“Everything's so red and fiery down here,” she whispered. “Just like hell.”
“It is hell, my dear. You can smell the sulphur, hear the clank of chains…” He pointed to the faces in the paintings and then up to the overhead tackle. “See!”
The red turned to green and she became a corpse and her slick became a rotten streak of pus. He shivered at the unholy sight which, of course, was holey too, and he held his breath, waiting for the light to turn again and fill her veins with blood. As the red took hold she smiled at him, wistfully. “Come on, Sir Lancelot, you’ve frightened him off, whoever he was. Bring your helmet and, if you think you need it, your shield, and let's go back to bed.”
The grey December light crawled in with the dawn, adding its gloomy touch to the bedroom. The windows were frostbitten even though the central heating had banged throughout the night. The bedroom was warm and stuffy. In her sleep she had thrown off the bed covers and lay naked, face down. Her breathing was gentle, her sleep untroubled by the creeping light.
He wondered whether he'd snored and checked his chin for froth. His hand remained dry and for a while he lay there pleased with himself.
She looked paler, mixed with buff-yellow. From the hollow of her back the curve of her behind was breathtaking. There could be no finer single line. Stroking it seemed natural. His stalk was still alive, stabbing at the air, made immortal by nocturnal witchery and a handful of pills. He wondered how many men had been inspired by such delight, how many had been led to disaster while drunk on such abandon. He was, nevertheless, aware that the circadian clock was ticking. He was feeling jet-lagged from his ride with Laura, or it might have been the pills, or the unlikely excitement of the night. Whatever it was, with the exception of his dong which was out of control, he was beginning to flag. Even the bedroom door opening made no difference to that.
Paul's face appeared, bright and early, his happiness reaching through the specks of dust held in the heavy air.
“I'm home, Mr Lawrence. Let out early for good behaviour. Gosh, Mr Lawrence, you should be proud of that! A Kodak moment, without a doubt.”
The spell faded slowly, leaving Mr Lawrence befuddled. He tried to smile politely but it wasn’t easy. One of his hands rested on Laura's behind, the other was full of his enthusiasm for it.
Paul looked from right to left then settled on the bed again. Mr Lawrence said, “How in God's name do you people get in? I bolted the door!”
Paul winked. It was obviously a trade secret.
Chapter 12
The day before Paul discovered he had not much in common with Michael Faraday or Georg Ohm, DC Anian Stanford stood in Jack Wooderson's office in Hinckley Police Station.
“Why me, Guv? I'm part of the team.”
The Inspector liked the Guv bit. It tickled him. He also liked the fact that Anian Stanford was standing before him looking faintly manhandled and fragile. He enjoyed the moment, stretching it out. He flicked a speck of white from his uniform. It might have been dandruff, but his face was flaking too. The dark blue threw up everything that was wrong.
“I'm sure we'll manage, Anian,” he said, not even trying to conceal his delight.
She looked over his desk piled with paper. Muddled, disorganized, it mirrored the man. She sat down without invitation and smoothed her skirt over her knees. A defensive move. The thought annoyed her. She said, “That's not what I meant.”
Wooderson wanted a cigarette and thought about a walk to the garage. He said, “There's someone out there who doesn't like women, that's all I know. You must have heard.”
She nodded. Of course she'd heard. Half the world had heard by now. One woman had a breast cut off and another needed fifty stitches to keep hers on.
“And then there's the bomb. They're stretched, calling in all the spare. We'll give it till Monday. If nothing breaks by then I'm afraid you'll have to go. It's out of my hands. DI Cole is due in this afternoon. I'll confirm it with him.”
She coloured up, reddish-brown, hardwood.
Wooderson loved it. It stirred a memory. But that was wrong. The thought was always with him, day and night. Her bony thighs wrapped around him, her groin pressing against him and her hair, flashing along her parting, black as coal and charged with static. It was a gutless sensation. Like bereavement but worse. Time didn't make it easier. Not when he had to see her every day and listen to her conversation with the others, particularly Butler with whom she had formed some kind of attachment.
“Look,” he said. “Believe it or not, I don't want to lose you.” “Why don't I believe you?”
“Anyway, even if you do go and, there's still what, three days? If anything breaks here you'll be back. I'll bell you personally. I've still got your number somewhere.”
He'd said it for a response, nothing more. Control could get her day or night. It went with the job. You couldn’t get away from the job. She said sharply, “Does your wife know you've still got it?”
Wooderson grimaced. The mention of his wife dulled the memory. “Get out of here. Go and iron something. Maybe that chip between your shoulder blades.”
She glared across the desk.
The coldness between them, the result of fall-out, the radiation of bodies that had got too close, felt like the curious chill of too much sun. Looking at him now, nicotine stained, ruffled, even a faint trace of dandruff on the blue, she wondered what she'd ever seen in him. Even his aftershave hung around like a cheap cigarette. He looked like a civil servant or a banker who knew there was nothing else till retirement. That sort of acceptance dragged on the face as well as the soul. And the booze he drank the night before and, from the bottle in his desk during the day, came at you from every pore and every breath. Before long, she knew, he'd be history.
But right now, that wasn't soon enough.
She left him looking gloomily out of the first floor window. The city that he could see was dripping under a belt of cloud, the colour of a body on a PM slab, once the blood had been hosed away. DC Anian Stanford was convinced that Inspector Jack Wooderson was a loser, a man who'd climbed one rung too many. Sooner rather than later he would be found out. Unfortunately, she found out too late. In a vindictive sort of way, the way in which lovers part, she looked forward to his downfall.
Her origins lay in the subcontinent, but they were long gone. Thought of occasionally, particularly now that Asians were winning Booker prizes and making inroads into films and TV, but it was more out of sadness than anger. She never wanted to wear a sari, for Christ sakes, but she never knew where she belonged. She called herself British and, that's what her passport said, but the British never accepted that and never would. She was born in England and raised in England but that didn't mean a thing to the Anglo-Saxons. They were islanders, removed from the rest of the world. As far as they were concerned she was from over there, somewhere, and owned a corner shop or a takeaway. And the sooner she got back the better they'd like it.
She had never known her parents. Just hours old she'd been found outside a Catholic orphanage. Anian had been written on the cardboard box. For all the nuns knew, the box might have carried exotic fruit from Asia. Anian might have been the name of a prickly pear. At a year old she'd been adopted from our Blessed Lady's Home by the Stanfords, an English, Catholic, working class family that had a ready made sister for her. Lisa Stanford was two years older and white but in those days blacks and browns could go to whites and no one had a problem.
When she walked from the small office she found three uniforms and a detective sergeant waiting. There were a dozen more uniforms at Hinckley but they were out, on the streets or pulling nights. The four men turned toward her, asking the question. They all knew about her affair with Wooderson.