So He Takes the Dog. Jonathan Buckley

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       8

      The door opens and we’re looking at a young woman in grey tracksuit leggings and a baggy grey T-shirt, late twenties, not slim, five-six or five-seven. Her hair, gathered in a twist and secured with a pair of chopsticks, is a colour that some people might classify as red but most would describe as fair or strawberry blonde. We both know at once that we’re looking at Henry’s walking companion, and at least one of us is thinking it’s odd that her face didn’t make much of an impression on Tom Gaskin, because it’s not the kind of face you see every day of the week. There’s something Slavic about the breadth and slope of her cheekbones, and about her eyes, which are narrow and deep-set, and set slightly at an upward angle. The nose, small and somewhat flattened at the bridge, is interesting too, and rather delicate, whereas her mouth is wide and full-lipped, with a distinct ridge above the upper lip, and her jaw is deep and heavy, almost masculine, some would say. Her brow juts out a little, which tends to give her a brooding appearance, and her skin isn’t terrific. You couldn’t imagine anyone describing Hannah Rowe as pretty, but nobody with functioning visual apparatus could deny that her face has strength, an unusual strength.

      She shakes hands with both of us: her grip is strong and her skin surprisingly rough. She precedes us up the stairs to her flat, into a room that has no curtains or blinds. The floorboards are unvarnished and there’s just one rug in the middle of the room, a big square of thick chalk-coloured wool with a small square of turquoise inset at one end. There’s hardly any furniture: a futon against the wall near the edge of the rug, a couple of leather beanbags, one wicker armchair, that’s the lot. A few books are lying on the floor, and there are some shelves of books and cassettes in the corner opposite the futon, above the TV and hifi and a tree branch that’s propped against the wall, stripped of its bark and as white as veal. The walls are a colour that seems off-white at first, but as the hour passes and the light changes in the room it acquires a tinge that’s greenish-grey, and in the centre of one wall there’s a row of photographs, each the size of a magazine page. All these pictures show the same thing – a field and a drystone wall – and all were taken from exactly the same place, so the wall runs diagonally across the top right-hand corner, but the images are different, because the light is not the same in any two, so in some the wall is grey and in others black or fawn or even pink, while the field itself is not the same hue of green from one shot to the next. And by the door there are some of pieces of cloth, pressed under glass. They’re not patterned or embroidered, like the samples in the Heidi house. These are just scraps of material, each dyed a single colour: a blue, a red, a yellow. One of them is black. That’s all it is: a bit of black rag. Ian notices it on his way in and you can see that he’s instantly decided that we’ve an arty poser on our hands.

      Hannah waves us towards the futon and the armchair. Crossing her ankles, she sits down on the floor, swiftly, easily, and her back is absolutely straight when she’s sitting, like someone who does a lot of yoga. For a few seconds she stares into the floor and a profound frown appears, as if she’s seeing on the floorboards a picture of Henry. ‘So,’ she whispers, and she glances up, but at the sky, not at either of us. ‘You found him on the second?’

      ‘He was found on the second of January, yes,’ replies Ian, employing the tone you’d take with relatives of the bereaved.

      ‘Where?’

      ‘On the beach. Midway between the end of the road and Straight Point.’

      She nods, once again gazing downwards. ‘And he was murdered.’

      ‘He’d been stabbed.’

      Now she begins to pick at a loose strip of wood in the floor, a splinter two or three inches long. It makes a buzzing sound as she plucks it, which she does repeatedly. Tears are budding in her eyes. ‘When?’ she asks.

      ‘We don’t know for certain. Mid December. Around then.’

      ‘So he was out there for two weeks?’

      ‘Possibly.’

      ‘And where is he now?’

      ‘The body’s in the mortuary. We need to find the next of kin.’ Ian waits for her to respond, but she’s pinching at her lip as she regards the sky and there’s no sign that a reply is imminent.

      Perceiving that we’re dealing with someone who’s in a less than entirely stable state of mind, Ian quietly clears his throat. ‘Your picture. It was taken in October. Is that right?’

      ‘That’s right,’ she replies abstractedly.

      ‘And when was the last time you saw him? Can you recall?’

      Hannah СКАЧАТЬ