“You’re not supposed …” Maureen stopped and began again. “It said you’d left the country, the news, it …”
“Good.”
“But why …?”
He was shaking his head. No questions other than his own. “You alone here today, or what?”
“No.” Instinctively, she glanced round toward the door. “My two girls, they’ll be here any minute.”
“When?”
“Half past nine.”
Michael nodded. “Send them home.”
“I can’t.”
“I thought you were the boss?”
“Why would I? There’s no reason. I don’t know what I’d tell them and anyway, they’d just hang around. All their friends, they work nearby, the other shops.”
“Then tell them you’re leaving ’em to it. Not feeling too great. Hangover, whatever.”
“I can’t. It’s my busiest day, I …”
He leaned in toward her, not much, just a little, the smile back at the edges of his mouth. “Is that what you think this is about? Whether you’re going to have a busy day? Sell a lot of poncey frocks?”
“No.”
His leg was pressing hard against her knees.
“Right, here’s what you do. Give me the keys to your car.”
“I …”
“Where is it? Up the top?”
Maureen nodded.
“Good. I’ll wait for you there. Go buy me some clothes, nothing fancy, nothing that’ll stand out. Shoes, size ten. You got a razor at home? A proper one, I mean?”
Again, she shook her head.
“Okay, get that sorted, too. And food. If you haven’t got much in, pick something up. I haven’t eaten a decent meal in days.”
“There’s that croissant …”
“I said food.”
For a moment, Maureen closed her eyes. Then, because Preston had got to his feet she did the same. When she moved, she could feel the dampness of her body, the dry hollow inside her mouth. As well as Preston, she could smell herself, rancid through her perfume. It was like a room in which they had just made love, a sweated bed.
“You know better,” he said, “than to try and tell anyone about this? The police. Anyone.”
“Yes.”
He could scarcely hear the word. “What?”
“Yes. I said, yes. I …”
His hand was at her throat, the pressure from the bone at the base of his forefinger just enough to stop her breath. “If you do, I’ll kill you.”
Maureen’s legs went beneath her and to stop herself falling she pushed out both arms sideways against opposite walls.
“Why?” she asked, recovering, catching her breath. “Why me?”
Slowly, Michael ran his hand down her neck and across the thin covering of her chest until it touched her breast.
Hurrying out of Blazer with a cotton sweater and chambray shirt, Maureen nearly bumped into a young policewoman turning the corner on to the Poultry. Two of the several bags she was carrying were jolted from her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said hastily.
“No problem.”
“I just wasn’t looking …”
“You’re all right, don’t worry.”
The officer was half a head shorter than Maureen, ten, fifteen years younger; a roundish face, ends of dark hair poking out from beneath her uniform cap.
“Here.” She retrieved the sweater, gray marl, safe in its plastic wrapper. “Nice,” she said. “For you?”
Maureen shook her head. “A friend.” She slid the package down into its bag.
“Not always easy, is it?”
“Sorry?”
“Buying for other people.” The officer laughed. “Men, especially. Know what they want, at least they like to think they do; only problem, they can never get it into words.”
“Most of them, yes, I know what you mean.”
“Well, if you’ve got one as can, hang on to him, that’s my advice. And watch out when you’re stepping out on to the pavement.”
How easy, Maureen thought, to say it now, tell her about Michael waiting up there in Fletcher Gate car park, hunched down in the back seat of her car. An escaped prisoner; a convicted murderer. I’ll kill you. “Thanks,” she said, moving toward the curb.
“Right,” the officer smiled, turning to walk away. “Take care.”
Ahead of Maureen, the corner bookstore, the fly-posted wall of Bottle Lane, splintered in a jagged blur.
“I thought maybe you weren’t coming,” Michael said, minutes later, when she got into the front seat of the car. “Thought you’d run off to the police instead.”
And he laughed.
I’ll kill you. She believed him utterly.
Twenty-five
Saturdays, for Resnick, especially once the soccer season had ground to a close, tended toward limbo. Though, truth to tell, even the prospect of watching his once-beloved County, perched for ninety minutes on a plastic seat designed for lesser backsides than his own, no longer filled him with the anticipations of pleasure it once had. Indeed, it was the seats, he thought, that were the problem, more so than the decline of the team. To watch those toilers in black and white plying their decidedly average skills among the trappings of a newly renovated all-seater stadium simply wasn’t right. This was neither Old Trafford nor the San Siro, not even nearby Derby’s optimistically named Pride Park. This was the wrong side of the Trent, nestling close against the old cattle market, the abattoir, and Incinerator Road.
What he wanted was the jostle and caustic wit of the terraces; Bovril on sale at the kiosks, Wagon Wheels and sausage rolls; urinals where you stood elbow to elbow in the wash of everyone else’s piss.
Romanticizing, Resnick knew, and as dangerous as the efforts to dress up the past and sell it sanitized that drew tourists to the Lace Museum and Tales of Robin Hood and even the Galleries of Justice, where for a few pounds you could inspect the old police cells and the tunnel along which deported prisoners were shepherded into canal boats on the first part of their plague-ridden journey to the colonies.
From where he was leaning on the railing overlooking the Emmett clock, he spotted Hannah, with a bag from the new Tesco Metro in each hand, and called her name.
For a while, they wandered around the upstairs market, Hannah, having deposited her first batch of shopping in her car, buying fillets of trout, scallops, and squid, Resnick half a pound of pale herring roe tinged with pink and two thick slabs of cod, which he would share, inevitably, with the cats. Hannah bought green vegetables, fruit; Resnick, Polish sausage, bacon, smoked ham, gherkins pickled in spiced vinegar and dill. They both bought cheese.
“Coffee?” Hannah said.
Her own choice, Resnick knew, would have meant a brief walk to the Dome or Café Rouge, one of those other places where, within moments of entering, he felt too fat, too old, too entirely in the wrong clothes. But today Hannah led him back to the Italian coffee stall, where, she guessed correctly, he had been less than an hour before.
“This band young Ben Fowles plays in,” Resnick said, “they’re playing in one of the pubs this Sunday lunchtime. He’s been doling out free tickets. If you’re interested.”
“You and me?”
“Why not?”
Hannah smiled with her eyes. “Thought your Sundays were spent listening to jazz at the Bell.”
“Maybe a change’d do me good.”
“That’s my line,” Hannah said. “Used to be. Anyway, I’ve plans for Sunday, I’m sorry.”
Resnick nodded, unsure if he were disappointed or not.
“You go. You might enjoy it.”
Resnick nodded; they both knew he wouldn’t venture within a mile. He spotted a couple leaving around the other side of the stall and hurried to claim the seats.
“I think they will have soon to arm you,” Aldo said, serving them their coffee. “These shootings.”
“Do you think they will?” Hannah asked, moments later.
“What?”
“Arm you, the police?”
He shook his head. “No. No more than we are now.”