August burnt. A searing sun in a cloudless sky. It was a favourite month of Troy’s. The persistence of childhood. His birthday fell in the last week of August, leaving three whole weeks of anticipation. Even now, when he scarcely bothered to acknowledge birthdays, to see August on the calendar created that same sense of waiting for something. August burnt. He sat on the shady side of the court, read an American novel Kitty had abandoned on his bedside table – Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow. It appeared to be the tale of a man who was partly inspired, partly crazy and completely frustrated. It was not Kitty’s kind of book. It was his kind of book. And he read in the papers of droughts in East Anglia, of peatland fires in Derbyshire, of the extended national tour to the Royals and Empires of provincial Britain by one Vince Christy, of the impending state visit of President Eisenhower – and of the murder of Glenda Felucci in an Essex village and the almost immediate arrest of two unnamed suspects.
And he called Kolankiewicz. ‘What kind of gun killed Bruno’s wife?’
‘A .357. Can we either of us be surprised at that?’
And he waited for the call from Jack that never came. August burnt. August was a month of waiting.