Strange Loyalties Read Free

someone I love has died, I have felt guilty. I didn’t spend enough time with them, I didn’t appreciate them fully when they were here, I hadn’t given enough to them.
    But the guilt, I believed wildly enough, wasn’t just mine. I’ve always been generous in that way. In just about every case I’ve investigated, I’ve wanted to implicate as many people as I could, including myself. My ideal dock would accommodate the population of the world. We would all give ourevidence, tell our sad stories and then there would be a mass acquittal and we would all go away and try again. (But don’t tell the Commander of the Crime Squad that I said that.)
    Scott, my dead brother, had become the focus for that manic feeling, so long suppressed in me. I needed his death to mean more than it seemed to mean. If the richness of the life in him could be snuffed on the random number-plate of a car, and that was all, I was ready to shut up shop on my beliefs and hand in my sense of morality at the desk. The world was a bingo stall.
    But I didn’t want it to be. I needed Scott in death as I had needed him in life. I needed a reunion in meaning between us.
    I was completing my pretence of tidying up the bathroom when I realised that Brian was standing in the doorway, watching me. He covered his surveillance with talk.
    â€˜Make something to eat?’ he said. ‘With what, like? Your fridge might as well be in a shop-window. There’s bugger-all in it. What you want me to do? Make soup out the curtains? I put the kettle on. At least you’ve laid in a stock of water, I see.’
    â€˜The frugal life, Brian.’
    â€˜Frugal? You’re a one-man famine.’
    â€˜Eggs,’ I said.
    â€˜That’s right. Four eggs in a wee plastic container. That’s your whack.’
    â€˜So boil them. And make some toast. Two eggs each. With toast and coffee.’
    â€˜The bread’s like bathroom tiles.’
    â€˜You don’t notice when it’s toasted.’
    â€˜Okay, Egon.’
    While he rustled up a gourmet breakfast in the kitchen, I went through to the bedroom. I dressed and laid my black leather jerkin on the bed – multi-purpose gear, suitable for cocktail party or dog-track. I didn’t know where I might be going. I found the travelling-bag in the cupboard. What to put in it was the question. I’m hopeless at packing. I usually leave it to the last minute so that I’ve got an excuse for making a hash of it.
    I might be away for a week. There were five clean shirts on hangers in the wardrobe. I kept them like that because I didn’t have an iron. God bless the tumble-drier. But it meant I had to work out how to fold them. Button each one first, lay it face down on the bed, fold each side in very slightly from the shoulder, fold the sleeves the other way, fold up the tail slightly, double up what’s left and an object of beautiful neatness was before you. (Personal column: home-help for hire, all domestic skills.)
    Five shirts should be enough, plus the one that I was wearing, if I packed a couple of pullovers to hide any second-day grime on the collars, should that prove necessary. I put in whatever else I thought I would need and then applied Laidlaw’s Infallible Packer’s Law: check everything from the feet up and the inside out. I had forgotten an extra pair of shoes. I put them in. All right. Shoes. Seven pairs of socks. Seven pairs of underpants, unironed. Five shirts. Two tee-shirts to wear under the polo-neck if the shirts proved unwearable a second day. Two ties, in case I was feeling formal. Two extra pairs of trousers, rolled cunningly to prevent creasing. A blazer jacket.
    The toilet bag. I went through to the bathroom, put what I needed in the toilet bag, brought it back and packed it. Thetravelling-bag didn’t look well. It was tumoured in a lot of places. But the zipper closed. I found my migraine pills and squeezed them into a