That was then, this was now. While he watched over the top of his newspaper as Amy undressed, he noticed she was smiling. He loved the way maturity had filled out her body: strong and well-shaped legs, a long and handsome back, breasts that were much fuller than before but without any sign of sag, a strong face and a crown of dark hair. She was no longer pretty, but he could imagine no woman more attractive.
'What is it?' he said. 'What are you smiling at?'
'You, lying there looking at me.'
She was naked, and stood directly before him.
'I look at you every night. That's what you like, isn't it?'
'Shall 1 put on my nightie?'
'No ... get straight in.'
He tossed the newspaper aside and took her in his arms as she climbed into the bed beside him. Her skin was cold, and when she turned her buttocks against him and pressed them into his groin she felt like a chill vastness. With the hand stretching under her body he cupped one of her breasts, with the other he reached around and pressed his hand against her sex, pushing that lovely chill vastness of buttocks harder against him. He loved to feel the soft weight, the hairy moistness, together.
They never hurried their lovemaking, and rarely fell asleep straight away afterwards. They liked to he together, arms holding around, playing affectionately with each other's body.
Sometimes it led to more lovemaking, but at other times they simply dozed together or talked inconsequentially about the day. That night Amy was not sleepy, and after a few minutes of cuddling she sat up, pulled on her nightie and switched on the bedside lamp.
'Are you going to read?' Nick said, blinking in the sudden glare.
'No. 1 want to ask you something. Do you think Mrs Simons is a reporter?'
' The American woman?'
'Yes.'
'I hadn't given it a thought.'
1 Well, think about it now.'
'What's given you that idea?' he said. 'And what does it matter if she is?'
'I ran into Dave today. He said she was.'
'You know what Dave's like better than 1 do.'
'It doesn't matter, of course, not really. But I've been thinking. She hasn't said anything about it to us, and when the other reporters came around asking questions, they never made a secret of it. They weren't too popular and they knew it, but they didn't try to hide what they wanted.'
'Then she probably isn't,' Nick said. 'Not every stranger who comes to town is trying to get a story.'
'I wondered if, because she's an American, maybe she works differently.'
'Why don't you ask her?'
'All right.' Amy yawned, but showed no sign of being about to turn off the light and lie down. 'She told me she's British. Born over here, anyway. One of her parents was British.'
'Why are you interested in her?'
'I thought you might be.'
'I'd hardly noticed her,' he said, with complete truth.
'That wasn't the impression 1 got.'
Amy had an expression he had only recently learned to recognize, in which she smiled with her mouth but not with her eyes. lt usually meant trouble for him, because of something he was thought to have done, or to have omitted doing. Now she was staring down into her lap, scooped into shape by her crossed legs. He reached out to touch her hand, but found it unyielding.
'What's up, Amy?'
'I saw you with her in your office, laughing and that.'
'What ... ?' He could hardly remember it. 'When was that?'
'This morning. 1 saw her in there with you.'
'That's right,' Nick said, and glanced at an imaginary wristwatch on his arm. 'I was setting myself up for a visit to her bedroom later this evening. Do you mind if 1 go to her now?'
'Shut up, Nick!'
'Look, just because a single woman checks into my hotel doesn't mean' He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence, so ludicrous was the idea.
'She's not single, she's married,' Amy said.
'Let's turn out the light,' he said. 'This is getting silly and pedantic.'
'Not to me it's not.'
'Suit yourself'
He tried to make himself comfortable, bashing the pillow and pulling up his side of the bedclothes, but Amy sat in rigid anger beside him. Her lovemaking had given no clue of the mood she had been working herself into. He turned to and fro, trying to settle, and all the while Amy sat beside him, her eyes glinting, her mouth in a thin rictus of irritation. He fell asleep in the end.
CHAPTER 8
The next morning Teresa took her rental car for a drive around the Sussex countryside, but the sky was shrouded in low clouds, which were dark and fastmoving, bringing in squalls of heavy rain from the sea and obscuring the views she had come out to look at. She gained only the barest impression of the trees and hills and pretty villages she passed through. She was still ill at ease with driving on the left and before lunchtime she had done enough exploring to satisfy her curiosity.
She ate lunch in the bar of the White Dragon: Amy Colwyn served her in what seemed to be unfriendly silence, but on request microwaved a quiche for her and produced some boiled rice. Teresa sat at one of the tables closest to the fire, forking the stodgy food into her mouth with one hand and writing a letter to Joanna, Andy's mother, with the other. Amy meanwhile sat on a stool behind the counter, flicking through the pages of a magazine and not taking any notice of her. Teresa inevitably wondered what she might have said or done, but was not too concerned. A little later, when more customers came in from outside, the oppressively silent atmosphere in the room lifted noticeably.
After lunch she drove along the coast to Eastbourne, and found the editorial offices of the Courier. She saw this as a preliminary trip, expecting that a trawl through the back issues of the paper would take two or three days, but to her surprise the newspaper stored its archives digitally. In a small but comfortably appointed room set aside for the purpose she accessed the archive from the terminal she found there, and in under half an hour had identified and downloaded everything she wanted about Grove, including brief court reports of his earlier minor offences as well as 'detailed accounts of the day of the massacre, and the aftermath. On her way out she paid for the floppy disk she had used, thanked the woman on the reception desk, and by midafternoon she was back in Bulverton. If she had known, or had thought to enquire, she could have used the internet and downloaded the same information from home. Or perhaps even from the hotel, if there was a modem she could use.
. She returned briefly to the hotel and put away the disk for future study. Consulting her town map she located Brampton Road. lt was one small street amongst many others like it, on the north-eastern edge of the town. She worked out the simplest route that would take her there, then found her tape recorder. She slipped in the new batteries she had bought that morning and briefly tested the recording level. All seemed well.
Brampton Road was part of an ugly postwar housing estate, whose best feature was that its position on one of the hills surrounding the town gave it an impressive distant view of the English Channel. The thick clouds of the morning were starting to disperse, and the sea was brilliantly illuminated by shafts of silver sunlight. Otherwise, the estate itself was a bleak and dispiriting place.
The terraced houses and three and fourstorey apartment blocks were built in a uniform palebrown brick, and had been positioned unimaginatively in parallel rows, reminding Teresa of the Air Force camps of her childhood. There were not many mature trees to soften the harsh outlines of the buildings, and gardens were few. Much of the ground appeared to be covered in concrete: paths, hardstandings,