Excuse me.'
He left the bar. She wished she had ordered another drink before he went, because her glass was nearly empty. She had come down to the bar this evening with only one thought in mind: to get wiped out as fast as she could, then fall into bed.
She was, though, still sober enough to realize how she must be sounding, and didn't like it.
What on earth had possessed her to start in on him about guns? She clenched her left fist, digging the nails into the palm of her hand. All her life she'd been saying the wrong thing; all her life she had been resolving to be more careful with what she said. Here, of all places! Are you into guns, Nick? Oh yeah, ever since that maniac blew away my parents, and everyone else. Bigmouth American's in town. She felt her neck and face prickling with embarrassment, and she sat rigid, praying that Nick wouldn't return until she was back in control of herself She need not have worried. For whatever reason, he was staying down in the cellar longer than she expected, so she had plenty of time to sweat away her mortification.
She remembered a control technique she had sometimes used: make a list in your mind, straighten your thoughts.
What had she done in the town so far? Local newspaper accounts: done. National newspapers: some done, but the Guardian and Independent computer archives had been down when she tried to access the websites. She'd try again later. Police interviews: completed, but why had so many officers moved away to other towns since the massacre? Did they jump or were they pushed? Video footage: a lot viewed and
a lot more on hand, but she found that most of it had already been shown on CNN and the other US networks.
Witnesses. Ellie Ripon's vagueness about where Steve could be found was explained: he was in Lewes Prison, remanded in custody on a charge of burglary. His lawyer had told Teresa she was hopeful she could get him out on bail when he was taken back to the magistrates the following week. Teresa hoped to interview him then. Her second attempt to talk to Ellie Ripon had been as unsuccessful as the first. She had interviewed Darren Naismith, Mark Edling and Keith Wilson; Grove had been drinking with them before the shooting began. Margaret Lee, the cashier at the Texaco filling station, would not agree to be interviewed, but Teresa had on video a long interview the young woman had given last year to a TV reporter, so that didn't matter too much. Tom and jennie Mercer, the parents of the grievously injured young girl Shelly, had agreed to meet her the following day. She had located and interviewed about a dozen eyewitnesses of the shootings; again, many of them had been reluctant to speak, but Teresa had managed to piece together a fairly good descriptive account of what had happened in the streets. She was still trying to locate Jamie Connors, the little boy who had been trapped in his parents' damaged car, and had watched the last stages of Grove's spree in Eastbourne Road.
Locale: Teresa had covered all the ground of Grove's tragic adventure, from the seafront area of the town to the picnic site in the woods near Ninfield, to the Texaco filling station, and back through the streets of Bulverton itself She had identified and timed every known incident.
There were anomalies she had yet to resolve: there was an unexplained gap in the timing, and an apparent overlap, but she knew that more investigation would probably resolve these.
Amy walked through the bar on some errand or other,
and gave Teresa a nod and a smile. It was the signal of being busy, or at least not wanting to be delayed. As Amy was about to pass out of sight Teresa called after her.
'Amy, may 1 have another drink?'
Without a word the other woman returned, went behind the counter and mixed her a bourbon highball.
'Will you be having a meal with us this evening?' Amy said.
'I haven't decided yet,' Teresa replied, swirling the glass between her fingers, and reflecting that in the Bureau some of the drinking men would say she was already halfway through the main course.
Amy wrote down the price of the drink on Teresa's account, then without saying anything continued with what she had been doing.
Teresa, left alone again, wondered what she had done to offend Amy. They both seemed to be avoiding her. She felt more and more like the loudmouth American, intruding, clumping around insensitively, offending everyone she spoke to. Maybe it was this kind of thing, the undercurrents of unsaid Britishness, that had made her leave England in the first place? No, it wasn't that. She was just a kid then. Wouldn't have known. She drank the whiskey, stopped when she was about halfway down the glass, and put it on the counter in front of her.
She wished she hadn't started drinking so early in the evening. She wished more customers would come into the bar. She wished she was somewhere else.
With the car fights slipping past the frosted panes in glistening blurs, the streaks of rain on the plain glass above highlighted by the streetlamps, and the bright central room light overhead, virtually unshaded, the bar felt bleak and lonely. Thinking that music might change things, she walked across to the jukebox and dropped in a coin, but nothing happened when she tried to make selections. She remembered Nick doing something to disable the instrument when he closed the bar at night, but when she peered behind the machine she could see no obvious switch.
The empty, silent bar was oppressing her, confusing her. She knew she had already drunk too much, and wondered if she should take this last drink to her room, and finish it there before sleeping everything off. Yet again. As she walked back to her seat, weaving between the chairs, she collided with one of the tables, knocking it to one side. She restored it to its position with careful, elaborate movements.
When she sat down she was startled by a sudden impression of brightness, flooding the room as if a stage light had been turned on. She twisted on her stool, and saw that the large windows all along the opposite wall were now lit up, as if by daylight. The impression was so vivid that for a moment Teresa wondered if she had passed out, slept uninterrupted for several hours, and woken up with no perceptible gap.
She put her weight on one leg, half sliding off the stool, ready to cross the room. A movement behind her startled her, and she became aware that a man must have come into the bar from the corridor behind, without her hearing. She turned sharply back towards him. He was tall, quite elderly, greyhaired, and had a face with fine bone structure. His blue eyes were staring past her towards one of the windows. He put down the cloth he was holding and stepped quickly sideways, along behind the counter, still looking anxiously towards the window.
He turned back, and she heard him shout through the door into the corridor: 'Mike! Are you there?'
There was apparently no answer. He lifted the bar flap and went through in a hurry, crossing the barroom. The flap banged back down into place. He walked quickly between the tables, heading for the door that led out to Eastbourne Road.
It was then Teresa realized that several other customers were in the bar. She could see four people, all men. One was sitting at a table, with his beer glass pressed to his lips, but the others were standing, looking and peering, trying to see past and above the frosted panes, into the street outside. The jukebox was playing an old track by Elton john.
There was a series of sharp bangs from outside. The elderly man, almost at the door, ducked down.
He looked back towards the counter.