With a sense of reluctance, McLoughlin presented himself and his two men outside Anne's door and rang her bell. Nick Robinson's crowing account of his chat with her had set a pile-driver beating in his head. "Got your wires crossed there, old son," Nick had said breathily into his ear. "Given half a chance, I'd have a shot myself. They always say the bright ones are the least inhibited."
McLoughlin, starved of alcohol, poked stiff fingers into the fat man's beer gut and listened to the satisfying ejection of air. "You mean they stick a knife between your ribs when the performance is lousy," he hissed into the other man's face.
Robinson notched up a direct hit and chuckled between deep breaths. "I wouldn't know. I never have that problem."
McLoughlin tried to remember a time when his head hadn't hurt, when shutters stayed open in his mind, and when he hadn't felt sick. His feelings see-sawed violently between intense dislike of Anne coupled with certainty that she was responsible for the mangled body in the ice house, and a hot shame that set the sweat pouring under his arms whenever he thought of his behaviour of the morning. He bunched his fist till the knuckles gleamed white. "So why did she say she was a dyke?"
With a wary eye on the fist, Nick Robinson took a pace or two backwards. "Claims she didn't. Face it, Andy, she reckons you're a pompous ass so she took the piss." And it'll do you good, he thought. He liked McLoughlin, he had no reason not to, but the man fancied himself a cut above the rest of them which was why his wife's desertion had come so hard. The joke was that the Station had known about it for days, ever since Jack Booth had spilled the beans to Bob Rogers, but they had waited tactfully for McLoughlin to tell them himself. He never had. For two weeks he had come in every morning with a ferocious hangover and rambling stories about what Kelly had said or done the night before. Only his pride was hurt, they all knew it, and that not for much longer the way the WPCs were queuing up to get between his sheets. The clever money was on WPC Brownlow. And for Nick, fat, prematurely bald and with a penchant for WPC Brownlow himself, Anne's indifference to McLoughlin had been a soothing balm.
Anne opened the door and gestured them inside. McLoughlin removed the search warrant from his briefcase and gave it to her. She read it through carefully before handing it back with a shrug. There was no change in her manner towards him, no indication to him or his colleagues that he had overstepped that invisible mark beyond which behaviour is censured.
"Go ahead," she said, nodding towards the small staircase leading to her upper rooms. "I'll be in my study if you want me." She returned to her desk in the big sunlit room. "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" throbbed in the amplifiers.
Her spare room revealed nothing. McLoughlin doubted if it had been used for months, even years. There was a depression in the counterpane of one of the twin beds which implied that Benson or Hedges had found a comfortable retreat there, but no indication of a human presence. They moved on to her bedroom.
"Not bad," said one of the men approvingly. "The wife's just paid a fortune for pink frills, white melamine and mirrors. Can't get into the bloody bedroom now. Bet we could have done something like this for half the price." He ran his hand along the front of a low oak chest.
The room gave an impression of space because it contained so little: only the chest, a delicate wicker chair, and a low double bed with a pile of pillows and a bottle-green duvet. In a recess in one corner was a built-in wardrobe. A white carpet stretched to infinity with no line to show where carpet ended and white skirting boards began. Huge colour close-ups of glorious flowers against jet-black backgrounds marched in a brilliant band round white walls. The room both challenged the eye and relaxed it.
"You two go through the chest and wardrobe," said McLoughlin. "I'll have a look in the bathroom." He retreated gratefully to the normality of a pale pink bathroom but found nothing exceptional, unless two tins of shaving foam, a large packet of disposable razors and three used toothbrushes could be considered unusual possessions for a spinster. As he turned to the door, the corner of his eye caught a movement behind him. He spun sharply, heart struggling like a live thing in his mouth, and hardly recognised himself in the drawn and angry man who stared out of the mirror. He flicked the tap and splashed water over his face, dabbing it dry with a towel which smelt of roses. His head ached unbearably. He was at war with himself and the effort of trying to hold the warring parts together was destroying him. It was nothing to do with Kelly. The thought, unprompted, surprised him. It was inside him and had been inside him for a long time, a simmering rage that he could neither direct nor control, but which Kelly's departure had fired.
He went into the bedroom.
"Here's something, Sarge," said DC Friar. He was on the bed, reclining against the pillows in a posture absurdly reminiscent of Manet's " Olympia." He held a small leather-bound book in one hand and was chuckling over it. "Jesus, it's obscene."
"Off," said McLoughlin with a jerk of his head. He watched the man slide his feet reluctantly to the floor. "What is it?"
"Her diary. Listen to this. 'I cannot look on a penis, post-ejaculation, in a condom without laughing. I am transported immediately to my childhood and the time when my father's finger turned septic. He constructed a finger-stall out of industrial polythene-"to keep an eye on the bugger"-and summoned my mother and me to witness the exciting climax when the finger, after much squeezing, burst. It was a jolly occasion.' Jesus, that's sick!" He twitched the book out of McLoughlin's reach. "And this one, listen to this one-" he flicked a page-" 'Phoebe and Diana sunbathed nude on the terrace today. I could have watched them for hours, they were so beautiful.' " Friar grinned. "She's a dirty little bugger, isn't she? I wonder if the other two know she's a peeper." He looked up and was surprised by the expression of distaste on McLoughlin's face. He took it for prudery. "I was reading the entries for end of May, beginning of June," he said. "Take a look at June second and third."
McLoughlin turned the pages. Her handwriting was black and strong and not always legible. He found Saturday, June 2nd. She had written: "I have looked into the grave and eternity frightens me. I dreamed there was awareness after death. I hung alone in a great darkness, unable to speak or move, but knowing" (this word was underscored three times) "that I had been abandoned to exist forever without love and without hope. I could only yearn, and the pain of my yearning was terrible. I shall keep my light on tonight. Just at the moment, the darkness frightens me." He read on. June 3rd: "Poor Di. 'Conscience does make cowards of us all.' Should I have told her?" June 4th: "P. is a mystery. He tells me he screws fifty women a year, and I believe him, yet he remains the most considerate of lovers. Why, when he can afford to take women for granted?"
McLoughlin snapped the diary shut in his palm. "Anything else? Anything on her clothes?" The two men shook their heads. "We'll tackle the living-room."
Anne looked up as they went in. She saw the diary in McLoughlin's hand and a faint colour washed her cheeks. Damn, she thought. Why, of all things, had she forgotten that? "Is that necessary?" she asked him.
"I'm afraid so, Miss Cattrell." The Stones struck a final chord which lingered as a vibration in the air before fading into silence.
"There's nothing in it," she said. "Nothing that will help you, at least."