“Oh, I thought you’d brought me a coffee,” I said, noticing that she was empty-handed and pushing the spare chair towards her.
“No,” she replied, without returning the smile. “I brought you this. I thought you ought to be the first to know.” It was a long white envelope, addressed to me.
I took it from her and turned it in my fingers. “Is it what I think it is?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” I told her, and she shrugged her shoulders. I placed it on my desk, propped against a box of paperclips, and looked at it. “You’ve some holiday to come,” I stated.
“Three weeks,” she confirmed.
“So you could be gone by the end of next week.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve accepted his proposal?”
“Yes.”
We only have to give a month’s notice to resign. The last thing you want hanging round a police station is a demob-happy disgruntled officer spreading doubt and disillusion about the job. A week, though. We’d been jogging along quite nicely, up to now. I’d behaved myself, Annette had done her job. We’d even had a drink together, after a particularly harrowing day, and I’d enjoyed seeing her around, half hoping that her friendship with the teacher might grow cold. It obviously hadn’t.
“There’s an alternative,” I said.
She shook her head. “No.”
“I could tear this up, drop it in the bin, and you could come to live with me.”
She hung her head, one hand on her brow. “Don’t, please, Charlie,” she mumbled. “Don’t make it more difficult than it is.”
I looked at her, seeing for the first time the worry lines in the corners of her eyes that hadn’t been there before she started seeing me. Now somebody else would have to soothe them away. I opened my mouth to tell her that she was making a mistake, then changed my mind. I’ve been through all that, before. “I’ll miss you,” I said, “and I hope it all works out for you.”
“I hope it all works out for you, too, Charlie,” she replied.
“Oh, it will,” I told her. “It will. No doubt about that.”
So the following Friday we had a “do” in the Bailiwick, with everybody there. Gilbert made a presentation and Annette said we were the best bunch of people she’d ever worked with. Embarrassing episodes in Annette’s career were recalled and David Rose did his party trick, drinking a pint of beer while standing on his head. It’s time to leave when David does his party trick.
I didn’t have the opportunity to say a private goodbye to her, thinking that maybe I’d give her a phone call the next day, but suspecting that I wouldn’t. Dave Sparkington and I shared a taxi home and I asked him if they’d heard from Sophie this week.
“Yeah, she keeps in touch,” he told me.
“Is she enjoying her lectures?”
“She says she is. It’s hard work, but she’s coping.”
“And the flat’s OK?”
“Hmm, bit of a problem, there. She says the place stinks of garlic. The previous tenant must have eaten nothing else but.”
I remembered the microwave I’d given her, and the exploding chicken Kiev. “Students,” I said, by way of explanation.
“Yeah, students.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence, apart from the hiss of the tyres on the wet road and the swish of the wipers. “I reckon you missed your way there, Chas,” Dave said as we turned into his street.
“Where?”
“With Annette.”
“Oh. No, not my type.”
Rain, carried by a wind straight off the hills, was lashing at the windows as he slammed the car door and dashed for the shelter of his house. I gave the driver new directions and he took me home.
I over-tipped him and turned up my collar as he wished me goodnight. The postman had left the gate open and the bulb had failed again in the outside light. I’m sure they don’t last as long now that we get our electricity from the gas people. I found the right key by the light of the street lamp then plunged into the shadow at the side of the house, shuddering with cold.
What was it to be, I wondered: a hot bath; some loud music; a couple of cans with my feet on the mantelpiece; or all three? Silkstone would probably be tucked up in bed in his nice centrally heated cell. Jason would be having it away with some totty he’d picked up at the Aspidistra Lounge. And what about Chilcott — the Chiller — where would he be? In a bar in a warmer clime if his luck had held. Somewhere where you can live like a lord on ten grand a year. Cuba, or Mexico.
Unless, of course, he was still out there, wondering about fulfilling his last contract. I doubted it, but it gave life a certain piquancy, knowing that somebody thought enough about you to pay money to have you killed. I was a cop, so I must be doing something right. The key found the keyhole third attempt and I turned it. I pushed the door open and reached inside for the lightswitch. No doubt Mexico’s fine, but there’s no place like home.