Sara came out of the shop wearing low heels, black skirt inches over the knee; underneath her coat Raymond caught the gleam of a white blouse. Tonight they’d be like twins.
He waited in the doorway across the broad swathe of pedestrianized street; Sara chattering to two of the other girls, one with a cigarette already in her hand, the other lighting up as she spoke. Just when Raymond was starting to get restless, scuffing his feet, the other pair turned and walked off towards the city, arm in arm. Sara waited a couple of moments, only acknowledging Raymond when he stepped out of the doorway and began, hands in pockets, to walk towards her.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing. Why?”
Raymond sniffed and shrugged. They stood close, facing in opposite directions, movement on either side of them, groups of youths walking up from the station, in by train from the suburbs, the surrounding towns. Saturday night.
“What you want to do then?” Raymond said.
“I don’t know, do I?”
A few more moments of silent indecision. No more than fifteen, a lad, jostled by his mates, bumped into Raymond and Raymond whirled round, angry, “Watch where you’re fucking going.” The boy backing away, laughing it off, “Sorry, mate. Sorry.” Fear in his eyes. His friends gathering him up and sweeping him away.
“Raymond, what’d you do that for? It was only an accident.”
“Not going to let him push me around for nothing,” Raymond said. “Bastard! He wants to fucking watch out.”
“What is he like, this boy?” Sara’s mum had said. “You haven’t told us much about him.”
“You hungry?” Raymond said.
Sara was looking over towards HMV, the posters for the new George Michael album in the window; maybe she’d get that before the end of the week if her money held out. “No,” she said, “not really.”
“Come on, then,” Raymond, starting to move away, “might as well get a drink.”
The ground floor of the restaurant was small and already quite crowded, the waiters either asking newcomers if they minded sitting upstairs or if they would like to try again in an hour, an hour and a half. Patel and Alison were in the corner, behind the door, next to two couples who had greeted the owner familiarly and proceeded to talk loudly through their meal, spraying advice on the relative hotness of the curries and details about their planned winter holiday round all and sundry.
“I’ve embarrassed you, haven’t I?” Alison grinned, spooning lime pickle on to a piece of popadum.
Patel shook his head. “You? No, I don’t see how.”
The grin broadened. “Wearing this.”
This was a low-cut chenille top beneath which it was impossible to disguise the fact that she’d elected not to wear a bra. The top was the color of cream, worn over raspberry culottes in cotton velour. Patel was wearing dark gray trousers, brown leather shoes, shirt and tie under a burgundy jacket. He was trying not to stare each time Alison leaned forward towards the pickle jar.
“Not at all,” he said.
Alison laughed, not unkindly. “The girls at work said you’d take one look and run a mile. Either that or put me under arrest for offending public decency.”
Patel’s turn to smile: by the standards of a normal city Saturday she was quite conservatively dressed.
“You have arrested someone, haven’t you? It was on the news.”
“For the murder of the little girl, yes, that’s right.”
“I thought there were two,” Alison said. “Two girls.”
The waiter squeezed his way between the tables with their portions of chicken tikka, shami kebab.
“So far, I think he’s only been charged with the first murder. I don’t know about the second.”
“But he did do it?”
Patel nodded thanks to the waiter and realized that their noisy neighbors at the next table had fallen quiet to listen.
“I don’t know,” Patel said. “I haven’t really been that involved. Look at all the chicken tikka you’ve got, you’ll never be able to finish your main course.”
Stephen Sheppard lay on a plain, thin mattress in the police cell, a continuous period of eight hours’ rest, free from questioning, travel or any interruption. Whenever the duty officer looked through the door, Sheppard was a moving tangle beneath his blanket, the shal-lowness of broken sleep.
“Remorse, then, Charlie, that what you’d say he was feeling?”
Resnick sighed. Since his first waking thoughts about the Shepperds’ new carpet, he had been functioning for close on sixteen hours. “Oh, yes, remorse by the bucketload. Even then not above trying to twist the blame.”
“How do you mean?”
“You know, so beautiful, so lovely I couldn’t stop myself from touching her. The way she smiled, not like a little girl at all. Always smiling, clinging to my hand. As if somehow she’d been egging him on.” A shudder ran through him and he struck his fist against the side of Skelton’s desk. “Trying to make her complicit. Six years of age. What kind of twisted mind can convince itself of that?”
Skelton’s father-in-law had arrived long since, replete with urinary sheath, leg bag and new three-piece suit in Donegal tweed; three times his wife had phoned to inquire when he would be home. “Nothing about the Morrison girl?” Skelton said.
Resnick shook his head. “Still reckons to know nothing about her. Beyond who she is, stuff he’d agreed to before.”
“Think he’s waiting till we’ve proof there as well?”
“Possible. Either that or he’s telling the truth.”
Skelton was on his feet, taking his jacket from the hanger on the back of the door. “Charlie, look at what we already know. Look at the facts. Chances he didn’t do for the other kiddie, thousand to one against.”
“I’m sorry,” Lynn Kellogg had said, “there’s still no information about Emily, nothing new at all. We’ll let you know the moment there is.”
Michael and Lorraine, not really focusing on Lynn’s face, exhausted, cried out, gazing past her into the night.
“Raymond, however many’s that you’ve had?”
“What difference it make? Just ’cause you want to sit all night over one lager and black.”
It was her second but Sara didn’t argue; she didn’t know what had gotten into Raymond, but it obviously wasn’t going to pay to argue with him about anything. He’d already had one shouting match with a bloke who’d splashed beer over his shoe.
“What d’you reckon then? This place, all right, isn’t it?”
“’S all right.”
They were pressed against the balcony, looking down over the crowds milling round the bar below, squeezing between pillars or sprawled along bench seats down the sides. At the bar itself they were five deep, calling for attention, waving ten-, twenty-pound notes. Up where Raymond and Sara were, there was as much dancing as space would allow, a DJ playing Top Forty and regular soul mixed with swingbeat. Raymond promised himself that if the bastard DJ played “I Wanna Sex You Up” once more, he’d go over and stiff him one. Bastards with their big mouths and big dicks.
“Raymond!”
He had been absentmindedly stroking Sara’s behind and she wriggled away, giving him one of those reproachful, wait till later and even then you’ll be lucky, specials.
Raymond thought they’d make a move pretty soon, after he’d finished this pint, see about the long walk home. Some other night, he’d try and get her back to his place, room to stretch out, take your time. Not tonight though, he could tell she was in a mood about something. Not like some blokes, Raymond thought, no sensitivity at all, didn’t matter what the girl was feeling, still wanted to pork it.
Patel looked along the room to where Alison was sitting, toying with her wine glass, waiting for him to return; he still couldn’t take it in, that she wanted to be here with him. The warmth of her smile as he sat down beside her. The thrum of conversation, the thud of the speakers made anything less than a shout a waste of breath.