Dead in Time

Chapter Nine

Jeremy called round the next morning. I opened the door, red of eye, sallow of skin, and claggy of hair, and he looked at me as if he couldn’t decide whether I was coming down with flu or had just had the night of my life.

“Your friend Jack about, then, Ell?”

“Sod off,” I muttered, clutching my ratty terry-towelling dressing gown around me. I’d had to prise it out from under Mr. Tibbs while I buzzed my unexpected visitor in, and I really wasn’t in the mood. “C’min. Ignore mess.”

Jerry chuckled and edged around the pile of books by the door. I scanned the room for signs of abnormal habitation, offering up silent thanks that Day’s fag ash had been confined to the kitchen last night. A light breeze fluttered the curtains at the open bay window, and Mr. Tibbs leapt up onto the window seat, yowling softly. A chill touched the room, and I narrowed my eyes.

Don’t bugger about.

“Well, I’ve got to make it quick.” Jerry pulled a wad of papers folded into quarters from his pocket and smoothed out the creases. “But here you are. I did what I could with what you gave me. She was a bitch to find… but then I suppose anyone would be, in her situation. Did you know people used to go to the house, try and nick souvenirs? Tile from the bathroom her husband died in turned up on eBay last year, apparently.”

It took me a minute to catch up with him but, when I did, I thought too hard about it.

“Yuck.”

“Yeah…. Anyway, there it is. Um.”

He loitered, shifted his weight on the balls of his feet, obviously desperate to pump me for information but not quite sure how to start. Just a few weeks ago, I realised, I would have taken pity on poor Jerry and spilled the whole story… or at least some form of it that I could have shared without him thinking me completely insane. Now all I wanted to do was get him out of the door. 

I peered at the papers he’d handed me, sucked my apparently furry teeth, and nodded. “Oh. She stayed in Gloucestershire… we thought she— Uh. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Jerry. I owe you on this one.”

He made no move to go.

“Are you…. I mean, you’re okay, are you?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Very fine. Thanks. Hunky dory, all that. Yeah.”

I virtually pushed him out into the hall. His mouth set into a hard line, biting back whatever reprimand he wanted to give me.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said icily. “Got to go and talk to God on the big white telephone, have you?”

I managed a sick sort of smile, appropriate under what Jeremy assumed the circumstances to be, and closed the door. I heard him huff his way down the corridor, fading out to the sound of hurried, grumpy footsteps on the stairs. I’d hear all about this later, I just knew it, though it somehow failed to worry me. I looked down at the papers in my hand. Eileen Shawcross, she went by now. Middle name, apparently. I wondered if there had ever been a Mr. Shawcross. I assumed so; for all I knew, maybe more than one ex-husband stood between Inez and her past.

I called her that morning. Somehow, it seemed right to take a shower, put on some clothes, and fix my hair and make-up before I did… not that it was video-phone or anything. I’d seen neither hide nor hair of Day. To be perfectly honest, I preferred it that way; I had no desire to try wheedling an interview out of Inez with him standing over my shoulder gesticulating. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what I’d say to him, after last night.

I sat with the phone cradled to my ear, my knees drawn up against my chest, and the leather of the window seat pleasantly warm beneath me. The sun sparkled on the glass; a bright, seaside summer to come, maybe.