She stopped the car opposite the tube station and, stretching across, hands resting on the wheel, kissed him once on the lips. It was a strange kiss — formal, barren, unlike her. A kiss with no history and no future. A kiss that said goodbye and nothing else. Her mouth had shut in his face like a door and she had withdrawn deep into the house to tend to something more pressing. He thought he understood as he got out. Now she was nearing home he had taken second place to her family. He leaned on the window. Stared at her.
‘You look tired,’ he said.
She nodded.
‘I’ll call you in the week.’ He never usually said things like this to her. It was that kiss. It had unnerved him somehow. He felt the car move fractionally against his body.
‘See you soon, Mary.’
He lifted his hands, stood back. She drove away. Hunched over the wheel. Like somebody driving in thick fog. He watched the car shrink, a metaphor for her withdrawal. He shrugged. Turned away. Leaving her to drive into a tragedy that he could never have foreseen because all the important things are shocks that take place on either side of your imagination.
It was Sunday afternoon.
He didn’t call her until the following Wednesday.
*
‘I’m home,’ Mary announced.
Her voice hung on in the air, a slowly dying thing.
She stood perfectly still, her hand on the edge of the front door, and listened to the empty house. The creak of a stair under no footstep. The automatic click of the kitchen thermostat. The wind testing a window in the living-room. She recognised the sounds, but she had never heard them on a Sunday before. How peculiar.
‘How peculiar,’ she said out loud. And felt a rope begin to tighten round her throat.
She took a few steps forward, down the hall, and stood in the kitchen doorway. They had the presence of inhabitants, those sounds. They had grown out of all proportion in her absence. In this silence.
She walked across the room and opened a window. Cold air flowed in over the back of her hand. Raised the hairs on her forearms.
There ought to be a note, she was thinking. But there was only a pot of cold tea. A jar of marmalade. A dirty plate.
Then a sound that didn’t belong. A guest sound.
No, not guest.
Intruder.
She turned round.
‘Mrs Shirley?’
A policeman and a policewoman stood in the kitchen doorway. Their eyes blinked like the wings of butterflies. She stared at them and saw such nervousness.
‘He’s dead,’ she said, ‘isn’t he?’
Crime is Order
Elliot had gone away for a few days. Business, Ridley said. Business? Moses thought. Hiding, more like. But he kept the thought to himself.
It took him until Tuesday night to pin Elliot down.
‘You know that policeman who was looking for me?’ Moses said, lowering himself on to the corner of Elliot’s desk. ‘What was he like?’
‘I told you,’ Elliot said. ‘He was a big bloke.’
‘A big bloke. That really narrows it down, doesn’t it.’
Elliot heaved a sigh. ‘All right, he was old. Sixty, maybe. Maybe older. Tell you one thing, though. He had a punch like a fucking train.’ His hand moved gingerly across his waistcoat.
‘What did his hair look like?’
‘Hair? Grey, I think.’
‘Long? Short? Curly?’
‘It was short. Sort of a crewcut.’
Moses felt his heart stall. ‘What about his eyes?’
‘Oh, fuck off, Moses. How am I supposed to notice his eyes? I wasn’t in love with the geezer, was I?’
Moses walked to the window. He stared out over the rooftops, his hands in his pockets. Car headlights wiped across his face. ‘Ridley was there, wasn’t he?’
‘He turned up after the bloke ran off. I don’t reckon he saw much.’
‘Do us a favour, Elliot. Get him up here for a moment, would you? It’s important.’
Elliot blew some air out of his mouth. ‘The things I do for you, Moses. And what do you do for me, eh?’
‘I get hit on the head, that’s what I do for you.’
Elliot sighed. He reached for the phone and dialled an internal number. ‘Is Ridley around? Yeah? Well, tell him Elliot wants to speak to him. Yeah, now.’
A few minutes later the office door opened and Ridley appeared. He looked from Elliot to Moses and back again. ‘So what’s the problem, chief?’
‘You remember that copper who came round a couple of months ago?’ Elliot said.
Ridley rolled his head back. He remembered.
Moses jumped in. ‘D’you remember what he looked like?’
‘Didn’t see him, did I?’ Ridley scratched his forearm. It sounded like somebody sawing wood. ‘Heard his voice, though.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Deep. Fucking deep.’
‘Thanks, Ridley.’ Moses turned away. Sixty, crewcut, deep voice. That clinched it.
When Ridley had left, Elliot said, ‘What’s this all about, Moses? You know who the copper was?’
Moses was staring out of the window again. At the place where Peach must, impossibly, have stood. ‘Yeah, I know who he was.’
‘So who was he?’
‘It won’t mean anything to you.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Peach. Chief Inspector Peach.’
‘Peach? I never heard of no fucking Peach.’
‘You wouldn’t have.’ On his way out Moses paused by the door. ‘One thing, Elliot. If you see him again, don’t be too gentle, all right?’
Elliot threw his cigarette out of the window to its death. ‘I don’t think you need to worry about that, Moses.’
Moses walked slowly down the stairs. Peach in London. Peach asking questions. Why? Moses needed to talk to somebody. And the only person who would understand was Mary. He tried to reach her that night, but there was no reply.
*
The next day he tried again. It was three in the afternoon and he was standing in a call-box in Soho. Dead ducks rotated on a stainless steel spit ten feet away. A green neon sign — SPANKERAMA — flashed in a curtained window. Somebody had scratched the words GOD and FUCK into the red paintwork above the phone. With a coin, probably, because the O was a pyramid and the U looked like a V-sign. A copy of the Sun soaked up urine on the floor. BIG FREEZE CHAOS, the front page said. The freak cold snap earlier in the week had thrown the whole of Central London into chaos: rail services cut, traffic snarl-ups, hyperthermia. Moses shivered as he dialled. Somebody picked up on the other end. He pressed his waiting coin into the slot.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘I was wondering when you were going to call.’
‘Mary?’ He hardly recognised her voice. It sounded so emaciated. As if it had been sent to a concentration camp for voices. But that only delayed him a second. ‘Mary, something’s happened. I’ve found out who — ’
‘Wait a moment, Moses,’ her voice cut in, gathering strength. ‘Listen to me. Just slow down and listen to me.’
The next five seconds were like watching a punch in slow motion: soft ripping as the fist split the air, then the sudden jolt as everything speeded up, happened too fast, as the punch connected.
‘Alan’s dead. He died on Saturday — ’ Her voice crumpled as it hit the sixth word.