Rush of Blood (23 page)

Walking from church, Dave took Marina’s hand and squeezed and when they reached the car, he said, ‘That was nice, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘Not a great turnout, but that’s not how we measure these things, is it?’ He opened the car doors. ‘It’s how you feel afterwards.’

Driving home, Dave felt pretty good, always a lot calmer at this time on a Sunday than he had been walking into the cool and
the silence of the church. The stress and the tension built up during the week, every petty annoyance and painful memory lodged
like a small, sharp stone in his chest, until by Saturday night the weight of them had become almost unbearable. With the
worn wood of the pew solid at his back though and the words of the sermon echoing around, the weight was lifted, he could
feel
the rushing wind and once he began to sing – loud enough sometimes to make Marina wince next to him – it was as though he
weighed nothing at all, and nothing mattered but God and forgiving, and nothing and nobody could ever wind him up again.

Only for an hour or two, the anaesthetic bliss of that, but still …

‘You know the smell?’ he asked. He was waiting patiently to pull out
into traffic on the main road, no hint of irritation, not a single angry gesture as bastard after bastard refused to let him
out. ‘Mothballs, candles, whatever it is. The smell in the church.’

‘What?’ Marina said.

Dave smiled, waved a thank you and eased out. ‘It’s
faith
,’ he said. ‘I heard an old woman telling her friend. The “glorious stink of faith”, she said.’ He chuckled. ‘That’s great,
don’t you think?’

‘Smells like old clothes to me,’ Marina said. Her eyes were fixed on the blur of shops and houses moving past the passenger
window. ‘A charity shop or something.’

She didn’t say a great deal else for the rest of the journey home, but Dave thought that was OK. They never talked much afterwards,
each enjoying the moments of quiet reflection after a service in their own way. Dave believed it was important that they respected
one another’s headspace, especially at times like this, but all the same he wondered and could only imagine that, while it
lasted, she was relishing the same feelings of peace and calm that he was.

Of course she was, he could see it on her face.

They certainly never discussed their beliefs with anyone else. Not with work colleagues or friends and definitely not with
that Florida lot. Nobody’s business but theirs, same as everything else. Yes, it was partly because they were private people,
but Dave was not the sort to foist his opinions on anyone else. He couldn’t stand those idiots who tried ramming their religion
down your throat, and besides, if he was going to respect the beliefs of others, surely that included the freedom to believe
in bugger all. Not that he would have minded half an hour with Richard bloody Dawkins, put him right about a few things …

He knew others might find it all a bit … strange, what with him being such a science geek and all that, but he’d never found
the two things to be incompatible. Like he’d said to Marina once, ‘Why can’t I have God
and
an iPhone?’ He’d been very pleased with that one, had passed it round the congregation the following Sunday.

‘Quiet night in, yeah?’

Marina nodded.

He’d taken her to church for the first time a day or two after they’d met. That party when they’d found out how much they
had in common. He’d told her just how much his faith had helped him with all the bad stuff, told her it would do the same
for her.

Which it had, that was obvious.

‘Stops the hate eating you up,’ he’d told her. ‘And the guilt.’ They both agreed that was the worst thing.

They never really
dis
agreed, not about anything that mattered, which Dave reckoned was what made them such a perfect team. I’m the brains of it
and you’re the heart, he would say to her. Give me the best computer in the world and I couldn’t design anything better. You
and me versus the rest of them kind of thing.

God, the Florida lot …

Turning into the street where they lived, he felt a nice fresh stone heavy in his chest, the jagged edges of it.

‘Nowhere to park,’ Marina said, quietly.

He could just imagine how they would react. Barry sniggering like a kid and Ed making ‘God Squad’ remarks, the wives meek
as mice. Well, Barry was thick as mince and the only divinity Ed believed in was between his legs, so screw
them
!

‘When are we going to get Residents’ Parking?’ He felt for the inhaler in his pocket, the stone settling in. ‘How many emails
have I sent now …?’

Ten minutes trying to find a space, and walking back from the next road along, Marina’s hand still hot in his and the sun
on his back, Dave could see nothing but their faces. Smirks and knowing glances and Ed pretending he was a deep thinker; trotting
out the usual tired shit.

‘So, if God is
love
or whatever, how do you explain tsunamis and babies with AIDS? How do you explain murdered girls?’

Dave imagined it all very clearly. Barry nodding, impressed, and Ed waiting with his arms folded.
Go on then, smartarse, answer that
. He wouldn’t of course, not because he couldn’t but because they were not
worth it. He would say nothing. He would just smile and hope they understood how worthless he thought they both were.

He would say nothing.

Marina went straight to the fridge and began swigging water from the bottle. She’d nearly been sick in the church, but now,
when Dave came across and rubbed the small of her back, mouth twisted in concern, she just put the bottle back and smiled
and said she was fine. A bit hot, that was all.

He’d trotted off to check on the thermostat.

But not for long.

More than anything she wanted to be on her own, just for five bloody minutes, but he kept following her; upstairs, then from
bedroom to bathroom and back again like a puppy. He spoke in that high, silly voice he reserved for times like this. He reached
out to stroke her neck when she passed and, in all the ways she had come to recognise, made it blindingly obvious that he
was hoping for his Sunday night special.

She could never understand it. Why did God make him so horny? The last thing praying made Marina feel like was fucking.

She wanted a hot shower.

Not that she
had
been praying, of course.

At first she’d gone along because she had nothing better to do, happy enough to make him happy; clinging to the hope that
it might help, that maybe belief was something you could get better at, like table tennis or a foreign language. It couldn’t
hurt, could it? But she’d known almost straight away that it wasn’t for her. She’d found it all a bit creepy to tell the truth,
a bit desperate, and she could never quite bring herself to tell him, to destroy his image of them as ideally matched. Beautiful,
he’d said, that’s what we are, like the perfect bit of software.

MarinaDave Version 1.0. He’d actually written that once, in a Valentine card!

She didn’t know how he managed to … disassociate himself the way
he did. Like he was a character in one of the games he designed, like what had happened wasn’t real. She envied it, if she
was honest, couldn’t find anything that worked better than spliff or red wine. Maybe she didn’t
want
to let go of the hate, not completely. Sometimes she felt it crackling through her and it was like she was empowered by it,
staring at some of the idiots on the other side of the reception desk and feeling so much stronger than they could possibly
imagine.

The guilt was something else though.

Today, Dave belting out some dirge about kings and shepherds next to her and she could feel it coming off her like sweat.
She half expected that her fingers would leave it there for everyone to see, in tell-tale, guilt-greasy smudges on the hymn
book.

What she’d done. What she wanted to carry on doing.

She wasn’t stupid, I mean you didn’t need to be Freud or whoever to work out that this was probably why she wanted to be an
actress or a writer. Why she wanted to tell
other
people’s stories.

‘You look tense,’ he said.

‘Just tired,’ she said.

‘How about a massage later?’ Behind her now, his small hands on her shoulders. ‘I could run you a bath …’

She knew what people thought, how they looked at her sometimes when she told them she was an actress. An actress … who works
as a dental receptionist.
Oh right … you get a lot of work?
She’d seen that look from Angie and from Ed, from Sue even and she was probably the only one with a creative bone in her
body.

‘That would be lovely,’ she said. ‘Thanks, babe …’

Nobody knew how good an actress she really was.

‘It’s me.’

‘Hey, Jeff …’

Hey
, like she was happy enough it was him, but also
hey
, like she was not that surprised, like who else would it be? Gardner could not help asking himself how many other people
were calling Patti Lee Wilson these days to see how she was. When he’d been up there he hadn’t seen too many signs that anybody
else had been around to check up on her. There were no cards, no food in Tupperware from neighbours in the fridge. There had
been a handful of distant relatives at the funeral, a few of Amber-Marie’s friends, but nobody had seemed keen to stick around
afterwards.

‘What you doing?’

‘Just watching TV,’ she said.

‘Anything good?’

‘Some gameshow. It’s OK.’

‘Nothing wrong with gameshows.’

‘Hey, I got a job.’

‘You did?’

‘Just the checkout at Best Buy, but that’s fine, you know? Pays the
bills, right? No point waiting around for IBM to come knocking at my door.’ She laughed, and Gardner heard applause from the
TV. ‘How
you
doing?’

‘Busy,’ Gardner said.

‘People never get tired of killing each other, huh?’

‘Seems that way.’

‘It’s a sick world, Jeff.’ She paused and the volume from the TV was turned down. ‘It’s kind of ironic, but sometimes I think
my baby was too good for it, you know? Better off … somewhere else. Does that make sense?’

Gardner had no idea if Patti was religious or not. The ceremony had been pretty much standard, except for a short reading
from
The Prophet
and the pop song Patti had said was her daughter’s favourite. Something about fireflies.

‘Yeah, I see that,’ Gardner said.

‘Wouldn’t you rather
not
be busy?’ she asked. ‘Trying to catch murderers, I mean. Wouldn’t you rather be giving out tickets or chasing the assholes
who didn’t pay their taxes or whatever? I bet you’d sleep a damn sight better.’

‘It’s my job, Patti. I just deal with what comes my way.’

She sighed a ‘Yeah, I know,’ then said nothing for a few seconds. ‘So, this part of your job, Jeff?’ Her voice was quieter
now. She sounded sleepy. ‘The aftercare?’

‘Listen. I wanted to ask you,’ Gardner said. ‘When you were at the Pelican Palms, you remember the three British couples?’

She said, ‘Sure,’ but there was hesitancy and a question in it.

‘The three guys, you remember them?’

‘Yeah …’

‘Ed Dunning, Dave Cullen—’

‘I don’t remember their names—’

‘That’s OK—’

‘Which of them was which, anything like that.’

‘Look, I’m just asking if maybe one of them was a bit friendlier with Amber-Marie than the others.’ Gardner was struggling
to find the
right words. ‘Did you notice … anything that might have been a little off?’

‘Don’t you think I would have mentioned that?’

‘Maybe something that didn’t seem strange at the time, I don’t know. I know I’m asking you to think back, but—’

‘They were nice,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t like I got real friendly with any of them, it was just a few words once or twice, you
know? But they were nice …’

‘OK.’

‘Why? You think one of those guys …?’

‘No … look, it was just a shot, OK?’ There was more noise from the television, bells and klaxons sounding. ‘I’m just following
up on a few things, loose ends, you know?’ He did not want to say anything else. She did not sound tired any more.

‘Shit …’ He heard a noise, a hand slapped down on the cushion of the settee, maybe. ‘Now I’m going to have to take some pills.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I’ve just started to sleep a bit better, four or five hours the last few nights, but now … well, I think I may need a little
help after this.’

‘Really, there’s no need.’

‘Easy for you to say.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Gardner held the phone to his chest for a few seconds, cursed quietly. ‘Like I said.’

‘Your job, right.’

He told her that he needed to go, then said the same things he’d said countless times. He told her that he would let her know
as soon as there was any real news, that the case was anything but closed. He tried to make it sound fresh,
meant
, half expecting to hear a sarcastic ‘blah blah blah’ coming back at him.

‘You like Lucinda Williams, Jeff?’ she asked when he was done.

‘I don’t know,’ Gardner said. ‘I mean … I’ve never really listened to any of her songs.’

‘There’s this one of hers, “Sweet Old World”. It’s a real sad one, where she’s talking to some fool who’s killed himself,
telling him about
all the great stuff he’s left behind.’ She began to softly hum a few ragged bars and, when she stopped, the breath catching
in her throat, the muted applause from the TV sounded as though it might be for her.

‘Patti …?’

‘I love her stuff … always have. She’s got this
voice
, you know? You can hear the hurt in it and the pack of Marlboros a day and all the great sex she’s having. She can give you
chills, I swear … but I’m telling you right now that’s one stupid song I’m never going to listen to again. “See what you lost
when you left this sweet old world”. You see what I’m getting at, Jeff?’

He saw it, but let her say it anyway.

‘Nothing sweet about it.’