Decay Inevitable

His concern for her safety was negated by the eerie certainty of his instinct that, should he plough after her, he would not find her. Irritated by the distraction, he returned his attention to the funeral, but the black suits were drifting away from the graveside like scraps of incinerated paper. A simple goodbye he had sought, but he had failed even in this, looking instead for intrigue in the irrelevances that surrounded him. Plodding back to his car, careful not to give away his position to the two stragglers with whom he had observed the service, Sean presumed that he was subconsciously reluctant to give up the police part of his brain – such as it was. From the sanctity of the driver’s seat he watched the slow dispersal of the mourners, recognising Naomi’s father as he did so. He had changed only marginally in the fifteen years since they had last met. Perhaps he was a little thicker around the middle; there was a deeper smattering of grey in the oiled black hair; there was sadness and fatigue in the eyes. Age and shock were pulling his body south.

Sean caught a glimpse of his own face in the rear-view mirror but shied from its scrutiny. In the wake of Naomi’s death and the acknowledgement of his own failures, he didn’t want the awareness of his own mortality to compound his misery.

He gunned the engine as the two men brought up the rear. They were relaxed, alert, like presidential bodyguards. Sean found first gear and moved sedately away, wondering why his heart beat so violently, why his head pounded with frustrated questions.

ON THE TRAIN north, he tried to read the biography of an actor whose films he admired but he couldn’t give his mind to the words when Naomi kept dancing at its fringes. He pushed his focus beyond the filth on the window into fields wadded with mist. Low sunlight picked out the uncertain shapes of farmhouses; a man with a stick; a wheelbarrow. Hedgerows were blistered with newish berries. A series of narrow lanes striped the land for miles.

He tried to remember the last time he had ventured north but only the memory of his leaving it emerged. London was all he seemed to have known. The images of a bleak, rainy motorway and a series of New Order cassettes; appalling sandwiches (or “sadwiches” as Rachel referred to service station food), and the dead grind of traffic made him grateful for this trip now.

The train slowed noticeably. Presently the driver made an announcement that they were approaching Warrington Bank Quay. Sean collected his things and shuffled down the aisle to the doors. Through the window, the platform shuttled into view. The blur of faces waiting to board bothered him by their lack of features – lost to the train’s speed. Just before the brakes bit harder and he was able to define individuals, the grinning face of the child he had seen in the cemetery sprang out at him: a surprise in a pop-up book. He craned his neck to keep her in his view but she was lost to the passengers as they jostled for position in front of the doors. Once the train was at a standstill and the security locks were released, Sean hopped onto the platform and hurried back towards the lead section of the station. Through the criss-cross of bodies he saw a whip of long brown hair as she ducked down the exit steps. He followed as quickly as the crowds allowed him but knew as he reached the ticket barrier that she had given him the slip.

CHAPTER FOUR: RENTED ACCOMMODATION

EARLY NEXT MORNING, after a night spent in the hotel across the road from the train station, he rented a car, a blue Rover 25, rang a few of the landlords advertising bedsits in the local newspaper, and moved his meagre possessions into a furnished studio flat above a greengrocer on Ripley Street, overlooking the car park of the general hospital on one side and the railway on the other.

He chivvied himself along with thoughts of how much such a chicken coop would fetch in London, and without a view anywhere near as attractive. He spent the afternoon in town, buying groceries and items he felt he would need for the bedsit: a desk which he arranged to have delivered that evening, a table lamp, a couple of litres of white paint, and a paint roller. Once or twice during his shopping trip, he looked up from the languid scrum at the market stalls, certain that there would be someone looking directly at him. He wondered if he would see the little girl again, but although there were plenty of youngsters out shopping with their parents, none of them resembled her.

He lugged his purchases back to the car and locked them in the boot. The thought of returning to the flat and arranging everything, stamping his authority on the place, was attractive, but he felt the compulsion to slow down. If he was going to fit in here, he needed to slough his London skin. Warrington wouldn’t require the same thrust that the capital demanded of him. There was no rush in which to become embroiled.