“Not always,” Resnick said. “Usually.”
“Doesn’t it ever get you into trouble?”
“Doesn’t everything?”
They walked on until the land seemed suddenly about to fall before them, tumbling sharply down to a narrow cleft, a stream of gray-green water that wound snakelike towards the sea.
Ruth patted her pockets, found and lit a cigarette, smoke from it quickly lost in the air. “So what did you expect?” she asked. “To find me dead?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“But that was one of the possibilities?”
“I suppose so.”
She almost smiled. “You weren’t disappointed.”
Resnick shook his head.
“But Rains,” Ruth said, “you didn’t think it would be Rains?”
“No. I mean, I didn’t know. But, no, I don’t think so.”
“He’s out then?” Ruth said, moments later. They both knew she meant Prior.
“Yes.”
“And you’re watching him?”
“No.”
“Expect me to believe that?”
Resnick shook his head. “We haven’t the reason, haven’t the resources. He’ll be expected to report to his probation officer once a week.”
Ruth snorted.
“D’you want to start walking back?” Resnick said.
“All right,” Ruth said, but neither of them moved.
“What you have to understand,” Ruth said several moments later, “no one had looked at me like that in so long I swear I’d forgotten what it meant. No one had touched me, wanted to touch me. It was as if, early, stupidly bloody early, that part of my life had just stopped.
“And then there was that bastard, hands all over me, like he couldn’t get enough.” She finished her cigarette, nipped the end between finger and thumb and opened the last of the paper, scattering shards of tobacco towards the ground. “I knew he was using me, though, of course, he denied it. Knew and I never cared. I thought, Prior’s going down for a long time and what that means to me he doesn’t care, he doesn’t give a shit. I’m just this thing that he’s lived with and used to cook and clean and wipe between his legs. I felt that low.” She looked at Resnick and made a gesture with her hand as if she were holding something minute. “And what Rains did, he stopped me feeling like that. Oh, Christ alone knows, not for long. But when he did …”
Ruth began to walk and Resnick moved into step beside her. All the while she had been talking he’d shut out the constant roll of the sea and now that she was quiet it came back the more strongly, accompanying them home.
“You haven’t got any coffee,” Resnick called from the kitchen. The past five minutes he’d been through every drawer, every cupboard.
“That’s right.”
He made more tea.
“What I’ve got,” Ruth said, wandering in followed by a still dazed-looking dog, “is a stomach lining I’m going to leave to medical science. They’ll use Xrays of it in years to come, illustrating the dangers of tannin.”
For all the jokes, she still looked lined and drawn, still jumped at the first strange sound.
They sat at the table, the dog beneath it, asleep again, snoring faintly.
“Rains,” Resnick said, “he didn’t give any indication of where he was staying, anything like that?”
Ruth shook her head. “You’d go and talk to him? I mean, officially?”
“I daresay.”
“What for? What could you prove?” She drank some tea. “What did he do, aside, I suppose, from breaking in?”
Resnick leaned towards her. “There’s more.”
“With Rains?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of more?”
“We’re not sure, but … one or two things, we think he might be involved.”
“What kind of things?”
Resnick leaned back. “When you were seeing him, did he ever talk about Frank Churchill?”
“Only questions. The usual things. Meetings, places, and times. All the usual things.”
“He didn’t give the impression they might be close?”
“Rains and Churchill!” Ruth gave a derisory laugh. “Fine bloody couple they’d make! Only person Frank Churchill’s ever been close to’s his mother. Rains’d never got that sort of close to anything unless it was a mirror. Anyhow, why d’you want to know?”
Resnick’s turn to shake his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“No? That’s what Rains’d say. Every time. We’d be lying there, you know, after making love, I’d be waiting and sure enough they’d come, the questions, on and on and if either I wouldn’t answer or ask him why he wanted to know, that’s what he’d say-doesn’t matter. Ten, fifteen minutes later, he’d be asking the same thing. One thing I’ve never done, knowingly, give that bastard anything that’d push my husband deeper into the shit. Never. And if that’s what Rains was saying, to you lot or anyone else, he was lying. He was covering up.” She released his arm and the marks of her fingers were left, pale, on Resnick’s skin. “Maybe what you were suggesting was right, maybe he did have something going with Churchill, more than was thought. As far as jobs was concerned, I shouldn’t think there was anything I knew as Frank Churchill didn’t. Less.” She got up and carried the two mugs, hers and Resnick’s, to the sink.
“I ought to be going,” Resnick said, looking at his watch.
“Thanks,” Ruth said.
“What for?”
“Being bothered. Coming.”
“Just one thing,” Resnick said.
“What’s that?”
“Why did you stop singing?”
“Fuck right off,” Ruth said, grinning.
Forty-Nine
Darren pressed his finger full force against the bell and kept it there until Rylands, flushed in the face with anger, threw it open.
“What in God’s name d’you think you’re at?” Rylands demanded.
“Keith,” Darren said, ignoring his reaction. “He in?”
“Out.”
“Out where? Been walking all over the city center past couple of hours, looking for him.”
“He went to the Job Centre,” Rylands said.
“Job Centre!” Darren was incredulous “What the fuck’s he want to go there for?”
“Here you go, sarge,” Naylor said, shutting the car door with a clean thunk. “Jumbo sausage and chips.”
Millington’s eyes lit up. Go anywhere near his wife with a jumbo sausage and you risked a lecture on harmful additives and carcinogenics. “Get the mustard?” he asked.
Naylor fished a sachet containing a vibrant yellow from his breast pocket.
“Good lad!”
Naylor had fetched himself cod and chips. Or was it haddock? For the best part of fifteen minutes both men ate, neither spoke.
Millington was dipping the last few inches of his sausage into the puddle of mustard when the door to Number 11 opened and Frank Churchill came out. Without looking around, he unlocked the door of the Granada and climbed in.
“Probably off to see his mum,” Naylor suggested.
“Goes there,” Millington said, screwing up the wrappings of his lunch, “he walks.”
“Maybe he’s taking her for a drive?”
“And maybe I’ve just been eating prime beef.” Naylor fired the engine and waited while Churchill backed out across the road and headed away from them at a good speed.
“Just make sure you don’t get too close,” Millington said. “Last thing we need, him spotting us.”
Naylor nodded, indicated right, and changed down for the bend.
“Where the fuck’ve you been?” Darren grabbed hold of Keith by the shoulder, swinging him round so fast that Keith lost his balance and ended up on his knees.
“Get up, you prick! You look fucking pathetic!” Keith scrambled to his feet, aware that several passersby were looking round at him and sniggering. That’s it, lady, laugh your tossing head off, why don’t you? He shook Darren’s hand clear and said nothing.
“You avoiding me or what?” Darren demanded.
“Leave him alone, you great bully,” called an old woman with what looked like a year’s supply of papers in a pram. “He’s only little.”