The Light of Day: A Novel by Graham Swift Page A

your throat. But it’s not up to me anyway. I’m here for her, for her sake. Her agent. How long would she give it, if she were here? For ever? Before she turned her back, closed her eyes, walked away. Suppose they let her out, just for this purpose, just for this one day. The taste of freedom. Lemon light. Cold air in the mouth. The freedom of a graveyard, where they never let you out at all.
    But I have to do it for her, taste it for her. This life we cling to. As if she might be right here beside me, clutching my arm. Both of us looking down. The gall, the nerve of it.
    I have to be here for her. To receive any messages. And that might need waiting—that might take ages—coming from the cold hard ground.
    No word. Not today.
    It’s not up to me. And now that I’m standing here, not knowing how, when to go, I have the same feeling I had last time. It’s up to
him.
He’s got me now, in his grip. It’s his one chance, I’ve walked into his trap.
    You’re glad, aren’t you? Glad to be alive. He’s smiling at me coldly down there. Nice flowers. Beautiful day.
    He’s not going to let me go in a hurry, not going to make it easy for me: this stranger he never knew, who turns up now like some phoney friend, some fake well-wisher. This stranger who followed him, shadowed him, though he never knew, when he was alive. Spied on him—in his pain, in his misery. And now comes to spy on him even in death.

22
    Rachel chose me, that’s what I think now. Chose me—and unchose me. Though I thought I was doing all the choosing, making the move, sizing up the situation and stepping in, just like the well-trained cop I was.
    Though I was something more than that by then: CID, if only just. A detective constable. Plain clothes. So she didn’t know, the disguise must have worked. And it was the first and the best time I’d ever used it like that, to my own advantage, like some magic mask, like some suit of invisible armour.
    I said, “What’s the trouble here . . . ?”
    Police training. A little bit of presence and authority. You can break up fights (book them if they hit you back), you can stop traffic, you can act like a little god—if you’re in uniform.
    But she didn’t guess, she thought it was just me.
    It’s how I met your mum, Helen, long ago. I was Detective Constable Webb. But I was Saint bloody George riding to the rescue.
    I said, “This lady would like a cup of coffee.” (“This lady”!) And I sat right down at her table. The nerve.
    It was called Marco’s. It was new and it was just a little way from the County Courts. I might have gone to the caff in New Street where all the cops on court duty hung out. I might have gone to a pub. But I mooched about and ducked into Marco’s just as a shower was starting.
    Eleven-thirty on a Friday morning and my weekend off was coming up, and the judge had called a sudden adjournment. My lucky day. And the sergeant said, when I called in, “I’d hop it if I were you. See you Monday.”
    Sometimes fate is on your side.
    You can sniff an atmosphere straight away, you know when something funny’s going on. Off duty? Maybe, maybe not. I sat at a table by the window. The shower had turned into a downpour. A waitress with a strange, hounded look seemed only too pleased to serve me. Three tables along, a big man (Marco?—I’ll never know) was standing, towering over a girl who was sitting facing me but not looking at me, looking hard at her hands, one of which held a just-lit cigarette. The big man was speaking—under his breath but as if he might suddenly bellow—and she was ignoring what he was saying. He jabbed a finger towards the door. She wore a raincoat— unbuttoned, dry—but looked like she didn’t mean to budge. He wore a grubby T-shirt, a tea towel tucked into his belt.
    She took a drag on her cigarette, blew the smoke quickly and straight up, tilting up her chin.
    And I got it all straight away. Ten out of ten for detection (and for that other thing