‘That was news to me, Kathy-the serial killer.’
‘Yes, sorry. I wasn’t going to mention it until I’d done some more checking. I just thought they needed shaking up a bit.’
‘Well, it did that all right. I thought Gavin sounded rather defensive. Do you think there could be anything in it?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Mr Brock! Kathy!’
They turned round and saw Jackson weaving through the throng. ‘Just wanted to say, no hard feelings, eh? Mr Tindall likes to sound like he’s well hard, but they both know you’ve got a job to do.’
‘Of course, Harry,’ Brock said. ‘We’ll work with you on the walk-through. You’ll help us, will you?’
‘Course, course. And Kathy, that stupid rumour. Maybe it would put your mind at rest if you had a look through our security daybooks, eh? We record every little incident in there. If anyone had been aware of anything weird going on, it’d have to be recorded there. Okay?’
‘Thanks, Harry. Yes, I’d like to borrow them for a day or two if that’s all right.’
‘No bother! I’ll send them up tomorrow first thing. Night.’
‘Good night, Harry,’ Brock said, and they moved off again through the strolling crowd. ‘Well, that’s more like it, Kathy. The books will be more use than that glossy report he did for us.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘They are. I photocopied most of them this afternoon while he was out.’
6
L eon Desai was in unit 184 when they returned, chatting to one of the clerical staff. Seeing him there, unexpectedly, Kathy got that little jolt she’d experienced seeing him that morning. He looked good, very trim and sleek in his black leather jacket and jeans, she thought, with his brown skin and blue-black hair. She saw a couple of the women eyeing him and thought yes, you wouldn’t mind being seen with that.
‘Hi.’ He grinned at them both.
‘Hello, Leon,’ Brock returned. ‘All done?’
‘Yes. Even had a shower and a swim downstairs in the pool. Feel a lot better than I did after I’d finished crawling around on concrete and grease all day. I just wondered if anyone could give me a lift in to a tube station. The guy who brought me out here this morning has gone.’
‘Certainly-’ Brock began.
‘I’ll do it. I’m going north of the river.’
‘You sure, Kathy?’ Leon asked. ‘Anywhere I can pick up a tube.’
‘Not a problem. I’ll just get my coat.’
They ran across the rain-swept tarmac and Leon held his umbrella over her as she unlocked the car. As they got in it occurred to Kathy that there is that moment when a couple, getting into a car together on a wet windy night, slamming the doors shut, experience a sudden compression of space, as the world shrinks to the intimate cabin around them. After a few seconds the effect fades, the mind adjusts to the new dimensions, and normal service is resumed. But for that moment they may be caught unawares, their mental-space reference tricked, and their sense of the proximity of the other dramatically heightened. At that moment, she thought, if there is the potential for something to happen, it probably will.
She glanced across at him, and found that his dark eyes were fixed on her. Unnerved by that look, Kathy said lightly, ‘I can’t believe Bren told you that, about Martin Connell. I haven’t seen him in ages.’
‘He didn’t say you were still seeing him, just that you were still obsessed with him.’
She flushed at the word ‘obsessed’. ‘That’s ridiculous. How would Bren know, anyway? And, come to think of it, Bren was the one who first put the idea in my head that you might be gay.’
‘Naughty Bren. Let’s go round to his place and beat him up.’
She smiled. ‘Better not. He’s bigger than both of us.’
‘Why would he do that, though? Does he fancy you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘I wouldn’t say there’s any “of course” about it, Kathy. It’s not that hard.’
She looked away, got the car going with quick, hard gestures and drove off. She felt quite absurdly unsettled and she couldn’t imagine how they were going to get through a long car ride together. As they approached the edge of the carpark, she recalled that she had been in this situation before with Leon, and had evaded its possibilities and regretted it afterwards. And she had a sudden sharp sense of how much she would regret doing that again. She braked hard and switched off the engine.
‘Let’s just think this through,’ she said, as if this was some practical sort of project. ‘You have to ask why we let Bren put us off, don’t you? I mean, we didn’t exactly struggle against his guiding hand, did we?’
‘Ah, it was the colleague thing,’ Leon said. ‘You and I, we don’t really approve of the colleague thing, relationships with people at work, do we? We’re embarrassed by it. It gets in the way, it’s messy.’
‘Yes, that’s true. That was one of the disastrous things about Martin, that he was connected to my work. Also he was married, and he was a total bastard.’
‘Was he really?’
‘Oh yes. You’re not married though, are you, Leon?’
‘No.’
‘And you’re not a bastard.’
‘It’s sometimes hard to know. Maybe everyone is.’
‘No, you’re not. But you are a colleague.’
He nodded, turned away, as if accepting that she wanted him to keep his distance.
‘Oh…’ She looked at his profile, the light from the tall mast floodlights rippling in the rain. ‘Bugger the colleague thing,’ she whispered, and undid her seat belt.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, the windows are greasy. Hang on.’
She grabbed the cloth from the door pocket and jumped out of the car, feeling a great need for cold air and rain on her face and space around her. ‘Heck,’ she muttered to herself, rubbing the glass furiously. ‘Get a grip, girl.’
She heard the other car door open and was aware of Leon walking round to her side of the bonnet, then the shelter of his brolly over her. She put down the cloth and they looked at each other, that same look again, and the space beneath the umbrella closed around them as they kissed.
After a few minutes they broke apart and she said, somewhat stunned, unable to recall quite how it had happened so decisively, ‘We’d better go before we become an entry in Harry’s daybooks.’ They got back in the car and drove away.
She took him to her home, a small flat on the twelfth floor of a tower block in Finchley. They were prickly with the dampness and the car heater, and when they got into the flat they peeled off their coats and then everything else, and made love under the shower. Then Kathy led him to her narrow, cold bed, and they curled up tight together there and made love again, at a more leisurely pace.
In the grey light of dawn she slipped out of bed to try to forage for something for them to eat. They had missed dinner, and she soon realised that her fridge and cupboards were bare. The whole place was bare in fact, like a nun’s cell, she realised, looking round at it as a stranger might-as he would. She’d made no effort to make it comfortable at all. The washing machine was old, and there was no tumble drier, so there wasn’t much she could do about his clothes. The TV was on the verge of packing up and she rarely watched it because there was no video and she was never there when the programmes she wanted to watch were on. The furnishings were uniformly spartan. Not much of a love-nest. Probably about as far from Mrs Desai’s cosy home in Barnet as you could get.
At least the central heating worked, which was just as well, because she didn’t have anything he could use as a dressing gown, so he was naked when he slid up behind her and put his arms around her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I haven’t got a thing to eat, and the milk’s gone off.’
They had a big breakfast at the station cafe before Leon got a train into central London for meetings at the forensic science lab. She went onto the platform with him and kissed him goodbye when the train came in. It was crowded, and he got in last so that he could stand crushed against the door and they could look at each other with goofy little smiles as the train began to pull away. Kathy noticed people at the adjoining windows looking at their sleepy faces and guessing what was up, turning back to their morning papers with nostalgic grins.