It had been the imperative of their years together. He lived to serve her. She lived to be served.
He drew the blankets and sheet away from her body. Beneath them, she was nude, and her scent was rank, and he looked on her with no stirring of lust. No longer the form of the fifteen-year-old girl he’d rolled with in the maram grass between the dunes, her body expressed the loathing that her voice wouldn’t speak. She was pitted and stretched. She was dyed and painted. She was simultaneously barely real and all too corporeal. She was the past?embroilment and estrangement?made flesh.
He put his arm beneath her shoulders and he raised her. She’d begun to weep. It was a silent crying, ugly to watch. It stretched her mouth. It reddened her nose. It slit her eyes.
She said, “You want to, so do it. I’m not holding you here. I’ve never held you.”
He murmured, “Shhh, now. Put this on,” and he slid arms through the straps of her bra. She was no help to him, despite his encouragement. He was forced to cup her heavy breasts in his hands and fit the bra around them before he hooked it in the back. Thus he dressed her, and when he had her in her clothing, he urged her to her feet and she finally came to life.
She said again, “I can’t let them see me like this,” but her tone was different this time. She went to her dressing table and from among its clutter of cosmetics and costume jewellery, she brought forth a brush. This she vigorously ran through her long blonde hair till she had it untangled and fashioned into a passable chignon. She switched on a little brass lamp that he’d given her on a long ago Christmas, and she bent to the mirror to examine her face. She used powder and a bit of mascara, and then she rustled among the lipsticks to find the one she wanted, which she applied.
“All right,” she said, and she turned to him.
Head to toe in black, but her lips were red. They were as red as a rose might be. They were as red as blood indeed was.
IN CONDUCTING THE PRELIMINARIES of the investigation with the assistance of Constable McNulty and Sergeant Collins, Bea Hannaford learned soon enough that she had as helpmates the indisputable police equivalents of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. This realisation had abruptly descended upon her when Constable McNulty informed her?with a suitably lachrymose expression on his face?that he’d given the family the information about Santo Kerne’s death likely being a murder. While this in itself could not be called execrable police work, having gone on blithely to share with the Kernes the facts about the dead boy’s climbing equipment definitely was.
Bea had stared at McNulty, disbelieving at first. Then she’d understood that he was not misspeaking, that he had actually disclosed vital particulars of a police investigation to individuals who very well might be suspects. She’d exploded first. She’d wanted to strangle him second. Exactly what do you do all day, she’d enquired third in a nasty tone, toss off in public lavatories? Because, my man, you are the most wretched excuse for a police officer I’ve yet to meet. Are you aware that now we have nothing known only by ourselves and the killer? Do you understand the position that puts us in? After that, she’d told him to come with her and keep his mouth shut unless and until she told him he had permission to speak.