LITMIR.BIZ

       SEVEN

      The answer machine was blinking at me when I walked in. Two messages.

      The first one was from Laura. I had stayed at the bar longer than I intended, just one more drink turning into three.

      ‘Hi Jack, it’s just me. Just ringing to let you know that you can ring me any time about this. We need all the help we can get.’ Then there was a pause. ‘And I just thought,’ and then another pause, before, ‘Oh, no, forget it, it doesn’t matter. Sorry. We’ll talk again. Bye.’

      As I heard her voice, I felt flutters, like dances in my stomach. I remembered how I felt the first time I met her, and then the same feeling every time after that. It was like a need, a tightness in the chest.

      But she had been married, and I don’t go out with married women. They bring trouble I don’t need.

      Now she wasn’t married any more, and I could feel all those yearnings coming back. And I had felt her get close earlier. Just a brush, warm lips, maybe just friendly, but it reopened whatever I felt when our paths crossed.

      I sighed and laughed to myself. It must be the beer talking, all this teenage mush.

      I reached into the fridge for another beer, popped off the cap, but stopped when the next message started.

      ‘Hello Jack, it’s Dad. I heard about Henri Dumas, and it looked like it happened near you. I just thought I would ring to see how you’re doing. I haven’t spoken to you for a while. Give me a ring.’

      And then it clicked off.

      I sighed. I felt the skip I’d had before fade. I glanced at the picture I had of him on the wall, from when he was still a footballer, trying to dribble past a sliding tackle. He looked young, full of promise. I looked away. He wasn’t that man any more. I see a man a little lost, and maybe a lot lonely.

      I thought about calling, but, as always, I didn’t act on it. I tried to ignore the nagging guilt, and instead began to think about the article I hadn’t quite finished, and about the calls I still had to make for Laura.

      But my thoughts turned back to my father. It had always been the same with him. He calls to say hello, but we don’t get much beyond that. He doesn’t know much about my life, and there’s not too much to talk about with his. He goes to work, sometimes goes to the pub. Any time he has left, he spends it messing around with his car, a 1973 Triumph Stag. He bought it when he was still a footballer, it was the car he had when he met my mother, and he had kept hold of it, some kind of nostalgia thing. He has other cars, routine runarounds, but it is the Stag that sees him with a rag in his hand, cleaning and mending and waxing.

      It had been like that with my father since my mother died a few years earlier. She was where I got my darkness from, with her long brunette curls and chocolate eyes. She had been funny and vivacious and loving. She had provided the emotion, my dad the steel. A cancer had killed her, sneaked up on her and then danced all over her body, reduced her to bones, pain-killed to a stupor.

      It was a relief for me when she died. I couldn’t watch her suffer any more, and I saw what it was doing to my dad. He’d stopped talking, stopped smiling. I was able to move on when she died, still with my own life ahead, but I think my dad thought that the best bits of his life were behind him, and he didn’t seem keen on facing the rest on his own. By the time he came around, we’d become strangers in the same house. He didn’t know my friends, didn’t know where I went. We still talked, like if we needed milk, or the rubbish needed putting out, the routine stuff, but not much else. I moved to London and he stayed in Turners Fold.

      I turned away from the answer machine, ignoring the knot of guilt I had in my stomach. He was all the family I had left. But we could talk another time.

      The only sound Bob Garrett could hear was the sound of his tyres humming over the cobbles as he went through the town triangle.

      Turners Fold seemed quiet. He saw the lights flick off in Jake’s, the end of another endless day for him, competing with the all-night garage and the new late shop at the end of the street. He would return once Jake had locked up. Jake was having problems with youths using the side of his shop to meet and get drunk.

      It wasn’t just the noise that bothered Jake. It was the sheer waste of it all. All hooded up in black, indistinguishable, tracksuit bottoms tucked into their socks, they sat around the town at night, drinking cheap cider. Mostly, they’d just get noisy, but when it got warm they’d look for trouble.

      Bob knew their parents. They were decent people. The kids would be, given the chance. Bob just didn’t see many chances coming their way.

      Bob looked back at Jake’s and waved. He didn’t know if Jake could see him, but the gesture felt good.

      He looked down the road, towards where the town drifted into darkness, the lights of houses the only spots of life. He saw the house where James Radley used to live, his old police friend, until the house burnt down, James and his wife choked by the smoke, burnt to death by the flames. It was all new now, the black grit-blasted away.

      He sighed at the thought of the night ahead. He had some bail checks to do, making sure people were obeying their curfew, and a couple of statements to take.

      He cocked his ear at the radio. A drunken husband was banging on his door, making threats. Same again. She’d had him back three times in the last month, despite the beatings. She needed the police when they argued, but wouldn’t take the help when he was prosecuted, always attending court to beg for his return.

      Time to go. He didn’t want her murder to take place on his tour.

      I had filed the article before I called Laura. She sounded sleepy when I called, and I tried to be brief when I realised she had her young son asleep with her.

      ‘I didn’t wake him, did I?’

      I heard the smile in her voice, wrapped up in a yawn.

      ‘No, just me. Have you got anything?’

      ‘Not much, but I’ve called a few contacts. Seems like the celebrity engagement isn’t what it seems. There are rumours that neither party to the couple treasured their fidelity too highly, although nothing the papers would dare to print. Rumours of one-night stands for him, secret liaisons with a dancer for her, but nothing else.’

      ‘Can you get any details?’

      ‘I’m going to see someone in the morning for you. He might open up to me.’

      ‘Thanks, Jack.’ There was a pause, Laura thinking how far she could go, and then, ‘What do you want to know?’

      ‘Just what’s happening? Anything unusual about the post mortems.’

      She

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