Читать книгу Terry Brankin Has a Gun - Malachi O'Doherty - Страница 14

Four

Kathleen’s phone beeped on the seat beside her. She checked the text without slowing down, one hand on the wheel. ‘Are you OK?’ Terry never abbreviated.

She was not OK but she felt calmer now that she had a project in hand.

That morning she had told him that she would leave if he didn’t confess to the bombing. She had spent the night awake in their bed with her back to him, resenting his ability to sleep. She supposed he’d learned that too from the IRA, switching off the emotions. The only rest she got was after the whirling in her brain had settled into a resolve. She’d told him as soon as she was aware that he was awake beside her.

‘What you’re asking for is daft,’ he’d said. ‘I have done my time – in my head. Do you think I have not agonised over this for years? I suffered long and hard.’ She doubted that.

He had been grilled by the nutting squad for days that had felt like years, and then he had had to go to England and work for shit pay just to stay out of the way. He had worked a year in a gay bar in Lancaster and lived in a shared house down by the river. And all of it was so that the whiff of the Magheraloy bomb would not contaminate the fragrance of Dominic McGrath while he was secretly negotiating peace terms with the government.

Kathleen had gone to the Linenhall Library that morning, to read newspaper cuttings about the bomb and the Laverys. A smiling young man with curly hair and the first wisps of a beard had carried the huge bound volumes of broadsheet papers from the time and laid them out on the big oak desk in front of her. She had to stand to be able to view them and it surprised her to see how normal Belfast had been in other ways at a time when the IRA was bombing shops and paramilitaries were shooting civilians and police officers, men and women. None of it had pushed the ads for girdles off their corner spots on front pages. The curly haired young man might as lightly have assumed she was looking for pictures of a wedding or a book review as for a murder.

None of the pictures in the papers of the time were as gory as the ones that Inspector McKeague had dropped on her floor, but there was reportage and commentary on the atrocity, the familiar condemnation of the ‘animals’, ‘barbarians’ and ‘terrorists’. Some said they were the ‘scum of the earth’. Clergy and politicians had vented their moral outrage; that was part of their job.

She wondered what she had been doing on the day. She worked out that she would still have been doing her GCSEs. She was surprised to find that all the local papers had given extensive front-page coverage to the bomb and had inside features on the family. She couldn’t remember any of that. None of the reports speculated that the bomb had been intended for the Chief Constable and his family.

She read that Patrick Lavery had been a property developer and he had gone to County Meath, that last morning of his life, to look at a piece of land he might buy. He had chosen to make a day out of it with his wife and daughter. There was a photograph of the couple in The Irish News, in formal dress at a GAA dinner dance. There was another picture of the twins, Isobel and Seamus, playing on swings in the garden at home. They were only five years old, by the look of it, when the picture was taken, a few years before the bomb. There was no picture at all of Isobel as she was in the last days before she died. Perhaps the family didn’t have one.

Kathleen wondered why wee Seamus had not been in the car that day, what small domestic consideration – a cold or a tantrum – had determined that his twin sister Isobel would die and he would live.

She searched online to find where Seamus Lavery was now. Google turned up several men of the name, one a priest, one a pool hall manager and one a councillor. The one Kathleen thought was most likely to be the son of Patrick and Elizabeth was a hurley player and ran a computer repair shop in Swatragh, a small town in the Sperrins.

But what could she say to him? ‘My husband killed your parents and your sister and I want you to know that I’m very sorry’?

***

Terry went to see his friend Nools at her home near Templepatrick. A lot of police and security people lived out there, just ten minutes up the motorway from Belfast. The little estate was shaped like a tree, with cul-de-sacs curling off a main stem. He parked away from her home and walked there. But people were sure to notice him, weren’t they?

‘The only thing that ever brings you to my door is trouble,’ she said, in a tone which suggested she had given up wishing it was different.

He followed her into the living room.

‘I’ve been tidying up. We’d the book group last night.’

‘Kathleen said she couldn’t finish it.’

She walked through to the kitchen and he browsed her shelves as he waited. He looked for books a prison officer like her husband, George, might read. Solzhenitsyn?

Nools came back with tea and biscuits on a tray. ‘Well?’

‘A cop came. He raked up all this stuff about an awful bomb he wants to pin on me. Kathleen couldn’t take it.’

‘Now why would he want to pin a bomb on you – blame you for something you’d nothing to do with?’

‘I don’t do confession anymore, Nools. Not even to you.’

‘I suppose till now Kathleen thought it was all Robin Hood. She should have married a prison officer and seen him come home at nights with the roared abuse and smell of shit still in his head, and leaping out of bed in the early hours to grab his gun and shoot at shadows,’ she said.

‘The guy handling the case is old, burnt-out and cynical. I’m guessing he’s been handed a file by someone who’s tired of looking at it and getting nowhere,’ Terry said.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Aren’t you in those circles? Don’t you still have protection officers hovering round you?’

‘If it’s the Cold Case crowd then they have it because the A team don’t see any hope of closing it themselves. They’ve off-loaded it. I shouldn’t worry.’

‘Or they’ve come up with something that warrants another look at it?’

‘DNA? I think if it was that, they would have you in now and not be sending one of the ould fellas out to talk to you.’

***

She drove down the narrow country road to the town and looked for the cemetery. She walked along the aisles of shiny black marble headstones, learning the most common names of the town, noting those who had died young and those who had lived long. This calmed her. The Lavery family plot was a wide triple grave with a large stone angel over it but with no indication on it of how the three people below that angel had died. Kathleen wondered if it was an embarrassment in a Catholic town to have people belonging to you killed by the IRA. There were too many republican families around for anyone, even a victim, to feel free to risk offending them. She looked at other graves, some of small children, most of older people. Usually people died at the proper time – three score years and ten, indeed much later still – but there were children ‘taken suddenly’ and young men who had smashed cars on country roads. ‘Murdered by cowards’ was the tribute on one grim untended grave. Kathleen felt the need to mark her pity for the Laverys but she had not thought to bring flowers. She said a prayer.

***

Basil McKeague raised another spoonful of gloop to his wife’s lips, but she pursed them against it. ‘Do you want me to read to you, then?’

She nodded.

‘From the Holy Bible?’

She sighed.

He lifted the black book from the table by her bed, where it usually sat beside the box of tissues and the bottle of lemon barley water. He opened it at random, allowing the Lord himself to pick the text for the day.

‘And in every province, whithersoever the king’s commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes. So Esther’s maids and her chamberlains came and told it her. Then was the queen exceedingly grieved; and she sent raiment to clothe Mordecai, and to take away his sackcloth from him: but he received it not.’

His wife said, ‘What’s that all about then?’ and when she saw him compose himself for a considered answer, she said, ‘Never mind. Read on if it pleases you.’

‘Do you get no comfort from it?’

‘I get no comfort from anything. Tell me about your work.’

‘I met a sinner yesterday, one of the worst of sinners,’ he replied.

‘An adulterer?’

‘A killer – one who has slaughtered the innocent.’

‘And will you be able to put him in jail or is this another one that will get away?’

‘He will have to confess; it’s the only way.’

‘Then you’ll be waiting till Hell freezes.’

‘But he’ll be there long before that happens.’

***

It was an old grey stone church and in the porch were notices about pilgrimages to Lourdes and Medjugorje, some notices in Polish too. Once through the door she was in the hush of a different atmosphere. The aisle between the old dark wood pews led to a white marble altar overseen by a large realistic crucifix. As she walked towards it she examined the face of Jesus for an expression that would match his predicament. He had eyes that met hers wherever she stood. The blood on his brow and leaking from his side seemed almost ornate. She looked away. At the side of the church was a statue of the Virgin Mary, in her familiar blue robe. She was supposed to be the resort of all troubled mothers, but Kathleen was not a mother. She lit a candle at the foot of the statue and wondered if she would hear reassurance if she stared long enough. Then, without thinking, she held her hand over the candle flame to hurt herself as much as she could bear. She couldn’t bear much, so she drew her hand higher then lowered her palm slowly again into the sharper heat. It took an act of will just to endure a second or two of pain, but it was enough to wring the tears from her eyes again and that was what she needed.

‘Can I help you?’

She had not heard the priest approach and was embarrassed that he had found her like this.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry, child. Come into the sacristy and let me find some ointment for that. You’d be surprised how often we need it for the wee altar servers.’

‘No. I’ll go.’

‘Don’t be silly. Come on now.’

Calmed by his relaxed manner, she followed him. In front of the altar, he genuflected and she did the same. She felt almost mischievous, even a little honoured, to be walking past the altar to the door in the wall panelling.

She had never been in a room like this before. It was dark and musty with the smells of burnt incense and men’s clothes. This was a male space. A private space. Was she wise to be here? Not every priest was a holy man. Some – well, she’d take the eye out of his head if he tried.

‘There’s a toilet through there and a sink and a mirror.’

At first she was puzzled and wondered if this was some proof of the trivial thinking of men who had so little contact with others. Then she realised that he was telling her where she could tidy up. She went through to the little bathroom and saw that her face was streaked with mascara. And her hand hurt. ‘What a mess I am!’

She found tissues and cream in her handbag and mopped the mascara stains off and then removed all her make-up and washed herself and brushed her hair. It wasn’t the face she had planned to meet the day with, but it was the one she had now and it would have to do.

‘You don’t have to speak to me,’ the priest said when she came out. ‘But this is the house of God and most problems are a little lighter when shared with Him.’

She said, ‘I should talk to someone.’

‘Well in your own time, dear.’ She was surprised by the solicitous manner of the man, and she looked more closely at him. She saw that he was probably a little younger than she was. His hair was greying at the sides but he had a trim build. His black suit seemed polished where most worn.

‘I have found out things about my husband that have surprised me.’

‘That is a more common experience than you might imagine.’

‘He killed a little girl.’

‘Dear God,’ said the priest. ‘Are you saying it was deliberate, or was it an accident?’

‘It was an accident in that it was the wrong little girl, but he would have been happy enough with himself if he had killed the right one.’

Just saying it distressed her. The priest simply waited.

‘He was in the IRA.’

‘Ah.’ The priest sighed as if it was clear now and easier for him to countenance. ‘Well, a lot of good men did bad things, you know. And the blame can’t all be put on them.’

‘Don’t you think that if a man kills a child, he ought to suffer for doing that?’

‘Well, ultimately justice is with the Lord, you know. My dear, I have seen many good men crumple under the burden of what war wrought out of them. It may be that your husband needs you more than you know.’

‘He has to be sorry for what he did. He has to be made to be sorry for what he did.’

‘Come on, child. You know the country we grew up in and no one man needs to bear the blame for the war that was imposed on the Irish people.’

She paused. She had thought she was opening up to a man who understood the human heart and now he was talking like a politician.

‘Fuck you,’ she said, and then got up and walked out into the clean air.

***

If Terry was still in the office, she would be able to drive home and pick up the keys to the Damascus Street house and pack a case to get herself started. Of course, if he was guessing her moves, then he would go straight home himself and wait for her. Well, she had many strong feelings about him, but fear wasn’t one of them.

As it turned out, he wasn’t there when she arrived. She packed two cases, mostly with underclothes and clean bed sheets, toiletries and casual clothes, and took the keys for the house. On her way out, she saw Inspector McKeague’s business card sitting on the coffee table where he had put it the night before. She picked it up and put it in her purse, not knowing if she would ever need it. Then she drove towards town, as far as the university, and turned into the Holy Land area and Damascus Street.

***

Damascus Street, behind the university, is one of a grid of little streets called the Holy Land. There is Jerusalem Street and Carmel Street. Once these houses had been tiny homes rented by families from the city council. Women in aprons and headscarves had mopped the doorsteps and children had played hopscotch on the pavement. At least, that is how Kathleen imagined it had been. Now much of the area had been bought up by property developers like herself and converted, with the help of generous grants, into temporary homes for students. Walking through it was like discovering a town in which everyone was eighteen years old.

She turned the key in the frail flaky door, let herself into the musty house and scooped up the mail on the mat. Mostly it was bills for overdue parking tickets, bank statements and other letters with ‘final warning’ stamped in red across the front. There were copies of the republican paper An Phoblacht, New Internationalist and leaflets advertising pizza delivery, taxi companies, cleaning services and protest parades in memory of victims or support for prisoners. There were cards announcing prayer rallies and gospel meetings. Junk. She tried to remember when she had last been in the house. All this in two weeks!

Deeper inside the house were smells of decay, at best a piece of chicken someone had left in a bin, at worst a mouse that had died under the floorboards. The carpet in the living room was a cheap mustard colour. Terry had said, ‘Don’t spend money catering to your own taste; this place isn’t for you.’

A large Irish tricolour was draped above the double bed in the main bedroom. She whipped it from the wall, bundled it up and threw it into a corner. The bed itself had an uncovered duvet over a bare mattress that still had sweat stains on it. At least, she hoped they were sweat stains. How much could she do now to transform this place? Her brother worked in a furniture shop in town and she called him.

‘Bill, I’ve a house that needs a makeover.’

‘Today?’

‘I’d like to make one bedroom nice. Then for the living room, two armchairs and a sofa, smallish but tasteful. Let’s see, slate blue or something.’

Then she ordered a skip. They said it mightn’t come until tomorrow. There was a soft rhythmic thud from the house next door. She would have to do something about that too. But first … She knocked on her neighbour’s door. A youth with long ginger hair came out, and, slowly, a dark-haired girl settled behind him.

Kathleen said, ‘I have some furniture in here I need rid of. I’ll give you fifty quid just to lift it out.’

‘Whoopy doo,’ said the lad and shouted, ‘Cathal!’

‘Wha?’ his friend Cathal shouted from upstairs.

She heard him from the window above her rather than echoing through the house.

‘Beer money!’

Cathal and Ginger followed Kathleen into her house and surveyed the furniture. ‘What do you want us to do?’

‘Move it to a dump somewhere. Keep it if you want it.’

The boys shrugged and started heaving the furniture out into the street. They set down a three-piece suite on the footpath and sat on it, enjoying the incongruity of living-room comfort in the open air.

The girl said, ‘This stuff’s better than our own. Take our own stuff out and let’s put this in. What’re the mattresses like?’

‘One smells like somebody died in it,’ said Cathal.

In an hour, half the furniture from Kathleen’s house was in the street along with half the furniture from the house next door. Other students, thinking this signalled a party, joined in. Some came rolling armchairs on frail castors over mottled tarmac. Kathleen’s first impulse was to feel responsible and plead with them to behave, but then she decided that she had more important things to think about. And there was a furniture van coming up the street, the delivery from her brother.

‘Delivery for Brankin,’ said the driver. Kathleen wished she had cleaned the place better first. Shifting the other furniture had unsettled dust and scraps everywhere. She needed time to get the carpets up too, but if she let the driver put this new furniture down on the street, it would be absorbed by these crazy students into their spontaneous party.

Two men brought in the furniture and set it down roughly where she wanted it.

‘There’s a couple of rugs as well, madam,’ said the driver.

Bill had picked them out for her. Well, she thought, they would cover the shitty carpet for now. The men spread one of them out on the living-room floor, half of it flopping against the new sofa. It was yellow and red in a mix of squares and triangles and had very deep pile. ‘Perfect.’

‘Anything else, madam?’

Kathleen tipped the men a tenner and they left.

The kids outside now had a music system on the street and were playing rebel songs. One of them was dancing with the tricolour she had wiped the bathroom floor with. Were they waving it in her face? They were waving it in somebody’s face.

In an hour this shambles would be a home. Well, she had made temporary homes before out of dingy flats and rooms in shared houses. Terry had done it too.

He rang that evening.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m moving into Damascus Street.’

‘Fuck’s sake, Kathleen.’

‘Let me do this, Terry. I need space right now. I’ll see you tomorrow. Did you get something to eat?’

‘I’m fine.’

***

At first, dreamily, Kathleen persuaded herself that the alarming sound of breaking glass had come from the party below her window and that she could go back to sleep, but then she registered that there was now only silence outside and that the damage was closer, in fact, inside the room. Clawing her way back from preoccupations that she couldn’t recall, she resented the feeling that she was missing something. But the smell of petrol was not from some revved-up car. It was a vapour close enough to be irksome, like filth in her nose and gullet. She knew by the feel of heat on her face that she was in trouble even before she saw flames crackling through the curtains. She had to wake herself up and get out of there. And she was naked. She whipped the duvet from the bed and tried to fold herself into it, but tripped over. She scolded herself, bundled up the duvet and ran out of the room, hoping, as she scuttled down the stairs, she’d be able to cover herself before she reached the street.

She stopped at her front door. Downstairs still looked normal. She took seconds to wrap the duvet round herself, and then the door came crashing through and a man tumbled over her. His skin was on her skin. His hand pressed into her in the dark as he lifted himself up. He was wearing boxer shorts and trainers, and stepped on her while getting off her.

He’d rallied himself. ‘Get out, Missus. Get out!’

It was Ginger, one of the boys from next door. He fumbled the duvet over her as she tried to stand but she snatched it from him and ran into the street.

‘She’s alright,’ Ginger was shouting. ‘I got her out.’

Kathleen tried to calm herself and see what was happening. She was barefoot on tarmac. The red paint on her toenails looked absurd now. Cathal and the girl approached her timidly, staring at this wild frantic woman and then at the flames at her window.

‘Did one of you bastards do this?’ she yelled at them.

The girl called the emergency services on her mobile, and Cathal and Ginger ran into the house to beat out the flames, so the fire was dead before the first tender arrived.

‘You’ll want a pair of clean knickers, won’t you, Missus?’ said the girl, caustically.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kathleen, still unable to rally any gratitude.

The girl brought her into their house. It was such a mess she wondered if there had been a calamity here too, but the students didn’t seem to notice that stacks of books on the stairs had tumbled over into heaps and that the carpet was actually sticky under foot.

The girl gave Kathleen a shirt, a jumper and a pair of jeans. She closed the living room door to keep out the boys while she put them on. The jeans were too tight to fasten at the waist. The girl said her name was Aoife. She was from Strabane.

She said, ‘What would you want to come and stay in a place like this for?’

Kathleen laughed.

‘Not that this sort of thing happens every night.’

‘I should hope not,’ said Kathleen.

There was now a fire tender in the street and firemen standing around discussing whether to hose the house. A policewoman came into the kitchen. She was hardly much older than the students and Kathleen wondered who’d thought of giving her a pistol and sending her into company like this, where she could be jostled and have it taken from her, but the students were wary and deferred to her.

Kathleen had to settle her thoughts and focus. Aoife was giving her a cup of tea. There wasn’t much to tell. She had been asleep and was awakened by breaking glass. She couldn’t remember whether she had heard the glass first or smelt the petrol first. Someone had firebombed her house. She was only just beginning to realise that. Kathleen sat quietly for a full minute, just rubbing her brow and wondering how to cope.

Cathal came in. ‘Everything up there stinks, but here’s your phone.’

There was a new text message. It was from Terry. It read, ‘I love you.’

‘Have you any thoughts on who might have done this?’ the policewoman asked.

Kathleen tried to pay a little more attention to her now that her concentration was returning. ‘No. Have you?’

‘There have been a few car burnings around here,’ she said. ‘There’s a feud on between students who are wrecking the area and those long-time residents who want them out. It could be something to do with that.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Cathal sarcastically.

Aoife scowled at him.

‘Do you own a lot of these properties?’ asked the policewoman.

Kathleen didn’t respond and walked away from them all and into the bathroom. There was a scum ring round the bath and dozens of shiny bottles of sprays and things she hardly understood herself. There were piss stains on the lino round the loo. She sat on the edge of the bath and phoned Terry.

He answered groggily. It was four in the morning.

‘Someone petrol-bombed the house.’ She voiced the words with contempt.

***

For a moment Terry was back at war. This was one of those exhilarating half panics, an occasion for leaping into action, grabbing a gun or jumping from a window. But there was no need. There were times in the past when he had been laughed at by comrades for cocking a pistol at the sound of a cat, once for risking his life by attempting a shot at the back of an army vehicle when the gun had not been loaded, and luckily the soldiers hadn’t seen him.

He had only to drive to Damascus Street, pick up Kathleen and bring her home. Yet his senses were keen and his heart frantic. It was past dawn now and the sky was light – the perfect time to drive. He could ignore traffic lights that flipped through their settings automatically, without regard to the clear roads around them. There were a few spacers around the university, staggering drunkenly or drugged out of their heads. They might be clients in a few years, or applicants for jobs with his firm.

As he turned into University Square, his phone rang again and he punched the button on his steering to answer it, thinking the call would be from Kathleen again.

‘Yes?’

‘Mr Brankin, it’s Sally Leeson. Your tenant in Stranmillis Avenue.’

‘What is it, Sally? Don’t you know what time it is?’

‘Mr Brankin, our house is on fire.’ She was crying now. ‘I think it was a petrol bomb.’

Oh fuck! For a moment he was tempted to turn around and rush to Stranmillis Avenue. One attack could have been a mistake, something intended for a neighbour or a previous tenant. Two meant targeting, and he started sorting his thoughts around who might be responsible for this: someone with the wherewithal, someone who saw him as a problem and resorted easily to this kind of solution. In Belfast, that could be a lot of people.

‘Sally, call the police. Do it now! I’ll get back to you.’

Then, thinking this was all too dramatic and abrupt for a young woman he hardly knew, he said, ‘I have another house burning in Damascus Street. I have to deal with that first.’

He smelled the smoke and petrol in Damascus Street before he saw the black scorch marks around the window. There were lights on in the houses on either side, and in several other houses in the street, so he had to phone Kathleen to find out where she was.

‘Did you bring me any clothes?’

Fuck, he thought, of course he should have brought her some clothes.

He found her looking like a kid in the woolly jumper and jeans, and he smiled without being able to help it. There were real kids standing around watching them and he was annoyed by a sense that they expected something from him.

‘Come on, Kathleen. Let’s go.’

‘Terry, you have to thank these people for helping me.’

‘Yes, thank you everybody. Now, we have to go. The Stranmillis house has been attacked too.’

Kathleen got into the passenger seat of his car, leaving her own car on the street, and the house, for now, open to the winds and any burglar. Terry ripped out of the street towards home. He went up the Lisburn Road at 80mph.

‘Aren’t you going to ask how I am?’ she asked.

A fire engine overtook them, its siren screeching. Then another. As they turned into the estate, they saw a huge rope of smoke twist over the rooftops and fray. He knew what it was before he was in the street, because he’d worked out how much damage could be inflicted on him in one night. He stopped the car behind a fire tender and they stared at the flames curling out of their own downstairs living-room window. Her favourite furnishings were burning. His computer and Joe McWilliams paintings were burning. The kitchen was burning. Thick stinking smoke wrung a stench out of all the things they loved.

And his mobile phone was ringing again.

‘Yes?’ he barked.

‘Mr Terry Brankin. This is the police at Donegall Pass. I believe you are the landlord of two adjacent properties on Dunluce Avenue.’

‘I suppose they are both on fire too?’ he said.

***

Standing in the street in their separate rages, Terry and Kathleen made mental audits of all they had left in the world. Terry had an office in Bedford Street, for now, or hoped he had. Perhaps the fire bombers would have stayed away from security cameras there. He had a car and he had the casual clothes he was standing in. He had his wallet and credit cards in his pocket. Thank fuck for that, he thought. He also had a little cottage in Donegal, near Ardara, with basic kitchenware and bedding. In the garden of the cottage he had buried a police issue Ruger .357 pistol. He also had thirty rounds of ammunition and he supposed that they were still there and that he might soon need them.

Kathleen had a car, parked two miles away in the Holy Land, and that was about it. She had the key to a house. Her key had opened it for the last time. She had no clothes of her own, no credit cards or money. But she had a mobile phone.

‘What time is it?’ she asked.

‘Who cares what fucking time it is?’

‘I’m wondering if I could get into a hotel in this state.’

Terry phoned the night porter at the Wellington Park Hotel and told him the problem.

‘Maybe you should stay here and talk to the police,’ said Kathleen.

He made another call.

‘Jack, sorry to wake you up. All my houses, including the one I live in, have been petrol-bombed tonight. Yes, that’s what I said. You’ve done all the work on them before, so can you get round them now and see what can be saved and then seal them up? Yes, I know what time it is.’

Kathleen said, ‘What insurance company do we use?’

He ignored her and dialled another number.

‘This is Terry Brankin of Sallagh Crescent, Belfast 7. I have five properties insured with you and all are currently on fire. Thank you.’

He said, ‘Kathleen, take the car and go up to the Welly Park. They have a room for you.’

She didn’t move.

He turned to her and tried to speak softly through his anger. ‘Go on, love. It’s best if you let me handle this – whatever this is.’

Kathleen knew what she looked like walking into the hotel lobby but she was past caring. She had no plan yet for how she would get clothes in the morning, but she hadn’t the energy to think about that either. The night porter gave her a key and asked if he could help her in any other way.

‘Would you have a toothbrush, maybe?’ she asked.

He opened a drawer and took out a little plastic toiletries bag. ‘You’ll find most of the essentials there.’

At a glance she saw a toothbrush, toothpaste, skin lotion, a nail file, condoms and Alka-Seltzer. She thanked him and went to the lift.

The room was an enormous bridal suite, more like three rooms than one. The sumptuous bed seemed almost a sarcastic comment on the state she was in. She undressed and buried herself in the comforting darkness. With the drapes closed, it could have been the darkest hour of night and not the advancing daylight of early morning. So she expected she might sleep. She’d give it a try.