The meanest Flood

she went, it pervaded the place.
    Taps running in the bathroom upstairs.
    He touched the kettle in the kitchen, see if she’d been down to make a drink. It was cold. He switched it on. Maybe she’d want coffee before they left. If she didn’t that was OK. Whatever the lady desired.
    He crept up the stairs breathing shallowly, a faint smile on his face. He imagined the shriek she’d come out with when he pushed open the bathroom door, the intake of her breath and the realization and relief as she came towards him, her arms outstretched.
    The upper landing was sodden, water coming under the bathroom door and soaking into the fitted carpet. His feet squelched as he walked towards the bathroom with growing trepidation.
    But she wasn’t in there. The radiator was on and there was a pink bath towel hanging on it. A face-cloth lay on the lavatory seat. The taps were running and water was streaming over the side of the bath, flooding the floor. Ruben turned the taps off and fished for the plug. The water gurgled as it ran down the drain. In the mirror on the cabinet Ruben’s face stared back at him like one of those Impressionist paintings. It was hot in the small room and a line of sweat ran off his forehead and into his eye. He brushed it away impatiently and turned for the bedroom.
    And she was still in bed, asleep.
    It was the silence that got to him. There were no sounds in the house. Nothing apart from the sounds he brought with him. There was tension in his chest, a tightening around his ribs and emptiness inside him. He took two steps into the bedroom, towards the figure obscured by the duvet, and there were flies as luscious as blackberries feeding at her gaping eyes.
    For a moment the floor under his feet seemed insubstantial. He reached for something to steady him and touched the side of the bed. He took a breath and pulled the duvet away, watched it slip to the carpet. The pillow over her chest was soaked with blood.
    When he’d broken the bouncer’s neck Ruben had felt no twinge of conscience or remorse. And whatever they’d thrown at him in Long Lartin, the screws or the cons, he’d taken it all with a knowing nod. The sight of blood had never fazed him. He’d even shrugged his shoulders when his old lady had breathed her last. This was what happened in life; apart from the occasional shag there was only blood and violence and death, and if you knew that and you took it on board you survived, and if you denied it you were a two-time loser.
    This woman, Kitty Turner, had taught him something else. She’d taken the whole of his life and his entire experience and turned it inside out and shown him something of the power of tenderness. He hadn’t fully absorbed it, the world that she’d held out to him. He’d seen it in a dim image, shadowy, flickering, like a flame that could live or die. And as long as she was around there had been hope. His mind reeled. He picked up the pillow and watched as the thick blood oozed out between his fingers. This wasn’t true, it couldn’t be. It was senseless, meaningless. Ruben could find no image to tame it. It swarmed in his mind like an infestation of vermin.
    It was worse, much worse than anything he could have imagined. Ruben collected Kitty’s body in his arms and staggered out of the bedroom door. When he reached the head of the stairs he stumbled and recognized that the sounds filling his ears were his own cries for help. He was bawling and screaming at the top of his voice, her name and the name of God. ‘Someone,’ he yelled. ‘Anyone. Look at this, what they’ve done.’
    As he opened the front door and pushed his way through to the street, the beloved and bloody love of his life still cradled in his arms, the kettle in the kitchen behind him began to howl.
     

3
     
    After breakfast the private detective got on a train in Nottingham. He had been there for two days, staying in the High Willows B&B, and was looking forward to returning to York and everyday life.
    ‘Are you married, Mr Turner?’ the owner of the High Willows had asked him. She was a woman who had been a beauty queen in extreme youth but had shed most of her petals and an errant husband after thirty-eight years of marriage. Sam Turner had guessed as much before she came out with the facts. He was, after all, a detective, and besides the proprietress of the High Willows B&B was precisely the kind of woman he seemed to attract. He had perfected the trick of folding himself into a