The meanest Flood

pad.
    ‘Yeah?’ Geordie’s voice said in his ear.
    ‘Did you see the news?’
    ‘I’m still watching. Trying to. I mean, I was watching it and then the phone rang. Now I’m on the phone. The news is history.’
    ‘The house in Leeds. The bodies, you catch that?’
    ‘Yeah. Sounds nasty.’
    ‘Geordie, that’s where I was this morning. The same street.’
    Silence.
    ‘You still there?’
    ‘Yeah, I’m still here. The house? You mean you went to the same house?’
    ‘No. The address I had was across the road, opposite the house with the bodies.’
    ‘It could be a coincidence, Sam. No need to panic.’
    ‘OK, let’s look at it. Last week I was in Nottingham and Katherine was killed. The cops pulled me in and I had to lie to get out of it. Now this Bonner guy rings and asks me to meet him in Leeds. I go to the house and the same day a couple of bodies turn up over the road. People know I was there. The guy in the house. I went to another house, to make sure I hadn’t got the wrong address. My car was parked in the street.’
    ‘But why would they think of you, Sam? We don’t even know who these people are, the dead guy and the woman.’
    ‘That’s why I’m ringing. Can you find out?’
    ‘How do I do that? It’s the middle of the night.’
    ‘Drive out there. Walk along the street. Ask the neighbours.’
    ‘At midnight?’
    ‘Nobody’ll be sleeping, Geordie. The place will be buzzing with reporters. Just hang around and listen to what they’re saying. When you find out ring me at home.’
    ‘You sound worried, Sam.’
    ‘I need to know the score. If the bodies belong to people I know, how long will it be before the cops come knocking on my door again?’
    ‘You think it’s a set-up?’
    ‘I think I need to be careful. I’ll wait for your call.’
    ‘OK, I’m on my way. But here’s a thought for you.’
    ‘I’ve got enough thoughts, Geordie.’
    ‘Who do you know who lives in Headingley?’
    There was a gentle click as Geordie put the phone down at the other end of the line.
    Sam went upstairs and walked into the bathroom. Angeles was lying in the bath, her skin glistening in the rising steam from the water.
    ‘You looking for me?’ she asked.
    ‘Listen, something’s come up. I have to go out.’
    ‘Oh, Sam, I thought you were staying. What is it? Can’t it wait?’
    ‘I’ll explain later,’ he told her. ‘Got to get moving.’
    He kissed her on the lips and she ran a damp hand over his head. He closed the bathroom door behind him and shook his head. ‘Who’re you gonna miss the most?’ he asked himself as he ran down the stairs.
     
    Back at his own house, Sam thought about Geordie’s question. He didn’t know anyone in Headingley. He knew a couple of pubs there, or he used to know them in the old days. Places he’d gone looking for a good time but only scored a length of oblivion. He’d once woken up on the floor of a flat in Headingley. No one around but there was a three-legged cat, student posters on the walls and some naive artist had painted stars on the ceiling.
    And way back in the mists of time, when Elvis was still alive, there’d been a house in Headingley with a guy who did embroidery.
    There was such a thing as coincidence, of course, everyone knew that. It was statistically possible that Mr Bonner had given him the wrong address in North Lane and asked him to go there at the same time as a murder was committed. The two things could be unrelated. But Sam didn’t believe that. When you’d worked the streets for as long as he had worked them you were suspicious of coincidence. It could get you into trouble. Better to dispense with it as a theory altogether. Concentrate instead on the near certainty that if two things happened simultaneously it was more than likely that someone was orchestrating them.
    Maybe the guy at number thirty-seven was Bonner after all? Or he was a guy who called himself Bonner when he was setting someone up on the phone? Sam tried to recall him, think if he’d seen the guy before. He’d worn a track-suit and trainers. And he was good-looking in that modern way; his head and face like a successful product of Hitler’s experiments in genetic engineering while his mind proved that the concept was a fallacy. Couldn’t have been him, he’d have had to read from a script. When he’d opened the door and Sam had enquired, ‘Mr Bonner?’ the guy had had to think about it.
    It was interesting to speculate, a possible area in