Losing both parents had toughened me up, perhaps too much. When I looked at Laura, saw her smile or heard her laugh, or whenever I caught her in an unguarded moment, vulnerable and soft, unlike the tough cop I knew she could be, I felt a need to hold her, to be the strong man. But most times I stopped myself; something inside of me held me back, as if I was waiting for the rejection.
So maybe losing both parents hadn’t toughened me up at all. Maybe it had made me too fragile, so that I was scared of the knockbacks.
I turned the key in the ignition.
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ I whispered, ‘but I’m going to have to sell the car.’ Then I laughed at myself. Not really for talking to myself, but because it was about something as trivial as a car. It wasn’t that simple though. My father had owned that car throughout my childhood. It was how I remembered Sunday mornings, my father with a sponge in his hand, washing it down. I had friends at school whose fathers owned better cars than a 1973 Triumph Stag in Calypso Red, but to my father it was a reward for his police work, the drives on sunny days his escape from the humdrum of family life.
I let my words hang there for a minute or so, just giving him a chance to hear them, to know that I wasn’t being disrespectful. It was my last real connection with my father and somehow I wanted him to know that I was doing it for the right reason, not because I was trying to dim his memory.
My thoughts were interrupted by my phone ringing. I took a couple of deep breaths before I answered.
‘Hello?’
‘I’ve got some material for you.’
I smiled. It was Tony Davies.
‘What like?’
‘Just the archive stuff we used for the Gilbert anniversary edition. I’ve done you copies. I’ll drop them off later.’
I thanked him and hung up. I gave a quick salute to the lines of headstones. At least I was making progress.
Mike Dobson closed his eyes as he lay back on the sofa. It was one of those summer evenings when the heat never really disappears and the neighbourhood children seem to play too late, the laughs and shrieks drifting in through the open windows.
The television was on in the corner of the room, but he couldn’t concentrate. Why was it that the memories came back to him so strongly? He could go for months when there was nothing, but then it took just a small thing, like the sight of his naked wife, frigid and cold, or the flowery sweetness of the scent of Chanel. He was swept more than two decades back, and the images assaulted him, mixed up the past with the present, as if she was in the room with him.
Summer nights like these were the worst, when the sun took all evening to set over the lavender bushes in the garden, their delicate smell drifting in through the open window. And with the smells came the sounds, the sensations. He felt her touch for a moment, that spark, that excitement, her hand in his, her fingers soft and light, sitting together in the park. Then he remembered those other moments. His mouth on her breast, soft murmurs, loud moans, two bodies together.
But then came the blood, as always. He could feel it on his hands, and his eyes shot open as he heard the thumps, the knocking, like a desperate drumbeat, the shouts, the muffled cries.
Mary was watching him. He glanced over quickly and he thought he saw a shadow behind her, someone moving through the door. He blinked and it was gone, and all he could see were Mary’s cold eyes.
He clambered to his feet to go to the fridge. When he got there, he leant against the door for a moment, his forehead damp, before reaching for a beer.
When he walked back into the room, Mary looked pointedly at the bottle. ‘Do you think you should?’ she said.
‘I feel like I want to,’ he replied, taking a long swig. When she shot a stern look at him, he added, ‘I’ve had a long day. No one’s buying, and I’m hot.’
He went outside, to wait for the sun to drop lazily behind the houses, catching the duck and dive of evening birds and the buzz of midges over the laurel bush in the corner of his garden.
He closed his eyes for a moment and let the scents creep back in again, and he was taken back to stolen hours, a country drive, the weight of her in his arms, laughing, his mouth on hers, the caress of her fingers in his chest hairs, the summer of innocence.
He heard a sound, like a thump on wood; as he looked up, he saw Mary step away from the window. She had been watching.
He took another pull on his beer. He knew he shouldn’t think of it, but then he felt that burn, that familiar need.
He went back into the house and took his car keys from the hook by the door.
‘I’m going for a drive,’ he said, and he was met by silence as he slammed the door.
I was sitting in my garden as I flicked through the newspaper articles Tony had dropped through my door. I had views over Turners Fold to distract me, the strips of grey terraced houses and small fingers of chimneys sitting between the slopes, and towards the jagged lines of drystone walls dividing up the hills, black and white dots of cattle sprinkled as far as I could see.
I took a sip from my wine glass and noticed how Claude Gilbert’s house looked different in the old black and white photographs, the garden slightly overgrown, less formal. I smiled as I held up a photograph of Claude, the one that had spread to the nationals, his dark hair thick, a superior smirk. Did he really want to come home? I plucked an article from the bottom of the pile and saw that the picture used was the full photograph, with Nancy Gilbert sitting next to him, an austere look on her face. The photographs used later were more relaxed shots, showing her laughing and happy, as if they were meant to prick the general conscience—the public wouldn’t warm to the hunt if she was some uptight rich bitch.
As I read the articles, I saw nothing new, just stuff that had been rehashed countless times since. I slipped the cuttings back into the envelope when I heard the hum of car tyres and watched as Laura’s charcoal-grey Golf crunched onto the gravel outside our gate. As she stepped out of the car, her white shirt open at the neck, I raised my wine glass. ‘It’s open,’ I said.
‘So I see,’ she replied, and gave me a weary smile. When she joined me at the table, a glass in one hand, she put her arm around my neck and her head on my shoulder. I could feel the collar of her stiff white shirt, and, as I reached behind and felt her legs, my hands brushed over the coarse regulation black trousers and my fingers crackled with static.
‘It still seems strange, seeing you in your uniform,’ I said, as I got the waft of her perfume mixed in with the sweat of the cells. I had put Bobby to bed, but from the shouting I could hear drifting through the open window he must have heard the car. ‘I’ll go say goodnight in a minute,’ she said sleepily. ‘I just need to slow down for five minutes.’
‘Life tough at the top?’
‘I’ll tell you when I get there,’ she said, and stretched out a yawn. ‘I’ll need to do some revision soon though. It feels like I’ve forgotten how to study. I wasn’t the best at it in university, but I must have done it at some point.’
‘I was a crammer,’ I said. ‘Go out until Easter, and then just rush it through at the end.’
‘But you were younger then. So was I. This is a sergeant’s exam. I’m supposed to know the stuff already.’
‘You’ll do it easily,’ I said. ‘It’s just about staying cool enough to remember what you already know.’
She sighed. ‘I’m