Shooting in the Dark

enough for her. He was too much like Marie herself. Her soft, rounded body yearned for hardness in a man. She wanted someone who had an oily rag hanging out of his pocket and calluses on his hands. Someone who went out in the morning and messed with the sharp end of life.
    ‘God help me, Russell,’ she said. ‘Even when they’re perfect they don’t match up to requirements.’
    Marie wanted Gus back, even after all these years. She wanted Gus or someone so like him that it made no difference. And the search took her out in the morning and kept her at it until the stars came out. The result was an emotional desert with the occasional watering hole.
    ‘The difference between you and me, Russell, apart from the obvious, of course, is that it didn’t work for you. In the love department we both managed on fairly frugal diets. But yours killed you, whereas mine nourishes me. Only just, but I get by.’
    Sitting up all night with the body of a man she hardly knew. She was keeping a vigil. It had to be done. Russell Harvey had spent his life alone, but for this night he would have company.
    It was a wake, she decided, after the pale light of the dawn had crept over the surfaces in the room. She kissed the tips of her fingers and put them to his cheek. Outside the air was sharp, the streets beginning to stir with people making their way from bed to work. Marie headed for home and the warmth and comfort of her single duvet.
     

31
     
    ‘Is Sam rich?’
    ‘It’s a simple enough question,’ said Ralph. ‘You don’t have to repeat it back to me.’
    ‘Is Sam rich?’ said Geordie. ‘How can you think he’s rich? He’s a private eye. Sometimes he doesn’t have enough to pay us our wages.’
    ‘That’s exploitation,’ Ralph told him. ‘You could sue him for that.’
    It was two o’clock in the afternoon and they were playing snooker in the Stonebow. Ralph had come up tops on a dog the night before, and when he got out of bed around 11.30 he’d taken Geordie out for breakfast. Geordie had already had breakfast with Janet and Echo four hours earlier, but he didn’t mention that, not wanting to hurt Ralph’s feelings.
    They’d had the works, egg and bacon, hash browns, sausage, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes, chips and two mugs of dark brown tea. Ralph had tried to get his teeth round the waitress, a tall girl with a moustache and a black bra showing through a transparent blouse. He’d arranged to meet her in the Museum Gardens when she got off at three, so the snooker was to fill in time until then.
    Barney, Geordie’s dog, had crept under the snooker table. He’d been withdrawn and quiet since Ralph had arrived on the scene, but more so when Ralph was drinking. Occasionally the dog’s nose and eyes would appear and he’d give Geordie a dirty look.
    ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Geordie asked defensively.
    Ralph was rolling when he came back to the table with another two foaming glasses of lager. It was their fifth pint in an hour and a half, and didn’t look as though it was going to be the last. Geordie tried to think back to when he had drunk so much before, but he couldn’t remember. When he’d been on the street he used to drink cheap wine and worse, whatever was going in fact, but not lager. Maybe he’d drunk around four pints once with Janet, when they first met, but he couldn’t be sure. Sometimes he made up stories like that because it made him sound cool.
    Ralph, though, he could drink five or six pints any time of the day or night. If he really went for it, he could probably stand at a bar all night, go through ten or fifteen pints and not even blink. Jesus, he’d been a sailor. On ships.
    ‘I’d never sue Sam,’ Geordie said. ‘Sam’s the best bloke I met in my life. It wasn’t for him, I’d still be walking the streets. Me an’ Barney both. I’d never’ve met Janet, that was through him as well, and Echo’d never been heard of.’ He supped a couple of inches off the top of the glass.
    ‘All right,’ Ralph said. ‘Keep your hair on. I’m not telling you to sue the guy. I’m just saying he’s got a nice set-up. I’m making a remark, something to talk about.’
    ‘Go on, then.’
    ‘That house he lives in,’ said Ralph. ‘That’s his own house, right? He owns it?’
    ‘Was Dora’s house,’ Geordie said. ‘Before she died. Sam, he inherited it.’
    ‘Y’know how much that house’s worth?’
    ‘Dunno. It’s a big house.’
    ‘Right. It’s a big