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  However, Sunday did always present the challenge of how to spend his time. It seemed to reinforce and exaggerate the sense of purposelessness in the rest of his existence. Surely a man of his age and lifestyle should have a variety of things to do between lunch and dinner on his only free day of the week, but he never seemed to. There always seemed this need to do his washing or go and buy a paper because if he didn't he would just have to sit and stare out of the window. And this week the uncertainty seemed more pressing than usual. Not that he wouldn't welcome a certain amount of boredom: ennui suddenly seemed a rather desirable commodity. It was just that there seemed so many things that he should be doing, like . . . well, something surely. If you are a suspect in a murder inquiry you should be doing something. But he couldn't really think of anything. Or at least there was one thing he could do: go to the shop, get the Superman One and destroy it. It might stop him dreaming about drawers and red fingerprints every night. Several times he almost made it to the door to set off, but each time he sat down again. What if it was important that the comic did exist? That was the question troubling him. It was the only proof he had that someone was trying to set him up. Someone who had perhaps waited a long time for this. Harvey thought back over the reunion; someone must have been waiting for Bleeder's return just as he had been. Who else was there? Who else knew Bleeder? And into his mind came the image of Bleeder talking to someone at the reunion; that old maths teacher, what was his name? Harvey thought about him for a while. Had he too been waiting for Bleeder? Waiting for one of his star pupils to return? Was there something else there? Was there something that didn't involve the comic? But then who sent the comic to him? How was he being set up? And why? He was sitting on the bed, looking out over London, when the telephone rang.

  It was his mother, which caused Harvey a certain degree of outrage: he had rung her yesterday, done his duty for the week, maybe for the month. This was against all the rules. But it turned out she had a reason for ringing, which was that she had spoken to Jarvin. He lit a cigarette while she talked about what a nice man the chief inspector seemed and he waited for her to get to the part that he needed to worry about. It didn't take all that long.

  'We talked about last weekend,' she told him, 'and what a bad temper you were in most of the time, rolling home drunk and sleeping in with a hangover. And I told him how you came home filthy that Sunday. He was quite interested in that.'

  Harvey was suddenly standing up and breathing hard. 'You told him that?'

  'Of course I did. And Donald said that you had left a stain on the driver's seat of the car, which I didn't know about and I'm really very cross with you, Harvey, we only got that car last year. So Donald suggested that the police might like to have a look at the stain. And Mr Jarvin said one of his men would come round today if they could. Isn't that efficient? I do think the police are very efficient, don't you, Harvey? All that nonsense in the papers about them I think is just rubbish.'

  'When are they coming round?'

  'I don't know, sometime today, which means we have to wait in, and I must say we don't appreciate that, Harvey, we are busy people . . .'

  She would probably have said more, indeed perhaps she did, but Harvey put the phone down at this point and sat quietly taking a long, penetrating look at his view. Then he rang Maisie and demanded that she come out for Sunday lunch. As it was two o'clock by this time – Harvey having followed his usual practice of rising late on the sabbath – she suggested that dinner might be a better idea and they arranged to meet at seven in Islington. This left Harvey a fair amount of time to think. He paced the floor in bare feet, leaving faint footprints in the grime of the carpet, and it was this that made him consider cleaning up. The majority of his brain was fixed on the fact that he was clearly about to be arrested – the stain had to be Mrs Odd's blood, he didn't leave stains on seats as a rule – but one small part of his thoughts did return to the subject of sex. You can't pull with a messy flat: simple fact of life. So he fetched the ageing and underemployed Hoover from the cupboard in the hall and dug out a duster and spray polish from under the sink. With a horrible feeling of familiarity he began to clean. There was no blood here but still the motions of cleaning were remembered by his body and remembered too was the revulsion of that day, one week ago, almost to the minute. In his muscles he could still feel slight twinges of familiarity, tiny points of pain from his previous exertions. As he knelt to pick up some errant fag-ends his knees recalled the movement and protested. He had cleaned away a murder and he had left a mark of it on his father's car. In his mind he pictured a huge stain across the Fling's cheap grey seats. He saw it like a map of Africa, or like Gorbachev's birthmark, some symbol of vast and various meaning. And the primary meaning was guilt. Jesus, he had taken on this murder like growing a boil, it had become attached to him. As he worked he gritted his teeth and sobbed between them. And the sobs this time were uncontained, forcing their way out of the knotted coils that had formed inside him, coils of horror and guilt and anger and fear, until he had to stop and just kneel in the dust, with all his cleaning materials around him, a pot of Mr Muscle still clutched in his hand, and watch his tears form black splashes in the grey dust of the floor.

  How long he sat like that Harvey wasn't sure. It was a significant moment, definitely, he had had few enough of them to recognise one when he saw it. He didn't exactly kneel down a boy and stand up a man, although that thought did drift through his mind. But he felt sort of different afterwards, stronger and a bit less weak and hopeless. When he tried to characterise it to himself his thoughts came back to his stomach. It was as if his stomach had been making all the decisions so far, and they were therefore flabby, excessive and self-pitying. From now on, whatever else happened, he was going to think with some other part of his body. Maybe his heart could have a say, maybe his brain could work things through rationally. It was with a firm nod that he grasped this slightly obscure metaphor. But of course it wasn't really his heart or his brain that was doing the thinking. The cleaning was for Maisie and her seduction, so it was his genitals that really had the floor. But at least they were making decisions that the rest of him was happy with. And as he set off for Islington, although his fingers were shaking as he locked his flat, there was a trace of a bulge in his trousers and some difficulty in his gait as he strode down the stairs.

  Chief Inspector Jarvin's smile was biologically determined and therefore unreliable as a guide to the inner world. His son, Jack, who had inherited the green eyes but not as yet the dolphin jawline, was examining his father's face for more than a genetic appearance of good will.

  'I am absolutely serious, Jack. I want you to pal up with Oliver a little bit. Make him feel like he has some protection at least, if not a real friend.' Oliver was the victim of bullying in Jack's class and Jarvin had developed a protective feeling for him.

  Jack shook his head in anger. 'You are interfering in the dynamics of my relationships, Dad,' – Jack was studying psychology – 'and you are letting your job influence your family life. Who I am friends with is up to me.'

  'Yes it is. But who you bully isn't.' Jarvin was able to admire his son's intelligence at the same time as objecting to backchat. This was in part a product of his own background: his English mother, so gentle and liberal in his youth, opening his mind to so many possibilities, and his more traditional Finnish father imposing a variable and unpredictable restraint. How he wanted to be the best of both of them in his relations with his son, and how often he felt that he was the worst.

  'I'm not a bully! Other people pick on Dawson, not me.'

  'Dawson? You don't call your friends by their surnames, why do you call Oliver that?'

  'Because everyone does, he's Dickie Dawson . . . He's Dawson's Freak. That's what they call him.'

  'They, they, they . . . ? When did you ever learn to make choices based on what "they" think?'

  'When you sent me to comprehensive school, Dad, remember? I have to take care of myself. I can't be nurse
maiding anyone else.' Jack got up and made for the door, thereby declaring this father–son chat concluded. Jarvin sighed and for a moment looked almost like Harvey Briscow. He shook his head too.

  'Just do your best, Jack, that's all I ask.'

  'Yeah, sure. But I've got to live my own life.' And his son was gone on what was, Jarvin had to admit, a pretty un answerable exit line. He got up and did what he rarely did, which was to look in the glass cabinet in the corner of his sitting room. The room was light with a bay window opening onto a tulip tree, just beginning to bud, and the sunlight was calling him into the garden. Instead, he looked for a moment into his past. Susan, his wife, had arranged his memories for him in the cabinet. Army photos: him in desert gear and camouflage; his two medals, displayed so nicely in a frame; his trophy for winning the marksmanship contest for his year; passing out from Sandhurst; his first commission; Hendon, class of '84. What was this all about? He looked at these memories for a while with real uncertainty. What had he intended when he chose this course, this institutional, controlled, frankly authoritarian path in his life: his father's path not his mother's? If even his own son was potentially delinquent, potentially making another human being's life hell, and if he, Jarvin, didn't really care, so long as Jack was OK, so long as he survived it and made it through to the unpredictable delights of adulthood, why do this? Why not get some desk job, or go back to college and study Engineering as he'd sometimes dreamed? His thoughts turned now, as perhaps he knew they would, to the case in hand. Mrs Odd and her poor bullied son, and his strange City financier existence; Harvey Briscow and his comic shop and his unexpectedly guilty demeanour; Maisie Cooper and her deep sea-green eyes, and her distant, bitter husband. Jarvin had been to see Jeff Cooper the day before and had come away troubled. What had Allen's words been? 'Pretty near the boil, Mr Cooper.' And Jarvin had known exactly what he meant. Something was bubbling in Mr Cooper. Was it just the loss of his wife? Jarvin thought again of Maisie and had to acknowledge that the loss of her would certainly be a blow. But he thought most of Charles Odd, Bleeder Odd. Where was he today? He would like to meet him again. Being so far from Cornwall was a problem. To prevent things like Mrs Odd's murder: was that why he did it? As he straightened up from bending to peer at a picture of a younger, smiling, seemingly carefree Jarvin at the back of the cabinet, he allowed himself this one generous thought. But as he made his way outside for half an hour's weeding before lunch he was unsure that it was anything but a palliative, unsure that there was really any reason at all.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  They met in a Pizza Express. This wouldn't have been Harvey's first choice for what his genitals were characterising as one of the more important evenings of his life. He was not without romantic nous and had some insight into how women thought. He would have preferred somewhere intimate and personal; somewhere that they could perhaps call their special place; somewhere that they would always go back to on their anniversary and point out fondly to their grandchildren. Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to think of anywhere. So they met in the weirdly unreal, post-modern splendour of the Islington Pizza Express. The way Harvey was feeling perhaps it wasn't such an inappropriate choice.

  'You look terrible.' Maisie had taken his hand as he stood up for an awkward peck on the cheek. The kiss had been mistimed and he had bashed the side of her head with his chin.

  'Oh, thanks.' They both sat down, with Harvey attempting to retain her hand as they did so, almost knocking over the rare and unlikely foreign flower with which the table was inevitably adorned. He let go and sat heavily.

  'I mean, you look worried. Are you worried?'

  'Oh no, I'm fine. Not a care in the world.' Harvey shook his head and closed his eyes, then remembering he wasn't speaking to Josh, but to the woman that parts of his anatomy had been dreaming about almost unceasingly, he opened them again and sighed. 'Sorry. I don't mean to be mean, yeah? But I'm having a bad day.'

  'Another one?' Her smile reached across the table and her hand came with it to reclaim his. 'Tell me,' she said. So he did.

  'Shit, OK, so now we know where we are.' They had ordered pizzas and were sharing a mixed salad and garlic bread in preparation for their arrival. And Harvey, while telling her about the stain in the car, had revisited a little of his earlier sorrow. He pronged a moody cherry tomato and shook his head.

  'I know where I am: in bloody Reading Gaol, that's where. Bang to rights and doing stir. Bastards.'

  Maisie was not sure who this last expletive was directed at but decided that it was probably better not to ask. 'No, now you will have to tell the truth and that is a good thing, Harvey. If I was you I would go to Jarvin first thing tomorrow. How long does it take for them to analyse a stain? Probably a day or two, so you'll have plenty of time to go and sort everything out.' She saw the look on Harvey's face. 'I'll come with you if you like,' she said gently. 'It really is for the best.'

  'They'll arrest me.' Harvey could feel the tears from the cleaning session still hanging in his vocal cords. 'They'll put me in a cell and hold me. They won't let me go once I tell them. Jesus, I'm so stupid.'

  'Well, perhaps . . .'

  'I don't mean that. I mean with Bleeder. Why didn't I talk to him when I had the chance? I keep thinking of that. When I saw him at Steve's party he wanted to tell me something, I know he did. Stuff that I don't know about his mother and about the past. Jarvin thinks the murder is linked to the past and to Bleeder. He obviously hasn't told the police very much.' He stopped and bit his lip. 'I just wish I could talk to him, just get everything straight in my head. Because they will lock me up, Maisie, you must see that. If I go in there and tell Jarvin that I was at Mrs Odd's house, and that I broke the back window, and that I saw the body and that I wiped up all the fingerprints, and then add, "Oh, but by the way, I'm not the murderer," he is never in a million years going to just say, "Oh fine, well thanks for popping in." He is going to chuck me in a cell and give me a small bucket to piss in and a bar of soap to protect my honour in the showers. Shit. I need to talk to Bleeder.'

  'All right.' She spoke with sudden authority and took him by surprise. 'We'll go down there tomorrow. I'd been thinking about it anyway, actually. You should speak to Charles, he obviously wanted to talk to you. And I'd like to set eyes on him myself. If this is the centre of our lives and he is the pivotal figure, I'd at least like to know what he looks like. We'll get this straightened out.' She said it with such certainty that Harvey was moved.

  'That's really kind,' he said softly and she smiled at him. 'But I'm not seeing my mum and dad!' he added suddenly with real vehemence. 'And I'm not fucking staying at their house.'

  'No, OK, we'll find a B. & B.' She smiled. Harvey grinned back and his genitals gave a little shimmy of delight.

  After the pizza there was wine. There had been some during the pizza, of course, but not enough for Harvey to attempt romance. But once the eating was over and the decision was made, he was able to let his genitals really take over the planning of the rest of the evening. He ordered a bottle of red and drank it quickly and efficiently and ordered another, so that within a fairly short space of time he was able to worry about the garlic bread he'd eaten earlier and just hope that she had had her share, because he was kissing her over the table. She tasted as clean as a broad bean, how did women do that? He wasn't sure what he tasted like but when he went to the bathroom, he found that his teeth had turned a nasty sort of glistening purple colour. They were making good progress on the second bottle by that time and Harvey had been doing more than his fair share to keep up the pace. He wasn't really a wine drinker, except at parties where he would drink anything. But these days he went to fewer parties than in his youth and beer had rather taken over. It is, of course, possible for a man in his mid-thirties to go up to the bar in a straight pub and order a glass of red wine for himself but Harvey had never actually seen it done. When examining his teeth in the bathroom, he noticed that he was also rather red in the face. Kissing did make him red
, he knew that of old. Kissing and tennis. When he returned she was still there, which while hardly unexpected was not necessarily a sure thing in his experience.

  They kissed some more and then came his least favourite bit of any romantic evening, when they got their coats and paid the bill and didn't look at each other's faces in case they caught the wrong sort of expression there.

  'Er, shall we get a cab, or are you heading straight off?' Harvey had used this question before. It wasn't perfect but it did allow some suggestiveness without crudity and some freedom without rejection. It prevented, in fact, the worst scenario, where he said 'please' and she said 'no' and then they had to make conversation for half an hour while they waited for two separate taxis to arrive.

  'I'd like to see where you live.'

  He wondered if she'd used that before too, because as far as he was concerned it was just about perfect.

  'Cool. We'll do the taxi thing, yeah?' And they got one almost at once, which was in itself pretty miraculous, and the driver was only mildly sarcastic and bitter when Harvey mentioned their destination. And they kissed some more in the back with the driver talking about West Ham, and apart from one moment when Harvey had to pause to correct him about Bobby Zamora, the journey was unusually trouble free. And when he surfaced occasionally for air Harvey saw that the Old Kent Road had never looked so beautiful, nor so exotic and strange, as if he had left his usual bubble existence and was experiencing how someone else might see south-east London: the eyes of someone from another dimension perhaps, who had seen it before but never quite like this. This idea so caught his imagination and he became so involved in the visualisation of how it might work as a comic, that he almost forgot to kiss her.