‘Well, I wanted to see you, speak to you again. It’s been a long time.’
The words weren’t important, it was only necessary to use the voice, so confident, so sonorous, to bring to life the well-remembered style, the warm, easy, habit-forming styles as addictive as a drug, which she had allowed to soak deep into herself through long susceptible hours on the phone, in the dark, in whispers and in parked cars just like this.
‘No, Martin. I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing to say.’
He leaned across to her, uncomfortably close in the intimacy of the car, his left arm stretched out with his black gloved fist on her steering wheel.
‘We’re working on the same case, Kathy. We’re bound to see each other.’ His voice was intimate, patient, amused. ‘We could help each other. One way or another.’
She took a deep breath, glad to feel angry now. ‘Clear off, Martin. Just clear off. Find someone else to try it on.’
He drew back with a little smile. A tactical withdrawal. Try a different tack. ‘You lot are making a hash of this one, Kathy.’
There was something in his voice which chilled her suddenly. The grown-up was telling the child how reality was going to strike her down if she didn’t do what was required.
‘That Sergeant Gurney, for instance. Left himself wide open, walking into my chap’s office like that, and rifling his files, without a warrant. The girl says he pushed her aside, rather brutally actually. He doesn’t know how much trouble he’s in. And it’ll reflect on Brock, of course.’
Kathy clenched her jaw, getting her anger under control.
‘Does Lynne know where you are today?’ She got some little satisfaction from seeing him blink at the mention of his wife. ‘In fact, it only occurred to me the other day, that I never really knew for sure if she knew about us. Did she know, Martin? Did she know that she was the second choice for the trip to Grenada?’
Connell stared at her for a while, his lips pressed tight together, then abruptly turned away and yanked open the car door. A flurry of snow sprayed into the car as he got out. Just before he slammed the door closed again, he stuck his head back in and hissed, ‘You are the hardest bitch I ever screwed, you know that?’
Kathy leaned over and banged the lock down on the door. Several small flakes of snow lay on the passenger seat, melting in the warmth he had left there. She gripped the steering wheel, and began to shake.
In the snug of The Crooked Billet, Danny brought them their drinks, brandy for Kathy and Scotch for Bob and himself. He raised his glass.
‘Tae absent friends.’ For a moment they were quiet, savouring the heat of the spirits slipping down inside. Kathy took a deep breath, willing Connell out of her mind.
‘Well,’ Danny said, licking his lips, ‘Peg will be moving out at the end of the week.’
‘What!’ Kathy stared at him. ‘Is that what her announcement about Eleanor’s ashes was all about?’
Danny Finn smirked. ‘Aye. It just needed the right negotiator tae make everybody happy. The trouble with most people who try tae get their own way is that they don’t bother tae listen tae what the other party wants. Well, I was a shop steward for a while, and I learnt that the first priority in any negotiation is tae understand what the other man really wants-which may not be what he says he wants.’
‘What did Peg really want, then?’ Kathy asked sceptically.
‘She wanted tae do the right thing by her sister Eleanor. She didn’t really want tae stay any more in Jerusalem Lane, but she didn’t want tae let down her sister. It was Eleanor, ye see, who first brought them all tae the Lane, on account of their great-grandad Karl Marx having lived there, and their grandad, Freddy Demuth, being born there. It’s a fascinatin’ story. Anyhow, we eventually came to an answer.’
‘You conned her, you mean.’
‘Don’t be so suspicious, lassie.’ Danny looked hurt. ‘I’m not trying tae rob the old dear. The answer we came tae was this, that Eleanor can stay in Jerusalem Lane, in perpetuity, and Peg can go tae a lovely wee modern apartment that’s just been completed in a refurbishment job we’ve done up in Highgate, not a stone’s throw from great-grandaddy’s final resting place in Highgate Cemetery, which she likes tae visit every Sunday afternoon.
‘Well, Eleanor’s stay maybe won’t be in perpetuity,’ he added. ‘I did explain tae Peg that the kind of things we’re building now will almost certainly be obsolete and ready for redevelopment in twenty or thirty years, anyway, but she wasn’t worried about that. In fact she seemed rather taken with that idea.’
‘What about her rent?’
‘Hen, she’s seventy-two and not that strong. We’ll work something out in the purchase price of number 22 with Terry Winter, so she doesn’t have tae worry.’
‘You’re a cunning old bugger, Finn,’ Bob laughed. ‘Anyway, I’m glad she’s going. Jerusalem Lane is no place for her now. What exactly is she going to do with Eleanor’s remains, then?’
‘Well, I had the contractor’s joinery shop make up a nice wee oak chest tae her specification, two feet by two feet by one foot six, and into that she’ll put the ashes and so on, and this evening she and I and a couple of the contractor’s men will lay it tae rest precisely under the spot where number 3 Jerusalem Lane used tae stand, and which just happens tae be the position for the main lift core of tower A, on which the big concrete pours start in the mornin’. The timing was perfect, ye see.’
Kathy and Bob lingered in the pub after Danny left, reluctant to exchange its warmth for the freezing night outside.
‘Why did you come to the funeral, anyway, Bob?’ she asked.
‘In the hope of seeing you,’ he said with a lopsided leer.
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ she said, glumly drawing patterns with her finger on the table top.
‘What?’
‘Try that stupid patter on me.’
‘Oh.’ He rocked back in his seat and blinked. ‘Sorry.’
She gave a little frown. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I like you, when you’re being yourself. But you’re hopeless at chatting up women.’
He sighed. ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right. Always have been. And I haven’t had much practice for a long, long time. Apart from a disastrous attempt on Judith Naismith.’
‘Well,’ she smiled, ‘your patter would have had to be miraculous to have got you anywhere with her.’
‘The stupid thing is, I meant it.’
‘What?’
‘About coming here in the hope of seeing you.’
‘It’s not a very good time…’ And then, seeing him blush and begin to stutter, she added, ‘I mean that I’m sort of preoccupied at the moment with this bloody case. But I wouldn’t mind something to eat. Why don’t we go somewhere?’
They found a Thai place which had recently opened. Kathy ploughed hungrily into the peppery tom yum soup. When she finally lifted her head, she saw Bob staring thoughtfully at her.
‘What?’
‘Yes, you look like someone who’s stuck at the end of stage one.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The French mathematician Poincare said that there are four stages to the creative process. First is the gathering and absorbing of the data. I don’t just mean finding out the facts and making lists, but actually getting your brain to soak the information up and get a feel for it. Towards the end of this stage you’re trying to make sense of it-in Poincare’s case trying to devise a theorem, I suppose, for me trying to get a design concept for a building, and for you reconstructing the murder. But the solution is very elusive. You just can’t get an answer that feels right. And you get to look like you look now.’
Kathy smiled. ‘Go on.’
‘OK. So you put it out of your mind. You go out to the movies, or go for a run, or get drunk, or whatever. You let your brain get on with it in its own time, and you stop trying to worry the problem to death. This is stage two, the mulling stage.
‘Then, one night you wake up with a start at three o’clock in the morning with the answer staring you in the face. Or maybe it hits you in the bath, like Archimedes, or while you’re on the loo. This is the eureka stage, stage three, and it’s wonderful, pure euphoria. You can’t understand why you couldn’t see it before, it’s so obvious, and so beautiful. That’s the important thing, the answer doesn’t just work, it’s also elegant and economical and beautiful.