Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [21]
It was a much more appealing prospect than poking at cardboard boxes behind office outbuildings. He could check for sleepers on the park benches. He never understood how anyone could survive outside when the day’s warmth evaporated from the Fens, and he expected each curled-up body to have died in the night, frozen to its draughty slatted bed.
But from where he stood, each bench appeared unoccupied, and he decided to check the public toilets instead before walking further.
They were housed in an old red-brick square block with individual cubicles along each side, and had been recently refurbished with a range of gadgets, including cisterns that automatically flushed upon the opening of the doors, and soap and water dispensers that squirted and sprayed without any actual physical contact. It would only take a few more such advances in technology, and bums wouldn’t even be touching seats.
Goodhew checked the doors one by one and found that none were occupied, they were obviously too compact for even the dispossessed to spend the night in. It was as he turned the final corner that he finally found him.
Ratty stood, tilted back, with his shoulder blades against the outside wall. He was smoking a roll-up, holding it between index finger and thumb as it sat in the centre of the tunnel made by his other curled-over fingers. Goodhew almost felt that Ratty was waiting for him, perhaps resigned to being tracked down and choosing to get it over with.
Even when Goodhew spoke, Ratty continued to stare vacantly across Christ’s Piece and Goodhew quickly deduced that he hadn’t emerged from the cooperative side of his sleeping bag that morning. ‘Did you know I was looking for you, Rat?’
Ratty spoke slowly, his voice rasping like bone against bone. ‘’Course I did.’
Yeah, of course, thought Goodhew. ‘OK,’ he said, then paused, waiting for Ratty to turn his head and look at him. He didn’t. ‘We have a witness who saw you.’
Ratty blew out a thin plume of smoke. ‘Oh yeah, doing what?’
‘Nothing, really, but you were out near the airfield. My guess is that you were heading for that lake off Coldhams Lane when she walked past. A few minutes later she was assaulted. Did you hear about it?’
This time Ratty looked directly at Goodhew. ‘We’ve all heard about the Airport Rapist.’
‘Did you see a man following her?’
Ratty shook his head.
‘That’s not an answer, Rat.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you have your code. When you mean no, you say no – shaking your head is merely avoiding the question.’
Ratty shook his head again. ‘You think you’re smart, don’t you? Well, you are, too. Lucky-fucking-you, that’s all I say. I’ll tell you about it, Gary.’ He had emphasized the ‘Gary’ and then stopped speaking which, word-wise, was more economical than saying I know stuff you don’t know. Goodhew waited, almost hypnotized by this macabre spectre trying to stare him out.
Despite Ratty’s stillness, his eyes were dark and hollow, and he seemed even less substantial than he’d been the last time they’d met: he’d always been a shell of a man, but now the walls were thinner. Sooner or later, the drugs inevitably took their toll, and Goodhew could see that Ratty now viewed the real world from the other end of an ever-extending tunnel.
Ratty ground the half-inch butt of his cigarette between his fingertips until it flaked to the ground. ‘I’m not talking to you. Right now, I’m nothing, and when things go bad that’s the best thing to be.’ He fanned out his nicotined fingers. ‘Trouble is like poison. You go near it and you get infected.’
‘That’s deep.’
‘What, coming from someone like me who’s never been out of it?’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Well, there’s trouble and there’s trouble. I always have some, but only my own. And I know all about other people’s, but there’s a line.’ He turned his face