Bright Spark

by Gavin Smith

  “No. Sick leave,” he muttered, frowning and off-balance. “I’ve been ordered to rest and talk to no-one.”

  “But you came here in your suit. You may as well have been in uniform. That should bother me.” She hesitated, once again looking for something in his eyes. He couldn’t say what she saw, but knew that his mask lay in pieces on the floor.

  “I’m sorry. I was on the case. Unofficially. That was my plan. I didn’t set out to deceive you.”

  “I know you didn’t.” She wrapped her arms around his waist, pushing his mouth into hers again and kissing him hungrily. “I’m glad nobody knows you’re here. What’s your first name again?”

  He kissed her deep and hard, letting the pent-up need flow back and forth in a scalding arc. As he surrendered to his need, he forced his hands to touch the back of her neck, the small of her back, the curves of her buttocks, the swell of her breasts, gasping as excitement and pain flared together.

  He knew they would never find the comfortable silence that supposedly defined a healthy relationship. Even in this space, with the lengthening shadows softening the hard edges of bedroom furniture and blotting out the trail of discarded underwear, their discomfort remained stark.

  “Are you sleeping?” she ventured, turning onto her side to regard him, one arm draped over the breasts he’d lavishly caressed only a few heartbeats ago.

  “No,” he said, studying the ceiling, hoping the cold clarity would thaw, craving the euphoria that had wholly consumed him then evaporated into the ether wholly and instantly.

  “Don’t get awkward on me.”

  “I’m sorry. Just. You know.” He turned to mirror her and felt the first jolt of pain from his hands, chased away by the flood of endorphins and now set to return with a passion of its own. “Enjoying the moment. Drifting.”

  “Kiss me then.”

  He sealed his lips gently over hers, feathered kisses over her cheeks and eyes then lay on his back again, drawing her to his chest. He found a hollow there swallowed an urge to find the shower and sluice the stain of sweat from his body.

  “That was nice,” she whispered. “Almost like you cared.”

  “What makes you think I don’t?”

  “Because there’s no reason why you should. We’re both grown ups. We both needed….this, whatever this was.”

  “I don’t make a habit of this, Sharon. Things have been rough at home and…..”

  “I don’t care about your domestic woes, Rob.” She lay back, hands behind her head, naked and confident again. “So just don’t bring that stuff here.”

  “What stuff?”

  “That whole serial shagger script, you know, ‘my wife stroke partner doesn’t understand me’. Or, ‘we’re still living together but it’s over’. It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care. I won’t be the other woman. Not again.”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t making excuses….”

  “Yes, you were. It’s in your programming. You’re a married man – practically speaking – and you’re laden with guilt about….well, you don’t need my opinion. We’re grown-ups. We have certain desires. We happened to cross paths. We both had a good time. Let’s not ruin it with guilt. I am not your mistress or your girlfriend. I won’t be afraid to look you in the eye again. I won’t cry into my pillow if you don’t call.”

  “You really know your own mind.”

  “If you haven’t got your own script, someone will write one for you. Does that seem cold?”

  He studied her without needing to talk, the silence more bearable now that the static electricity had been earthed. Sated, he looked into her eyes with only a hazy interest in the body she’d exposed to his hands and eyes and tongue.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I might think you care.”

  “Is that not allowed?”

  “You know it’s not. For a dozen reasons.”

  “Good. That makes things easier.”

  “Not always. But it’s….rational.”

  “I have a theory,” Harkness began, staring at the tendrils of sunlight probing at the margins of the curtains. “Social gravitation. Basically, we’re all propelled through society, some of us by the force of collisions with other bodies, some of us by the overwhelming attraction of something bigger than ourselves. Sooner or later, we meet another body. Too much attraction or the wrong kind of trajectory and we collide, with all sorts of fireworks and upheaval. Too little attraction or a glancing trajectory, and we touch then speed apart. But if we find just the right balance between outward motion and attraction, then the bodies capture each other and orbit in a finely balanced waltz for eons.”

  “That’s bizarre. You sound like, I don’t know, an Open University video from the 1970s. What kind of copper are you, sergeant?”

  “I just don’t know anymore,” he said, clouds gathering behind his eyes.

  They held each other until the sunlight ebbed away, dozing, touching, embracing and finally, seamlessly, without speech or thought or meaning, making love again as they sank into unburdened silence.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Don’t talk about it. Don’t break the spell.” She placed a mug of coffee on the kitchen table in front of him and sealed his lips with her finger. She stooped and kissed him on the forehead, avoiding his mouth and his eyes.

  “I’m sorry.” He straightened his face and sipped his coffee, one eye on the kitchen clock as the minute hand toppled from midnight into another day. His car keys lay next to the blinking clamshell of his replacement mobile phone, a cheap pay-as-you-go unit whose number he’d so far shared only with Slowey. “I should go. Soon.”

  “You should. But drink your coffee. You may need it.”

  “Our q & a session was…interrupted. I had one more question. Seems a bit churlish to ask it now but…..”

  “But it is your turn. As far as I remember. Feels like a long time ago.” She leaned against the wall and unconsciously pulled her baggy t-shirt further down over her naked thighs. “Ask away.”

  “Well. You’re so composed. Emotionally intelligent. So good at sidestepping self-delusion and flattery and lame excuses.”

  “That sounds like flattery. Don’t make me side-step it.”

  “What I’m getting at is your empathy. You’re good at it. Your brother presumably isn’t.”

  “My brother?” She winced momentarily, perhaps at the contrast between her love for her brother and the physical transaction she’d just shared with an adulterous cop. “Empathy? No. That’s beyond him.”

  “How so?”

  “Well think of it this way. If you showed him a chocolate box and asked him what was inside, he’d say ‘chocolates’. If you opened the box and showed him that it did in fact contain pebbles, he’d accept that fact. If you then closed the lid again and asked him what mummy would say was in the box if she just happened to walk into the room at that moment….”

  “He’d say ‘pebbles’.”

  “Just so. He can only see the world through his eyes.”

  “So he can’t lie.”

  “Why on earth would you ask that?”

  “I just think he might have seen something. Could be your neighbours just disturbed him weeks or months ago. Maybe his chronology is out. I’m just curious.”

  “No. He can’t lie. He’s not a saint. He can be naughty and knows the difference between right and wrong. If rules are spelled out, he can follow them. Sometimes. He just wouldn’t understand enough about how your mind ticks to know how to form a lie. I’m not sure he’d even see the point.”

  “When we first met, last week, when your family was here, Jeremy came into the garden and spoke to us briefly.”

  “I remember. You were obnoxious. And I couldn’t have imagined I’d be standing here wearing only a t-shirt remembering what a nice time we’d just had. Watching you become obsessed with a dead case again. Giving a damn. Feeling awkward and half-cut.”

  “But Jeremy just had to tell me he hadn’t seen anything. And just to be extra cle
ar, he said it was the noisy neighbours that he wasn’t to tell me anything about.”

  She frowned. “He’s easily confused. And he’s wary of policemen. In uniform is bad enough – plain clothes is even more confusing. If you make a careless joke, you’ll discover months or years later that he took it to heart. Maybe my mum said something. To stop him bothering you.”

  “I’m sure that’s it.” He drained his coffee, reached for his keys and stood.

  “That’s all? Now I’m worried.”

  “No, don’t be. Look, I have to go. I don’t really know what to say.”

  “Just say goodbye and go. Don’t think too hard. That’s the simplest way.”

  “I wish things were different.”

  “Lame, Rob. Doesn’t change anything and it could hurt someone’s feelings.”

  He halted in the doorway, rooted to the spot, needs and desires tugging at him from every direction. He needed to kiss her mouth, hold, touch and taste her again. But he couldn’t trust his emotions and had to keep delusion at bay. He couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t break anything he touched.

  “Goodnight then,” he said, heading for the front door with a diffident glance at eyes he’d immersed himself in an hour earlier, so long ago.

  “Honey, I’m home!” he proclaimed as he slammed the front door shut with studied clumsiness.

  “Hi,” came Hayley’s muffled reply from the kitchen.

  He slipped off his shoes in the hallway and threw his jacket on the stairs. Voicing a silent prayer of thanks that Sharon didn’t appear to wear lipstick or use gallons of perfume, he resisted the urge to throw himself into the shower, instead ambling into the kitchen. As he glimpsed Hayley bent over her laptop at the dining table, he tugged off the tie he’d put on in the car two minutes earlier.

  “Want one?” he asked, filling the kettle to make a hot drink he didn’t really need.

  “No. Thanks. Too late for me.” She closed the laptop’s lid with bitten fingernails. She’d become gaunt in her beauty, cheekbones made stark by weight loss and eyes bruised by sleeplessness. “Late for you too.”

  “Long day. My sleep patterns are still topsy-turvy too.”

  “Got your note. I was still worried. You’re supposed to be off work.”

  “I was bored here. There were things I had to do.”

  “You’re supposed to be taking it easy. Not just now. But.” She almost stood but remained fixed to her chair. “Just tell me something, Rob.”

  “Of course.”

  “What’s going on?” He almost flinched and clenched his jaw shut. “You’re supposed to be using this time. Not just to heal your burns. Christ knows that’s reason enough. But to sort your head out. Get us back on track.”

  “Sorry.” He yawned, perhaps a touch too theatrically. His heart raced, the night’s euphoria flaking into toxic embers. “Work dragged on. As ever.”

  “I can see that. But why the hell were you there at all? I thought the case was finished.”

  “Depends on who you ask. I’m just not sure it is finished. The honest truth,” he added, trying it for size, “is that we may have to begin again from first basics. Something huge may have been missed.”

  “Are you talking about the case or us?”

  He found no answer to this, instead shrugging off the question and turning to pour boiling water into his mug.

  “I rang Slowey,” she said evenly. “When you weren’t back for dinner. He said he’d called you. Couldn’t get an answer though.”

  “He wouldn’t do.” He’d blundered. The ground was crumbling beneath his feet. “Lost my phone in the fire.”

  “You need to brief your friends when you want them to lie for you.”

  “To lie for me…” The lie was thriving and he couldn’t bear to choke it off now. It was the least of his sins and he would atone at a time of his choosing. “Just wait a minute. What on earth are you thinking?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know what to think? You say you’ll be here, looking after yourself, looking after our future. But you’re not. You slope off to work even when you don’t have to. If that’s where you went.”

  “Of course that’s where I went.”’

  “And Slowey’s a good friend to you but I caught him by surprise. He let slip he’d been at work today and got vague on whether he’d seen you there. And how would he call you on the phone you lost?”

  “As I said, he couldn’t. He’s a busy man. Must have slipped his mind.”

  “You’re lying to me. Again. And I don’t even know why.” Hayley simmered, tears burning away before they could fall.

  “I’m in trouble. At work.” He shouted it out, not having to look far for the anger he needed; diverting the lie, allowing it to find a more natural course. “I botched the murder enquiry. I wasn’t on duty. I was working. In a blind panic. Looking for facts. People. To make things right.”

  “And you couldn’t tell me.”

  “Of course not. Newly promoted and I could have lost a major prosecution and my job and maybe you. I had to try to put it right. My way. In my time.”

  “But I’m your partner.” Her tone was brittle; she’d been ready to fight her corner but he’d changed the rules. “You can fall on me. I need you to believe that.”

  “Of course you’re right. But I’m in a deep dark hole. I nicked the wrong man and he torched himself. It’ll all come out, sooner or later. I’ve been told to stay at home. So I can’t work from the office, can’t speak to Slowey. I need to make this right, but I can only do it under the radar.”

  “I just don’t know what to think any more, Rob. I wish I did.”

  “I can’t get off this train. I’ve got to see it through. Then we’ll have time. A quiet space. I promise.”

  “You know nothing’s changed, don’t you. I still need your decision. Soon.”

  “I need a shower.” He picked up the hot mug of tea, deserving the pain, intent on sluicing and scalding the day away.

  “I can’t say I’m troubled about the childhood accident. That was mainly bad luck and stupidity. But as for the way you’re treating Hayley, well you’re old enough to know better.” Slowey used another slice of thick white bread to mop up the last traces of grease and brown sauce from the plate in front of him. “I was going to say I thought better of you but that would be total bollocks.”

  “That’s all?” Harkness said, throwing a few crumbs and scraps of gristle from his bacon sandwich onto the grass for the waiting ducks to bicker over.

  “What were you expecting? It’s mildly surprising but you’re still you. Can’t see how it would affect our working relationship. Unless…” He wiped the grease from his hands and drained his mug of tea.

  “Unless what?”

  “Nice here, isn’t it?” Slowey pushed his plate away and leaned against the creosoted wall of the garden centre café with a contented smile. A pair of mallards tussled and grumbled over the bacon scraps while various elderly couples pecked at their own late breakfasts on the picnic tables arranged around the centre’s ornamental pond.

  “Unless what?”

  “Alright, Sarge. Let a chap digest, won’t you. I meant, unless you really allow yourself to believe you’re somehow cursed. You know, doomed to carry forward your guilt, hell-bent on making amends but destined to make things worse. That kind of thing.”

  “You really think I believe in curses, hexes, bad juju and the like?”

  “Consciously, no. You’re a sceptic, a one-time scientist, a secular type through and through. But at some level, you seem to think that your run-in with Firth was a logical consequence of the antics of your eight-year old self. Maybe you see the similarities and think there must be karma at work. Maybe you actually believe you deserve to suffer, deserve to be held responsible.”

  “Ok. Fine.” Harkness held up his hands in mock surrender.

  “Oh and before I forget. If you expect me to lie for you again, brief me first. And give me a good reason. Hayley’s a nice girl…”<
br />
  “And deserves better or whatever else you were going to say. Yes, guilty as charged.”

  Slowey produced a handkerchief, wetted the end with his tongue and began rubbing at a sauce stain on his tie which today featured a pattern of slavering cartoon animals chasing each other in an endless spiralling pattern. Harkness felt liberated and anonymous in t-shirt, jeans and sunglasses, but his hands, red raw and shedding skin in silver shreds, still branded him.

  “So why were you pretending to be at work yesterday?”

  “I was working the case.”

  “So where did you go? Which witness did you bother?”

  “Sharon Jennings.”

  “Pretty girl? Plenty to say for herself? Marjorie’s daughter?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Jesus. Rob. Is that why I’m your alibi?”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Bollocks,” exclaimed Slowey, causing blue-rinses and flat caps to be shaken sadly all around them. “Thrice bollocks.”

  “Alright,” whispered Harkness, realising with a surge of anxiety how much he counted on Slowey’s respect. “It is what you think but it’s not just that.”

  “Well you’ve just wolfed down that second bacon sandwich so you can’t have stayed for breakfast.”

  “We talked. Swapped life stories. One thing led to another.”

  “Tends to when you go looking for it.”

  “The point is we, I, missed something. Her brother saw something and either can’t tell us or hasn’t been allowed to.”

  “Doesn’t matter, Sarge. You’ve heard the news. The prime and most likely suspect is dead. Nobody else has a motive. I’m still on the team but not for much longer. We’re making sure it’s watertight, but we’re doing it for the Coroner, not for a prosecution. We need to start excluding evidence, not including it.”

  “If he could only tell us what we already knew, I’d agree. But what if it wasn’t Firth?”