Shooting in the Dark

acquainted. She’ll need to know who I am, get to know my little ways.’
    Geordie did a double-take. ‘You mean you’re gonna push her in the pram?’
    ‘No,’ Sam said. ‘I thought I’d take her on the bike, give her a croggy, leave the pram in the garden shed.’
     
    Opera North had brought their production of Carmen to town and Angeles Falco would be going to that evening’s performance. When Sam tried to buy a ticket, the woman in the booking office told him it’d be easier to get knighted.
    He asked her to repeat it, and she said the same thing again, which was a change.
    At five o’clock he relieved JD and sat in the Montego fifty metres down the road from Angeles’ house. His injured hand was playing up this evening. He flexed his fingers repeatedly, but couldn’t stop them cramping up.
    There it was again, that irrational effect of a strange woman walking into his life. You could probably narrow it down to a physical effect, the result of mixing a few chemicals and hormones together. The attraction of opposites. Sexual tension. But somewhere deep down Sam believed in miracles. He strung days together into weeks, and the weeks became months and there was no sign of a woman. There were always females around, other people’s women or friends or colleagues; but after a while you forgot the absurd effect of being knocked sideways, ceased to believe in it as a possibility.
    Then she walks into your office. You’re the oldest and the greyest guy in town; you’ve been celibate so long you’re beginning to philosophize. You’re so sad you don’t bother brushing the dandruff off your collar any more. You slap at it but it’s building up, beginning to make you stoop. You watch her, you listen and smell, and the feel of her when your hands touched lingers on. You feel foolish and you like it. You remember worlds you inhabited which were crazy, and the world you’re living in now suddenly seems unstable.
    It was quiet. At 5.12 a new BMW arrived at the large white house two doors down from the Falco residence. One of the Stepford wives got out and carried her shopping into the house. At 5.17 a maroon Daimler with white-walled tyres juddered to a stop outside a substantial, gabled mansion, and a stereotypical drunken lord rolled out of it. He wove his way up the path to his front door, leaving the motor almost parked.
    5.48: Canary-yellow Peugeot 306 Cabriolet playing a Bjork CD louder than the tone of the neighbourhood dictated. Drove at speed, the engine booming, into the garage of a bungalow called ‘Home’. Rustling of white bond paper as the other residents of the street prepared to write letters of complaint.
    A minute or two before six, Sam walked down to Angeles Falco’s house. Before he turned into the gate he noted that the street was deserted apart from a paper-girl with a green mountain bike who was delivering the Evening Press. She used the bike like a scooter, with one foot on a pedal, and at every stop she let it fall to the ground with a crash.
    Sam rang the doorbell and waited for Angeles to let him in. She’d been to the hairdresser during the afternoon and her dark curls were stiff from the tension. She wore a thin housecoat over a three-quarter-length silk slip. Bare legs with fine hairs on the shins, silvered in the lamplight.
    He followed her to the lounge and let himself sink into the luxury of the sofa. There was a game of Scrabble set out on the table, Braille version. A cut-glass tumbler with two rocks of ice swimming in Laphroaig. But Angeles was more interesting. You could watch her all the time. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t aware she was being watched, or if she was she didn’t find anything wrong with that. Maybe blind people didn’t know that it wasn’t socially acceptable to stare? Why should they know that? Or even think about it? It wasn’t their problem.
    ‘I’m getting dressed,’ she said, heading for the stairs. ‘You can come up if you like, help me choose.’
    ‘This is not the kind of offer I get every day,’ Sam said, as he followed her up to her bedroom. ‘There’s usually a little more work involved before I get into a lady’s boudoir.’
    ‘Bedroom, not boudoir,’ she said.
    ‘Poetic licence?’
    ‘A boudoir is a small room, somewhere a girl can sit and sulk. My bedroom is rather large.’
    The bedroom was enormous, taking up three-quarters of the upper floor of the house. The wall opposite the windows was lined with cupboards from