Nicola Barker - Darkmans

Laura snatched her hand back. ‘ Gaffar . What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Huh?’

‘Do you two know each other?’ Beede asked, clutching at his shoulder. Laura turned to Beede, startled. ‘No. Not at all.’

She glanced around her, slightly panicked. The kid was returning, pushing a long, silver worm of trolleys ahead of him.

‘There’s my trolley…’

She moved forward. ‘That’s fantastic . Well done … uh …’ she squinted at his name tag, ‘well done, Brian .’

She unlatched her trolley from the front.

‘Oh…’ She frowned, inspecting it, ‘…but there’s no…’ she pointed, ‘ you know…the little metal thingy with the…’ she paused for a moment, uneasily, weighing up her priorities ‘…Although…Forget it. It doesn’t…I mean really must …’

She waved blithely at the assembled company and charged off.

Pause

‘So that went very well, I think,’ Beede deadpanned.

’She’s trapped in this suffocating marriage,’ Gaffar sighed, gazing poignantly after her. ’Separate bedrooms. Her son died last year. She blames herself for the whole thing because she was having an affair. Her husband’s an insensitive pig who has no understanding of her needs. He’s obsessed by this five-year-old African macaw which he got from an Exotic Bird Rescue Centre in Canterbury. He’s taught it all the catchphrases from Top Gear . Sleeps with it. Takes it to work. Rings it — whenever he goes out — and leaves these idiotic messages on the answerphone…’

‘Laura Monkeith ?’ Beede asked.

‘Always wants a bloody trolley with a clip -board,’ Brian interjected. ‘But I’ve seen her here loads and she never has no bloody list to pin on it.’

‘ Yes …’ Beede frowned and checked his watch. It was late. He was late. ‘…Although I suppose your function in fetching the trolley for her,’ he mused (almost to himself), ‘is principally a palliative one.’

Brian stared at him, doubtfully.

‘In other words,’ Beede expanded, ‘not only are you providing an essential service here, but you’re also — at a more general level — caring for the very particular emotional needs of the community…’

As he was speaking, an especially large, high branch came crashing down on to the tarmac, followed by a loud, almost Bacchanalian roar from the small team of contractors.

‘…Which is precisely why ,’ Beede concluded, with an angry flourish (not really even convincing himself with this tenuous piece of logic), ‘if only for your sake, Brian, they should leave those blasted trees alone.’

Kane dialled the number. It rang for what seemed like an age, and then, just as he was finally abandoning all hope–

‘Hello?’

A woman answered. An older woman, with a pleasantly mischievous voice. An engagingly English voice. A voice of the linnet and the sparrow. A voice of the bramble and the hedgerow.

‘Hi,’ Kane responded, ‘is this the right number for Peter?’

‘Why?’ she asked, curtly. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘I just need quick word with him,’ Kane said. ‘Is he around?’

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘A friend,’ he said, ‘well — a friend of a friend.’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ she said, ‘Peter doesn’t have any friends.’

‘Oh.’

Kane was taken aback.

‘He’s utterly friendless ,’ she said, with evident delight.

Pause

‘Well how dreadful for him,’ Kane drawled, finally catching up. ‘Isn’t it, though?’

‘And how about you?’ Kane wondered.

‘How about me?’

‘Aren’t you his friend?’

‘Good God , no.’

‘His wife?’ Kane guessed.

‘Peter? Married?! Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘His secretary, then?’

‘Absolutely not,’ she hotly denied in one breath, ‘but in the loosest possible sense, yes ,’ she confirmed — somewhat quixotically — with the next.

‘His mistress?’

‘We do share a bed…’ she mused, ‘and blankets and pillows, if that counts for anything…’ she paused, ‘although the most genuine description of my overall role here would probably be…’ she paused again, ‘…that of maid .’

‘“A man needs a maid.”’

Kane automatically quoted Neil Young.

‘“Just someone to keep his house clean, fix his meals and go away,”’ she quoted back.

‘Marry me!’ Kane exclaimed.

‘So who exactly,’ she staunchly ignored his flirting, ‘ is this deluded friend of yours?’

Kane quickly grabbed a hold of the business card and flipped it over. ‘J.P.,’ he said.

‘J.P.?’

‘Yes. Peter worked with him on…’ Kane inspected the card again ‘…on Longport, for the Weald and Downland…’

‘Are you in a car right now?’ she interrupted him. ‘Are you driving?’

Kane was speeding up Silver Hill on his way home from visiting a client in the outer reaches of St Michaels.

‘No. Not driving as such,’ he lied, ‘I’m just idling at a light, actually.’

‘ Ssssh for a second,’ she hushed him.

He was quiet.

‘You’re driving a Mercedes, C 220,’ she said, ‘and you’re a liar. You’re speeding up Silver Hill in completely the wrong gear.’

Kane double-blinked. He glanced into his rearview mirror and flipped down his indicator.

‘Bear with me for one second,’ he said, braking, changing gear and promptly pulling his car off the road.

‘So how the hell ’d you figure that out?’ he demanded, brutally yanking his handbrake up.

‘ Urgh . Sticky handbrake,’ she said. ‘It’s that particular model, I’m sure of it. I had one myself but I wrote it off — three-car pile-up, on my way home from a house sale in Cheam. It had the sticky handbrake and this tiny, maddening little knock when I drove uphill in fourth.’

Kane frowned. ‘Were you hurt?’

‘Excuse me?’ she sounded briefly distracted. Her voice was a little further away from the receiver than before.

‘When you wrote it off. Were you hurt?’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she said, drawing closer again, ‘it was a bloody Merc .’

‘Good point,’ he said.

‘What colour’s yours?’

‘She’s a blonde.’

‘Mine too! Although mine was a mink. I called her The Mink…’

She sighed, ‘I do miss her dreadfully.’

‘So what do you drive now?’

‘A customised Lada.’

‘What?’

‘And a van. I have a small van…’

‘A Lada ?’

‘Yes. A Lada. Why? Do you have a problem with that?’

‘It’s just an odd…an unusual…uh… progresssion . In terms of style.’

‘Not at all. Where’s your imagination? It’s an absolute gem . I had it shipped over from Jamaica.’

‘Jamaica? A Lada ? Are you serious?’

‘Of course I am,’ she sounded vaguely insulted, ‘they import them to use as taxis over there. They love them. Give a Lada a spray job, darken the windows, and hey-presto: you’re transformed into some seedy, low-ranking apparatchik in a fabulous, Eastern Bloc spy drama.’ ‘Wonderful,’ Kane said, flatly.

‘It is ,’ she insisted.

‘And you shipped it over from Jamaica?’