“Right. Fine. Work all you want, if that's what you're doing. But don't expect me to be like you. I got to have breathing room, and if every time I need to have space you're going to think I'm fucking some bloke in a public loo—”
“You go to the square on market days, Cliff.”
“Christ! Jesus! That really cuts it. How else am I going to do the shopping if I don't go to the square on market days?”
“The temptation's there. And both of us know how you are round temptation.”
“Sure we know, and let's both get straight on why we know.” Gerry's face grew red. Cliff knew that he was inches away from scoring the definitive goal in this verbal football match they were engaged in. “Remember me?” he taunted. “I'm the poofter you met in the market square loo when ‘taking precautions’ wasn't near as important as buggering any bloke willing to have you.”
“That's in the past,” Gerry responded defensively.
“Yeah. And let's have a look at the past. You liked your cottaging days as much as I did. Giving blokes the eye, slipping into the loo, doing the business on them without even finding out their names. Only I don't wave those days in front of your face when you don't act like I want you to do. And I don't take you through an inquisition if you stop by the market square for five minutes to pick up lettuce. If that's what you're picking up, by the way.”
“Hang on, Cliff.”
“No. You hang on. Cheating works both ways, and you're out more nights than me.”
“I already said. I'm working.”
“Right. Working.”
“And you know how I feel about fidelity.”
“I know what you say about fidelity. And there's a hell of a lot of difference between what blokes say and what they feel. I figured you might understand that, Ger. I guess I was wrong.”
And that had been that. Deflated when his argument had been turned against him, Gerry'd backed off. He'd sulked for a while, but he wasn't a man who liked to be at odds with anyone, so he'd ended up apologising for his suspicions. Cliff hadn't accepted the apology initially. He'd said gloomily, “I don't know, Gerry. How can we live in peace together—in harmony like you always said you wanted—when we get into rows like this?”
To which Gerry had said, “Forget it. It's the heat. It's getting to me or something. I'm not thinking straight.”
Thinking straight was what everything was all about, in the end. And Cliff was finally doing that. He shot along the country road between Great Holland and Clacton—where the summer wheat languished under a sky that hadn't produced a drop of rain in four scorching weeks—and he realised that what was called for now was a rededication of the self to another. Everyone received a wake-up call sometime during his life. The key was to recognise that call for what it was and to know how to answer it.
His answer would be straightforward fidelity from this time on. Gerry DeVitt, after all, was a good enough bloke. He had a decent job. He had a house five steps from the sand in Jaywick. He had a boat and a motorcycle as well. Cliff could do a lot worse for a permanent situation than hooking up with Gerry. Hell, Cliff's past was a veritable study on that point. And if Gerry was a bit of a bore sometimes, if his compulsion for neatness and promptness began to wear against one's natural grain now and then, if he clung too closely so that one wanted to swat him into the next time zone every once in a while …weren't these in reality small inconveniences compared to what Gerry had to offer in return? Certainly. At least they seemed to be.
Cliff turned along the seafront in Clacton, spinning along Kings Parade. He always hated this stretch of going home: a line of seedy old buildings nudging the shore, a score of ancient hotels and decrepit nursing homes. He hated the sight of the doddering pensioners, clinging to their zimmers with nothing to look forward to and only the past to talk about. Every time he saw them and the environment in which they lived, he renewed his vow never to be among them. He'd die first, he always told himself, before he ended his life this way. And always as he came in sight of the first of the nursing establishments, his foot pressed down on his old Deux Chevaux's accelerator and his eyes shifted to the undulating mass of the grey-green North Sea.
Today was no different. If anything, it was worse than usual. The heat had brought the pensioners out of their caves in herds. They were a bobbing, teetering, careening mass of shiny bald heads, blue hair, and bulging varicose veins. And traffic along the shore was halted, so Cliff was treated to a lingering look at what the happy golden years of old age had in store for the unfortunate.
Restlessly, he tapped the car's steering wheel as he watched them. Ahead, he could see the flashing lights of an ambulance. No, two. Or was it three? Brilliant. A lorry had probably ploughed right into a group of them. And now he was going to be treated to a nice long sit as the paramedics sorted out the living from the dead. Not that they all weren't half dead already. Why did people continue to live when it was so clear that their lives were useless?
Shit. Traffic was going nowhere. And he was parched with thirst. If he drove with two of his wheels on the pavement, he could make it up to Queensway and cut into the town from there. He went for it. He had to use the horn to clear the way, and he was treated to a few raised fists, one tossed apple, and some shouts of protest. But he gave two fingers to anyone who hassled him, and he made it to Queensway and headed away from the shore.
This was definitely better, he thought. He'd crisscross through town. He'd drop back to the shore just beyond Clacton Pier, and then he'd have only a quick jaunt from there to Jay wick Sands.
Moving along again, he began to consider what he and Gerry could do to celebrate his conversion to monogamy and lifelong fidelity. Naturally, Gerry couldn't know that's what they were celebrating, since Cliff had been smiting the air—if that's what the word was—with major protestations of his fidelity for years. But a subtle celebration was certainly in order. And afterwards, with a little wine, a nice steak, a fresh green salad, some lovely veg, and a jacket potato oozing butter …Well, Cliff knew that he could make Gerry DeVitt forget any suspicions he might have ever entertained about his lover's roving eye. Cliff would have to dream up some phony reason why they were having a celebration, of course, but there was time to think of that before Gerry came home.
Cliff zipped into the traffic on Holland Road, turning west in the direction of the railway tracks. He'd shoot beyond the tracks and make his next turn into Oxford Road, which would eventually take him back towards the sea. The scenery was grotty as hell going this way—nothing but dusty industrial estates and a couple of recreation grounds long gone the colour of straw in the deadly, continuing summer heat—but looking at filthy bricks and dying lawns was a damn sight more appealing than watching the old farts down by the shore.
Okay, he thought as he drove along, one arm out the window and the other hand resting easily on the steering wheel. What to tell Ger about the celebration? A big new order came into the Distractions? What about a legacy left by old Aunt Mabel? Or perhaps an anniversary of some sort? That last sounded nice. An anniversary. But was there anything special or significant about today's date?
Cliff considered the question. When had he and Gerry met? He couldn't remember the year without effort, much less the day or the month. And since they'd first done it the day they'd met, he couldn't exactly offer that momentous occasion as a point of celebration either. They'd moved in together—or at least Cliff had moved into Gerry's digs—in the month of March because the wind was blowing like a bitch that day, so they must have met sometime in February. Except that didn't seem right because it was cold as frozen shit in February and he couldn't imagine having it off with anyone in the market square toilet in the February cold. He did have some standards, after all, and one of them was not freezing off his jewels all in the name of getting his rocks off with some good looking bugger who gave him the eye. And since he and Gerry had indeed met in the market square, and since meeting had led directly to doing the business, and since that had led to livin
g together in fairly short order … He knew that March as the move-in date must not be the right month at all. Shit. What was happening to his memory? Cliff wondered. Ger's was like a steel trap and always had been.
Cliff sighed. That was the problem with Ger, wasn't it? He never forgot a single flaming thing. If he only did have the occasional lapse of memory—like who was where and at what time of night—Cliff wouldn't be searching his brain at the moment, trying to come up with something to celebrate. In fact, the whole idea of having to have a celebration instead of just getting on with life left one feeling just a bit aggrieved.
After all, if Gerry had one single milligram of trust in his body, Cliff wouldn't be in the position of trying to placate him. He wouldn't be trying to worm his way into Gerry's good graces because he'd never have been out of his graces in the first place.
That was the other problem with Ger, wasn't it? One had to try so bloody hard with the bloke. A single wrong word, a night or a morning or an afternoon when one just didn't feel like doing it with him, and all of a sudden the whole relationship was under the flipping microscope.
Cliff turned left into Oxford Road, feeling a bit more peeved at his lover. The road ran parallel to the railway, separated from it by another dingy industrial estate. Cliff glanced at the grimy, soot-stained bricks, and he realised that that's exactly how a go-round of the guilts with Gerry made him feel: dirty, like he was something unclean and nasty while Ger was as pure as rainwater in Switzerland. Like that was really the case or something, Cliff thought scornfully. Everyone had weak spots, and Gerry had his. For all Cliff knew, his lover was shagging sheep on the side. He wouldn't really have put it past him.
At the bottom of Oxford Road, two other roads met in the apex of a triangle. These were Carnarvon and Wellesley. The latter led to Pier Avenue, the former to the Marine Parade, and both of them led to the sea. Cliff paused here, his hand on the gear lever, not so much considering which direction he wanted to set off in as considering the manner in which the last few days had played out in his life.
Okay, so Gerry had gone a bit rough with him. It wasn't like he didn't deserve it. On the other hand, Gerry always went a bit rough when he got his teeth into a subject. He couldn't ever just let it go.
And when he didn't have his teeth into something—some shortcoming of Cliff's that he felt needed an adjustment right NOW—he was all over him like a rash, looking for reassurance that he was loved and treasured and wanted and …shit. Sometimes living with Gerry felt like living with a clinging woman. It was all long, meaningful silences that had to be interpreted just so, soulful sighs that were supposed to signal God only knew what, nuzzles on the neck that were meant to be taken as foreplay, and—here was the worst and it made him crazy—that stiff dick poking against him in the morning, telling him what someone's expectations were.
And he hated anyone's expectations. He hated knowing that they were there, like unspoken questions he was supposed to answer immediately. When Gerry prodded him with his prong, there were times that Cliff just wanted to smash him in the face, wanted to shout, You want something, Ger? Then just fucking say it for once.
But he never said anything directly, did Gerry. Only when he accused was he finally direct. And that—above all—really pissed Cliff off. It made him want to strike out, do things, break things, and hurt someone bad.
He saw that without thinking he'd taken the right side of that triangle whose apex was created by Carnarvon and Wellesley roads. Without realising where he was going, he'd driven to Clacton market square. He'd even pulled to the kerb in much the same fugue in which he'd made the turn.
Whoa, he told himself. Hang on here, son.
He grasped the steering wheel and stared beyond the windscreen. Someone had hung bunting above the market since his last visit, and the arrowhead banners of blue, red, and white all fanned out from a single small building at the square's far edge, as if with the intention of directing the gaze of every shopper to the public conveniences, a low brick building on which the sign GENTS seemed to shimmer in the heat.
Cliff swallowed. Christ, but he was thirsty. He could get a bottle of water in the market square, or a juice of some kind, or a Coke. And while he was here, he could also do most of the shopping as well. He'd have to pop round the butcher's for the steak, and although he'd previously been thinking that he could get the rest of the meal from the grocery in Jaywick …Didn't it really make a hell of a lot more sense to buy everything here, where the food was fresh and the air one breathed was fresh as well? He could get salad and the veg and potatoes, and if he had the time—which he obviously had because he'd taken a half-holiday, right?—he could browse through the stalls and see if there was something special to give as a peace offering to Ger. Not that he would know it was a peace offering, of course.
And anyway, he was so fucking thirsty that he had to get something to drink before he drove another mile. So even if he didn't do the shopping here, he could find something to soothe the fire in his throat.
He shoved open the door, kicked it shut behind him, and strode confidently into the market square. He found the water he was looking for, and he drank down the bottle in one long go. God, he actually felt almost human again. He looked for a rubbish bin for the empty. That's when he noticed that Plucky the scarf seller was having a special sale of his phony designer ties, scarves, and handkerchiefs. Now, that would do for a gift for Ger. Cliff wouldn't have to say where he bought it, would he?
He began to weave over to the stall where the brightly coloured bits hung on a line, fastened with plastic clothes pegs. There were scarves of every size and design, arranged with Plucky's usual attention to artistic detail. He did them in gradations of colour, did Plucky, working from a paint wheel that he'd nicked from the local ironmonger's.
Cliff fingered through them. He liked the feeling of their slickness against his skin. He wanted to bury his face in them because it seemed to him—in the godawful heat—as if they'd cool him like a mountain stream. And even then—
“Nice. Aren't they?” The voice came from his right, at the juncture of two of the stall's corners. A table there was laid out with boxes of handkerchiefs, and standing in front of them was a bloke in the sort of abbreviated muscle T-shirt that cut in from the shoulders and revealed his well-developed pectorals. The shirt revealed his nipples as well, Cliff noted, and one of them was pierced.
Christ, but he was a looker, Cliff thought. Awesome shoulders, just a nip of a waist, and wearing running shorts so short and so excruciatingly tight that it made Cliff shift his weight uncomfortably as his body registered its reaction to what his eyes were seeing in front of him.
All it would take was giving this bloke the look. All it would take was locking eyes onto eyes and saying something like “Dead nice, they are.” After that a smile—eyes still locked on eyes—and the willingness would be revealed.
But there were vegetables to be bought for the dinner, he reminded himself. There was salad to be purchased, potatoes to take home and bake. There was the dinner to concern himself with. The dinner for Gerry. Their celebration of unity, fidelity, and lifelong monogamy.
Only Cliff couldn't take his eyes off this bloke. He was tan and fit and his muscles gleamed in the afternoon sun. He looked just like a sculpture come to life. Jesus, Cliff thought, why couldn't Gerry ever look like this?
Still the other man waited for a response. As if he could sense the conflict in Cliff, he offered a smile. He said, “Bloody hot today, isn't it? But I love it hot. What about you?”
Christ, Cliff thought. Oh God. Oh God.
Damn that Gerry. He would always cling. He would always demand. He would always examine with his microscope and trot out his endless flaming questions. Why couldn't he ever just trust a bloke? Didn't he see what he could drive someone to?
Cliff flicked his glance to the toilets across the square. Then his gaze went back to the other.
“Can't get hot enough for me,” he said.
And then
he sauntered—because he knew he sauntered better than anything—over to the gents.
HE LAST THING EMILY WANTED TO PUT UP WITH WAS yet another in-your-face with one of the Asians, but when DC Honigman brought a quivering Fahd Kumhar back to the nick for another session in the interview room, Muhannad Malik's cousin was right on the DCs heels. Kumhar took one look at Emily and began spewing the same sort of mindless gibberish he'd engaged in on the previous day. Honigman gripped the bloke at the armpit, gave a little twist to the skin he had hold of, and growled at him to stow his mumbo-jumbo, which did absolutely nothing to quiet the man. Emily ordered the DC to toss the Asian into a cell until she could deal with him. And Taymullah Azhar confronted her.
She wasn't in the mood to be confronted. She'd arrived back at the station to yet another phone call from Ferguson, demanding Chapter and verse on her search of the mustard factory. He was about as pleased with the news that she'd turned up nothing as she herself had been. His real concern, of course, was not so much the murder of Haytham Querashi as the outcome of his scheduled interview for the assistant chief constable's position. And what underlay his questions and comments was the fact that he faced the selection panel in less than forty-eight hours and he wanted to face it flush with triumph at having the Balford murder resolved.
He said, “Barlow, good Christ. What's going on? I'm hearing sod bloody all from you to tell me that you lot aren't chasing your tails over there. You know the routine, don't you? Or do I have to recite it? If you can't guarantee me a suspect by tomorrow morning, I'm sending Presley over.”
Emily knew that she was supposed to quake with fear at the threat, after which she was supposed to produce a candidate for arrest—any bloody candidate, thank you very much—in order to give Ferguson the opportunity to paint himself in the most positive light for the muckety-mucks who held his promotion in the balance. But she was too incensed to play the game. Having to deal with yet another of Ferguson's obsessive attempts to have his professional feathers oiled made her want to crawl through the telephone line and kick the superintendent's arse black and blue.