‘My God! So we have! The Tennis chap!’
‘He’s just a guy in need of a bit of expertise,’ said Stevie. ‘We’re not invading, I promise.’ And now, almost as if they were approaching a wild animal without wanting to scare it, they drew closer to the microphone on the contraption by the front door.
‘Well,’ said the voice, ‘someone needs to know the truth of this damn matter. These bloody people. I don’t want to be alone in this.’
Silence. Kim, Stevie and Edward, back on the doorstep, looked at each other. After a minute Edward said, ‘Hello?’
This time the reply came from somewhere to their right. ‘Over here!’
They moved back onto the gravel, the stones underfoot whispering their every movement. To the right was a small garage, the door painted white long ago, the paint flaking, dead grey aluminium underneath. Around the edge of the roof of the garage was wooden latticing, sketching out a terrace. They heard a hissing sound before they saw the professor.
‘I just need to check it’s you. Very good interview we did.’
‘It was a while ago,’ said Edward, looking up, as a barely human shape that was more sphere than rectangle appeared onthe garage roof. The professor was in some kind of protective suit, a light blue veneer of thin material that had a hose line attached where her right thigh would be. The hissing sound was air. When she moved she pulled with her an object which must be generating the air, inflating the suit into a giant balloon shape. Behind a pane of glass in the hood, Edward saw wild eyes in a face with a smudge of lipstick on the mouth.
‘You can’t come any further,’ said the professor, her words muffled behind the protective glass. ‘Quite to my disgust, astonishment and surprise, and whatever other words you want to attribute to me, I’m dealing with a radioactive substance.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
At the words ‘radioactive substance’, Edward, Kim and Stevie all took a long step backwards. The professor cackled, the sound undeniably clear even over the hissing of the air supply.
Stunned, Edward called out, ‘Is this a leak? Aradioactiveleak? Do you want me to call the police?’
The word ‘police’ made Florence Veitch almost scream with laughter. ‘Someone needs to call the police, yes, but on them! Enough clowns for twice a circus!’
Kim murmured to Edward, ‘Just tell her why you’re here.’
‘I have a show tonight. I was looking for information about the … problem at the pizza place. As you’ll know, a child died. Something was spilled or thrown in there. I don’t know. The police can’t say or won’t—’
‘They don’tknow!’ It was a smoker’s rasp, coming from inside the hood like air from broken fireplace bellows.
Unusually polite, Stevie said: ‘He just wanted your insight into whatever it might have been, ma’am. Just your expertise. Didn’t want to get in the way of your work.’
‘Don’t “ma’am” me. “Professor” was earned.’ She tried to move the glass visor, then said: ‘No. Shouldn’t do that.’ Kim glanced at Edward. Every time the professor moved on thegarage roof, the corrugated metal squealed below her. Either the metal would give way and she would crash through the roof, or she would suddenly float like a helium balloon into the sky.
Edward must have thought the same at that moment, because he said, ‘I’m worried you might do yourself an injury up there. You don’t need to worry about us invading. I just wanted to ask—’
The professor shifted position, tipping slightly as the metal bowed beneath her feet.
‘I’m not worried about you invading. If I look like an astronaut then I’m sorry. I need to protect the three of you and the one of me. They have completely stitched me up, giving me a substance that is …’
She paused. As if she knew how heavily the next word would land, how the sound of it would be heard around the country.
In the silence, Edward spoke. ‘Professor, I’m here for the radio station.’
‘I’m here for the radiation,’ she snapped back.
Flinching, Edward continued, ‘I’m here because we’ve spoken before and I know your expertise. I know you’re trusted by the police. I don’t want to betray your trust myself. If you want to say anything publicly for my radio show, please say it and I’ll report it. If you want to say things off the record, tell me, and we’ll keep the conversation on that basis.’
The professor stood there, on the roof, moving her weight from one foot to another, each shift in her bulk making a sound like an unoiled door opening.
‘I can’t be recorded.’
‘Sure. Understood,’ said Kim, thinking she was now talking like a reporter herself.
‘But I’ll speak publicly because you should know what’s happened here. I want to show you, to actuallyshowyou the scene in my garden, but I can’t bring you any closer because of the—’
After a moment, Edward prompted: ‘The?’
