Читать книгу Night Angels - Danuta Reah - Страница 11

It was dark by the time Roz got home. She lived on the east side of the city, away from the expensive residential suburbs. Pitsmoor had trees and quiet roads, rows of terraces and big, detached houses. Burngreave Cemetery, the small park and a recreation ground provided green spaces among the shops and houses and roads. But the area was run-down. Shop fronts were boarded up. Low property values meant that landlords left their rentals to decay. As the streets became more unkempt, graffiti started to appear on walls and bus stops. The signs of regeneration struggling in the city centre had made no impact here.

Pitsmoor suited her with its varied and varying community. And she had fallen in love with the house from the moment she saw it. She loved the square bays of the double front, the high hedge of privet and bramble and rambling roses, the stone lions that guarded the steps, the wide entrance hall and wooden stairway, the huge, flagged kitchen with the old range, the labyrinth of conservatory and outhouses that led from the back of the house to the double garage that reminded her that Pitsmoor had once been a place where the wealthy, or moderately wealthy, of the city lived. She even found the house next door an asset; a house like the one she lived in, but one that had stood empty for too long and had been vandalized into dereliction.

Everyone had said Roz was crazy when she bought the house. She’d been in Sheffield for three months, and knew she was going to stay for a while. ‘Not Pitsmoor!’ they’d said, and ‘Wait until you’ve had a chance to look round.’ But the house had reminded Roz of the house where she had lived with Nathan, and Pitsmoor had reminded her, just a bit, of the place she had left. She was happy.

She stood at her back door now, looking at the derelict house. A tree was growing out of the oriel window, and fringes of ivy and dead grasses hung over the eaves. On summer evenings, she could sit in the yard and watch the pigeons flying in and out of the holes in the roof where the slates had been removed by weather, time and local children. She shivered. It was getting cold. The moon was nearly risen now, and she had things to do. She went back inside.

She put bread under the grill to toast, and opened some beans. She wasn’t in a mood to cook. She ate a spoonful of beans out of the tin while she was waiting, leaning against the side of the cooker, her eye on the bread to catch it in that moment of transition from pale brown to charcoal. She wondered if Gemma was going to phone her, or if she should try and make contact herself. She remembered the tape that Gemma had been working on. The recorded voice had sounded emotionless, probably because the woman was concentrating hard on finding the right words. But she knew…Shit! The toast! She turned off the gas. The toast was just about retrievable. She tipped the beans into a pan and put it on the hob, dumped a plate on the table and took the toast over to the sink to scrape off the burnt bits.

She sat at the kitchen table to eat, staring at the window that had become a square of darkness. Friday night, and here she was alone in her house, eating tepid beans on toast, planning an evening’s work, and happy, contented, to be doing that. It seemed such a short time ago that she had been a student, and Friday night would have meant clubbing, hitting the town with her friends, going to parties, having fun. Maybe she’d tried to recapture that time with Luke.

Then there had been her time with Nathan. Friday night still meant the weekend, still meant special times, but it was time that they wanted to spend together or sometimes with friends…And then there had been the isolation of his illness. Their friends had tried, but a lot of them had disembarked. They hadn’t been able to cope, and in the end, nor had she. She twisted her wedding ring round her finger. ‘You find out who your true friends are,’ her mother had said philosophically.

And now, she was a successful research academic, well on her way up the ladder, and Friday night was just another evening – an evening without the immediate demands of the next day’s work, so one that could be used to catch up with longer term projects. Her book, for example; unimaginatively titled An Introduction to Forensic Phonology. She picked a couple of stray beans off her plate. She could try and get that tricky fifth chapter sorted out. She licked the tomato sauce off her fingers, washed her plate and the pan and left them to drain, then collected her briefcase and went into the downstairs room where she usually worked.

Privet pressed against the bay window, shutting out the light. The room was cool and cavernous, a huge mirror illuminating its shadows. The mirror had been left in the house by the previous owner. It was old, the gilt chipped, the glass slightly distorted and marked. The reflected room looked drowned, softened in the dim light. Roz stood at the far end of the table and saw her face a white blur in the shadows. Her gold-rimmed spectacles reflected the light and obscured her eyes. She took them off. She didn’t really need them. She untied her hair, and let it fall round her shoulders. The imperfections in the glass made the light waver like a candle flame, made her reflection look as though she was swimming through deep water, pale face and fair hair floating in the brown shadows. Rosalind. If there be truth in sight, you are my Rosalind. Nathan used to say that to her, Mozart on the tiny cassette player that was all they could afford, the gas fire combating the draughts from the ill-fitting windows and rattling doors of their flat. You are my Rosalind.

Work, she had work to do. She turned on the desk light, its pool of illumination dispelling the shadows in the mirror. She had brought one of the laptops from work, more powerful than her own machine. She wanted to try out some new software that Luke had recommended, as well as work on the book. She switched the machine on, and sorted through her disks while she waited for it to boot up. She realized, as she looked at the files on the machine, that this wasn’t the laptop she usually brought home, it was the new one, the one that Gemma had been using. She’d thought that Gemma had taken it to Manchester. She must have taken the older one. Maybe she hadn’t wanted the responsibility of the more expensive machine. Roz tried to imagine what Joanna would say if it got stolen or damaged, and decided that Gemma had made the right decision. That made her uneasy about the security in her own house. Break-ins were not unusual in Pitsmoor. They weren’t unusual anywhere these days. Gemma had lost her sound system just a couple of weeks ago when her flat had been burgled. Roz decided she’d lock the laptop in the cellar head before she went to bed.

Gemma. Ever since her conversation with Luke…Gemma should have been in touch at some time during the day, or she should have phoned this evening to let someone know she was safely back. Joanna would want to know how the Manchester meeting had gone. Maybe Gemma had been in touch with Joanna, bearded Gren-del – Luke’s occasional name for her – in her lair. Roz wondered if she should phone. But Joanna was going out this evening; she’d mentioned it to Roz on her way out. ‘Must rush. I’m going to the concert tonight.’ Joanna probably wouldn’t welcome the intrusion, especially not if she’d already been reminded about Gemma’s delinquency by a phone call.

Luke. Luke would have heard. She tried his number, but she got the answering machine. He must be out. She held the phone against her ear, thinking. Then she tried Gemma’s number, without much hope. Nothing. She was seeing Joanna tomorrow evening. She’d find out then. She pushed the problem out of her mind, and turned to the computer. Gradually, the work absorbed her, and the problem of Gemma retreated to the back of her mind. The hours passed, unnoticed, as she sat there in the dark, in the pool of yellow light, the words scrolling up and up the screen.