The Dunbar Case(19)

I found a parking spot and had a meal in the first decent-looking eatery I came to. Fish, as recommended by my cardiologist and generally my preference anyway. A half-bottle of white wine to go with the food and wash down the necessary pills. Service was slow, which suited me. I read some Conrad and scribbled some notes. Black coffee to finish.



I bought a bottle of wine at a pub, programmed the GPS and followed the directions to Redhead on the coast a bit north of the city. Marisha’s address was a block of flats on the road that ran along the beach. If she was up high enough and in front she’d have a view across the road, the dunes and the beach straight out to the South Pacific Ocean.



It was just after nine o’clock when I buzzed her flat. She released the door after telling me to come up two flights. I went up slowly—you don’t want to arrive on a woman’s doorstep puffing. She had the door open waiting for me. No ceremony. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her and felt a surge of feeling that’d been missing for a long time.



She hung on to my arm and pulled me inside. I hadn’t seen her since Lily’s wake when she’d been one of the most distressed people there before she became one of the drunkest. She hadn’t changed much—still looked as though she could do a triathlon the way she used to. She seemed reluctant to let me go and I wasn’t struggling. I waved the bottle of red.



‘Good one,’ she said. ‘Let’s crack it and drink a toast to Lily. How are you?’



I knew what she meant. The name had to come up and she’d done it in the best way possible.



‘Healed,’ I said.



‘Jacket off, have a seat, I’ll open the plonk.’ She looked at the label. ‘Shit, that set you back a bit.’



I put my jacket on the couch on top of a pile of newspapers and magazines—the room was pleasantly untidy, a bit like Marisha herself, who wore a wrinkled skirt and a shirt half tucked in, half out.



‘My client, you mean.’



She unscrewed the cap on her way to the kitchen. ‘Yeah, I heard you were working again. Having fun?’



She came back with two glasses, put them on the coffee table in front of the couch and poured. Then she sat in a chair across from me but not far away. She raised her glass.



‘Lily,’ she said, ‘from two who loved her.’



We drank.



‘I asked if you were having fun.’



‘It’s a good question. I haven’t thought about it.’



I was having trouble thinking about anything except her smooth olive skin, dark eyes and the way her overbite gave her a smile all her own. I drank some wine to stop from staring at her.



‘Some of it’s fun,’ I said. ‘Some of it’s a bit like what you do—talking to people, finding things out.’



She nodded, still smiling. ‘But there’s a difference. I haven’t been shot ten times.’



‘Nowhere near ten.’



We drank and didn’t talk for a minute. I pointed to the curtains drawn across floor to ceiling windows. The flat was at the front of the building. ‘Must be a great view.’



‘You don’t want to talk about the view, do you, Cliff?’



‘No.’ I finished the wine, stood and moved towards her. She put her glass down and I took her hands and pulled her up and towards me. She came smoothly and we kissed as if it was something we’d rehearsed. She tasted of wine; she smelled of the sea.



‘You’ve been swimming,’ I said.



‘Every night.’



We kissed again. We pressed close. I was getting hard.



‘Lily said—’



‘I know. She told me. She said I was your type.’



‘You are.’



‘Come on, then.’



We were both eager but not impatient. We took our time and discovered what pleased us both the most. Then it became urgent and we fucked vigorously. After we finished we lay wrapped together in the semi-darkness. She ran a finger down the pale spots that marked where they’d split me open.



‘I heard about this but I forgot about it just now. Didn’t seem to cause you any trouble.’



‘It doesn’t. Mind you, if we’d done that, say, a day or two before the heart attack, you’d have had to heave me off and give me CPR.’



‘I’m good at that. Anyone who does a triathlon should know how to do it. I’ve done it twice to blokes younger than you who didn’t know their hearts were iffy.’



‘They say I’m good for quite a while yet if I look after myself. Which I do, more or less.’



‘You look pretty good. Not much flab.’