Annie stood up.
‘You have what seems like a result. Run with it.’
‘And keep on running?’ Bliss said.
Annie looked away.
Tap on the door. Terry Stagg leaned in.
‘Ma’am?’
Annie went out. Bliss stared at his desk. A result, yeh, but hardly the result anybody wanted, and not his result. All he’d done was put the squeeze on a semi-literate woman of seventy-plus. Karen had pulled his chestnuts out of the fire, and he’d get the credit, do the talking-head, the radio soundbite. We’ve now arrested several people in connection with the Marinescu murders and we expect there to be charges. Nothing else I can tell you at this moment, thank you…
… unless of course you want to give me something on Sollers Bull…
Bliss smashed his fist into the desk. It hurt; he was glad.
Annie came back to the door. Her angular face was unreadable. They were so not an item any more. This time she didn’t come in.
‘Actually, Francis, there is one thing you could do while you’re waiting. Talk to Robinson’s… partner. She’s in reception. And then get rid of her, would you?’
50
Either it would happen or it wouldn’t. As the morning wore on, Jane was beginning to hope there’d be a get-out.
There were three buses to Hereford today, and she’d missed one. Watched it coming as she was waiting down the street from the Ox. It gave her an hour before the next and then, like, another four hours before the one after that.
OK, this was the decider. If the bus came before there was any sign of Cornel, then fate had decreed she should be on it. That would be fate lifting it out of her hands.
She’d been down to the Ox earlier. ‘Mr Cornel?’ Whizz Williams, the lugubrious licensee, morosely scrubbing the bar down. ‘Dunno where he is, but he en’t paid his bill yet, and them’s his bags, so I reckon he’ll be back.’
Leather cases in front of the bar, airline stickers on them.
Jane had hung around for ten minutes, then walked back up to the square, wandering quietly around, being anonymous. No sexy stuff today; she was in the high-necked black Bench jacket, fully zipped up, jeans and trainers, an old red beret of Mum’s.
This was business. A handful of people had gathered to wait for the second bus. She hadn’t joined them, but stayed within range, looking into the bookshop window where two copies of Mother Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love were displayed. On impulse, she went in and bought one from Amanda Rubens.
‘You’re joining the meditation tomorrow, Jane?’
‘Maybe. Think it’ll work? Into the valley of pain and death? An Easter miracle?’
‘That’ll be?6.99,’ Amanda said.
As Jane left the shop, the book jammed into a jacket pocket, the bus was coming round the corner, the morning sun bursting in its windows. Chariot of fire. Jane felt a certain half-guilty relief and stepped out across the cobbles.
Then a dark grey shadow glided in front.
‘Girlie returns,’ Cornel said from inside the Porsche.
Jane looked up, blinked and then walked slowly over like she didn’t know who this might be but was intrigued. A few people moved around her, some giving her a glance before getting on the bus.
‘Remind me,’ Cornel murmured over his raunchy little engine growl. ‘Do I owe you an apology?’
‘Could be me.’ Going automatically into the voice she’d used on him that night in the Swan. ‘I was, like, a bit pissed?’
‘Very charitable of you,’ Cornel said. ‘But I was a lot pissed.’
He was wearing this kind of dated short chamois-leather blouson jacket over a khaki shirt with camouflage patches on it, and sunglasses. He didn’t look cool, maybe a little sad.
‘Look, do you need a lift?’
‘I was getting the bus into Hereford, actually, but if you want to get a cup of coffee somewhere, you could park on the square?’
‘With you? You’ll miss the bus.’
‘I, like, wanted to ask you something?’
‘I’m not going in the Swan, girlie. Not too popular, you know?’
The bus was up against the Boxter’s back bumper. The driver jerked his thumb.
‘Cornel, you’re, like, blocking the bus stop?’
‘So hop in. Stone me, girlie, it’s a Porsche! Mass-rapists don’t drive cars this conspicuous.’
Jane’s scenario had them on foot or in the back room at the Ox, lots of people around. But she supposed he was right.
Never been in a Porsche before. The passenger seat moulded itself around her. She hardly heard the door close.
‘There you go. That wasn’t too hard, was it? Where we going?’
‘I was going to Hereford,’ Jane said.
‘I could go that way, I suppose.’
Cornel drove off into Old Barn Lane, speeded up. Jane looked over her shoulder at the diminishing square.
‘OK, look,’ she said, ‘I was pissed and you said something about shooting cats. I’ve got a cat.’
‘I didn’t shoot your cat, did I?’
‘Well, no, but…’
‘I was legless.’
Cornel came out of Old Barn Lane, hit the bypass with a satisfying tyre-bounce and shot her a glance.
‘What’s your name, again?’
‘Jane.’
‘And what did you want to ask me?’
‘I…’ She floundered, hadn’t expected things to escalate, was still talking in girlie’s voice. ‘Like… what you said about Paris?’
‘Ah… Paris, France.’
Cornel began to smile, the skin over his face stretched so tight that when he opened his wide mouth it was as if you could see his skull. The sun was behind them now, the fresh countryside opening up all the way to the Black Mountains, but that wasn’t the way they were going, and it didn’t seem to be towards Hereford either. Cornel had the top down now, flooring the Porsche’s accelerator on the bypass.
‘Oh, and I didn’t go out killing sheep and chickens either, OK? Mr Savitch needs the support of all the farmers and landowners he can schmooze.’
Jane looked across at him. Hint of cynicism there, in relation to Savitch?
‘Besides,’ he said, ‘chickens are too easy. Even for me.’
It was like a gift. OK, go for it.
Jane took a breath.
‘They, like, kill one another, anyway, don’t they? Maybe that’s more fun?’ Concentrating on not looking at Cornel, even when she felt the flicker of his glance. ‘Well, cocks, anyway. This time of year.’
Feeling the pull as his foot came off the accelerator. Cornel slowing down very gradually, saying nothing, coming off the bypass at the smallest exit lane, which was just there for the sake of a couple of farms. The road surface was full of potholes from the winter. There was no other traffic. When they hit a straight stretch, Cornel just stopped in the middle of the road.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Me?’
‘Nicked a sack from a litter bin?’
His lips were stretched, his big chin thrust out. The Porsche’s engine was muttering. She could, of course, get out now if she wanted to. Just climb out and walk off. He could hardly leave his Porsche in the middle of the road. Jane watched him warily.
‘What did you see, Jane?’
‘I… saw you put a sack in a bin. That’s… that’s it. I just… wanted to see what was in it.’
‘And then you took it.’
‘I just wanted to show it to somebody? My grandad?’
‘What for?’
‘He breeds them.’ She had this bit all worked out. ‘And he’s always-’
‘Breeds what?’
‘You know…’
‘I don’t!’
‘Gamecocks!’ Jane backed hard against the car’s door. ‘And like he’s always going on about how great it was in the old days? With all the betting and how they used to feed the cocks special diets and like it wasn’t really cruel because they had a good life, and he… he still breeds them.’
‘What’s he do with them?’
Cornel released the handbrake, let the Porsche creep along the lane like a hunting cat.
‘Well, that’s it,’ Jane said. ‘Nothing. He just breeds them and he’s like, Oh, I wish it was still going on. Like, Oh I’d give anything to put one of my birds in the ring again.’