known her throughout time.  He had known her through innumerable incarnations, since pre-history.  He and her had always been together.  And Frances knew what he meant.  They were not separate beings, Graham and Frances.  They were one.  If Graham’s mood swung she felt it immediately, and it worked the other way as well, something would upset her and before she had time to think it herself Graham would be at her side.  “Are you all right?  Don’t worry, I’m always with you.”

          The world went past them.  Whatever happened nothing could touch them.  They were greater than the world.  “Relationships like ours,” Graham would say, “are the reason that the world exists.”

          But the Devil is wily.  The Devil screams with pain when faced with the beauty of a relationship like that.  He can’t stand it.  He summons all at his command to break it up, his pimps and his prostitutes, his fornicators.  He gets them all chipping away at it.  Trying to break it down, make it turn sour.

          You have to be vigilant.  You have to be strong.

          The beginning was wonderful.  Graham had left New Zealand to search for his destiny.  He had travelled across the globe.  And he had kept going, whatever came in his way, he had not given up.  Frances had been born in Leeds, she had never left, knowing that one day someone, something would happen.  She didn’t know what it would be.  She never dreamed it would be Graham.  But that is what it was.  She fixed to a spot that he was inexorably drawn to.  It was like in the fairy stories.  But it was real.  Graham said all the fairy stories were real, but people now, they were too sophisticated to understand them.

          Graham, in his simplicity had known more than her.  Frances had only known something would happen.  But Graham was actually looking for her.  He knew what she was called, what she looked like.  He dreamed about her for years before they met.

          The first year, the first two years had been wonder after wonder.  Having found each other at last the two of them blossomed.  They grew in each others company, grew together like a flower that had been separated root from stem and then, miraculously, reunited.

          That was the period of the best poems, The Frances Poems.  During those two years they had spilled out of him.  “They write themselves,” he said, excited.  “They fall off the end of the pen.  I hold your image before me and the poems come tumbling down.”  Two years of grace.  Grace and happiness.

          Then the visions started.

          The Devil and his henchmen began to break through.  Somehow, working away from the inside, they undermined Graham’s fragile, poetic sensibility.  He was too sensitive, too open to withstand the constant bombardment.  He’d been weakened by the ministrations of the pimps and the prostitutes along the way.  Especially the ones in that house in York.  The house of sin.

          Frances had tried to calm him.  She’d kept the visions at bay, or explained them away.  She’d done that for years.  But as time went by they grew a little stronger, until, eventually, he had been consumed by them.

          The first visions were of Sara Dunn, the next door neighbour who had seduced him when he was still a boy.  She would come to him in dreams, whenever he closed his eyes.  Frances would cradle him in her arms until he slept, but then the seductress would return and Graham would wake screaming in the night.

          Then the Swedish woman would come, Lotta Jensen, and eventually they would all come until Graham could not rest at all.  He paced around the house night and day, his eyes blazing.  “Keep them away, Frances,” he would say.  “For God’s sake keep them away.”

          Frances suggested he should write a poem about them, thinking there must be some way to exorcise them.  He worked through the night.  Frances didn’t sleep.  There would be periods of pacing, periods of silence.  In the morning he came into the bedroom.  “I’ve done it,” he said.  “I’ve written a poem about Sara.  Got rid of her.”

          He led her through to his work room, and there it was on the wall.

          And it seemed to work for a while.  Keep her at bay.  The others followed quickly until they covered one wall in his room.  Frances didn’t think they were proper poems, but she didn’t mind, anything to give Graham some peace of mind.

          But peace of mind was not really on the cards for Graham any longer, nor for Frances herself.  The visions continued and Graham’s health deteriorated.  He never slept for more than an hour at a time, was always tired, towards the end he hardly knew who he was.  Sometimes he didn’t recognise Frances.  She would walk into a room and he would start screaming, “Keep away, keep away from me.”

          Graham didn’t leave the house for half a year.  He wouldn’t even look out of the window.  Kept the curtains of his workroom and their bedroom closed at all times.  “In case,” he said.  “In case.”

          In the end it had been a mercy killing.  Frances had collected thunder bugs, Spanish Fly, dried and ground them and fed them to Graham in his breakfast cereal.  They gave him diarrhoea, weakened him physically, but didn’t put him to sleep.  In the end they would have worked, cumulatively.  But they weren’t fast enough.  They weren’t merciful.

          Frances waited until he was asleep and slit his throat.  She held the pillow over his head until he stopped struggling.  But he was terribly weak.  He didn’t struggle for long.  He knew what she was doing, and he wanted it as well.

          The very next day he came back and told her so.  They would be reunited soon.  But first the pimps and prostitutes had to be dealt with.  The ones who had separated them.  The ones who had worked against them.

          Frances took the poems off the wall in Graham’s room, handling each one carefully, so that her fingerprints would not give her away before the job was complete.  You have to be very careful when fighting the Devil.  You have to be vigilant.  Leave nothing to chance.

          And now the job was nearly done, just a couple more to get rid of.  Everything going smoothly and the Devil plays a new card.  The stupid detective.  Putting his nose in.  Knowing too much already, or thinking he knows.

          Frances could have killed him today.  She was on the point of it when the Inspector arrived.  She might have to do it.  If he kept getting in the way.  There was no poem for him, but it was obvious which side he was on.

 

chapter

33     

          Jane Deacon arrived home from work at the same time as Sam.  Shoulders hunched, a glum far away look about her.  She tried a formal smile on him but it fell flat.  “What happened to you?” he asked.

          “Oh, nothing.  Some legal points holding up the transfer of the business.”

          “So it might not go through?”

          “No, nothing like that.  It’s just going to take longer than we thought.”

          “You in a hurry?”

          She looked at him and the next attempt at a smile fared better.  No joy in it, but a fairly good piece of acting.  “Once it’s settled I can go away,” she said.

          “You’re leaving?”

          “I’m going away.  In the short term I’ll keep the house on here, but I want to be somewhere there’s some sunshine.  Somewhere I can relax, think about the rest of my life.”

          “Spend some money?” Sam said.

          “Yes, that as well.  I’m a virtual prisoner here.”

          “You’re gonna be a prisoner wherever you are until we find whoever it was killed your husband.”

          “Graham, you mean?”

          “If it was Graham, yes.”

          “You mean there’s some doubt about it?”

          “It’s not been proved yet.”

          “Sam, there can’t be any doubt about it.  It has to be Graham.  There is no one else.”  Her voice was rising, not hysterical but it was certainly going up the register.

          Sam had been on the point of telling her about the notes, the forensic evidence, but he sensed she was too highly strung.  “No, there’s no one else,” he said.  No point in making her nervous.  The client wants to think it’s straight forward, the client’s right.

          “I don’t see how it could be anyone else but Graham,” she said.  “He’s got the motive, everything.”

          Sam took a chair and placed it next to her, sat her down.  “Jane, I was being semantic.  You’re right.  It must be Graham.”

          She settled a little but was still anxious.  Sam couldn’t understand why.  The lady had been fairly cool up till now.  Just a passing remark and she goes to pieces.

          Jane got up from the chair and started making coffee.  There was something odd about this woman.  Some ways, she doesn’t seem to be affected by the death of her husband.  Sam had noticed this before and thought she must be holding herself together by an effort of will.  He’d thought she’d crack.  She buries the guy and goes back to work, arranges to sell the business, counts the insurance money, now she’s planning a holiday.  She’s the main, the only benefactor from Terry Deacon’s death.  The only reason she isn’t the chief suspect is because Sam Turner knew she was nowhere near the house when Deacon bought it.

          She was having her portrait painted.  Or was she?

          She went into the painter’s house, left her car in the drive.  Sam sat outside the house a couple of hours.  She could’ve gone in the front door and out the back.  Gone home, killed Deacon, and come back the same way.

          Okay, here’s a hypothesis.  Jane Deacon starts an affair with the painter, what’s his name, Watson.  They fall in love and decide to kill Deacon, get his money and ride off into the sunset.  Jane sets it up with Deacon to hire a detective to follow her, so when she kills her husband she has a cast iron alibi.

          Perfect.

          But it doesn’t explain Sara Dunn,  Lotta Jensen, and Steven Bright.  Doesn’t explain the notes left on each body.  Doesn’t explain why Graham East has disappeared off the face of the earth.  Doesn’t explain. . . enough.

          “Where’ve you gone?” Jane said.

          “Sorry,” said Sam.  “Train of thought.  Look, d’you want to go out somewhere?  Get out of the prison for a while?”

          “Where?”

          “Wherever.  What do you like to do?  Take in a movie, have a drink, walk in the park.  We don’t have to sit here all night.”

          “I don’t think I could concentrate on a film,” she said.  “A walk might be nice, even a drink.”

          “Tell me when you’re ready,” he said.

          Jane went upstairs to have her bath, get changed.

          Here’s another hypothesis.  The painter, what’s his name, Watson, is really Graham East in disguise.  That’s why no one can find Graham East.  Jane Deacon’s affair with Watson is really an affair with Graham.  Sam, you’ve done too many movies.  The blonde lady cracks so you start to put her in the frame.  You said she would crack under the strain of everything happened to her, and then as soon as she does, starts to act normal, you think she’s a mass murderer.

          Leave it.

          Sam finished up his coffee and did his nightly checks.  The Walther, the downstairs windows and back door.  Two more chapters of Simenon while waiting for the lady.  She came downstairs in a sleeveless mauve dress, short, very short, V-necked, buttoned down the front,  slim gold chain at her throat.  Tanned legs that seemed to go on forever, and flat shoes.  Some eye makeup, but nothing on her lips.  “Is this over the top?” she asked.

          “Yeah,” said Sam.  “Perfect.  Where we going?”

          “Shall we just walk?  See what happens?”

          It was a rare, humid summer evening which brought people pouring out onto the streets, into the parks.  Girls and women in cotton dresses, men in shirt sleeves carrying their jackets, the old folk occupying every inch of bench space.  Every public house or drinking place had a gaggle of youths and girls outside the entrance, sitting on the pavements drinking and laughing.

          In the normal course of things Jane Deacon turned heads.  This evening, walking through the park, Sam noticed she drew the eyes of young and old, men and some women, they’d get an eyeful and then turn round for another one.  Jane didn’t seem to notice.  She must have, but she didn’t seem to.

          “What’s happening with the painting?” he asked.

          “The portrait?  It’s not finished.  I was supposed to have one more sitting, but I don’t know if I’ll bother now.  It was for Terry.  What would I do with a portrait of me?”

          “You could give it to me,” Sam told her.  “When you’ve gone off to your island in the sun it’ll remind me the time I walked through York with the best looker in town.”

          “Looks don’t mean much,” she said.

          “Maybe not, when you’ve got ‘em.”

          “It’s just fashion,” she said.  “Todays face is good for a laugh tomorrow.”

          “I was still thinking about today,” he said, staring back at a guy on the pavement giving Jane the all over up and down and up again.  “Look at him, the guy’s in a trance.”  Jane turned to look and the guy suddenly became conscious, pushed his hands into his pockets and hurried off along the pavement.  “Wait,” said Sam, “he’ll turn round in a minute.”

          They watched the guy until he came to the corner.  There he stopped and looked back quickly before disappearing round the bend.  Sam and Jane laughed, carried on walking.  “Gone to change his undies,” said Sam.  Her hand brushed against his momentarily, long enough for him to take hold of it if he wanted.  He did want, but he didn’t do it.

          In the Theatre Bar he got her a white wine and a tonic for himself, took them over to a table she had colonised.  “You don’t drink? she asked.

          “Yeah.  More than most,” Sam admitted.  “But only when I’m miserable.”

          “You really want the portrait?”

          “I’ve got this huge wall with nothing on it.  Needs breaking up.”

          “Okay, you’ve got it.”  She touched his hand with her index finger across the table.  A light touch and then she withdrew, little electric shock.  Sam closed his eyes and opened them again.  The tingle still there.  He gave no sign, aware that he was playing a game in spite of himself.  A touch here, a look there, something he or she said, storing them all up.  Leaving them alone, letting them stand until there was no other way out.  Playing with dynamite.  Like sitting in front of a bottle of whiskey, reading the label, unscrewing the top, smelling it maybe, not touching a drop.  Sitting through the night with the bottle between your legs.  See how long you can go.

          They walked through the Museum Gardens, passed a couple of winos who shouted abuse at them, something unintelligible, the only clear message being that Sam and the blonde should be shagging each other.  Sam didn’t need anyone to tell him that.

          “How do you get like that?” she asked, watching as one of the winos fell headlong into a border of flowers.

          “It’s easier than it looks,” he told her.

          “But completely out of it.  They don’t know where they are.”

          “You just drink your way to the bottom of the bottle,” he said.  “Then you start on a new one.  It doesn’t take long.”

          “The voice of experience?”

          “I know where they’re at,” he said.

          “But what makes somebody do that, give up like that?”

          “Poverty, any kind of deprivation, inadequacy, emptiness, insolvency, want, need.  Shall I go on?”

          “If you can.”

          “Distress, destitution, insolvency, starvation, nothingness, nothing particular, a broken heart, infatuation, yearning, failure, success.  Hell, anything you can’t or don’t want to cope with.  There’re as many reasons as there’re bottles.”

          “Are you an alcoholic?”

          “Only when I’m drinking.”

          They walked back to the cul-de-sac in silence.  All the way home nobody looked at her twice.

          “Thanks,” she said, going up to bed, “for taking me out.  I needed it.  It was nice.”

          “I blew it,” Sam said.

          She lingered on the bottom step.  “Not necessarily.”

          “Yeah.  I’ll try harder tomorrow.”

 

 

 

chapter

34     

          Geordie didn’t lie down in his doorway in the Coppergate Centre.  He stood there for a while, then sat and waited for the guy.  There were bruises all over his body and his neck was stiff, his left arm felt numb, but more than any of these he was hungry.  Some drunk had thrown the remains of a bag of fish and chips away outside the Viking Museum and Geordie had shared them with Barney, but not more than a mouthful each.

          The guy usually came just after the clock struck two, and that was about ten minutes ago.  Geordie counted, telling himself the guy would come round the corner when he got to a hundred.  When the guy didn’t come he started counting again.  He was on his third hundred, number sixty three, when the guy arrived.

          “Christ,” said the guy.  “What happened to you?”  He brought up a hand to touch Geordie’s black eye, but Geordie moved away in time.  “That’s a real shiner.”  He held out a packet of sandwiches and Geordie opened them and took a bite, tore a piece off for Barney.  Cheese and chutney.

          “And hungry,” said the guy.  “So, what’s the answer today?  D’you wanna job?”

          Geordie took another bite out of the sandwich.  He didn’t think he wanted the kind of job the guy would offer.  Before he got the sandwiches he thought he might say yes, but now he’d got the sandwiches, now he was eating one, he wasn’t so sure.

          The guy felt in his pocket and took out a handful of coins.  He offered them and Geordie tucked the packet of sandwiches under his arm so he could take the money.  “No chocolate biscuits today,” the guy said.   “You got all that was left yesterday.”

          He walked off.  When he’d gone a few steps Geordie followed him.  The guy turned round to look, and Geordie stopped.  The guy stood and stared for a few seconds then carried on walking.  Geordie followed.

          If he wants sex, Geordie thought, I won’t be able to do it.  His body ached all over.  I’ll be able to do it but it’ll really hurt.  Something about the guy made Geordie think he wouldn’t want sex.  Not his build, not the way he carried himself.  You couldn’t tell by things like that.  Some of the guys wanted sex were like women, some of them like men, big ones, small ones, tough, weak, you could never tell by looking.  But there was still something about this one, Geordie would be surprised if he was after sex.  But he’d been surprised before, more than once.

          The guy walked faster than Geordie could go with his limp, getting a little farther ahead all the time.  But Geordie kept after him.  He didn’t want to spend another night with the fuckin derelicts beating the shit out of him.  Once they knew you had money they kept coming back.  No matter how little you had, they’d never leave you alone.  Only thing you could do, move to another town.  But you moved wherever, the derelicts would find you in the end.

          The guy got about a hundred yards ahead and turned a corner.  Geordie tried to go faster, not wanting to lose him now.  When he turned the corner the guy had slowed down, only a few paces in front again.

          Two more corners and the guy stopped at a door, got some keys out of his pocket and opened it.  He stood holding the door until Geordie walked past him into the dark flat.  “Welcome to my humble abode,” he said ominously.  Closed the door and put the light on.  “If you don’t mind me saying so,” the guy said, “you stink something rotten.”

          Geordie couldn’t smell anything.

          “Just stand there,” the guy said.  “Back in a minute.”  He went through one of the internal doors and disappeared.  Geordie stood on the spot looking around the room.  Everything was neat and tidy, clean, bright.  Like the place was not lived in much.  There was a cooker and a wash basin.  Over in the corner a stereo system and piles of tapes.  An old battered sofa and a table with two chairs.  Row of hooks with bright red mugs hanging.  A telephone.  Nothing on the walls.  From the room the guy had gone into came the sound of splashing water.

          When the guy came out of the room, steam came gushing out after him.  “Your bath’s ready,” he said.  Geordie walked to the door of the bathroom and looked in.  He couldn’t see much at first because of the steam, but as his eyes became accustomed he saw that it was a very small room with a bath, small wash basin and lavatory.  If the guy was planning getting into the bath with him they wouldn’t be able to move.  The guy was on his hands and knees now, scrabbling about in a cupboard under the kitchen sink.  When he came out of there he had a large black plastic bag, kind they put in dustbins to save the men making two journeys, Geordie had used one to sleep in once.  You slept in one of those it kept the wet out and the cold in.

          “Okay,” the guy said, handing Geordie the dustbin bag.  “You strip everything off and put it in the bag.  Then you get in the bath and have a good soak.  When you’re finished you leave your clothes in the bag.  There’s some pyjamas in the bathroom, dressing gown.  You put those on.”

          Geordie nodded.  “What about Barney?” he said.

          “Same with Barney,” said the guy.  “He smells nearly as bad as you.”

          Geordie went into the bathroom, Barney following at his heels.  He left the door open, but the guy closed it behind him, leaving him alone with the dog.  Geordie touched the water in the bath to test the temperature.  A little too hot maybe.  Maybe not.  He undressed with some difficulty.  There was a bad cut on his right heel and his sock was stuck to it with dried blood.  Eventually it came off and he put one foot in the water.  It was okay.  He stood in the bath and collected Barney in his arms.  “It’s a bath,” he told the dog.  “Nothing to worry about.”  Now he knelt in the bath and slowly lowered Barney in beside him.  The dog struggled for a few minutes, then seemed to accept it.  When Barney was completely settled Geordie lowered himself full length in the water.  “Jeez,” he said.  It was so good.  “Jezus Christ.”

          Last time he was in water was a couple a months ago when he paddled in the river, just after he arrived in York.  Fuckin freezing it was.  Before Barney adopted him.

          He lay on his back, his whole body immersed in  warm water, just his head sticking out.  Barney sat on his stomach, occasionally lapping up some of the water with his tongue, looking confused.  Next door the guy was playing music or singing.  Hard to tell which.

 

* * *

 

 

          Geordie woke up to the guy banging on the door.  He was shouting, “What you doing in there?”  The water in the bath was almost cold.  The door opened a crack and he saw the guy’s face peering through.  “Jesus, are you asleep?”  He came into the room and Geordie quickly covered his prick with his hands.  “Don’t wanna see it,” the guy said.  “Got one of my own.  Just wanna make sure you don’t die of pneumonia.”

          The guy turned the hot tap on, and slowly the water got warm again.  “Okay.  You can get out now, give yourself a good rub down.”  He left the room, taking the dustbin bag with Geordie’s clothes, and closed the door behind him.  Geordie got himself and Barney out of the bath.  Barney did a shake and sprayed cold water all over the room, splashing the mirror and the bathroom cabinets.

          When they were both dry he put on the pyjamas and the dressing gown.  Had to turn up the trouser bottoms of the pyjamas as they were several inches too long.  But the soft cotton felt good against his skin,  and the dressing gown was warm.  He opened the door and went back into the room where the guy was playing music on the system.  Like rock and roll or whatever it was called, made you feel good, a song he’d heard some of the buskers doing.  No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe.  Good song.

          “How does it feel?” the guy asked.

          Geordie nodded.  It felt good.  Something had happened to the room while he was in the bath.  The guy had put a mattress on the floor, a pillow and a sleeping bag.  Narrow mattress, and only one sleeping bag.  So the guy didn’t want sex.  Least ways he didn’t want it yet.

          “You can go to bed in a minute,” the guy said.  “Just a couple a things.  The dog craps anywhere you clean it up.  Okay?”

          Geordie nodded.  What did the guy think?  He didn’t know how to live?

          “Tomorrow I want to get you some clothes, so I need to measure you.”  The guy held up a tape measure.  “And those old clothes of yours,” he pointed to the dustbin bag.  “I want to burn them.  Any objections?”

          Geordie shook his head.  He didn’t mind burning the old ones if he was getting new ones.

          “And still something else,” the guy said.  “I’d like to hear you talk.”

          “Geordie thought for a moment, then said, “Thanks, pal.”

          “Sam.  Call me Sam.”  The guy looked at him, then repeated, “Call me Sam.”

          “Thanks, Sam,” said Geordie.

          Sam went through another door and closed it, must be his bedroom.  Geordie crept into the sleeping bag and laid his head on the pillow.  The dog turned round once and snuggled up on the mattress.  “You know, something, Barney,” said Geordie.  “This is the best job we’ve ever had.”

 

 

 

chapter

35     

          In another part of town Gus was reading a textbook on electronic bugging devices, Jane Deacon safely in bed upstairs.  He thought it would be simple to put some of these newer devices together.  Get the right chips and a little board, his soldering iron and a bright light.  Cost a fraction of the price if he made them himself.

          Gus was a practical man, could put anything electronic together if he put his mind to it.  He’d been messing around with computers for years, built them, fixed them, even had a job at one time mending TV’s, going from house to house in a little van, bored out of his skull.

          Couple of years ago he’d started a university course, but had to drop out because of the theory.  The maths wouldn’t stick in his head for some reason.  Sam’d said it was because he couldn’t think unless he had a soldering iron or a snooker cue in his hand.  Might be right, usually was.

          If this detective agency thing came together Gus saw himself with an electronics workshop, building job specific bugs,  miniature cameras and surveillance kit of all kinds.  Most of it he’d build himself, prototypes, then farm out the manufacture to other companies, maybe get someone to market devices he’d developed.  Hell, security was a big industry already, growing by the day.  Get in on the ground floor, make a real killing.

          He’d have to farm out the manufacturing, and get someone to help with design as well.  Most of the computers he’d built, Gus had housed them in a shoe box, something like that.  What the thing looked like didn’t matter, he was only interested in what it could do.  But people didn’t believe in the thing if it was in a shoe box, even people like Sam, he’d say inane things like, “I’ve got one of these at home.”

          Earlier, after Sam had left, Gus had taken the Walther to bits, cleaned it and put it back together again.  Bit crude by today’s standards, but he liked the way it was turned.  So simple, the whole idea behind a blow-back pistol, giving a hand gun the power of automatic fire.  It was one of the larger guns made by Walther, 7.65mm, designed initially for plain clothes detectives.  Then the Luftwaffe had adopted it and it became the staple of German Staff Officers.  This one, when it was new, who knows who’d used it?  Probably travelled all over Europe during the war.

          There was a movement on the stairs.  Gus closed the book and went to the hall.  The blonde was coming down the stairs looking like shit.  Good class shit, but nevertheless, decidedly ropey.  “Are you okay?” he asked.

          She rubbed her eyes with both hands, lifting the long dressing gown a fraction, what appeared to be a blue nightgown underneath.  “Bad dream,” she said.  “I couldn’t get back to sleep.  What time is it?”

          “Four, just after.”

          She floated past him into the living room, sat on the sofa and curled her legs under her.  “Sam gone?”

          “Yeah, couple of hours ago.”

          She was quiet for a moment, still waking up, strangely vulnerable, not quite in her body.  Gus eased down into the chair opposite and wondered what it would be like with her, even though he knew he wasn’t her type.  She was a high flyer, a guy wanted her would have to have money or something else she needed.  Whatever that was he knew he didn’t have it.  She looked up at him and gave him a bright smile, said,  “Have you known him long?”

          “We go back quite a way,” said Gus, thinking, Information, that’s what she wants.   “Ten years.  Met him at a Dylan concert.”

          “He was playing a tape the other night,” she said.  “Nice.  Bit old fashioned, though.”

          Gus shrugged.  “You want everything new?”

          Jane smiled, shaking her head.  “I take what comes.  I find him interesting.  Sam, I mean.”

          “You fancy him?”

          “Yes, I suppose so.  He’s got something.”

          “He has that effect on women.  Can’t see it, myself.  He’s a good mate, reliable.  He can laugh as well.  You find him attractive?”

          “It’s not a big thing,” she said.  “I’m not going to tell you, you’ll go straight to Sam, say, hey, Jane Deacon fancy’s you.”

          Gus laughed.  “Probably will,” he said.  “But he’ll know already.  Won’t need me to tell him.”

          “He knows,” she said.  “But he doesn’t move on it.  Doesn’t let on.”

          “That’s Sam,” said Gus.  “He likes to wait until the apple’s ripe.  Sometimes he buys a new tape, he won’t play it for maybe a week.  He reads the titles, all the blurb.  He picks it up and looks at it every so often, touches it, you know, feels it.  Then a few days later he’ll start to play it.  I made him a new cue over a year ago.  He really likes it, but he hasn’t used it yet.”

          “Oh, God,” said Jane.  “Come back in a year’s time.  I’ll give you a progress report.  What about you?  You married?”

          “Married,” said Gus.  “No.  I’ve got a partner, Marie.  We’ve been together a few years.  She’s a nurse.”

          “Nice,” said Jane.  “She doesn’t mind you working nights?”

          “It’s not permanent,” said Gus.  “She works nights one week in every three.  You get used to it.”

          “So what do you suggest?  About Sam?  Am I doing something wrong?”

          “Ask him,” said Gus.  “He’ll tell you the truth.”

          “He’s been married?  That right?”

          “Couple of times.  The last one was a real disaster.  Woman called Brenda, real gold digger.  Couldn’t ever figure out why she married Sam.  He never had any money.”

          “And the first one?”

          “She was called Donna,” Gus said.  “Sam doesn’t talk about her much.  I never met her.  They had a daughter, still a toddler.  Donna and the daughter were killed by a hit and run driver.  The kid was killed outright but Donna was on a life support machine for some time.  Sam asked them to turn it off in the end.”

          “That must have been tough,” said Jane.

          Gus shook his head.  “Sam,” he said.  “He’s got a real downer on bad drivers.  Anyone driving over the speed limit he sees red.  And drunk drivers, I think he’d hang them.”

          “I’m not surprised.  Did they find the man who killed his wife?”

          “No,” said Gus.  “The guy’s still driving around, probably.  I remember one time, we were on the A1, this guy overtook us on the inside lane.  Sam took off after him, hitting the horn for about six miles.  He forced the guy into a Service Station.  This guy gets out of his car shaking his fist calling Sam everything under the sun.  Sam is livid.  I’m trying to hold him back, thinking he’s capable of anything,  might kill the guy.  But he shakes me off and goes over to the guy.  ‘I wanna smell your breath,’ he says.  The guy’s still raving.  Next thing I know Sam’s smacked him one and the guy’s on his back in the car park.  He get’s up and Sam smacks him again.  ‘Every time you try to get into the car,’ Sam tells him, ‘I’m gonna smack you.  And I’m gonna go on smacking you until you sober up.’”