John Harvey - A Darker Shade of Blue

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Really?’ A smile crinkled the skin around her grey-green eyes and he knew her then.

‘Jennie,’ he said. ‘Jennie Calder.’

Her hair, grown back to shoulder length, was the same reddish shade as before.

Jennie’s smile broadened. ‘You do remember.’

The last time Kiley had seen her she had been standing, newly crop-haired, cigarette in hand, outside a massage parlour on Crouch End Hill, ready to go to work. Two years back, give or take.

‘How’s your little girl?’

‘Alice? Not so little.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘She’s at school. Nursery.’

Kiley nodded. Alice had been clinging to her mother, screaming, wide-eyed, when he had last seen her, watching as Kiley set about the two men who’d been sent by Jennie’s former partner to terrorise them, mother and daughter both. Armed with a length of two-by-four and a sense of righteous indignation, he had struck hard first and left the questions for later. Some men, he’d learned, you could best reason with when they were on their knees.

‘How did you find me?’ he asked.

‘Yellow Pages,’ Jennie grinned. ‘Let my fingers do the walking.’

She was what, Kiley wondered, early thirties? No more. Careful make-up, more careful than before; slimmer, too: black trousers with a flare and a grey and white top beneath a long burgundy cardigan, left unfastened.

‘You’d best come in.’

The main room of the second-floor flat served as living room and office both: a wooden desk rescued from a skip pushed into service by the window; a swivel chair, secondhand, bought cheap from the office suppliers on Brecknock Road; a metal shelf unit and filing cabinet he’d ferried over from his previous quarters in Belsize Park. For comfort there was an easy chair that had long since shaped itself around him. A few books, directories; computer, fax and answerphone. A Bose Radio/CD player with an eclectic selection of music alongside: Ronnie Lane, Martha Redbone, Mose Allison, Cannonball Adderley, the new Bob Dylan, old Rolling Stones.

One door led into a small kitchen, another into a shower room and lavatory and, beyond that, a bedroom which took, just, a four-foot bed, a chest of drawers and a metal rail from which he hung his clothes.

Home, of a kind.

‘You haven’t been here long,’ Jennie said.

‘Observation or have you been asking around?’

Jennie smiled. ‘I spoke to the bloke in the charity shop downstairs.’

‘A couple of months,’ Kiley said. ‘The rent in the other place…’ He shrugged. ‘Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee? I think there’s some juice.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine.’

‘This isn’t a social call.’

‘Not exactly.’

Kiley sat on one corner of his desk and waved Jennie towards the easy chair. ‘Fire away.’

A heavy lorry went past outside, heading for the Great North Road, and the windows shook. The Great North Road, Kiley thought, when had he last heard someone call it that? Seven years in the Met, four in uniform, the remainder in plain clothes; two years of professional soccer and the rest spent scuffling a living as some kind of private investigator. All the while living here or hereabouts.

The Great North Road — maybe it was time he took it himself. He’d been in that part of London for too long.

‘This woman,’ Jennie said, ‘Mary. Mary Anderson. Lives near me. The flats, you know. She used to look after Alice before she started nursery. Just mornings. Alice loved her. Still does. Calls her Gran. She’s got this son, Terry. In the Army. Queen’s Royal something-or-other, I think it is.’

‘Lancers,’ Kiley offered.

‘That’s it. Queen’s Royal Lancers. They were out in Iraq. Till — what? — a month ago, something like that. End of last week, he should have gone back.’

‘Iraq?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, I think so. But not, you know, straight off.’

‘Report to the barracks first.’

Jennie nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘And that’s what he didn’t do?’

She nodded again.

‘AWOL.’

Jennie blinked.

‘Absent without leave.’

‘Yes.’

‘Does she know where he is? His mum.’

‘All this last week he was staying with her, her flat. Thursday morning, that’s when he was due to go back. All his kit there ready in the hall, wearing the uniform she’d ironed for him the night before. He just didn’t go. Stood there, not saying anything. Ages, Mary said. Hours. Then he went back into the spare room, where he’d been sleeping and just sat there, staring at the wall. Mary, she had to go out later, mid-morning, not long, just to the shops. When she got back, he’d gone.’

‘She’s no idea where?’

‘No. There was no note, nothing. First, of course, she thought he’d changed his mind. Gone back after all. Then she saw all his stuff, his bag and that, all dumped down beside the bed. ‘’Cept his uniform. He’d kept his uniform. And his gun.’

Kiley looked at her sharply.

‘Mary had seen it, this rifle. Seen him cleaning it. She searched through everything but it wasn’t there. He must have took it with him.’

‘She’s phoned the barracks to make sure…’

‘They phoned her. When he didn’t show. They’d got her number, next of kin. She did her best to put them off, told them he’d been taken ill. Promised to get back in touch.’ Jennie shook her head. ‘She’s worried sick.’

‘He’s what? Twenty? Twenty-one?’

Jennie shook her head. ‘No, that’s it. He’s not some kid. Thirty-five if he’s a day. Sergeant, too. The army, it’s a career for him. Mary says it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to do.’

‘All the more reason to think he’ll turn up eventually. Come to his senses.’

Jennie was twisting a silver ring, round and round on her little finger. ‘She said, Mary, before this happened, he’d been acting strange.’

‘In what way?’

‘You’d best ask her.’

‘Look, I didn’t say-’

‘Just talk to her…’

‘What for?’

‘Jack…’

‘What?’

‘Talk to her, come on. What’s the harm?’

Kiley sighed and eased his chair back from the desk. The man in the charity shop below was sorting through his collection of vinyl. The strains of some group Kiley vaguely remembered from his childhood filtered up through the board. The Easybeats? The Honeycombs? He could see why people would want to get rid of the stuff, but not why anyone would want to buy it again — not even for charity.

Jennie was still looking at him.

‘How did you get here?’ Kiley asked. ‘Drive?’

‘Walked. Suicide Bridge.’

Kiley reached for the phone. ‘Let’s not tempt face twice. I’ll get a cab.’

When the council named the roads on the estate after streets in New Orleans they couldn’t have known about Hurricane Katrina or its aftermath. Nonetheless, following Jennie through the dog shit and debris and up on to the concrete walkway, Kiley heard inside his head, not the booming hip-hop bass or the occasional metallic shrill of electro-funk that filtered here and there through the open windows, but Dylan’s parched voice singing ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’.

Mary Anderson’s flat was in the same block as Jennie’s but two storeys higher, coping missing at irregular intervals from the balcony, the adjacent property boarded up. A rubber mat outside the front door read ‘Welcome’, the area immediately around swept and cleaned that morning, possibly scrubbed. A small vase of plastic flowers was visible through the kitchen window.

Mary Anderson herself was no more than five three or four and slightly built, her neat grey hair and flowered apron making her look older than she probably was.