THIRTY-EIGHT

Jean said nothing for a long time after we had driven out of the station car park at Norbury in my car. The silence was painful; she just stared straight ahead, lips firmly closed, eyes unblinking, whilst I drove with due care and attention. In a temporal and spatial sense, it was a short journey; in the sense of interpersonal relationships, it was a voyage around the world. I gave in, of course. ‘Are you pissed off with me?’

She turned her head to me at once for a brief moment, then back to the oncoming road; her stare had been painfully intense, though. She said, ‘Inspector Masson warned me about you.’

‘Did he?’ I was, I confess, surprised.

‘Oh, yes. As soon as he spotted you in the gymnasium he told me what you’re like.’

I felt a touch of affront. ‘What am I like?’

Now that was always going to be a dangerous question, but, alas, also an irresistible one, you will doubtless have realized. She said dispassionately, ‘He said you’re probably a very good GP but, as far as he was concerned, you’re a constant irritant; he added that you cannot resist trespassing where you’re not wanted and that your interference in police procedure, no matter how well intentioned, verges on the criminal.’

‘Oh . . .’

But she had yet to finish. ‘He added that your father’s even worse, although at least he has the excuse of senility.’

All this seemed a bit of a turnaround on the part of her attitude towards the Elliots, especially the junior branch. ‘Oh . . .’

The journey was completed in silence. The evening was cooling as we walked through the playground to the back area of the school; the buildings sheltered the worst of the traffic noise, and so there was a hint of the rural about the scene. It seemed to soften her somewhat. ‘Where is this clue?’ she asked, her voice mocking but gently so.

I took her over to the spot and drew her attention to what had been scrawled. She contemplated it for a long time, tilting her head on occasion, even going so far as to screw up her darkly hazel eyes. Then she relaxed, as if holding her breath was all part of the ‘police procedures’ in which I apparently interfered. ‘You’ve got a thing about graffiti, haven’t you?’

‘Not so as you’d notice.’

She scanned the entire wall. ‘This is like finding the face of the Virgin Mary in the froth of an emptied beer glass. You could make out anything in this chaos.’

‘But you see, don’t you? It looks like JG because of the upstroke of the h beneath it, the one from the word shit. It turns a C into a G.’

‘If you say so.’

I gave in. ‘OK. Thanks for taking a look, anyway.’

She must have felt a bit sorry for me for it was with a slight smile that she said, ‘You should have told me your theory first.’

‘I was going to.’

As we walked back to the car, I told her what had happened between me and Max. ‘I’m worried about her,’ I said.

‘I’m sure you’re exaggerating the threat from Tristan.’ Everyone seemed to think that; even I could occasionally be persuaded to that point of view, although there were times in the middle of the night when I awoke from a dream in which he was stamping on my fingers; rather painfully this was a dream based on memory and not fantasy. She added reassuringly, ‘I’ve no doubt her parents will look after her until she calms down a bit.’

‘I still don’t understand why she’s reacted like this.’

She stopped abruptly, looking at me with an expression that at first I thought was concerned, then I realized was pitying. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘You don’t, do you?’

Another long, quiet journey then ensued. As we arrived back at the station, Masson was just hurrying down the steps of the front entrance. He sailed past the front of the car as we both got out. Jean called out, ‘Sir? What’s going on?’

He turned at her call. ‘There’s been some sort of incident in Kingswood Avenue. A man’s been stabbed.’

Ever eager to help, I called, ‘Do you need me?’

He swung his gaze around upon me and, even for Masson, it was malevolent, quite possibly unto the point of loathing. ‘There’s an ambulance in attendance and I’m sure they will be able to cope so no, Doctor, I don’t need you.’

‘Is it a domestic?’ asked Jean as she went to join him.

He was still staring at me; I momentarily wondered if unbeknownst to me I’d sprouted some sort of appendage out of the back of my head, so fascinated was he with me. ‘Sort of,’ he replied. ‘The casualty’s name is Mike Clarke.’