The meanest Flood

with a sheath knife. By that time his drunk had lasted too many years. After they’d nursed him back to health he’d carried on drinking for another five.
    Sam laughed.
    ‘Something funny?’
    ‘When I came round,’ he said, ‘at the hospital, the police came to see me. Check if they should launch a murder hunt for the squaddies or give them a medal each. I was half-asleep and you came to the side of the bed with the Chief Superintendent - what was his name? - and he said, “What’s the prognosis?”
    ‘You told him, “Oh, his condition is very satisfactory.” And then the two of you wandered away towards the nurses’ station.
    ‘Very satisfactory? I thought. Must mean I’m going to die.’
    Marie smiled. ‘Didn’t stop you drinking though, did it?’
    Sam shook his head. It made me think,’ he said. ‘Made me realize I wasn’t the man I’d set out to be.’
    ‘And now you are?’
    ‘Still need to develop some humility.’
    ‘Shall I tell you something, Sam? About you?’
    ‘Don’t be bashful.’
    ‘You don’t talk about them much, but when you get around to telling about past relationships, how they failed, it’s always you who was at fault.’
    ‘It’s because I’m the centre of my own universe,’ he said. ‘I look at the world from my point of view and I report what I see. If I could see it from Katherine’s point of view it’d look different.’
    ‘But which is right?’
    Sam laughed. ‘And where is reality?’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s somewhere in between or it could be in another place entirely, somewhere we haven’t looked yet.’
    The telephone rang and he turned to his desk and picked up the handset. ‘Sam Turner,’ he said.
    ‘The detective?’ asked the voice in his ear. Sounded like a mobile connection. A voice which was croaky and at the same time slightly nasal. An uncertain individual; not a voice to trust.
    ‘That’s me. Can I help?’
    ‘I need someone to investigate my staff,’ the man said. ‘Things are going missing.’
    ‘And you are?’ Sam asked.
    ‘The name’s Bonner,’ the man said. ‘But I don’t want to speak over the phone. Could you come to my home?’
    ‘Address?’ Sam reached for his pad.
    ‘I’m in Leeds. Do you know Headingley?’
    ‘The cricket ground?’
    ‘No,’ the voice said. ‘North Lane. There’s a pub at the top called the Taps.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘I know the place.’
    He scribbled the house number and street on his pad. ‘Today?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m away today,’ the guy said with the speed of a young Mozart. ‘But tomorrow morning would be good. Nine o’clock?’
    ‘I’ll be there, Mr Bonner.’
    Sam replaced the handset in its cradle and looked at it. ‘Something wrong?’ Marie asked.
    ‘No, it’s work,’ he said. ‘Exactly what we need. Something odd about the guy is all. He seemed to be winging it, making it up as he went along.’
    Marie made a face. ‘That’s the main drawback to this business,’ she said. ‘The customers. Some of them are fine but we get a higher percentage of slimeballs than North Yorkshire Water.’
     

11
     
    After he was released from the police station Ruben Parkins went back to his flat on the Lenton Boulevard and thought it through. The police had believed him. When he’d found himself in the interview room he’d expected to be fitted up. In the past, whenever he’d found himself facing a couple of them in that room or another room identical to it in other police stations, they’d always been absolutely sure he’d done the deed. Sometimes they’d been right and sometimes they’d been wrong, but either way they’d do their damnedest to pin the crime on Ruben. Every other time but this. They didn’t suspect that he’d killed Kitty, even though he was on the spot and covered in her blood.
    The difference was Kitty herself. She had brought something intangible to his life. She would have laughed if he’d said that to her. ‘No, I haven’t,’ she’d have said. ‘Everything you are was already in place when we met. All I did was help you find something that was part of you.’
    She had natural modesty. Ruben had never met that before. Not like Kitty’s. Most people you met, they were falling over themselves to prove how great they were. Among guys it was direct competition, the strut or the curled lip, the way they’d show off their women or their biceps or the length of their schlongs. Women were subtle sometimes but even the quiet ones with