Cold Spring Part II
He squared his shoulders: turned round smiling.
But it was Lauren, not Bodie, and she didn’t look fooled for a second. “Morning, Ray.” She raised an eyebrow, tilted her head at the glittering ocean. “Would you be happier if I just walked into the sea?”
“No!” he returned, a little too brightly, and grinned at himself. “Of course not. Why?”
“Well… ” She ran a hand over sleep-tousled hair and came to sit beside him on the steps. “I thought we were just having fun last night, but I think I’ve made things complicated for you.”
“No. Things are just complicated.”
“Were you telling me the truth when you said you weren’t a couple? Because you don’t half act like you are.”
Doyle felt his face heat slightly, and groaned. “A grouchy one on the brink of divorce, I should think,” he conceded. “No. We’ve just… been through a lot together.”
They sat in silence for a moment, then she said plainly, “I thought he was going to make love to you after I did, last night.”
Doyle flinched. He could not talk about this now. His throat felt full of broken glass and nausea was coiling inside him. But certainly he would never be able to talk about it again. There was this girl, who was taking the ferry to the mainland in an hour, and there was this moment. Doyle rested his brow on the heels of his hands; closed his eyes. “I thought so too. He’d have liked that. One nice, uncomplicated fuck, then back to business as usual.”
“But you love him, and you couldn’t do it.”
She stayed with him for a long time, this girl he had known for one night and would never see again. He couldn’t cry: had only been able to do so last night because he was drunk and exhausted: but something harder and more painful than tears was at work on him, and while he was in the grip of it she sat in silence and attended. She didn’t try to offer solace to wounds whose depth and seriousness she couldn’t know, and when the taxi sounded its horn outside, said simply, “You were a sweet lover. I hope things change for you,” and left.
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Strangely, he and Bodie managed the rest of their short holiday in good order. The interactions demanded between them were of the simplest kind: Did you sleep well? Another coffee? Put your shirt on before you burn, Ray!: and easily managed in this stress-free zone with a massive, warm outdoors just three steps away from potential conflict.
Back in London, it was impossible. They limped through five strained days and fouled up a shootout on the sixth, each unprecedentedly incapable of predicting how the other would act. Bodie found himself in Cowley’s office barely an hour later, nursing a shoulder wound and wondering why Doyle had not been invited to the carpet-call.
“Sit down, for heaven’s sake. Have you had that properly seen to?”
Bodie thumped awkwardly into a chair, avoiding the acerbic gaze. “Yes, sir. It’s just a scratch.”
“Just a scratch.” Cowley sat in silence on the far side of the desk for a long moment. Then he leaned forward, picked up a pen and said, casually, “I’m informed you acquired your scratch because 4.5 failed to provide adequate cover.”
Bodie stiffened. An alarm shrilled in his mind. What was the old fox up to? “That’s not the way it was, sir. Lucas and McCabe weren’t in a position to observe what happened - ”
“I didn’t receive the information from Lucas and McCabe. I got it from 4.5.”
“From Doyle - Oh, for God’s sake. You know what he’s like. He gets frequent-traveller discount for his guilt trips.”
“Then you’d better tell me yourself what happened.”
Bodie released an impatient breath and folded his arms. “It’ll be in my report.”
“Don’t be insolent, 3.7! I’ve no doubt it will be, once you’ve thought up a way of phrasing it to cover Doyle’s incompetence!”
“What?!”
“You heard me. He’s perfectly aware that he fouled up. Don’t you compound the damage by lying!” Cowley paused, wondering if he was finally going to get the meltdown. No. Bodie was controlling it, just as his boss had always insisted he did. Channelling it. Burying it for release at the right time. Suddenly, that was not good enough. “He isn’t indispensable, Bodie.”
The resultant row shook windows. In the squad room, Doyle paced miserably; came to a halt by the door. “Christ, Mac. He’s going to get himself fired.”
“What, blue-eyed Bodie? Not a chance.” McCabe put the kettle on and leaned his elbows on the stained counter-top, listening to the performance. “The old man’d sooner close the shop. It’s your own arse you want to - ” He winced as a door slammed; gave Doyle a sympathetic leer. “Here it comes. Glad my little Lucas doesn’t give me all this bother.”
“Where’s my tea, you cretin?” responded little Lucas from the corner, then jumped along with the rest of them as the door flew open.
“What the fuck did you go and tell the old man all that for?!”
Doyle stared – for a moment absurdly distracted by the beauty of him. His colour was up; his eyes dilated to black. Peripherally he was aware of Lucas and Mac shuffling around them and out of the room. “All what?”
“That it was your fault I got hit this afternoon!”
“Well, it – it was, Bodie.”
“Oh, don’t worry! He believed you!”
Silently Doyle examined his partner’s face. A little coldness was beginning in his stomach. Bodie did not get to this pitch easily. At length he asked quietly, “What has he done?”
“What he has done, Doyle, is split us up. You’re assigned solo on the Catford operation, and I - I’m teamed with Jeffrey bloody Lake until further notice.” He stopped, ran a hand over his hair. “I hope you’re fucking satisfied now.”
What Bodie thought might satisfy him, what he thought he might have been trying to achieve, was utterly lost on Doyle. He could gain no information from the slammed squad-room door, nor subsequently from Bodie’s empty flat and unanswered phone. By the time he got back to HQ – where, he realised, he should have begun his search for answers – he was almost calm again. Calm or not, however, he did not knock at Cowley’s door.
“I trusted you.”
Having bigger fish to fry, the old man let the unceremonious arrival slide. He was in his usual evening modification of business wear, shirt sleeves rolled up, tie undone, and he glanced up at Doyle with something like enjoyment. “I’m sure you and Bodie have discussed the foolhardiness of that.”
“I let personal matters affect my performance this afternoon. Bodie and I have had a rough week. But we’d have sorted it out. I told you the truth about what happened so you’d know what was going on and give us a bloody chance.”
“Would you like to sit down, 4.5?”
“Not on your life.”
“Then finish what you have to say on your feet, and hurry up about it. The Catford team are waiting to hand over to you.”
“You’re actually going through with this?”
“I don’t waste staff time with threats. Bodie and Lake are on assignment now.”
“Where?” It was unsteady but Doyle had gone past caring.
“That is need-to-know, 4.5, and you don’t.”
“I have to see him.”
Cowley tugged off his spectacles. The enjoyment was definite now, fuelled by an old anger; an older grief. “For what? Further discussion of the personal matters that nearly got him killed today? I will tell you something, Doyle: Bodie is extremely vulnerable to you. And there are incidents recorded in his personal file which make it most inadvisable for him to engage in a same-sex relationship which exceeds the bounds of friendship. I will not have him exposed. Until you have your feelings under control, you may consider him off-limits, both personally and professionally. Do you understand?”
When Doyle had dropped gun, clip and badge on this desk’s battered surface over Ann Holly, he had honestly thought himself in love. He supposed the provocation was greater this time, if he was going to make the gesture. But the truth was that he wasn’t angry. His mind had skipped Cowley’s last couple of sentences completely, their load of presumption and vulgarity, snagging on one word only: “Incidents?” Outrage and aggression faded, leaving his vision clear, his heart pounding fast but steady. "Sir... what happened to Bodie?"
And Cowley knew that he had lost. Ray Doyle stripped of every emotion but concern for his partner was a force he could not deal with. In the past, only the man's volatility, carefully used against him, had kept him in check. Cowley had pushed him into leaving over the Holly business in order to pursue the investigation in peace; knew perfectly well he'd be back once his temper had died. A different man stood across the desk from him now - or rather some rage-purged concentration of the same one. For a moment the tired face looked like that of an angel in an old painting, compassionate and stern. Cowley realised with a shiver that some of the pity was directed at him. "Please." Not a hint of pleading in it, but almost gentle. "I need to know."
"If he thought so, he'd have told you."
It was a weary jibe, but sharp, and Doyle flinched. "I - I suppose you're right. I don't know what you're trying to do, but... " He tailed off, shook his head. "Never mind. I'll get down to Catford now. I'd be grateful if you'd tell Bodie where I am, let him decide for himself if he wants to - " A quick grin, the mask dissolving to weary amusement. "Actually, don't bother. If he wants to find me, it'll take more than either of us to stop him."
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The Catford job was a routine surveillance. Doyle found himself unresentful of the long shifts, although Cowley hadn't assigned a relief to spell him. The van's cramped interior became for him a theatre of many recent scenes, little dramas he hadn't had time to process. The audio equipment and metalwork dissolved to a bloodbronze sunset over the Mediterranean, to bright hot stars that then somehow kindled in blue eyes looking down on him. Broad naked shoulders. A white-painted bedroom ceiling. There had been a moment, of truth and lies, excitement and fear, and the balance had shifted and crashed down around them. Why had the decision, their simple, mutual no, caused such fallout? They knew one another well enough - Doyle had thought - to handle something like that between them, absorb the shock, continue.
Doyle supposed part of the problem was that his own mind and heart had been crying out yes. And for the past year or so, he had been subject to a growing feeling that Bodie would say yes too, in the remote event of the matter arising. There had been nothing definite, nothing to provoke conscious wondering, but in the sensory-deprivation tank the van became between conversations from the flat across the road, Doyle relived a thousand small exchanges of touch and word, and understood why the last barrier had not only stopped them but done so with the force of a high-speed collision. They had both been ready. The no had been the voice of the world, of cold common sense, of societal prohibitions drummed into them both from childhood; a rock on which nascent passion had broken and destroyed itself. And daily life, and business-as-usual, and – oh, God! – friendship, all had gone down with the ship. Doyle got up, sharply, forgotten headphones yanking him back. He detached himself with shaking hands and stood in the murmuring darkness. Damn Cowley. Damn the job. What was the point of it anyway, if their partnership was over? As a civilian, Doyle might be able to salvage something better. Bodie might find he could reach out to a friend who was no longer a colleague.
His letter already sealed and on Cowley’s desk in his mind, Doyle was nevertheless too good a soldier to dump even this excuse of an assignment without notice. He was therefore still in the van and trying to get patched through to base for a relief when the faint knocking came. Cutting the connection, he listened until it sounded again, then made his way cautiously to the van’s rear doors and cracked one open.
A motorcycle courier was outside, looking incongruous in top-to-toe black leather with a bottle of ouzo in one hand and a sheaf of beautiful dark-red roses in the other. He said, after a moment’s dubious examination of Doyle, “Angelfish?!”
Doyle hoped his surveillance target wouldn’t chance to look out of her bedroom window, because he was supposed to be nonexistent within the van, not folded up laughing on its back step with a bemused courier trying to offer him roses. “Yes,” he got out at length. “It would take too long to explain.” Wiping away tears, he took the bottle and the flowers and set them down carefully inside the van. “The man you’re delivering from – where is he?”
“Now? I don’t know. He just stopped me on the street near St Pancras. He didn’t have time to write anything down for you, but the message is, you’re not to quit and he’ll see you tonight at your place.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Doyle ran a hand through his hair. “Er … What address did he give you?”
“Unmarked white van opposite the Green Man, Catford.”
“Of course.” Doyle tipped him – very generously, as the courier only realised once the van door was shut and locked once more – and went back to work.
The day’s second visitor was almost as surprising as the first: Jax, both hands wedged into his jacket pockets, grinning broadly at the roses Doyle somehow could not bring himself to hide. “Whoever donated those deserves the shaved-and-showered version. You can run along now, Ray.”
Doyle smiled up at him from the tangle of cables and headphones in which he was still enmeshed. “I’m on shift here until eight. Still, it’s nice to have a guest.”
“I’m not a guest. I’m your relief. Move over.” Pushing Doyle aside with a hip, he began efficiently to pick up the ropes of the surveillance. He glanced at Doyle’s notes. “Not exactly been Watergate, has it?”
“My relief?” Doyle echoed in confusion. “Did Cowley change his mind?”
“No. But I heard what the old sod had pulled on you, and since my ma-in-law’s visiting tonight, this could work out to our mutual advantage.”
“Ah, Jax, there’s no need - ”
“Really? Want me to push off?”
Doyle stared into amused brown eyes. Abruptly, his mind was making an inventory of things he would like to do, given a few hours to prepare for Bodie’s return, as opposed to the last-minute dash across London he had assumed he would be making just to intercept him at the door. “You are a good, good mate,” he said finally, and unhooked his jacket from the back of a chair.
Jax laughed. “Well, Jeff and Bodie are coming off assignment tonight, aren’t they?” By dint of some kind and amazing diplomacy Doyle could only wonder at, he managed to take no notice of the roses his colleague was gathering up. “You’ll be wanting to have a few drinks with them.”
“I … Er, yeah. That’s right. God, thanks again, Jax. Can you square it with base?”
“If you mean our beloved Alpha, in my opinion the sadistic bugger doesn’t deserve to know.”
Doyle could not remember the last time he had had daylight hours on his hands. A little dazed – as much by Jax’s subtle understanding as his own sudden release into the sunshine – he made his way to the car. Carefully he laid the roses down in the boot where they would keep fresh. They only just fit. Huge, long-stemmed things, with big velvety heads and a scent like midsummer… And as for the ouzo, it was a joke, Bodie’s wry admission that alcohol had been a major player that night in Greece, and could be again, or not, if Doyle required a let-out.
Frowning, Ray began the process – long since become automatic – of wiggling the Capri back and forth until her nose cleared the backside of the car in front that had parked her in. His colleagues, or Jax and Bodie at least, seemed set on making life easy for him. He had always thought they would be an obstacle, a source of derision, if he took a step off the track. But he remembered Mac and Lucas darting out of the squad room the other day in time for his blow-up with Bodie, and Murphy – well, Murph seemed to assume they were when they weren’t, evincing only a sorry surprise at evidence to the contrary. Doyle supposed he should realise that derision was a separate thing from the raillery any such development would produce. If he could survive Cowley plainly accusing him of entrapment and seduction, the rape of the surrogate son, he could take a bit of teasing from his mates.
He left the car outside his flat and took the tube to Tottenham Court Road; made his way through the spring’s first serious outbreak of tourists in Soho Square, down Greek Street and onto Old Compton. The invariable queue outside Camisa’s deli would give him time to think. He’d turned out a fair cook, to his own surprise, provided you didn’t push him out of Southern Europe. The gift had delighted the ever-hungry Bodie and a string of girlfriends who couldn’t boil water. Leaning on the wall outside Camisa’s, poignantly-lovely London sunlight warming his face, he thought: Ann, and it didn’t hurt. Not at all. It was like waking up in hospital one morning, suddenly able to breathe without the machine. Fettucine puttanesca, he decided suddenly; Bodie had liked that last time, enjoying Doyle’s translation of the name – whore’s ribbons – almost as much as the food itself. Apart from the anchovies in the sauce, the meal had been vegetarian, which Bodie had not minded because it had not been pointed out to him. Come to think of it, Ann’s departure had marked the beginning of a subtle campaign on Doyle’s part to get Bodie to eat better. He’d cashed in shamelessly on what Doyle produced for the helpless Ann, and assuaged Doyle’s loneliness thereafter by hanging around his kitchen when they came off duty, his cook for me, then, if she’s that daft a silent reassurance in the air between them. Doyle had been happy to. Weaning Bodie off junk food required a carrot-rather-than-stick approach, provided the carrot could be served up with sufficient flair, and they’d shared many dinners since, Bodie reciprocating with dishwashing and extravagant takeaways…
To his surprise, he was not only inside the deli but at the head of the queue, the owner’s wife looking at him with the barely-leashed impatience that indicates plenty more where you come from, so wake up. He flashed a smile at her, potent with charm from other thoughts, and watched her blush and relent. Distractedly, going through the recipe in his head, he ordered fresh fettucine, big black olives in the shop’s own-brand sun-dried tomato marinade, anchovy filets and a jar of capers. For later, a quarter of Gorgonzola that looked about ready to trot back to his flat by itself. Two ciabatta loaves. “Oh, and a pound of the Kenyan coffee, ground for a percolator.”
“Non Italiano?”
“Ē troppo, con pasta y tiramisu.” The unintentional charm-offensive was complete. “Oh, yeah – I need stuff for tiramisu,” Doyle added - vaguely, because remembering Benny, that did still hurt, now, but his conquest was piling up savoiardi biscuits, mascarpone and cocoa powder on the counter-top without being prompted. Benny had taught him culinary Italian and how to recognise members of the Mob’s London chapter. That loss had occurred within a couple of weeks of Ann Holly’s. Standing in the crowded deli counting out change, signora beaming upon him, Ray Doyle finally understood which had hurt him more. “Grazie tanto. Buena sera.”
“Arrivederla, caro!”
Brown bag settled comfortably on his hip, Doyle edged back out onto Compton Street. At the place where it joined Wardour to his left, a warm south breeze was stirring dust in the air, and he noticed that the sun was picking out new growth on the trees in the old churchyard. A glance at his watch confirming that he had time, he went up the age-blackened steps, returned a friendly nod to the gentleman of the road inhabiting one bench and settled himself on another close by, where sunlight fell in broad whitegold shafts through wrought-iron railings. The bag in his lap smelled wonderful, bread and coffee mixed. How long was it since he’d done more than knock the mould off the end of a supermarket loaf and boil up some instant? He and Bodie had everything except time, and lacking that, sometimes had nothing at all. This great city all around them, and not a second to enjoy it. Companionship, snatched in the teeth of the chase. Leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, Doyle thought: love. Yes, love, starved of air and light because every day could be its last.
A cold, dry unease shifted in Doyle’s gut. His armpits and the back of his neck prickled. Glancing round him, he tried to find a source for the shadow, but there was only the churchyard, festive with belated spring, a muted babble of German and Japanese coming from the squadrons of exchange students gathered on the corner. Shrugging the feeling off, Doyle turned his attention to the evening ahead: what else did he need? Fresh veg. Tomatoes, on the vine for preference: garlic, a lollo rosso and some rocket if he could get it. That could be a problem in the city centre, but there were generally a few market stalls at the bottom of Gerard Street. They resented selling to anyone smaller than wholesale buyers from the Chinese restaurants, but Doyle had looked after them in various ways during his time on his Chinatown beat, and they had long memories. He smiled: Bodie had once accused him of knowing half London; he had mildly accused Bodie of having roughed up or slept with the other half, and that made them quits. Then – alcohol, yes. His cupboard at home was well-stocked, but a nice plain bottle or four of Valpolly would set off the pasta. They could turn to the ouzo later, if desired. A doubt assailed him: should he be doing Greek tonight? No – on reflection, if things went horribly wrong in the late part of the evening, he wanted the meal to remain digestible. Besides, the ouzo was a touch of comedy, and he and Bodie always did so much better with serious occasions if they could find the joke. Love? Yes, love, and every day could be its last. But that’s true for everyone. God, I’ve been such a fool. Doyle got up and left the churchyard, smiling and handing one loaf of ciabatta to the tramp as he went.
The flat was untidy, with the chilly, slightly-desolate feel it took on if he hadn’t been there much to attend its basic needs. And Doyle knew he would never be able to set down groceries and walk into a living room with equanimity. He was two miles downriver from the Kensington block where he’d been shot, but his body still set up a resonant ache when he put it through these homely actions.
Oh, it was time for exorcism, of all kinds of ghosts! Energy welled up in him, a burst of it from nowhere, as if something inside had been released from other, drearier tasks. He couldn’t account for it: the past few days had been a life-draining misery, and he’d hardly slept. But here it was, and here he was, and here was all this mess. Mentally closing the gift-horse’s mouth, he slammed a tape into the deck – Murmur, a pre-release bootleg from a friend in LA - and set to.
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