Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [83]
He settled back further into the corner between his seat and the door. She ran her tongue along the shaft, then drew him into her mouth. God, she was good at this. He adjusted the rear-view mirror to give him a good view of anyone approaching the driver’s side of the car and split his attention between it, the rear of the vehicle and the passenger side.
No other vehicles entered the street and, at first, the only pedestrians visible were those passing at the far end of the road. After a while, he stopped bothering to check the mirrors, but continued to watch, now through lazy, half-closed eyes.
Inadvertently his wife slipped into his thoughts, ensuring that he felt a pang of guilt, but he decided that a small dose of guilt was preferable to a bucketload of her indifference, so he quickly pushed her out of his mind again.
Another minute passed and he ceased to care about whether anyone spotted them. He now only watched the gentle bobbing of Mel’s head. He wanted to climax slowly.
It was only a semi-conscious decision that prompted him to walk towards Kincaide’s car. Goodhew’s feet began heading that way before his brain had time to consider whether there was any good reason to.
He could see that Kincaide was sitting in the driver’s seat, partially facing in his direction, but although Goodhew raised his hand in greeting, no acknowledgement came in return. Kincaide was stock-still, perhaps concentrating on a phone call.
Goodhew slowed, feeling suddenly as though he was intruding. But with only a few houses between him and the car, there was nowhere to turn off and doing a 180 degree about-face would look pretty stupid.
He slowed some more. He had picked out something else now, draped over the rear of the passenger seat, and an uneasy feeling began crawling up his spine. In the moment between seeing it and recognizing it as Mel’s red mac, he chose to take the about-face option. But somehow in that time, he saw Kincaide look in his direction, then jerk upright. Then the back of Mel’s head appeared. She turned towards him even as he turned away from her.
The car slipped out of the edge of his field of vision, and he hurried away, far faster than he’d approached.
THIRTY-ONE
Goodhew knew as he hurried away that this would be no early night, so he went to the cinema and caught Kirsten Dunst’s latest film. He’d never heard of it before he arrived, and by the time it had finished, he had forgotten what it was called. But that didn’t matter because, in his opinion, Kirsten was one of the two movie stars who could chuck away their scripts and still deserve Oscars.
Kirsten had stared into a mirror, feeling sorry for herself, then she’d cast Goodhew an empathetic glance. He’d sighed and wondered how he’d allowed himself to be blind to Mel and Kincaide’s affair, why he felt so let down by Kincaide, and what gave him even the right to feel hurt. Finally, he realized that, despite wishing things were different, they weren’t, and it was really none of his business. He’d left the cinema before the end credits rolled.
When Goodhew let himself back into his flat, it was ten minutes past ten. There were no messages on the answerphone. He stood by the window for the next few minutes, wanting to call his grandmother and hating himself for hurting her, but still unable to ring.
Beyond the shadowy expanse of Parker’s Piece the police station lay quiet; there were only a few lights on around the building and just a few officers would be on duty. Marks was right: a fresh start in the morning would be the best thing.
Goodhew padded into the kitchen, a narrow room with all the appliances on the right and the units fitted on the left. Under a small sash window a red drop-leaf table occupied the far wall, on which stood only a portable TV, with a calendar of Hawaiian sunsets propped against it.
Goodhew decided to make himself an omelette.