The meanest Flood

twisted mind because of me, then I don’t want to know. But I have to, because if I don’t he’ll go on working his way through everyone in my life.’
     

25
     
    Quarry House, the building which houses the Department of Social Security HQ in Leeds, is like something out of the Third Reich. Designed and built in the dying days of the Thatcher era, it imposes itself on the city’s skyline with the authority of a jackboot.
    Coming in from York and travelling the Leeds urban motorway towards the centre of the city, Marie passed under the shadow of the building with mixed feelings of disgust and fascination. ‘You’d need a really good reason to go inside,’ she said to Celia, sitting next to her in the passenger seat. With its heavy rectangular design and the mystic symbolism of its central, star-like, rooftop emblem it could have been a fitting monument to Albert Speer.
    Celia glanced back at the edifice. ‘I can’t believe someone has designed a Social Security building in such a way that it puts people off going inside. It seems so perverse. Surely it would be better to abandon the concept of Social Security altogether?’
    ‘Buildings like that come out of the gap between reality and dreams,’ Marie said, ‘out of that space between what people believe they want and what they really want. The man who designed it probably sees himself as a liberal humanitarian.’
    ‘You don’t think it could have been a woman?’
    ‘No way,’ Marie said. ‘The bricks are held together with testosterone. If you half-close your eyes you can picture Mussolini or Hitler standing in the doorway.’
    She pulled into a parking space opposite the Grand Arcade and switched off the engine.
    Celia opened the car door and stepped on to the pavement. ‘Will you pick me up from here?’
    ‘Yes.’ Marie glanced at her watch. ‘Five o’clock OK?’
    ‘That’ll give me three hours,’ Celia said. ‘Plenty of time to buy a few old clothes.’
    Marie left her spinning round on the pavement. She caught her in the rear-view mirror crossing towards the Grand Arcade, an ancient figure on her spindly legs, black beret pulled down over one eye, Marlene Dietrich-style.
    She drove out to North Lane in Headingley, parked the car and went into the Taps. The landlord was a burly man with a clipped white beard and moustache and a smile that continued past his face and reached deep down into the depths of his brown eyes.
    Marie told him a long, complicated lie about how she was writing a book around the Rolf and Nicole Day killing and that she’d like to meet some of their neighbours and friends.
    ‘I didn’t know her,’ he said. ‘Nicole Day. Wouldn’t have recognized her. She was in here once or twice according to a couple of the locals, but I don’t remember her. Him I did know, Rolf. Called in from time to time. He’d prop the bar up and make a pint last forty minutes. Thin wrists, like a woman. Glasses. Not much hair. Guys in here called him the Professor.’
    ‘Is there anyone else I could talk to?’ Marie asked. ‘Someone who knew them both?’
    The landlord looked around the bar. ‘Not at the moment,’ he said. ‘But Steve’ll be in soon. He lives at number thirty-seven, actually talked to Sam Turner before he killed the woman, or maybe it was just after. I’ll introduce you.’
    Marie got herself a large glass of cold red wine and tried to warm it between her hands while she watched the regulars at the Taps. There’d been no doubt in the landlord’s mind that it was Sam who did the killings. The police and the press had done a real job on him. He’d been tried and found guilty. The hangman was checking his rope, oiling the hinges on his trapdoor. Sam had always been a survivor but his future was looking increasingly bleak in the face of the evidence in this case.
    Maybe that was how it would end? A long and charmed life, forever lived on the edge and brought to a sudden ironic end by a series of events in which he was implicated but never actually involved. Sam would recognize the scenario. She could see him grinning as he said, ‘Just remember... if the world didn’t suck, we’d all fall off.’
    The outer door of the pub opened and Marie watched a pink and golden youth carrying the best part of fifty years walk up to the bar. He ordered a drink and exchanged a few words with the landlord. He glanced over his right shoulder at her while his host was pulling the pint. Attempted a long-distance smile.
    He