a rental, but by himself.’
‘Do we need an interpreter for this?’
‘He says not. Says he speaks English just fine.’
‘Hmmm, I’ve had that before. No interpreter, then you find there’s lots of convenient misunderstanding when it comes to the detail. Lots of no comprendo, DS Walker.’
They drive in silence through the Fens for a time.
‘And anyway,’ she says, ‘there are lots of ways of making it look like it isn’t murder. Pills. Push ’em in a river, car accidents. Easy peasy. It’s got an old-fashioned quality, hanging – makes me think of medieval times, or highway men at roadsides, or lynchings, the American Civil War, y’know? They hung slaves from the trees.’
‘Yes, but this is Wisbech,’ says Davy.
‘Oh yes Davy,’ Manon says, clasping an imaginary handbag mid-air. ‘This is Wisbech, the last bastion of civilisation.’
She reaches out to turn on the radio. Immediately says, ‘Oh fuck no, not him again, I can’t stand him,’ as Shane Farquharson comes over the airwaves, his voice immediately recognisable – the everyman twang combined with stockbroker belt well-to-do. ‘How can you listen to this awful crap, Davy?’
Out from the radio comes Farquharson’s tell-it-like-it-is voice: ‘Any normal and fair-minded person would have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Lithuanian people suddenly moved in next door.’
‘Not any normal people I know,’ says Manon. ‘What the fuck is he talking about? It’s not fair-minded to be worried about someone’s nationality! It’s the opposite of fair-minded. It’s Being a Big Bigot.’
‘He’s just a disrupter,’ Davy says. ‘None of it means anything.’
‘Think it’s worse than that,’ Manon says.
Farquharson, whose primary job is media rent-a-gob, is of above average intelligence and articulate – he can express what his angry troupe are feeling, making sense of their futile fury, making their impotence seem momentarily like purpose. And though he has never won a seat in parliament, he dominates radio airwaves, a favourite of talk show phone-ins like the one currently polluting Davy and Manon’s air. ‘Urgh, he’s invited onto Question Time every single week,’ Manon says. ‘Just gives him a platform so he can feed more crazy to the base.’
Manon is aware she has descended into one of her diatribes and suspects Davy may have switched off, thinking instead about Big-Bosomed Bridget, while she pontificates about anger and neglect in the air, meted out at polling stations. The misinformed holding sway. Anger in the pages of newspapers, anger on radio airwaves, anger that pushes to one side solid information. There are no facts any more. Instead, ‘all the feels’ and ‘we’ve had enough of experts telling us what to think’ and ‘the elite have always run things, it’s time for change’ and drain the swamp and make Wisbech great again.
‘Anyway,’ Manon says, turning off the radio. ‘How are the wedding preparations going?’
He flushes, reminded of the adultery in his thoughts about Bridget.
Things have happened very quickly with Juliet because they were both so enthusiastic about the trappings of coupledom: the moving in together, the holidays, weekend walks, cushion choosing, casserole making, box set watching, less and less hot sex having; the whole insulation from loneliness a project in itself. This hunkering down, which in many respects is a closing off of the wider world, a narrowing of their circle down to two, but a sure-fire dependable two. Closing the curtains on the world’s diverse riches – riches like Bridget and her snarky sense of humour and lively expression. While wanting to hunker very badly, Davy can feel the loss of his interactions – solo interactions – with the world at large. The way he used to say yes to every invitation in case he met someone, the way he would force himself to go to a thing alone, a force of will when every fibre of his being wanted to watch telly with a ready meal. He has been all too ready to give up the strains of moving through the world alone, but cannot help noticing the way he feels blunted by the seclusion he and Juliet are gathering about them like a thick wool blanket.
Not all his interests are contained behind the drawn living-room curtains, with the telly on and the heating a smidgen too high, comfy though it is. It is also boring.
No, he tells himself, Bridget can’t be right for him because Juliet is The One, and Juliet has put her salt and pepper mills in the dental surgery starkness of his Sapley rental. And once you’ve pooled salt and pepper mills, there really is no going back. Also, Juliet has been soaking up the neglect and disappointment the job creates: the way investigations kick off at no notice, holidays postponed. She has greeted these disappointments with barely suppressed aggression. This complex interplay between them cannot (should not) be compared to the breezy clean sheet with someone where no guilt or recrimination has built up at all (aka Bridget).
‘Do you know Lukas Balsys?’ Manon asks after the long beep has sounded on the recording machine and she has informed it that she is in the room with Davy and Edikas, who has not been offered a brief because he is not under arrest. Yet.
‘Yes,’ Edikas says.
‘What was your relationship with Lukas?’
‘I find him work. Agricultural job.’
‘He came over on the bus from Klaipeda, is that right?’
Edikas nods.
‘For the tape please.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it true you took away his passport and bank card when he first arrived?’
‘No! Why would I do this? I have no need of Lithuanian passport. I have my own. I just help my peoples. When guys come from Lithuania, I help them. That is all.’
‘Did you pay Lukas a wage?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can I see evidence of this wage?’
‘Yes, we have document showing payroll. And you can look in his bank account.’
‘If he had his passport and bank cards, why were these not among his possessions? We retrieved only a belt, some vitamins.’
Edikas shrugs.
Manon allows a silence to linger. Time for everyone to ponder this situation. Silences reveal much, she finds, if only you refuse to take responsibility for them. When she was younger, she was a frantic silence-filler, feeling the onus was on her to make the moment smooth out, no matter how socially inept her companion. This led to plenty of absurd situations in which she deployed sexuality to fill in the gaps. Sit a younger Manon next to some chilly, pinched-lipped,
