Blind Needle Read Online Free PDF Page B

though she hadn’t worn much the previous evening. Her eyelashes were naturally dark, they didn’t require mascara. Her lips were pale and faintly cracked, shiny with butter.
    I said, ‘That must have been some struggle, getting me up those stairs. There’s hardly room enough for one person.’
    â€˜You helped.’
    â€˜I did? Really?’
    â€˜I’m not surprised you don’t remember. You were rambling.’
    I watched her get up from the table and move to a cupboard next to the square pot sink. Like the rest of the house the kitchen had a dated, careworn look to it: cupboards of stained dark wood, floor covered in linoleum of indeterminate colour with rugs scattered here and there, a huge upright fridge with rounded corners and a flashy chromium handle with the manufacturer’s name stamped in it like a fifties American convertible. There was even an Ascot water heater I hadn’t seen in twenty years.
    People like Graham and Diane Locke, I supposed, didn’t set much store in material possessions. Providing an object or artifact continued to function and give reasonable service – car, fridge, water heater, telephone – why bother to change it?
    â€˜I couldn’t have made much sense last night,’ I said, watching her face as she set down a bowl and spoon and a packet of crunchy wholewheat cereal in front of me.
    â€˜There’s orange juice or apple juice too if you like,’ she said. ‘No, you didn’t, not much. A couple of names you seemed obsessed with.’
    I poured cereal – too much – into the bowl and held the spoon clenched in my fist as a child might waiting for its dinner.
    â€˜Whose names? What names?’
    â€˜Don’t you want milk with that?’
    The phone tinkled and Graham Locke came in. He walked with a slight limp, leaning to his left, the same side as the false eye. His lopsided appearance was real, not due to his cardigan being askew.
    â€˜Gilbert, as you might have gathered,’ he said to his daughter. He ran a hand through his hair and smiled at me in an abstracted fashion, as though he’d seen me somewhere and couldn’t remember. ‘Right. I’m ready to go.’ He finished off a mug of coffee. ‘It’s going to be fairly late, seven or eight, I should think, allowing for traffic. What will you do about the car?’
    â€˜They did say they’d ring me when it’s ready. But I wasn’t really planning on going anywhere. Listen. Please try and sell more than you buy, will you?’ Diane Locke sounded almost plaintive. Her forehead wrinkled in mock anguish as she said to me, ‘We have to park in the drive because the garage is full to the rafters. The attic is full. There’s only the bathroom left, and I refuse to climb over boxes to have a pee.’
    Graham Locke didn’t appear to have any qualms about leaving his daughter alone in the house with a stranger. I must have seemed to him trustworthy – or harmless. Did living isolated in the depths of the countryside, with no television, shield a person from the creeping paranoia that infected everyone else like fever? The house and its inhabitants were in a time-warp: could be that pre-war bakelite telephones and ancient fridges and worn linoleum lulled them into a torpor in which it was still possible to believe in a world that was innocent. A stable, compassionate, well-meaning world free from muggers and football hooligans and drug-crazed youths who battered old ladies to a pulp for their pittance of a pension.
    Graham Locke departed. I heard the van drive away and sucked at my broken tooth, where the hot coffee had found a sensitive nerve. ‘How far is it to the nearest town?’
    â€˜Four miles. Turn right at the bottom of the lane and straight on past the quarry. Just keep going. It’ll be muddy, after all the rain.’
    â€˜A bit of mud won’t bother me.’ I