The Third Shadow

Eighteen

Following my visit to Sarah Bracewell, I headed back towards the city centre. Stopping off at the first chemist's I passed, I got myself a box of aspirins and a cheap retractable umbrella. It was getting late by then, gone six, and in any case I was feeling decidedly grotty.

I found myself pulling in at one of those anonymous chain hotels where a painfully bored-looking receptionist thrust me a sort of credit card in lieu of a key. The room it opened was smaller than most people's bathroom, its own adjoining bathroom comparable to a broom cupboard. A quick test of the bed revealed it was only minimally more comfortable than the camping roll mat in the van. This perturbed me less than the smell however. A thousand passing salesmen had combined to create a general, all-pervading mustiness.

A thousand passing salesmen, yes... There's something about hotel rooms. About spending the night on your own in a hotel room. A sense of loneliness almost crushing in its persistence.

I swallowed down a couple of aspirin, made a call to my brother Frank, another to Ray Tindall, my wine merchant contact up in Durham, and a third to Diane. My planned visits would have to be delayed for a day or two, I told them. My homecoming put on hold.

After catching a little of the ITN news, I then drifted off into a strange, fevered sleep for twelve hours straight.

*

I woke up with a stiff back, but other than this and a still persistent sneeze I felt a little better. Not so much so as to face a full English however; I had to content myself with half a bowl of cornflakes instead.

Outside it was still drizzling, and the umbrella I'd bought wilted pathetically at the first medium-strength gust of wind. Discarded into the nearest bin, I gritted my teeth against the English summer. Fortunately, my destination wasn't far.

Here too the receptionist - a young lady of around twenty - looked painfully bored. Fifty-nine years I'd lived in the UK and had never quite realised it before: we Brits rarely smile for strangers.

"I'd like to speak to your chief crime reporter please."

"Our chief crime reporter."

The words were repeated with an unimpressed scowl, as if I'd walked into a posh restaurant and asked for beans on toast. In superimposed letters on the wall behind were the words Nottingham Evening Post. This was a newspaper, right?

"Your chief crime reporter. Yes,that's right."

She continued to glare at me for a moment, then grudgingly lifted the receiver of an internal phone, punched in a couple of numbers.

"Somebody here says he wants to speak to you Steve." There followed a couple of nods at something Steve was saying.

"Who are you?" she asked, looking back up at me.

My name was thus relayed. There were more nods. Another glance back up at me.

"Who are you?" she repeated.

So I explained my not insignificant role in the opening days of the Bracewell case. That I was available for an interview should anyone be interested...

Finally, there was something approaching a smile.

"Mr Marston will be down right away sir."

*

I know of detectives who make an effort to nurture close, collaborative relationships with journalists, develop a kind of information-sharing symbiosis. Personally, I'd always preferred a good old-fashioned snout for my intelligence. Crooks, in my experience, are a much better class of person.

Steve Marston seemed typical of his breed: cocky, coarse, lacking in basic level sensitivity. He was a bit of an alcoholic too perhaps: it had barely gone ten in the morning and he was already knocking back a pint at the pub he'd immediately ushered me towards. A modern sort of place, all polished pine and brass pump taps.

"So, what do you reckon to Sarah then? Nice bit of skirt eh."

I don't think I'd heard the expression ' a nice bit of skirt' since about 1978.

"Plenty for a man to grab on to, know what I mean? Not like Olivia. Christ, be like going to bed with a broom handle!"

I sipped at my orange juice without passing comment. Marston meanwhile gulped thirstily at his pint as if just having finished a long day's work in the fields. He was at that age where youthful energy and enthusiasm begins to wane but has yet to be replaced by old head wisdom: early forties perhaps. He was balding at the temples, his jawline bushed by pachy stubble which was turning grey. There was no wedding ring on his finger, I noted, but judging by my first impressions of the man this was hardly surprising.

"Yea, tidy piece of stuff alright, Sarah Bracewell. Ask me, could be something in it. You know, that Lee had been having it away with her."

It must have been clear from my expression that I'd never before heard of nor considered such a hypothesis.

"Don't read the tabloids then Jim?"

"Try not to, no."

Smiling, Marston looked out of the pub window at the wet grey street outside, the scurrying passers-by. We were at a corner table, beyond the earshot of the handful of cappuccino-sipping customers. The barman was occupied unloading the washer from the previous evening, the loud intermittent clatters of glass adding further cover.

"I wouldn't much bother with them either, just that it's part of my job I suppose. You know, keep up with what they're saying about the case. Mostly sensationalist rubbish of course, but sometimes there's something that makes you think..." Downing the last of his pint, he turned, clicked his fingers at the barman. "Gary, bring us another would you." A questioning finger was pointed at my glass: I was fine, I told him. "I know it's early," he muttered a little ashamedly, "but had a rough one last night. Hair of the dog, you know how it is. Couple of pints sorts you out again."

I nodded ambiguously. In my experience, the depth of someone's addiction can be measured by how quick they are to make excuses for it.

"So yea," he continued, after the barman had stepped away, "The Star it was ran with the story first. They'd found some workmate of hers - you know, another of those teachers who help out with the slow kids. Seemed Sarah's tongue had got loosened one girls' night out. The way The Star put it, she'd all but admitted to sleeping with her brother-in-law. Load of codswallop needless to say. Got hold of this workmate myself, says it was all blown out of proportion. Sarah had admitted that she thought Lee was..." - he looked out of the window again, as if the word he were searching might appear on the side of a passing bus - "dishy, I think that was the adjective she used." He took a first slurp of his new pint which the barman had placed beneath him. "Like I say, it got me thinking a little though. She fancied him and he must have fancied her. Any man would. And turns out neither of them were what you might call happily married."

At this, I found myself arching an eyebrow.

"Oh yea, Sarah's neighbours'll tell you a few stories all right. The shouting and yelling. The carrying on. And as for Lee and Olivia... well, you know the old saying: marry in haste, repent at leisure. According to friends, they spent the six months before the disappearance at each other's throats."

This latter fact wasn't so difficult to believe perhaps. What was much more surprising was the nature of Sarah and Sean's marraige. I'd always imagined them as a solid, established couple; they would have had their moments of course, their little fallings-out like any couple, but generally were okay. On the whole strong.

Appearances could be deceiving. Outsiders would probably have thought the same about Heather and I. Right until the end - right until I stepped through the front door that rainsoaked godforsaken March night - even I'd thought we were unbreakable.