The Take by Graham Hurley Page B

risked a grin, slowing down even more as a huge truck thundered past, not sure that the joke was altogether appropriate. The grin turned into a smile as her hand found his thigh. He glanced across at her.
    ‘You look all right to me,’ he said. ‘In fact, you look bloody fit, losing a bit of weight like that.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘I mean it. Doctors can be wrong, you know. They’re not always the bloody experts they claim to be. Maybe we should get a second opinion.’
    ‘He is a second opinion. The GP was the first. The consultant’s the end of the line. It’s pointless going any further. I’m there now. And it’s not as hard as you think it is.’
    ‘Dying?’
    ‘Accepting it.’
    Winter shook his head, lost for words, and moved into the outside lane again. A second opinion was a good idea. He’d do something about it. Except a second medic might be as fallible and useless as the first.
    Joannie was musing again, this time about a move to a hospice. Winter was appalled.
    ‘
Hospice?
What’s wrong with home?’
    ‘Nothing. I’m not talking about this week, or next. It’s nothing desperate. But there’ll come a time, love, there really will.’
    Her hand still lay on his thigh. He wanted to reach down for it, to cover it with his own, but he didn’t.
    ‘I’ll look after you,’ he said automatically.
    ‘No you won’t. You say you will and I’m sure you mean it, but we both know you won’t. Not when the time comes. Not when I need you.’
    Winter heard the rustle of sweet papers as she retrieved the Werther’s from the glove box. When she’d unwrapped a couple he opened his mouth to let her pop one in.
    ‘You’re pissed off with me, aren’t you?’
    ‘Not at all. You only get fed up with people who let you down.’
    ‘I let you down. All the time I let you down.’
    ‘No you don’t.’
    ‘You mean that?’
    ‘Yes. To know a man, you stick with him.’ Her hand was back again. ‘I stuck with you.’ She squeezed his thigh.
    ‘But you needn’t have.’
    ‘You’re right. But I did, surprise, surprise.’
    ‘And you don’t regret it? Now? When this happens? All the other stuff you could have done with your life, and you stayed with me? You don’t regret that?’
    ‘Not at all.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because I love you.’ She glanced across at him. ‘And I have no expectations.’
    Winter drove on in silence, poleaxed by this simplest of confessions. No flannelling around. No dressing it up. No fancy-fancy. Just the way she felt. Close to tears, he swallowed hard and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
    A big blue sign swam into view. The Lyndhurst exit. He signalled left. Slowing for the roundabout, he glanced across at Joannie. She seemed lost in her thoughts.
    ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
    ‘Little place I need to look at.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Just a job I’m on.’
    Joannie nodded, permitting herself the ghost of a smile.
    ‘See what I mean?’ she said at last.
    Faraday watched the videos for the best part of an hour, an endless sequence of couplings, nothing bestial, nothing harrowing, every variation of a twosome or a threesome or, just once, a fivesome covered from every conceivable angle. In time, slowly, he got to recognise the shape that Addison had imposed on the videos, the way he’d used his editing skills to tease and taunt, to delay or speed up the action, just the way that women, in real life, took subtle charge of a relationship.
    There were echoes here of Ruth. Nothing obvious. Nothing to do with technique, or endurance, or the very vocal delight a woman might take in being pleasured by a particularly dextrous lover. But something buried much deeper in the rhythm of each individual piece, in the way that a sudden, unexpected change of angle would confound every expectation. Ruth was like that. Not in bed, necessarily, but in her everyday life. He’d think he’d got close to her. He’d think he’d touched her in small but important ways. And on the