This story is the fifth in a series of six connected stories about A2A. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you've read the others, which are in order; London Fields, Playing with the Big Boys, And if I Start a Commotion, In Paradise.
I
"Here you go, and here." Speakers piped Mull of Kintyre through the menswear department of Kendals. And here, and here. Onto the two white shirts he piled five pairs of boxer shorts, two cotton singlets, socks and a tie.
"A tie?!" Alex protested as the menswear assistant looked on patient disdain. "You can surely wear the one you've got on now for a few days. I don't think your 'man-stink' has travelled as far as your tie yet."
"Right then." His eyes remained on her as he picked a random tie-clip from the selection on the counter and threw it onto the pile of clothes. Anything else to say?
"Don't stop there. If I have to pay for this lot, I think you should buy something a bit more appropriate for a holiday." Alex glanced around the racks. Not that there was much choice. Compared to the clothing stores she'd been to down in London recently, it didn't appear that Manchester had embraced early 1980s fashion yet. Most of the men out and about on the streets that morning had favoured navy blazers and grey slacks.
Mull of Kintyre segued daintily into a pan-piped First Noel, and she stopped in front of a rack of brown leather jackets. Just maybe she could persuade him into a polo neck ... and god, what about a pair of jeans? Perhaps Hunt was hiding a nice arse beneath those tailored pants.
He'd dragged her into Kendals pretty much as soon as they arrived in Manchester. It was about 10.30 am now and they'd spent less than ten minutes here … the payback for her having stolen his car and kidnapped him. She hadn't allowed him to go back to his flat and pack in case he double-crossed her and left her on a London street so they'd driven straight out of the city. Only when they were near switching onto the M6 would she agree to stop so he could take over the driving.
And he'd climbed into the driver's seat, lighting a cigarette and informing her sourly that she would be buy him a replacement wardrobe once they reached Manchester. His mood hadn't lightened for the whole trip up through the night. Mile after mile of road markings that grew mesmerizing if you stared at them, of ghostly fields intermittently frosted or sodden, and houses crammed together off the motorway huddling for comfort. And they'd been silent the whole time.
She couldn't help it. Her mind was fizzing. She had a set time and a set place to meet her mysterious informant and a whole day to pass here in Manchester before they rendezvoused at the Throstle, a pub and inn near a village in the northern part of the Forest of Bowland. Wherever that was. Now that she didn't have the map in front her, Alex couldn't quite remember where the Forest of Bowland was in relation to Manchester. It was somewhere she'd never been and sounded vaguely Robin Hood.
She couldn't contain her own glee and excitement. She was nearer – she felt it, she knew it – to the secret of her presence here. Nearer than she'd ever been.
"There you go." Alex held a camel-coloured polo-neck and pair of dark indigo jeans against his chest. She knew she was provoking, but nothing else had snapped Hunt out of his arsehole mindset. Somehow she had assumed that he would just leap at the chance of this adventure with her, maybe even if he did try to hide it. Away from Ray and Chris, and the reminders of the awful past month. But no … the hand that gripped her wrist and pushed the clothes away from his chest advised not.
"If you wanted Ray along, you should have stolen his car instead." Hunt exchanged a filthy look with the assistant and stalked over to the rail of overcoats. "But you just reminded me that as well as some socks and kecks, you owe me a new coat." It was not so many weeks ago that his old black coat had been shredded in that ugly fight in the Stepney warehouse, where he'd come close to having his head stamped in by Marc Michaux.
Of course he couldn't quite blame Drake for that situation, but on this harsh, white-light winter morning in his hometown he wasn't going to let her off the hook for anything.
"Well at least get yourself something different," Alex remonstrated as he tried on a long black woollen coat identical to his old one. He looked briefly in the mirror. Collar up, face in that sneer that was almost the natural resting expression of his face. Yes, same bastard.
"I'll change my look when you change yours," Hunt said and threw the coat on the counter. It was the quickest sale ever for the bored young assistant in Kendals menswear.
"This is going to bounce." Alex pushed a curl from her eye, as she began writing out a cheque.
She'd just spent what probably amounted to two weeks' salary on his clothes without a protest, she'd bought him coffee and a bun in a grotty, unfamiliar coffee shop and was presently enduring his continuing silence across the table. He looked down at the new coat – he'd cut the tags off straight away, momentarily guilty that he had deliberately chosen the most expensive one on the rack. Legs stuck straight out, just daring some dim teen to step over him, he sucked on another cigarette as light rain began to fall on the street outside.
And now he couldn't fucking stand it. It probably wasn't her fault. It was Manchester – he felt so edgy being back here, where he'd made so many mistakes, been a bad boy over and over again. And hadn't he just? Whether it was his teenage antics or as a copper, he could name any street and tell a story that should have been buried in the past. Somehow, with Alex here doing her Dorothy routine – click my shoes and I'll be back with my daughter – it made it worse.
Outside this street, Hunt glanced up and down, seeing past the women in their rain-coats pushing prams and jerking toddlers along on their leads. There were at least five night clubs and a couple of knocking shops. And I've disgraced myself in all of them.
It wasn't like he was ashamed of his past – who wanted to reminisce about twenty years of arriving home to fish dinners with the wife every night? As if Drake suspected anything less of him than bleary fights over strippers and drunken three am stumbles back to his house anyway. It was one of the things about her that annoyed him now as she drank her cup of tea.
She thought she knew him, thought she had him wrapped around her little finger, so very evident from that trick with the car keys back in her flat. He'd beckoned her for a kiss and she'd lightly clung to him for the briefest time just so she could get the keys from his jacket pocket. And forced him to drive her up here, and now was waiting there with that beautiful face expecting. Expecting that whatever his purpose had been for coming home to Manchester could just be dropped at her whim.
Not even my ex bloody wife thought she could carry on like Drake does, he thought, the change jingling in his pocket as he tapped his boot heel on the coffee shop linoleum. Fuck it. Hunt made up his mind then, and he stubbed the cigarette into the ashtray on the table as he stood up. Crammed the rest of the bun into his mouth in a deliberately uncouth display.
"This is where we part ways, Bolly," not giving her time to reply before stepping out into the rain.
Alex caught up with him on the street as he neared the Quattro. "Gene, what do you mean?"
Hunt looked at her sideways as he bumped the boot and handed over her suitcase and bag. "Meaning I have business here to get on with, and since I've delivered you up here for your business, which isn't my business, this is where we part ways." In a stagey way he swept an arm down the street. "Around the corner there are two car rental places. Don't go to the first one, it's run by a thieving Welsh bastard. Don't let them rent you a van either, because I've seen your driving and you ain't up to it. Get yourself a nice lady car, a mini."
Alex was still open-mouthed as he pulled away from the footpath and the Quattro disappeared around the corner. "Thanks very bloody much." The rain had plastered her hair to her face and she put her up her hand to stop the first tear of mascara running down her cheek.
"Are you aware of what your son has just been telling me?" Justin Marbury asked Gilbert, beckoning him over to his office door. On this early New Year's Eve afternoon the floor was tomb-quiet again, and Royce Gilbert could be seen thumping down the corridor away from them in his Wellingtons.
"Royce has been talking to you?" Gilbert frowned.
"Yes, I was just sitting in my office wondering where our new colleague Detective Inspector Drake had got to, and then your son comes in and starts telling me about how she has been encouraging him to use the computer labs in your wife's university department to decode State documents. Top-secret State documents evidently." Marbury leant against the doorframe and crossed his arms. "I'm not blaming Royce of course, but Gilbert, I am suggesting you find somewhere else for your son to spend his after-school time from now on." He ignored the slight redness spreading across Gilbert's forehead, nose and cheeks. "Don't worry. I didn't let it rest there. I've just been on the phone this minute to Assistant Commissioner Vanderzee to let him know that this little experiment with dumping DI Drake into our laps has ended. Short conversation. 'You can have her back' pretty much said it all. Well, as soon as she is back from … wherever."
Gilbert was looking at the floor and said absently, "I'm not sure it was really her fault, Justin. Royce got it into his..."
"Vanderzee was practically gnashing his teeth over the phone," Marbury carried through Gilbert's doubts. "Hopefully he'll see this is the last time he can palm off the CID trimmings onto Forensics."