John Harvey - A Darker Shade of Blue

‘Here, let me help.’

‘Piss off!’

But she stood back while, after freeing the bags and handing them to her, he lifted the buggy and led the way.

Kiley followed her into the flat and, when she didn’t complain, closed the door behind him. The interior was dominated by a wide-screen plasma TV, the furniture, most of it, third- or fourth-hand. Toys were scattered, here and there, across the floor. While Rachel changed the child’s nappy, Kiley found a jar of instant coffee in the kitchen.

They sat at either end of the sagging settee while the boy piled wooden bricks on top of one another, knocked them down with a loud whoop and started again.

‘Gary, for Christ’s sake.’

‘He’s Russell Means’ boy?’ Kiley said.

‘What of it?’

‘Russell see him much?’

‘When he can be bothered.’

‘Bradford Barnes’ mother came to see me, a week or so back.’

‘So?’

‘She wants to know what happened to her son.’

‘She buried him, didn’t she? What else she wanna know?’

‘She wants to know who killed him. Wants some kind of — I don’t know — justice, I suppose.’

‘Yeah, well, she ain’t gonna find it here.’

Kiley held her gaze until she looked away.

After that he called round every week or so, sometimes bringing a small present for the boy.

‘Listen,’ Rachel said, ‘if you reckon this is gonna get you into my knickers…’

But, stuck up there on the seventh floor, she didn’t seem overburdened with friends and now, as soon as he arrived, Gary scrambled up into his lap and happily pulled his hair. Kiley hadn’t mentioned Bradford Barnes again.

Ten days short of Christmas, the sky a low, flat, unpromising grey, he got round to the flat to find Rachel hurling bits and pieces over the balcony, tears streaming down her face.

‘That bastard! That lousy bastard!’

Kiley tried to calm her down and she lashed out, drawing blood from his lip. When he finally got her back inside, she was still shaking; Gary cowering in the corner, afraid.

‘One of my mates rung an’ told me, he’s only gettin’ married, i’n, it? To that skanky whore from down Stockwell. Saw it in Facebook or somethin’.’ Picking up a half-empty mug, she hurled it against the wall. ‘Well, he’s gonna learn he can’t treat me like that, i’n he? He’s gonna pay.’

Kiley listened while she told him what had happened that night, how Russell Means had stabbed Bradford Barnes three times, once in the neck and twice in the chest, and then walked off laughing. He phoned Jackie Ferris and listened while Rachel told her story again, then promised to look after Gary while the two of them went to the station so that Rachel could make a statement.

Three days later, Russell Means was arrested.

Rita Barnes had tears in her eyes when she came to thank him and ask what more she owed him and Kiley said to forget it, it was fine. He would have given the two-fifty back if it hadn’t been for a little matter of paying the rent.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure.’

She kissed him on the cheek.

That night, Kiley walked past the spot where Bradford Barnes had been killed. If you looked closely, you could just make out the marks where the photos had been taped, a young man smiling out, his life ahead of him, ghosts on the wall.

Kiley smoothed the page across his desk and read it again: a survey conducted by Littlewoods Pools had concluded that of all ninety-two Premiership and Football League soccer teams, the one most likely to cause its supporters severe stress was Notts County. Notts County! Sitting snug, the last time Kiley had looked, near the midpoint of the League Two table and in immediate danger neither of relegation nor the nail-biting possibilities of promotion via the play-offs. Whereas Charlton Athletic, in whose colours Kiley had turned out towards the end of his short and less than illustrious career, were just one place from the bottom of the Premiership, with only four wins out of a possible twenty-two. Not only that, despite having sacked two successive managers before Christmas, this Saturday just past they had been bundled out of the FA Cup by Nottingham Forest, who had comprehensively stuffed them at the City ground, two-nil.

Stress? Stress didn’t even begin to come close.

Kiley looked at the clock.

12:09.

Too late for morning coffee, too early for lunch. From his office window he could see the traffic edging in both directions, a pair of red 134 buses nuzzling up to one another as they prepared to run the gauntlet of Kentish Town Road on their way west towards the city centre, the slow progress of a council recycling lorry holding up those drivers who were heading — God help them — for the Archway roundabout and thence all points north.

His in-tray held a bill from the local processing lab, a begging letter from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and a polite reminder from HM Revenue amp; Customs that the final deadline for filing his tax return was the thirty-first of January — for more details about charges and penalties, see the enclosed leaflet SA352.

His pending file, had he possessed such a thing, would have held details of a course in advanced DNA analysis he’d half-considered after a severe overdose of CSI; a letter, handwritten, from a Muswell Hill housewife — a rare, but not extinct breed — wanting to know what Kiley would charge to find out if her husband was slipping around with his office junior — as if — and a second letter, crisply typed on headed notepaper, offering employment in a prestigious security firm run by two former colleagues from the Met. Attractive in its way, but Kiley couldn’t see himself happily touching his peaked cap to every four-by-four driver checking out of a private estate in Totteridge and Whetstone on the way to collect Julian and Liberty from private school or indulge in a little gentle shopping at Brent Cross.

Early or not, he thought he’d go to lunch.

The Cook Shop was on the corner of Fortess Road and Raveley Street, a godsend to someone like Kiley who appreciated good, strong coffee or a tasty soup-and-sandwich combo, and which, apart from term-time mornings when it tended to be hysterical with young mums from the local primary school, was pretty well guaranteed to be restful and uncrowded — the owner’s abiding penchant for Virgin FM Radio aside.

‘The usual?’ Andrew said, turning towards the coffee machine as Kiley entered.

‘Soup, I think,’ Kiley said.

Eyebrow raised, Andrew glanced towards the clock. ‘Suit yourself.’

Today it was mushroom and potato, helped along with a few chunks of pale rye bread. Someone had left a newspaper behind and Kiley leafed through it as he ate. Former Labour Education Minister takes her child out of the state system because his needs will be better served elsewhere. Greater transparency urged in NHS. Unseasonably warm weather along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Famous celebrity Kiley had barely heard of walks out of Big Brother house in high dudgeon.

An item on the news page caught his eye, down near the bottom of page six. ‘ Roadside bomb kills British soldier on Basra patrol… The death of the soldier, whose name was not immediately released, brought the number of British military fatalities in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, to 130.’

Iraq, Afghanistan — maybe some day soon, Iran.

Kiley pushed the paper aside, used his last piece of bread to wipe around the inside of the bowl, slipped some coins on to the counter, and walked out into the street. Not sunbathing weather exactly, but mild for the time of year. The few greyish clouds moving slowly across the sky didn’t seem to threaten rain. When he got back to his office, Jennie was sitting on the stairs; he didn’t recognise her straight off and when he did he couldn’t immediately recall her name.