Parking up near the Palace, where Oxford Road intersects with Great Bridgewater, I saw lights coming from The Temple. In a past life, The Temple had been a public toilet. It had also been a notorious cottaging spot in Victorian times, taking the city’s gay history back far before Canal Street. Now it was a small, subterranean bar. The owner was the frontman of a local band who’d blown up, and their biggest hit, ‘Grounds for Divorce’, obliquely mentioned the place.
It felt like I was being nudged back towards some old thoughts, old feelings, and I decided to go along with it. One benefit of quitting speed, cocaine and ecstasy was that it made drinking feel like a health choice. I walked down the steps and tried the door. It was locked but I could hear voices from inside. The jukebox still going at gone 11 p.m. I knocked, heard movement and stepped back so they could get a look at me.
‘Who is it?’ said a familiar voice.
‘It’s me.’
‘Waits?’ The bolt was drawn back and the door opened. I felt the warmth from inside, the simple thrill of communal drinking. Sian, the barmaid, looked out at me without expression.
I felt that too.
Sian had dark hair, pale skin and freckles. She wore black clothes and hipster glasses, and had a sleeve of delicate tattoos down one arm. ‘We’d started to think you were a reformed character …’
‘Relapsing,’ I said. ‘It’s good to see you.’ I took a step forward but she didn’t move, just stood in the doorway looking up at me. I remembered seeing her for the first time, also in that doorway. It had felt like a sheer drop.
‘Is it?’ she said.
A moment passed and she turned, walked back through the bar. I bolted the door behind me and followed. It was one narrow room, about the length of two saloon cars. There were four or five small tables alongside each wall, with just enough space to walk down the middle. I passed a few groups but no more than ten people. The Sunday-night lock-in crowd, all wrapped up in tall tales and heated debates. Conversations that seemed like life or death in the moment, but would probably be forgotten by the next day. The jukebox was blasting out ‘Brand New Cadillac’ by The Clash. No one gave me a second thought.
‘Guinness?’ I said, sitting at the bar.
Sian looked at me. ‘I might be out of glasses …’
‘I’d drink it from a hot-water bottle tonight.’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ she said, kicking opening the dishwasher, pouring steam into the air. She filled a glass in silence and slid it towards me. It was warm from the machine. I started to look for my wallet but she held up a hand. ‘It’s on the house, Aid.’
‘Thanks.’ I looked at her. Watched the pulse moving in her neck and knew that she felt it too, whatever it was. ‘How’ve you been?’ I asked.
‘Did I die of heartbreak, you mean? What are you doing here?’
‘Forgetting how to be a detective.’
‘At least it won’t take long, then. Seriously,’ she said. ‘Back after all this time …’
‘A lot of the local places have requested my absence.’
She leaned on the bar. ‘I didn’t know it was that easy, is there a form I can fill in?’
‘Tonight I was just working up the road.’
‘You’re always just working up the road. You’re the only person I know who keeps worse hours than me.’ She shrugged. ‘You look well on it …’
‘I’ve been running.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘A man needs a vice …’
‘You weren’t lacking in that department, as I recall.’
‘I’m clean now,’ I said, wondering if I’d come here to tell her that.
She let her guard down and smiled sincerely. So sincerely that I wondered how bad I’d been the last time we met. ‘That’s good, Aidan. That’s so good.’ She poked my arm. ‘What are all those speed dealers gonna do for a living now, though?’
I laughed. ‘I think they’re recession-proof.’
‘And what, you quit girls at the same time? Or just me?’
‘I …’
‘I usually get a goodbye at least.’
‘I thought I was coming back.’
‘You never did, though. You’re not even back now, really, are you?’
A man appeared at the bar and began ordering a large round. Sian served him brusquely, giving a small, tight smile as he began ferrying drinks back to his table. I realized I’d made a mistake in coming here. Worse, that I’d executed another flawless act of self-sabotage in disappearing from Sian’s life. I drank up and turned to leave.
‘I might not be here the next time you come around,’ she said.
I looked at her. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know, daylight? Above ground, at least. I’m seeing someone now.’
‘Nice guy?’
She nodded. ‘And they’re fucking hard to find.’
When Sian and I separated, more than a year before, we’d been in the unspoken stages of moving in together. Neither one of us quite ready to declare it, or give up their own flat, but taking it as read that we’d walk on to my place or hers when our respective night shifts ended. I’d been slowly meeting her friends, her family, and avoiding the fact that I had no one for her to meet in return. We’d been happy for a time, though. I remembered hastily prepared meals, eaten off plates that we balanced on our knees, so we could talk while we ate. Or getting on to the roof of her old building through the fire escape in the summer. Watching the stars with a bottle of wine and singing ‘Drunk on the Moon’. It had been a good time in my life but I’d ended things badly, gotten into trouble at work. Derailed my life. She was right, I hadn’t really come back.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
We began talking, a little more comfortably, about old times. When some regulars joined in I relaxed a little, letting the events of the last two days turn over in my mind. Arson, revenge porn and death. A varied caseload stretching all the way from bad to worse. I started on my second drink. Thought about Ollie Cartwright. Rousting him was exactly the kind of behaviour that had put me on to the night shift. On to my very last chance. It had been worth the riot act from Superintendent Parrs, though. I’d liked Sophie. She reminded me of someone I used to know.
Mostly, I thought of the smiling man.
Someone started banging at the door and Sian walked round the bar for it. Between songs I heard a gruff voice, hard and low, and turned to see a man, a shadow, trying to talk his way inside. The music kicked in again, and I didn’t hear the rest of their conversation. There was a short back-and-forth before the figure in the doorway held up his hands and backed away. Sian bolted the door and called time.
I finished my drink and left to the sound of ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’, knowing it couldn’t get any better than that, wondering if Sian had put it on the jukebox for old times’ sake. I climbed the stairs feeling loose, absent-minded even, and emerged on to the street still humming the tune. Double-decker buses roared by like bright, empty boxes of light. I’d started to walk back into town when I heard a movement behind me. I turned and saw someone, the shape of a man, standing by the entrance of The Temple. He was in shadow but I must have been back-lit by the street, and I could feel his eyes on me. Neither of us moved for a moment, then I turned and walked away.
* * *
It started again with another knock on a door.
It was a Sunday night, after ten, and the boy waited a minute first. Even though they were a long way from the city, even though it was dark, there were no stars this time. The boy thought about going back down the lane to the car, where his mother and sister were waiting. He could shrug and say there was no one home. But he knew that Bateman was watching, somewhere over his shoulder, ready to detach himself from the shadows and step in. Bateman already knew there was someone inside the house.
He already knew they were alone.
So when the boy knocked he wasn’t surprised to hear movement behind the door. He wasn’t surprised by the young woman’s voice.
‘Hello?’ she said. It sounded familiar, but he wasn’t sure. ‘Bates, is that you?’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t think you should come here any more …’