The meanest Flood

which to dig, but it didn’t fill Sam with enthusiasm. Better than the student squat and the embroidery guy but he could think about it all night, it wasn’t going to light any bulbs either.
    You sit alone in an empty house waiting for the call from Geordie, waiting for something to happen. You go into those spaces inside your head that the AA handbook tells you to steer clear of. Scary places where the voices tell you you’ll be fine if you have a drink. You don’t want to get drunk, this isn’t the point at all, you just fancy a nip in the middle of the night, something to keep the demons at bay. Medicine. One single shot.
    Sam shook his head, a smile on his lips. The voices had tried it on before, they came back from time to time. They were opportunist voices, insinuated themselves whether he was ready to hear them or not. And sometimes they were lucky. They’d have him going down the road to that all-night club on Bootham where you could score anything if you had the cash.
    But tonight wasn’t their night. Sam didn’t keep booze in the house and he wasn’t going to move an inch until he got the phone call. He might see the world differently after that, he didn’t know, couldn’t tell from here. But he didn’t think that Geordie’s news, whatever it was, would alter his focus. He was feeling strong, alert. There was something going on that he didn’t understand but he knew that it was going to require all of his strength and all of his attention to keep pace with it.
    Sam Turner knew about the illusions that are stored up in bottles of alcohol and he knew better than anybody else that his own physical and emotional constitution couldn’t cope with them. For whatever reason he was an alcoholic and he always would be. And the lesson meant that he couldn’t drink without getting drunk. Not ever. He could bluff it with a bottle of wine and some candles, make it look like he was a social drinker for a while. But once his system tasted the real thing he’d put his head down and charge at the red rag of reason.
    He listened to the night. The expansion and contraction of the house, the gently falling rain, panicking wind trapped in the howling cul-de-sac of the guttering. He heard the occasional footfall as a neighbour or a prowler sought some private meaning of their own. And he started from time to time as the local tomcats fought off the competition, then returned to their soliciting of Miss Debbie and Lala, the neighbourhood’s resident feline beauty queens.
    Sam made a pot of coffee and brought it over to the table and the phone rang before he could pour it into a cup.
    ‘Yeah?’
    Geordie said, ‘OK, I’ve got it. The couple were called Day. Rolf and Nicole. They moved in last year so the neighbours don’t know much about them. He was a lecturer at the university.’
    ‘Small guy,’ said Sam. ‘Glasses. An existentialist. He thought he’d discovered how reality is constituted by consciousness.’
    ‘You knew him?’ Geordie asked.
    ‘Never met the guy,’ Sam said. ‘But Nicole and I were an item before she ran off with him. She talked about him all the time. I got the impression he was a genius.’
    ‘Jesus, Sam, somebody wants you nailed to a cross.’
    ‘Seems that way. I’d better make myself scarce before the knock on the door comes.’
    ‘Where will you go?’
    ‘Dunno yet, Geordie. I’ll be in touch. Look after yourself.’
    ‘You too, Sam. And let me know what to do next, get you out of this one.’
    Sam put the phone down. He scratched his head and reached for his rucksack. No time to waste. With all these clues about and modern policing methods, the boys in blue might put two and two together and be here before Christmas.
     
    He was ready to leave when the phone rang again. Something Geordie had forgotten to tell him. But as soon as he picked up the handset he knew it wasn’t Geordie. A discernible silence for a moment, then the voice of Bonner. ‘Am I talking to Sam Turner?’
    Sam kept shtoom. Waited.
    A thin laugh came down the wire. No humour to it. Bonner said, ‘I know it’s you, Mr Turner. I’ve an observation for you. It’s the middle of the night now but this morning, when your ex-partner was transformed -could have been you.’
    ‘Who are you?’ Sam said. ‘What do you want?’
    ‘Think of me as a man with a list, Mr Turner. You might recognize some of the names on it. Katherine Turner, Nicole Day, Holly Andersen, Alice Richardson, and I think you