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A clock struck from the mantelpiece. Zuk dropped his weapon.
Hands raised, he moved toward the man in the chair cooing words of assurance. As he moved, Thigpen brought up the box and a match. Bassett froze in the doorway. He was not, precisely, frightened, rather there was nothing about the situation that was real enough to respond to. He thought to himself, Any second now I will hear a siren and the police will arrive and they will know what to do.
“It was a legitimate shoot, Bassett.”
“I never said it wasn’t.”
“He would have blown us all to kingdom come if you hadn’t stepped in when you did. I told you so at the time.”
The truth was that Bassett was shaken by the thought of the inquest, of recounting yet again what had happened. He’d told the story so many times to so many officials, it had begun to be like reconstructing a bad dream after waking in a sweat. And he’d yet to be asked about what bothered him most. He had come within a hair’s breadth of failing to act. He’d had but a split second to decide if Thigpen was extending the matches for his partner to take, or igniting an explosion, and he’d come as close as a man can to doing nothing at all. He simply couldn’t believe he was facing the end of everything, not in some freshly swept cottage with a kettle on the burner. Perhaps if the setting had been different, if Thigpen had been wearing a ski mask or a stocking over his face.
Numbed, he’d been counting the strokes of the clock when he should have been acting on instinct. He might not be so lucky in the future. Ever since the incident, he had been dreaming at night of explosives. Fuses, blasting caps, plastique. Bombs that were ticking away at night in a closet. Things that went off in his hands when he touched them. Senseless deaths that he’d been helpless to prevent.
“Right, you did, you said it at the time, Zuk.”
“So, forget it then. Put the Chesterfields behind you.”
“You’re the one who brought it up, Zuk, not me.”
“Only because I know you as well as I do. You need to talk things out. Always have. For as long as we’ve been together.”
“I told you, I’m okay.”
“Do like I have. Put that sort of thing behind you. Take it day by day, from now on.”
The truth was, Judah hadn’t put the shooting behind himself at all.
He remembered it clearly. They’d probably paid cash for their cottage, not borrowed from their inlaws, the way Judah had done.
Pretty little place with a yard for kids to play their games in, bordered by hawthorn hedges. There’d been a bicycle near the front door with a rusty bell on its handlebars. Thigpen’s.
Thigpen had showered, shaved, and splashed some of Chesterfield’s pre-shave on his cheeks, so that when Judah opened the door there was a faint whiff of Yardley’s beneath the overpowering stench of gas that filled the room. Thigpen worked as a milliner. He’d been dressed in black from head to toe. The round from Bassett’s gun threw Thigpen over the back of the recliner in a flurry of black cloth and stocking feet and nothing left to hope for. There. Despite himself, he remembered it. And much more clearly than he cared to.
“Jencks,” Bassett said. “Mr. Bleakhouse.”
“What?”
“The Lawrence woman’s neighbor. His name is Jencks. Said he used to be a milliner, or was that somebody else?”
“That’s it, Franklin Jencks. The lonely little man, remember?”
“I remember.”
Jencks was still in his pajamas, working up a scrapbook. He’d been finishing his breakfast. He had a plate in his hand, a half-eaten crumpet with a dab of gluey apricot jam on the side of the plate.
He’d probably been carrying it around the flat since he took it from the toaster that morning, nibbling it to death. His flesh was that whitish-silverish color of the critically ill and dying, and around his sunken cheeks there were whiskers he had missed. He wasn’t a man who would have much of an appetite. He offered them tea.
“If you’re sure it’s no bother,” Judah replied.
“So you remember us then?” asked Bassett.
“Oh yes, Mr. Bassett, I remember you perfectly, you and Inspector Zukor in addition. Please, gentlemen, sit down. I’ll only be a minute, I’ll have a cup as well, I think. I don’t always keep a kettle on, you see. Not when you live by yourself. I might have a lemon to go with. I’ll look.”
“We wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” said Judah.
“We won’t be long,” said Bassett.
“It doesn’t matter. Here, let me take your hat. I was only catching up on some unfinished business. It’s the little things I never seem to be able to find time for.”
He ran water. Pipes groaned. Bassett listened for the strike of a match. He heard coughing instead.
“It’s decent of you to visit. Sit anywhere you’d like,” Jencks called. “I don’t know what I can do to help you. I’m afraid I told you all I know the last time you popped by. If I’d have thought of something else, I’d have saved you the bother of coming.”
Judah looked for a place to sit down. A ray of light was coming through the window. The dust in the air was visible. “Are you sure we’re not interrupting?” he asked.
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