Читать книгу The Reaper - Steven Dunne - Страница 13

Brook was jolted awake by Cat rubbing herself against his legs. He lifted his head from his arms and squinted down at the squirming, affectionate fur ball at his feet. He felt a little dizzy so he returned his head to his arms for a moment and instead tried to move his lips but they seemed welded together, caramelised almost, by the stale sweet alcohol. His first drunken stupor for years.

He lifted his head again and was surprised to feel only a dull ache. He drank so rarely these days, he expected heavier punishment. For a few months in the nineties he’d tried to hit the bottle but soon tired of it. His insomnia wouldn’t be denied by an alcohol-induced coma.

Brook stood and winced in unexpected pain. His back muscles were tight from the wooden chair. That’s what came of getting a plush new car. No sooner had he experienced the pleasure of a cushioned seat than his back protested about having to accept second best.

He padded off to the kitchen taking the empty bottle and brimming ashtray with him. The linoleum was icy on his bare feet and he hopped from foot to foot before jumping onto the hall carpet for relief. He slipped on his loafers and returned to the kitchen to turn out a large tin of mush into a bowl.

Cat ate remorselessly until the bowl was empty then sauntered past Brook as though he didn’t exist, to seek out the hottest radiator to doze under.

‘Enjoy that, monkey?’ Cat ignored him and trotted off to the living room. ‘Don’t mention it.’ He smiled. There was a time when Brook would have preferred dogs. He still did, but over the years, as his job took him full pelt away from childhood, he’d noticed the resemblance the dumb mutts had to victims of crimes–battered wives and abused children, in particular. Dogs were too innocent for this world. They belonged in boyhood, in a past of hot endless summers and English sporting supremacy.

Cats were different. Nothing was unconditional. If you played ball you’d be given the appropriate amount of love and affection. But if you didn’t feed and house them properly they’d find somewhere better to live. Their demands provided a behavioural straitjacket from which you couldn’t deviate.

Brook flung open the back door to clear his head and ventilate the flat. He didn’t believe in aspirin. The freezing morning air felt good so he stepped out to have a cigarette. It’d been many months since he’d smoked in the morning but as it was the last in the packet best to get it finished. Already he was thinking like an addict again.

Brook lit up and exhaled towards the heavens. The sky was still black but the occasional early bird drove by.

On one such pass, a car’s headlights picked out a figure standing on the other side of the Uttoxeter Road. Brook narrowed his eyes, curious. People didn’t stand around in this weather, at this time of the morning.

From the shock of long blonde hair, it had to be a girl and she appeared to be staring back at Brook standing in the communal alley at the side of his building. He must look odd, outside in the bitter cold in shirtsleeves.

Brook continued to glance over, glad of the cigarette as pretext for loitering. There wasn’t a bus stop nearby so her presence was mildly interesting and he continued to observe her. Perhaps she was a prostitute or someone waiting for a lift into work.

She wore a dark blue padded jacket, buttoned up to her chin, faded blue jeans with horizontal slashes in the knees, brown boots and a pair of garish pink ear muffs, the sort of garb only young people seemed able to wear and not feel self-conscious.

One thing was clear. She was cold, jogging up and down in an effort to keep warm. Brook, in shirt and trousers, was reminded of the bite of winter morning and shuddered. Flicking his cigarette against the wall for the satisfying spray of orange, he turned to go inside.

As he did so, he noticed the girl crossing the road towards him so he tarried a moment longer. Perhaps she wanted directions.

She walked steadily towards him, her gaze locking onto Brook’s face so blatantly that he felt no embarrassment about staring straight back at her.

She was young, twenty perhaps, and had straggly unkempt hair, parted vaguely in the middle. Brook noticed a touch of darker root. She was medium height with a pretty face and a button nose. Her complexion was clear and soft and her grey eyes were large, with a hint of Eurasian slant. She moved well on her slim legs, like a model, aware of her attractions.

When she was a few yards from Brook, she hesitated, as though she’d remembered something, and rummaged in a generous, fleece-lined pocket.

‘Good morning,’ she smiled, revealing a full set of teeth in a large, slightly protruding mouth. There was no trace of an accent, which Brook, rightly or wrongly, always took as a sign of a middle-class upbringing.

Brook returned her smile, resisting the urge to flap his arms around his freezing torso. She consulted a piece of paper from her pocket. ‘Could you tell me where the Casa Mia Hotel is please?’

‘The Casa Mia?’ Brook knew it well. He could’ve taken her there blindfolded so many times had he been called in to deal with the unfortunates who fetched up in that DSS fleapit. Sergeant Hendrickson joked that it would be cheaper to have an officer permanently stationed there, to save on petrol. He wasn’t a natural comedian.

‘Why would you want to go to that dump?’

She seemed nonplussed by Brook’s frankness but she smiled, her grey eyes fixing him. ‘I’m staying there tonight. I’ve got an interview at the university, tomorrow.’

‘For what?’ asked Brook.

‘To study there,’ she replied. Her expression carried a semblance of reproach, as if Brook had suggested she looked like she’d be applying for a cleaning job.

Brook was tempted to challenge her further but he was shivering so he gave directions and darted inside.

He looked at his watch. He had an hour before Terri could call so he nipped inside to pull on a coat and went back out into the cold.

A couple of minutes later, he was staring up at the menu board in the steamy warmth of Jimbo’s Café, known to regulars as Jumbo’s because of the girth of its proprietor.

Brook sat down with his mug of tea to await his Farmhouse Special, having helped himself to one of the tabloids on the counter. He wasn’t feeling hungry, as a purely functional eater he rarely did, but he knew he hadn’t eaten for over a day so he had to take on board some fuel.

As he smirked at the nursery school alliteration of the Page Three caption, he suddenly became aware of a tightening of lips and stomachs amongst the only other customers, two stout lorry drivers tucking in to two oval plates of saturated fat, at the table in front of him. Brook turned to follow their gaze and saw the girl. She closed the door and smiled at him.

‘Hello again.’ She passed Brook and ignored the other table with its four eyes moving up and down her body like a barometer in a British summer. She ordered a cup of tea and painstakingly counted out the change from a small beaded purse.

‘Nothing to eet, meese?’ enquired Jumbo, in his broken English.

‘No thanks.’ She returned to Brook’s table with a smile and a nod at the chair in front of him.

‘Please,’ said Brook, folding the paper away. She sat opposite him and took off her coat. Full House Brook noticed, trying not to stare. To sharp intakes of breath from Jumbo and the other table, she pulled her baggy sweater over her head, almost pulling her flimsy T-shirt away from her unfettered breasts.

Eventually she sat down, pulling her T-shirt back over her midriff. Heavy sighs were released around the room and Brook almost expected a round of applause to follow. He tried to ignore the looks of exquisite pain directed at her from the other table and hoped his own expression didn’t betray the same yearning. Unattainable pleasures were to be avoided at all costs. The emotional epidermis of this male was pocked with enough wounds.

Still, it wasn’t easy for Brook to find a place to rest his eyes. Even looking directly at her face couldn’t hide the dark rim of her nipples goading him. Fortunately his breakfast arrived to distract him and he tucked in with more gusto than he’d felt a moment earlier. ‘No joy, then?’ he mumbled, through a mouthful of toast.

‘No, you were right. It wasn’t a very nice place,’ she replied absently.

Brook looked up to try and fathom why she’d need to lie. He saw her looking at his plate and realised that she didn’t have enough money to buy herself any food. Come to think of it, when he looked again, her cheeks did seem a little hollow, gaunt even. He was savvy enough to avoid wounding her pride by offering to buy her something so he just rolled his two sausages to the side of his plate and shook his head.

‘I told him no sausages,’ Brook complained. ‘I hate sausages. Look, I’ve paid for them already. Would you have them? I can’t stand waste.’

She seemed to perk up a little. ‘Well if you’re sure you don’t want them?’

‘I’m certain,’ he said and before the last syllable was out, she’d fallen on them as delicately as she could manage. Watching her mimic fellatio, Brook wished he’d offered her some toast instead but they were gone in a trice and she smiled gratefully at him.

Brook returned her smile but was puzzled. What did she want? She hadn’t had time to get to the Casa Mia and back and he knew, as a graduate himself, there was little likelihood of entrance interviews in the week before Christmas. She looked far too classy to be on the game but you never could tell; it wasn’t the exclusive preserve of pressured single mothers and granite-faced fortysome-things. She wouldn’t have been out of place in better parts of London but this was the rough end of Derby.

‘Where will you go now?’ he asked, trying to get to the bottom of it. He didn’t have long to wait.

‘I’ve tried everywhere else. All full,’ she said, unable to look at him. ‘I’ll have to go back there, I suppose.’

Brook scrutinised her, chewing both his food and his thoughts. ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-two.’ She looked at him for the first time without the discomfort of deceit so Brook decided it was the truth. He had nothing to lose, certainly nothing valuable in his flat, except Cat.

‘Look. I go to work at eight. I’ll leave a key under a brick near the back door, right.’ She feigned surprise quite well. ‘It’s a bit shabby but if you can’t find anywhere else at all, there’s a sofa for the night, if you want it? No strings and no charge.’

‘That’s very nice of you,’ she said. ‘Why would you do that? For a complete stranger, I mean.’

‘Why? Because I was a penniless student once, for all the good it did me, and because you’re not much older than my daughter and I’d hate to think of Terri wandering around a strange city without a place to stay. Also I’m a policeman, so it’s my job to prevent crime.’ He looked hard at her for signs to betray that she was on the make in any way. There were none.

Instead recognition flickered across her features. ‘You were on the TV last night,’ she said, open-mouthed, pointing at him, ‘about those murders.’ Brook nodded his confirmation, basking ever so slightly in his new-found celebrity. Top of the world ma. ‘Well, I’d feel much safer under a policeman’s roof than some of the hotels I’ve seen. Thanks very much for the offer.’

She stood up to leave and held out her hand to shake his. ‘I’m Vicky.’

‘Damen.’ Brook shook her hand and shot her a mechanical smile, trying to mask his fresh doubts about her age. If she thought being a policeman was a guarantee of moral rectitude, she must be more naive than he’d assumed.

She reassembled her layers, drained her cup and headed for the door, throwing a beautiful smile over her shoulder at him. This time four pairs of eyes took the tour around her southern hemisphere.

Brook turned back towards the occupants of the neighbouring table who were radiating a mixture of resentment and respect. He shrugged his shoulders modestly and pulled his best ‘Yeah-I’m-a-babe-magnet’ face before resuming his breakfast.

The phone rang just after seven-thirty. Brook picked up before the end of the first ring.

‘Terri?’

‘Dad.’

‘Talk to me.’

‘Dad, stop panicking. There’s nothing wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean there’s nothing wrong. I just got worked up about some silly thing, that’s all.’

There was silence as Brook wondered what to say. He wasn’t able to square away his daughter’s reassurances with her barely contained anxiety of the previous day. He decided to gamble.