the same count.”
The sub grinned. “Want a job?”
Cole went back to his desk. Annela Sims came up and said: “The Holloway
Road incident came to nothing. A bunch of rowdies, no arrests.” Cole
said: “Okay.”
Joe Barnard put down the phone and called:
“There’s not a lot to this fire, Arthur. Nobody hurt.” “How many people
living there?” Cole said automatically.
“Two adults, three children.”
“So, it’s a family of five escaped death. Write it.” Phillip Jones said:
“The burgled flat seems to belong to Nicholas Crost, quite a well-known
violinist.” “Good,” Cole said. “Ring Chelsea nick and find out what was
taken.”
“I did already,” Phillip grinned. “There’s a Stradivarius missing.” Cole
smiled. “Good boy. Write it, then get down there and see if you can
interview the heartbroken maestro.”
The phone rang, and Cole picked it up.
Although he would not have admitted it, he was thoroughly enjoying
himself.
NINE A.M. TIM FITZ PETERSON was dry of tears, but the weeping had not
helped. He lay on the bed, his face buried in the damp pillow. To move
was agony.
He tried not to think at all, his mind turning away thoughts like an
innkeeper with a full house. At one point his brain switched off
completely, and he dozed for a few moments, but the escape from pain and
despair was brief, and he woke up again.
He did not rise from the bed because there was nothing he wanted to do,
nowhere he could go, nobody he felt he could face. All he could do was
think about the promise of joy that had been so false. Cox had been
right when he said so coarsely, “It was the best night’s nooky you’ll
ever have.”
Tim could not quite banish the flashing memories of her slim, writhing
body; but now they had a dreadfully bitter taste. She had shown him
Paradise then slammed the door. She, of course, had been faking ecstasy;
but there had been nothing simulated about Tim’s own pleasure.
A few hours ago he had been contemplating a new life, enhanced by the
kind of sexual love he had forgotten existed. Now it was hard to see any
point at all in tomorrow. He could hear the noise of the children in the
playground outside, shouting and shrieking and quarreling; and he envied
them the utter triviality of their lives. He pictured himself as a
schoolboy, in a black blazer and short gray trousers, walking three
miles of Dorset country lanes to get to the one-class primary school. He
was the brightest pupil they had ever had, which was not saying much.
But they taught him arithmetic and got him a place at the grammar
school, and that was all he needed.
He had flourished in the grammar school, he remembered. He had been the
leader of the gang, the one who organized playground games and classroom
rebellions. Until he got his glasses.
There: he had been trying to remember when in his life he had felt
despair like this; and now he knew. It had been the first day he wore
his glasses to school. The members of his gang had been at first
dismayed, then amused, then scornful. By playtime he was being followed
by a crowd chanting “Four-eyes.” After lunch he tried to organize a
football match, but John Willcott said: “It’s not your game.” Tim put
his spectacles in their case and punched Willcott’s head; but Willcott
was big, and Tim, who normally dominated by force of personality, was no
fighter. Tim ended up stanching a bloody nose in the cloakroom while
Willcott picked teams.
He tried to make a comeback during History, by flicking inky paper
pellets at Willcott under the nose of Miss. Percival, known as Old
Percy. But the normally indulgent Percy decided to have a clamp down
that day, and Tim was sent to the headmaster for six of the best. On the
way home he had another fight, lost again, and tore his blazer; his
mother took the money for a new one out of the nest egg Tim was saving
to buy a crystal radio kit, setting him back six months. It was the