Shadow Play by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online

the face which had always reminded him of some exotic dancer blessed with oddly imperfect beauty and enormous eyes. You could not even guess her nationality with those saturnine looks, and here and now, despite the casual elegance of her fine, swinging coat, you could not guess the authority she held. She looked lost. She stood at the counter labelled FISH! paralysed with uncertainty. Supermarkets did this to her. On a market stall it was different, but here, she failed to function. In an instant, he understood her better, loved her better, though the liking was still in doubt. He saw that she had bought vegetables and so had he.
    People looked at her, without her ever seeing, he noticed, but they were not drawn to a man with a black eye as he went his aberrant way, tipping all he had chosen back on to the fruit and vegetable aisle. He looked like a thief who had abandoned the expedition, a reprobate who could not pay, and he felt a fool, for being ludicrously tidy in his replacement of what he knew she had already bought, putting back potatoes with potatoes, fruit with the same breed of fruit, plastic bags where they belonged. Bailey, who was willing to bet she had selected worse produce from her stall and paid more, replaced his goods with an element of regret. Then he walked up to where she stood, still immobile. The red coat crumpled as he placed his hands around her waist and whispered in her ear.
    â€˜Fancy a night on the town, then? Take you away from all this? Man with a black eye, asking for you.’
    She did not move, leant back against him.
    â€˜I never go out with strange men,’ she said. ‘I stay in. Do you want cod or plaice? I can’t even spell the others.’
    Â 
    T hey might answer to their names, but he doubted they could spell them. At ten past ten, Sergeant Morgan examined the relief for night shift, E division, King’s Cross. They paraded for duty in whatever shambolic order they chose and not for any other purpose than his counting them. You didn’t brief them these days. Although the sergeant would have liked it to be different, half of this relief were probationers, rookies from the country with accents you could cut with a knife and as far as he could see, scarcely a good one among them. He was grateful he did not have to examine their consciences, but counting them was easy. Out of ten, three were missing. Those present, who had come via various routes to work, could not explain the absence of the contingent from the section house.
    Sergeant Morgan sent the oldest constable, PC Michael, all of twenty-four, a handsome pugilist with a broken nose, and a temperament of surprising gentleness until he approached a fight and even then he seemed able to control his scarred fists. Michael was of a size which looked ridiculous in a panda car and the bulk of him made the door of the section house appear small by comparison.
    Inside, PC Michael could smell the conflict although the place looked as empty as a closed shop. Late turn, the two-till-ten shift, were still on their way home, while early turn, who would work from eight till two tomorrow, were all still out on the town. Following a nose for blood, Michael broke into a run up a flight of stairs where the sounds of violence were now unmistakable. A hoarse yelling, grunting, the noise of falling furniture, a slow dancing of malice-filled steps, the vicious sounds of bone on bone and a cry of enraged pain led his progress. There was a bedroom door ajar through which the central light swung drunkenly from a low ceiling, casting a beam like a moving flame on the scene beneath. He could see a stereo system smashed, a cheap bedside lamp in fragments. In the far corner, illuminated as the light swung back, a wardrobe door hung on its hinges, supported from falling by the slumped figure of a slight youth with his left hand shielding his eyes, the other arm outflung to the edge of a rumpled bed on which sat a girl with spiky hair,