Murder Club - Mark Pearson [13]
He rubbed one hand over the other again as he looked at the moon and winced.
‘Geoffrey, what are you doing out here? Come back to bed.’
He turned round, startled to see his wife standing in the doorway to their kitchen. She was just a few years younger than him, but she looked younger than that, even though her hair was pure white and the concerned expression that she wore on her face had settled into permanent lines from familiar usage. She had pale-blue, innocent, almost child-like eyes. Eyes that were large with concern. She was dressed in a pale-green dressing gown with matching slippers and held her arms wrapped around her body to comfort herself against more than the cold night air.
‘It’s dark, Geoffrey,’ she said again, ‘and it’s freezing down here.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded, but didn’t seem to register what she had said.
‘You could at least put something on your feet – where are your slippers?’
‘I don’t know, dear. Probably upstairs. Why don’t you get back to bed?’
‘I can’t sleep, with you down here.’
‘I won’t be long.’
‘But you haven’t even got your slippers on, you’ll catch your death of cold!’
Geoffrey nodded at the window. ‘Another full moon.’
‘I can see.’
Geoffrey Hunt looked back at his wife and blinked. ‘It would have been his birthday tomorrow, Patricia,’ he said.
His wife crossed over to him and wrapped her arms around his frail body.
‘I know,’ she said, and then again, ‘I know. I didn’t mention it. I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.’
Geoffrey nodded as he stroked her hair and looked up at the full moon. He shivered again and Patricia took his hand.
‘Come to bed now. There’s nothing we can do. There never was.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘It’s true.’
Geoffrey nodded, but his eyes belied the gesture. He stroked his wife’s hair gently, kissed her on the cheek and let her lead him from the kitchen.
8.
Edgware Road. Ten o’clock, Friday night
THE WHISKY WAS doing the trick now.
It always did, when he could get enough of it. And that was bloody rare. Sodding London! Too many fake immigrants with dogs and babies messing up the game. Only for him it wasn’t a game. People took him for a scammer too, though. Bloody Eastern Europeans – he’d spit on them. He’d blood their noses! Them and the bloody Big Issue nonces. Spoiling it for Bible. Spoiling it for all the real people. The civilians didn’t know better now. They couldn’t tell the Pharisees – the separated ones – from the Pharaohs, and who was to blame them! But it was he and the rest of them who suffered. Separated, right enough. They might be beloved of God, but you couldn’t tell it on the streets of London.
‘For I tell you,’ he shouted and waved his grimy fist in front of him, the people on the streets parting around him like waves before a prow, ‘that unless your righteousness exceeds that of scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven!’
He slumped against the window of McDonald’s and took a ragged breath. There was a buzzing in his head building now, and he half-mumbled, half-sang along to the rhythm of it. He moved his head slightly from side to side as he did so, bloodshot eyes peering through nearly closed eyelids. He liked it when his head buzzed. It blocked out his thoughts and his feelings, such as they were. Truth to tell, Bible Steve, as he was known on the streets, didn’t feel a great deal any more. Except cold. The last couple of winters had been brutal, and this one looked like it was going to be no better, before it was done with him. Maybe would do for him, because the worst of it still lay ahead, if he was any judge. He tilted his head and looked up at the night sky, his singing turning into a gurgle as he took another sip of medicine and grunted as he stumbled further