The Unburied Dead (40 page)

And that's just about it. Some questions answered, some not. A few leftovers, such as the man who currently rots in prison on the Addison murder charges from last year. The crimes of Gerry Crow
–
although that's all hearsay. Maybe it was Bloonsbury all along. Who knows? It'll be for someone else to work out what to do with the guy.

We're done, and I'm left sitting across the road from my ex-wife, waiting for something. Maybe it's for one of them to take the decision out of my hands. For one of them to look out of the window and notice the car parked across the road. For one of them to decide whether to draw the curtains or come over and invite me in.

At the back of my mind – despite all the stupidity of being infatuated with Charlotte Miller – I was presuming that I'd end up back here, that I'd be walking in through that door. But last night I killed a man, and it wasn't the first time. It was the first time in seventeen years. And while seventeen years is a long fucking time, it's not long enough.

I always thought that when I met the right women I'd talk to her. My part in the Balkan war. I'd let it all out, a great tumble of awful reminiscence, spewing forth, unstoppable, ending with me in tears and a wreck on the floor. And for years I thought it would be Peggy. For years. And maybe even this past week I'd thought it would be Peggy, that she was the one I could talk to.

But sitting here, across the road from her house, I know. I don't think I was lying to myself when I first thought she'd be the one. I genuinely believed I could talk to her. Now, however, I know for sure. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week. And some time soon, after I move back in, I'll wake up jabbering and sweating and panicking in the middle of the night and she'll look at me and be afraid and hope that I'll talk to her, and I'll see it in her eyes. The sure and certain knowledge that I won't. The sure and certain knowledge that there probably is someone out there in whom I'd confide, but that it's not her.

I see a movement in the front room, and suddenly I know that I can't be sitting here waiting for them to make the decision for me. I have to leave.

Engine on, into first, and smoothly away from the side of the road. Grasp the steering wheel firmly because my hands are shaking. Look at the clock. Must have been an hour that I sat there. Late afternoon, New Years day.

Automatically flick the music on. Bob.
Idiot Wind
.

I haven't known peace and quiet so long I can't remember what it's like
. Time for me and Bob to hit the nearest pub.

***

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