I Watson: Director's cut

“You’re right.”

“Listen, Christmas is coming. I want my family back for Christmas.

I want us singing around a fucking tree. A real fucking tree. Not one of these fucked-up plastic ones. Once in fucking David City. Right? I'm willing to forgive her. Whatever she's done.”

“Benevolent, you?”

“I'm serious. I've thought about it. We all make mistakes. This is the season of goodwill. Look at me. If it wasn't dark you'd see the sincerity. I'm in love with her. Always was. Can't help it. Want to, but can't.” “And?”

“I told you, I'm a reasonable man. I read about these other missing women; see the posters all over the shop. Got me thinking, worrying. Know what I mean? Maybe she didn't do a runner. Maybe there is more to it. Maybe that's why she didn't take her things with her.”

A ship's horn carried through space. A plane heading for Heathrow shone brighter than Venus. The darkness deepened; even the fires seemed further away.

“She didn't take her things?”

“Not so you'd notice, but she's got so many clothes and drawers stuffed with crap, how am I to know?” “What about cash?”

“Cash I do know.”

Cole sensed the shake of his head.

“You know Helen. She never wore a damned thing for more than an hour.”

“I remember.”

It was true. Cole knew Helen. She had looks that would pull you over from a hundred yards in a room full of beautiful people. But behind the feminine bit she was as cold as a Russian handshake. Even in those days she had Ticker Harrison wrapped around her little finger, even if he didn't know it. Yes, Cole knew Helen. More than Ticker would ever know.

“On the boat she monopolized you. Remember? We still got photos of the three of us on deck. What the fuck was that place called?”

Cole remembered well and either the cold or the thought that Ticker had held on to the photographs made him shiver. He remembered a white bikini and the top coming off and, later, after Ticker had gone ashore, the bottom coming off too. At length he said, “Greece. And it was a long time ago.”

“It doesn't seem that long.”

“In this weather, right now, it does.”

“Will you help me out?”

After a pause Cole said, “It doesn't sound right. You're not leveling with me.”

A sigh came from the darkness. The river slapped some more, then, “We had an argument. I was never so hot with words, the old fucking… GCE, eleven plus, you know that.”

“What was the argument about?”

Right? If you don't you get problems. You get your toes sucked and your tits all over Fleet Street or some arsehole creeping butler telling everyone your favourite position. I'm the bollocks around here. It was my dick that fucking moaning tart was sitting on when her picture was painted. There was nothing enigmatic about that expression, boy, that was fucking ecstasy.”

“That sounds pretty reasonable to me.”

“Well, anyway, I lost it for a moment. Slapped her. Aimed for the air, just to make a point, but got it wrong. She went out like a fucking light. I get our own GP out. Cost don't come into it. She gets the special treatment but does it make a difference? Does she care? Not a bit. When I come home two hours later she's gone. Faster than a Jewish foreskin.”

“You left her with the doctor?”

“No. He'd gone by then. Left her having a lie-down. Just popped out; a bit of business. Even cut that short to get back to her and that cost me fucking money. That's love for you.”

“But nothing went with her?”

“That's what I said. Can you help me out? I want to know about these other missing women. It's stupid, I know, and she'll turn up having taught me a right old lesson, but I can't help worrying. I got to point my people in the right direction.”

After a long silence Cole said, “I'll poke around but they're dealing with it over at Hinckley. They won't like interference. You understand I can't make it official unless you do.”

“Me, go to the kozzers? Do you want me to lose all credibility?”

“She's a missing person; you should report it.”

Ticker Harrison drew a long breath and said quietly, so the night wouldn't hear, “You do it for me. Put the word out. Let's do it on the quiet. Get someone to call over, discreetly. Make out it's a speeding ticket or something. If you can find her tell her I love her, that I love kids. I've changed my fucking mind. There's nothing I'd like more than kick a fucking ball on the park, diving into dog shit, that sort of thing. Tell her any fucking thing she wants to hear. I'm relying on you, Rick.”

“Let's find her first, worry about the rest later.”

“That's all I'm asking. She'll trust you. After all, you're a fucking kozzer. And I know she liked you. She's often mentioned the boat and what a great time we had. She's often asked about you. Unfortunately these girls don't grasp the reality. You and me. Know what I mean?

That we can't have Sunday dinner together.”

The gangster, Ticker Harrison, was even more concerned than he made out. He wouldn't have involved Cole unless he was really worried. He'd read about the missing women. It was hard to miss them. They'd been all over the papers these last few months. There were photographs of them in shop windows and stuck to bus shelters. Have you seen this person, they asked. They meant the police hadn't got a clue. The Helen Harrison that Cole remembered might well have run away, but not for a slap in the mouth, and even then she would have taken with her everything she could have carried. Helen was thirty-six and she'd been around. For a slap in the mouth she'd have just gone out the next day and spent five grand on his credit card. They parted, strangers again, as far apart as men could be but in the same business, on the same ladder. Lie some ladders on the ground it’s difficult to tell top from bottom.

But the villain had got it right. Cole had turned against himself and there had been a woman involved. The memory of it was bitter; it ground his edge, sharpened his indifference, increased the force he used when digging low-life in the kidneys.

Sunday morning started early.

Just a few minutes after the bells chimed six and still an hour before the break of a cold dawn, another explosion shook the capital and could be heard as far away as Calais. But this wasn’t another garden shed. The oil storage terminal at Buncefield in Hertfordshire went up in the UK’s biggest peacetime fire and a plume of black smoke began to fill the north-western sky. Although the authorities were shaken from their beds to begin an emergency evacuation of the surrounding area, it was quickly established that the cause of the blaze was down to the failure of a number of safety features and not more terrorist activity. In Sheerham, under the darkening smoke-filled sky, life went on. And death.

Outside his window a heavily pregnant woman paused to search in her handbag and in his shop doorway a man sheltered from a sharp December wind to light a cigarette. ront gardens.

Above the shop and the studio was the flat where he lived. Mrs Puzey cleaned the shop and the flat above; she was barred from the studio. Mrs Puzey and her tribe of five children. She was a Caribbean lady of huge proportions, quite frightening, really. She and her children made a living cleaning five or six shops in the High Road.

Her husband was a jazz musician who had disappeared along with his sax about five or six years ago. They arrived daily brandishing Hoovers and feather-dusters and black bin-liners. They arrived in a fit of laughter and chatter and for an hour there was bustle and chaos and when they had gone the silence was wonderful and the place was clean. Mrs Puzey's eldest daughter, Laura, supplemented her income with a little night work. She worked out of the endless bar of The British. Her clientele was small, restricted to married men who remained faithful to her. Mrs Puzey and her brood didn't clean on Sundays. On Sundays they went to the Pentecostal church. They marched past the shop in their Sunday clothes with Mrs Puzey in front and the children behind in descending order of height. On Sunday they prayed. On Saturday night, against his better judgement and because he needed some Christmas help, Mr Lawrence said, “You can stay until next weekend, no longer, and only if you make yourself useful in the shop.”