Wolf to the Slaughter by Ruth Rendell

subaqueous creatures surfacing with a gurgle and a splash. Drayton took the girl’s arm to shepherd her across the road and left it there when they reached the pavement. This, the first contact he had ever had with her body, sent a tremor through him and made his mouth dry. He could feel the warmth from her skin just beneath the armpit.
    ‘Enjoy the picture?’ he asked her.
    ‘It was all right. I don‘t like sub-titles much, I couldn’t understand half of it. All that stuff about the woman letting the policeman be her lover if he wouldn’t tell about her stealing the watch.’
    ‘I daresay it happens. You don’t know what goes on in these foreign places.’ He was not displeased that the film had been sexy and that she wanted to talk about the sexiest part of the plot. With girls, that kind of talk was often an indication of intent, a way of getting on to the subject. Thank God, it wasn’t the beginning of the week when they’d been showing that thing about a Russian battleship. ‘You thinking of nicking any watches?’ he said. She blushed vividly in the lamplight. ‘Remember what the character in the film said, or what the sub-title said he said. “You know my price, Dolores.” ’
    She smiled her close-lips smile, then said, ‘You are awful.’
    ‘Not me, I didn’t write the script.’
    She was wearing high heels and she was almost as tall as he. The perfume she had put on was much too old for her and it had nothing to do with the scent of flowers. Drayton wondered if her words had meant anything and if the perfume had been specially put on for his benefit. It was hard to tell how calculating girls were. Was she giving him an invitation or was the scent and the pale silvery stuff on her eyelids worn as a uniform might be, the battledress of the great female regiment who read the magazines she sold?
    ‘It’s early,’ he said, ‘only a quarter to eleven. Want to go for a walk down by the river?’ It was under the trees there that he had seen her on Monday. Those trees arched dripping into the brown water, but under them the gravel path was well-drained and here and there was a wooden seat sheltered by branches.
    ‘I can’t. I mustn’t be late home.’
    ‘Some other night, then.’
    ‘It’s cold,’ she said. ‘It’s always raining. You can’t go to the pictures every night.’
    ‘Where did you go with him?’
    She bent down to straighten her stocking. The puddles she had stepped in had made dark grey splashes on the backs of her legs. The way she stretched her fingers and drew them up the calves was more provocative than all the perfume in the world.
    ‘He hired a car.’
    ‘I’ll hire one,’ Drayton said. They had come to the shop door. The alley between Grover’s and the florist’s next door was a walled lane that ended in a couple of garages. Its cobbles were brown and wet like stones on a cave floor that the tide has washed. She looked up at the high wall of her own home and at the blank unlit windows.
    ‘You don’t have to go in for a bit,’ he said. ‘Come under here, out of the rain.’ There was no more shelter there than in the open street but it was darker. At their feet a little gutter stream flowed. He took her hand. ‘I’ll hire a car tomorrow.’
    ‘All right,’
    ‘What’s the matter?’ He spoke harshly, irritably, for he wanted to contemplate her face in repose, not working with anxiety, her eyes darting from one end of the alley to the other and up at the rain-washed wall. He would have liked eagerness, at least complaisance. She seemed afraid that they were watched and he thought of the thin beady-eyed mother and the mysterious father lying sick behind that brick bastion. ‘Not scared of your parents, are you?’
    ‘No, it’s you. The way you look at me.’
    He was nearly offended. The way he looked at her was something calculated and studied, a long, cold and intense stare that a good many girls had found exciting. A stronger desire than he had ever felt