The Vinyl Detective Attack and Decay by Andrew Cartmel

Author:Andrew Cartmel [Cartmel, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan Books

18: SRIRACHA

Not surprisingly, after what we’d been through, we slept most of the next day. Although, for my part, that sleep was far from unbroken or untroubled. During random nightmare-jangled intervals of wakefulness, I lay there in our dim, quiet hotel room, holding Nevada, clinging to her like a man fallen overboard in mid-ocean clinging to a life jacket, gnawed by the conviction that there was something vitally important that I had to remember, or to more fully understand.

Some connection I had to make.

But I could never grasp it, and I always sank back into exhausted sleep, spooning with Nevada in our big bed in the Penumbra Inn.

By the time we definitively woke up, disoriented and fuzzy headed, the sun was setting over the vattentorn. We washed and got dressed and were just wondering what we should do for supper when Tinkler and Ida turned up. Tinkler had apparently, unlike us, got up at a reasonably early hour, no doubt propelled by the prospect of Ida, and had duly spent the rest of the day with her in her tower. Well, good for him.

And good for her.

But not only did Tinkler and Ida turn up, they turned up bearing food. Food that Ida, rather sweetly, had cooked for us. Admittedly, as Nevada later pointed out, we’d given her most of the ingredients. But still… it was a kind thought. And the food was good. Though eerily familiar.

“Isn’t this your cheddar and pea frittata?” said Nevada, opening one of the takeaway containers Ida had thoughtfully provided, where a bright yellow wedge of frittata was indeed nesting on a bed of red and green salad leaves. I opened my own container and I looked at my own portion. It was substantially larger than Nevada’s, I noticed. Maybe to accommodate my lusty masculine appetite. Or maybe because Ida liked me better than my beloved.

“It certainly is my frittata,” I said, although I had, in turn, purloined the recipe from Marks and Sparks. “Tinkler must have described it to her. He has a remarkable memory where food is concerned.”

We had just begun eating with the wooden forks Ida had also thoughtfully provided when there was a knock on our door, signalling a return of the happy couple, who had been across the hallway making a similar food donation to Agatha. Tinkler was beaming with simple-minded happiness. Ida was brandishing the very familiar silver bullet of a thermos. “We forgot,” she said. “We also made some coffee for you.”

“She did,” said Tinkler, watching proudly as Ida unscrewed the cup-lid of the thermos and poured some of the contents into it. As she handed it to me, I had a sense of being given the opportunity to put right a previous wrong. Nevada was studiously ignoring us, tucking into the frittata. Ida watched me carefully, and she gradually relaxed as I at first sipped the coffee and then drained the whole cup.

“You’re not going to pour it down the toilet?” said Ida.

“Not for a few hours,” I said, and she laughed.

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