Written in Blood(95)

And off Brian went but not, alas, for long. In what Denzil would have called a hare’s breath it was all over. They uncoupled with a sad squelch. Edie swung her legs sideways and rested on the edge of the settee. Brian hovered apologetically. On the wall the light carved out their silhouettes. Brian said, ‘Sorry. I’m afraid it was the excitement.’

‘What excitement?’

Then, as quickly as she had slithered out of her tights, she was dressed again and walking away. Brian sat gloomily down on the gummy vinyl and watched as Edie lifted up the egg-streaked plate in the armchair and retrieved a shiny packet of Rothman’s King Size together with a match folder. She put a cigarette in her mouth and flicked a match against her thumbnail.

‘Wanna fag?’

‘I don’t, thank you, Edie.’

Brian became uncomfortably aware of a broken spring sticking into his bottom. One side of him, closely adjacent to the fiercely glowing bars of the electric fire, was crackling nicely. The other goose-pimpled fast. Surreptitiously he watched Edie. Her cheeks were sucked into hollows by vigorous inhalation. Smoke poured from her nostrils. She was as totally and utterly separate from him as if their conjoining had never been. He had a terrible headache from the wine and was wondering if he might ask for a cup of tea. About to speak he realised that she was, in fact, speaking to him.

‘Sorry - I didn’t get that.’

‘I said me mum’ll be back any minute.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Brian nearly fell off the settee. He scrambled up, seizing his clothes. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I am telling you.’

‘Come on . . . come on . . .’ He started swearing at his shirt, punching the flapping folds with his fist, searching for the armholes, finding them, ramming his arms in.

‘That’s inside out.’

‘Shit.’

‘More haste less speed, eh, Bri?’

He tore at the sleeves with fingers like huge, sweating sausages, pulled them through to the right side and buttoned the shirt up, skew-whiff.

‘You’ve got the wrong—’

‘Yes, I am aware of that. Thank you.’

She shrugged and, picking up a pair of tights from the pile on the armchair, went over to the settee and started mopping up the traces.

‘Where are my underpants?’ shouted Brian, only half to himself.

‘How should I know?’ She threw the tights over the back of the settee.

Brian gave up looking. He pulled on the He Man jeans, stuffing his slippery genitals inside. He got them safely past the zip only to catch them on the semi-upright prongs of a row of copper rivets. Tears sprang to his eyes and he howled in fury and distress.

‘Not your night, is it?’

Somehow he got into his windcheater. By now his mind had become swamped by images of gigantism. He saw Mrs Carter, muscles engorged with newly pumped blood, bestriding the threshold like a colossus, preventing his escape. Tossing him about the room like a shuttlecock. Eating him alive.

Edie was holding the door open. Drowning in appalled anticipation, Brian shot through and out into the freezing cold.





By twenty-two hundred hours the outside team had all returned to the station and debriefing began. Like many a Christmas morning it held quite a few unwelcome surprises as various items of information were offered that no one had expected to find in their stocking and did not quite know what to make of now they had.

Extensive and thorough questioning of prostitutes on the streets and around the clubs of Uxbridge had, so far, produced no lead on the blonde in the taxi. However, many of the girls did not show themselves until late evening, so enquiries would continue throughout the night and into the next day if necessary.

No luck either in finding the driver who had picked her up at Plover’s Rest and taken her wherever she wished to go. All freelance cabbies within a twelve-mile radius of the village had been followed up, as well as every one in Causton. Luck though, of a sort, with Hadleigh’s removal van.

‘Came across an old biddy,’ said Inspector Meredith, ‘who actually recalls not only the day itself but the name of the firm.’ He ruffled his pages and continued, abandoning his natural drawl for what he appeared to regard as a South Bucks working-class accent.

‘Oi remember thaat corz thaat was Beech Hams and moy maam used to give uz Beech Hams pills.’ He chortled, no doubt at the quaintness of old peasant biddydom in general and this crusty old example in particular.

Nobody joined in. Barnaby watched the inspector sourly. He was closing his notebook now, no doubt after memorising the fragment of folklore to entertain his chums. They’d be pissing themselves at the Athenaeum over that one.