‘Fat Leslie?’
‘Yeah - anyway this fight broke out. Duane climbed in the van to try and calm things down - p’raps make a citizen’s arrest like - when ratarse comes on the scene shopping with his missus. Straight over the counter wasn’t he? Poor old Duane ended up with his face on the hotplate.’
Brian stared, thrilled and aghast in equal measure, wondering how much of it was true.
‘Did he try and make you confess, Bri?’
‘Of course not. I haven’t done anything.’
‘That wouldn’t bother them,’ said Edie. She parted her legs, affording Brian a much clearer and more devastating glimpse of furry tiger markings. She plonked her eighteen-hole Doc Martens firmly on the parquet and rested her hands on her knees. ‘Keep after you. Wear you down.’
‘They were perfectly civil.’
‘Yeah, to you. Tame-o.’
‘Tame-o,’ repeated little Bor shyly.
‘Should see’m round our estate,’ said Denzil. ‘Any excuse, stop and search.’
‘After a feel half the time,’ said Edie and Brian’s heart jerked with excitement. She winked at him, lowering an eyelid the colour of ripe damsons spangled with silver. ‘You gotta go down the station?’
‘I don’t know.’ Brian was sharply aware of his complete ignorance as to the functioning of the humblest traffic unit, let alone the CID. ‘Do they usually say if they want to see you again?’
‘No,’ said Tom. ‘Not usually. They just turn up.’
And, at that very moment, the swing doors parted and Sergeant Troy appeared.
They talked this time, without the aid of refreshments, in a small room leading off the science lab. It was unheated and there was a faint but distinctly unpleasant smell coming from an old-fashioned sink in the far corner. The chill struck Brian keenly in spite of his thick lumberjack shirt, reindeer sweater and string vest.
Troy stood by the window, which was deeply embrasured. He had put his Biro on the stone shelf and was now taking out a notebook in a leisurely manner. He turned to the place he wanted and laid the book down next to the pen. He tugged his belt through the buckle and let his coat hang loose. Then he took off his cap and his hair sprang up, crisp and sparkling like a fox’s brush. Only then did he turn and speak to Brian, who was perched on a laboratory stool behind a bench of instruments and retorts.
‘Sorry to take you out of your rehearsals for the second time, Mr Clapton.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘Going well are they?’
‘Oh yes - very.’
‘What play is it you’re putting on again?’
‘Slangwhang For Five Mute Voices.’
Troy nodded and looked deeply interested without responding verbally.
‘A very demanding project. I ask a great deal of them. And of myself too, naturally.’ Brian relaxed a little, unwinding his legs, which had been locked around the struts of the high stool. ‘They’re a great bunch. Especially the Carter twins.’ He had to say her name. Just once. ‘Edie. And Tom. They really are remarkable.’
‘They are indeed, sir,’ replied Troy, who had come across Edie for the first time five years previously. She had been brought into the station when her mother, accompanied by the child, had been caught shoplifting. Edie had been wearing a full-length Teddy Bear coat with every inch of the cunningly pocketed lining stuffed with enough fags and sweeties to open a corner shop. A harmful little armful, to put it mildly.
‘So talented. And with life stacked completely against them. Yet they never give up.’
‘Certainly agree with you on that score, Mr Clapton,’ said Troy. Thinking - stone the crows, this bloke doesn’t know the difference between arsehole time and breakfast time. They must be running bloody rings round him.
‘The girl seems to me especially bright.’ That really must be the last time, Brian told himself. The very last. Not that he’d repeated her name, but still. Best stop while he was safe.
Troy merely smiled, but he had noticed the swoopy Adam’s apple and slightly quickened breath and he caught the sexual drift. Oh yes. Brian fancied a jump there all right. A little flutter. An apple for the teacher. And under age too. Naughty, naughty.
Admitting to recent fatherhood, Troy asked a couple of questions about teaching generally. Brian responded by talking about himself in particular and in great detail and Troy let him run on for a bit. This was the chief’s way when he had something nasty up his sleeve. He called it giving them a bit of margin.
First, isolate your rodent. Let him unwind, become expansive and off guard. Show him the prime Stilton. Have him sniff around a bit. Enjoy a nibble and then—