McLusky smiled down at Louise’s fist holding on to the shirt material. The grab had turned into a small, two-fingered caress. ‘I’m trained to deal with shirt-grabbers, you know?’
‘Well, you can show me that later. This is my interview technique. So. What happened? You’ve been very cagey all evening about your life in Southampton while I’ve told you practically every story of my life.’
‘I just don’t do stuff very well, that’s all. In Southampton I moved in with someone who seemed to have all that kind of thing already, fridges and cookers and heated towel rails. So I never accumulated any. When we split I simply threw some things into a few boxes and bin-liners …’ It had been Laura in fact who had packed all his possessions into boxes, carefully wrapped naturally, while he was still recovering in hospital. It was all there waiting for him at the section house when he got out. Half of it had never been unpacked since. ‘I’m not hung up on material things.’
‘Neither am I. Just a place to lay my head, really.’ She let herself sink back along the length of the sofa, bringing him with her by the shirt. Slipping her fingers into his hair she pulled him close until their lips met in a series of slow, tentative kisses. His aftershave seemed to have mellowed and blended with his own particular fragrance into faint hints of cinnamon and musk. She enjoyed the weight of his body on hers and wriggled lower, sliding her hands down his back as their kisses grew longer. His hands insinuated themselves smoothly into the small of her back, the arch of her neck. A hum of pleasure vibrated his chest and he pulled her body harder towards his own. Louise walked her fingers over the unfamiliar topography of his muscles under the shirt material, a whole landscape in urgent need of exploring. The unfamiliar buzz of the door bell froze both of them in a silent, trembling pause. The door bell sounded again, longer, more insistently.
‘Bugger.’ His first instinct was to ignore it. It was what the cast of Louise’s eyes and the pressure of her palms against his back seemed to suggest too. Only his mobile had been turned off, his airwave was in the kitchen and he could still hear the super’s warning that he might keep himself more available in future. The buzzer sounded for long seconds, someone was leaning on the button downstairs. ‘I’ll have to check.’ With an involuntary groan of frustration he disentangled himself, moving swiftly to the intercom by the door. ‘Yes?’
‘Liam?’ A woman’s voice.
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s me, open the door.’
‘Laura …?’
‘Give that man a coconut. Are you going to let me in or not?’
McLusky pressed the button while his mind raced. What was she doing here? And at this time of night? How had she found him? What could it mean? When she appeared in his doorway the sight of her drove all speculation into the background.
‘Well, can I come in?’ She peered past him. ‘Or is it inconvenient?’
‘No, not at all.’ He stepped aside to let her pass and caught sight of Louise whose expression suggested he might have worded that differently. ‘Come in, now you’re here.’ In the sitting room he made the introductions, feeling a little dazed. Unexpected didn’t begin to describe this. She looked well, her hair was shorter, she looked younger too, somehow, or just different? ‘What are you doing here? And how did you find me, I mean, why?’
‘I did call your mobile but it was always unavailable. They gave me your number and address in Albany Road, after they checked with Southampton that I was who I said I was.’
‘Laura, what are you doing here?’
Louise got up, smoothed her dress and picked up her handbag. ‘I’d better go, I can see you have things to discuss.’
‘No, wait, I mean, I’ll call you a cab.’
‘I’ll be fine, I’ll call myself one.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘Sure I’m sure. Bye-bye, Liam.’ She twisted lightly away from the hand he had laid on her arm and didn’t look back as she descended the stairs. McLusky closed the door gingerly behind her.
‘I did call, honestly, Liam. I thought I’d see how you are, I couldn’t have known you’d be having company. So soon.’ Casually opening the doors to both spare room and bathroom she nodded knowingly, went on into the kitchen where she stalled in mock astonishment for a moment, then tested the weight of the kettle before flicking the on-switch.
He leant against the door frame, hands buried in his pockets. ‘Make yourself at home, Laura.’
‘Well, it does all look so familiar. It’s an exact copy of the place you had when I first met you. I don’t even have to see your bedroom, it’s a mattress on the floor and a bin-liner with dirty laundry in the corner, am I right?’ Her smile finally reached her eyes. ‘But even then you at least had a fridge. You need a bit of help with this nest-making thing.’
‘Is that what you came here for, to help me build a nest?’
‘Oh no, not at all. I had an interview today at the university here.’
‘To do what? And why here?’
She turned her back on him while she pretended to look for tea and mugs in the dresser. ‘It’s for a degree course. I’m going to be a student.’
‘A student. Studying what?’ Laura had never before given the slightest hint that she wanted to resume her education.
‘You could sound a bit more pleased for me. Archaeology. Field archaeology.’
‘You’re going to … dig up stuff.’ It figured.
She turned, folded her arms and leant back against the dresser, the search abandoned. ‘That’s the plan. I had an interview today, it went well. At least I think it did.’
‘And what brought this on? I mean, you never talked about archaeology before.’
‘Yes I did. Well, I always watched stuff on telly.’
‘What about your job?’
‘The surgery is merging with a larger one and they don’t need two administrators so I took the redundancy they offered. It’ll pay towards my degree.’
‘But why here? Don’t they do archaeology at Southampton?’
‘They do but here I get to study with the good-looking bloke from the telly.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I am. The fees are lower and I prefer the course programme.’
‘I see. Well, I …’ He let out a deep breath through puffed-up cheeks. ‘That’s … brilliant. But why are you still here? In town, I mean?’
‘There’s a field trip for interested applicants tomorrow, we’ll spend the weekend on a dig near here. They didn’t tell us what, I think it’s to test our dedication.’
‘Could be a Roman villa.’
‘Medieval midden heap.’
‘Ancient burial.’
‘Who was that woman?’
‘Someone who helped me with a case.’
‘But she’s not an officer.’
‘No, she works at the uni.’
‘Might get to see more of her then. Me, not you, I mean. Ehm …’ Laura frowned at the kitchen again. ‘I’m not sure I really want a hot drink.’
‘There’s some red wine …’
‘You know I’m allergic to red.’
‘There’s a late-night place down the road, I’ll get you a bottle of white.’ He picked up his jacket, shook it but didn’t hear his keys. ‘I’ll ring the door bell, I won’t be a sec.’ While he walked quickly along the road McLusky marvelled at how Laura had managed within two minutes to drive away the woman he had hoped to take to bed yet had him trotting along to the late-night pub to fetch a bottle of overpriced white for her. Three years, that’s how. Three years of living and fighting and scratching their names into each other.
Laura walked through to the one door she hadn’t opened yet. She pushed it wide without entering. A mattress on the floor, as she had expected. Yet there wasn’t the accumulation of beer cans and empty cigarette packets that used to complete the picture and there were no black bin-liners either. Another sure sign that she had interrupted something was the fact that the bed was made. Liam never made a bed unless he expected to share it. And only then for the first half a dozen times. Unless the accident, as everyone had insisted on calling his attempted murder, had miraculously changed him into a tidy person. It had left him looking leaner and paler than she had ever seen him but underneath she suspected the same old Liam. So why was she here?