Cold Light by John Harvey Read Free Book Online Page A

thirty-five, was due in hospital for a mastectomy first thing in the new year.
    â€œCan I borrow your hairdryer?” Nancy asked. “Mine’s on the blink.” And then at the bathroom door—“This do tonight, we don’t have to get too dressed up, do we?”
    Dana’s smile was genuine this time. “Only to the nines.”
    What might have helped, Nancy thought, on her way to the bedroom, if this afternoon had been more of a fright than actually it was, it might have done something to bring me on, get this blasted period of mine moving.
    Martin Wrigglesworth no longer considered his working days in terms of good or bad; simply, they were gradations of the latter—bad, less bad, badder, baddest. A classical education not entirely gone to waste. There were days, he thought, his ail-but clapped-out Renault Five stalling at the Noel Street lights, when the whole of Forest Fields should be swept into care. Why stop there? Hyson Green. Radford. The lot. Wheel everyone over sixty into residential homes for the aged; whisk children under eleven into the welcoming arms of foster parents, twelve-to-seventeen-year-olds into youth custody. Anyone left could be swept on to a massive Workfare program and work for their dole, performing useful services like cutting the grass on the Forest with nail clippers through the daylight hours. Those were the thoughts that got Martin through his less bad days.
    At home in Nuthall at weekends, repainting the bathroom, waiting to collect the boys from swimming, helping his wife fold the washing in from the line, he tried to recall the exact moment, the feeling that had drawn him into social work, a good and honorable profession.
    And what, Martin thought, turning into another narrow street in a warren of narrow streets, could he do? What honorable course might he take? Brutus would happily have fallen on his sword, of course, being an honorable man, but so far the mortgage and the pension plan and the irredeemable dream of renovating a dilapidated farmhouse in the South of France had kept any such thought firmly in Martin’s scabbard.
    â€œMartin,” his wife would say wearily over her marking, “if it’s making you feel so low, why don’t you hand in your notice? Resign. You’ll find something else.” With over three million out of work, he knew only too well what be would find. Instead of resigning he was resigned.
    Number 37, he said to himself, checking the hastily scribbled note on the seat beside him. A row of two-story, flat-fronted houses, front rooms opening out onto the street. Locking the car, he crossed the narrow, uneven pavement towards the chipped paint of the door. A late referral from a police officer fearful for the safety of a child: Lord knows what he would find on the other side. Not so long ago, here in the city, a young mother had dipped her two-year-old son’s penis in hot tea and spun him round inside a spin dryer.
    â€œHello,” he said, as Michelle opened the front door. “Ms. Paley? Martin Wrigglesworth, Social Services …” Showing her his card. “… I’ve called round about your son, er, Karl. I wonder if we might talk inside?”
    â€œHow do I look?”
    Nancy was standing in the entrance to Dana’s room in a silver crochet top, short black skirt, silver-gray tights with a pattern of raised silver dots, leather ankle boots with a slight heel. When Dana had asked her, back in mid-November, if she would like to go along to her firm’s Christmas dinner and dance, it had seemed like a good idea. “Terrific,” Dana enthused. “You look terrific.”
    â€œI feel ten feet tall.”
    â€œBetter than five feet wide like me.” Dana looked as if she had dived into her wardrobe head first and emerged swathed in color, bright yellows, purple, and green. Nancy was reminded of a parakeet with cleavage.
    â€œNo, seriously, I feel