Dolphin Junction by Mick Herron

Author:Mick Herron [Herron, Mick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Published: 2021-09-14T17:00:00+00:00

The Other Half

WHEN SHE’D FINISHED WITH the computer she returned to the bathroom, set the boiler’s timer to constant, and collected the shirt: a black silk affair evidently saved for special occasions. She carried this downstairs, turning the thermostat up as high as it would go as she passed, then hung it on the kitchen door while she sorted out her remaining tasks. The clock on the wall read Nearly Time To Go, but she didn’t need telling, her body already sending out signals: pinpricks at the back of the neck, a fizziness in the blood; the on-the-edge messages the primal self transmits at useful moments. She’d promised herself ten minutes, max, and they were almost up. Kitchen jobs done, she retrieved the shirt and let herself out the back door, locking it behind her with the key from the hook next to the cooker. For a moment she stood fixed to the spot, gauging the quality of the neighbourhood noise. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She released the breath she’d been holding, then placed the key on the window ledge, before looking down at the shirt in her hand. ‘Now, what are we going to do with you?’ she asked; though if the truth were told, she already knew.

‘Reformatted,’ Joe repeated.

‘The hard drive, yes.’

‘Which is bad,’ he ventured.

‘You don’t get computers, do you, Joe?’

Joe Silvermann shook his head regretfully. While he didn’t mind that he didn’t get computers, he hated disappointing people.

Tom Parker said, ‘Basically, Tessa wiped it. Erased all the work stored in the machine plus all the software loaded on it, which, trust me, comes to an expensive piece of damage on its own. Even without her other party pieces.’

‘Such as the heating.’

‘I was only away two days. Imagine if I’d been gone all week? Or a fortnight?’

‘Or a long cruise,’ Joe suggested. ‘Four weeks, sometimes six. Two months, even. I’ve seen adverts.’

‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ Tom said. ‘House was like a heatwave as it was. The bill’ll be ruinous. Then there were the kitchen japes. Fridge and freezer doors swinging open, oven on full blast. And the phone, she’d left the phone off the hook. After dialling one of those premium rate chatlines. Jesus!’

‘It’s not good,’ Joe agreed, shaking his head. ‘Not good at all.’

‘And what she did with my shirt …’

He’d been steadily growing redder through this recital, and Joe was worried Tom Parker might have a seizure or something; perhaps a mild apoplectic episode requiring medical intervention. He was a youngish man, so this wasn’t desperately likely, but as Joe’s first-aid expertise stopped at dialling 999, he thought it best to steer conversation away from the shirt. ‘You’ll forgive my saying so, I know,’ he said. ‘Not only because we are friends, but because you’re a fair man. But you keep saying Tessa did this. Did she perhaps leave a note? Or some other declaration of some description?’

‘Of course she didn’t, Joe. We’re talking criminal damage here.’

‘She seemed a nice young woman,’ he mourned.

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