Jennifer Telfer was a pretty woman. A little thicker around the waist and thighs than Tubal Cain preferred in the female form, but she had an excuse. Bearing two kids had left its mark on her body as it did for many mothers. He watched as she walked from the black taxi to the front doors of her tenement building. She was laden down with six plastic carrier bags full of frozen food. Cheap brand name on the bags. The weight of the bags made her stoop and he could detect the strain in her face and the cords of her neck. Her hair was swept up and knotted at the back, a mother-of-pearl clip holding it in place. Beneath her lightly tanned skin he could see the fine line of her mandible, the high cheekbones, and the curves of her orbital sockets. He looked beyond the flesh, judging the bone structure, knew that her cranium would be a fine trophy.
Jennifer entered through a glass door smudged by thousands of handprints. The interior of the building was deep in shadow, but within seconds a spill of light fell across her as the doors of an elevator swept open. Jennifer stood aside, making way for an old man. They exchanged a nod and a couple of words then Jennifer stepped inside, placing the bags down gratefully. She looked out as the doors began to close. She seemed to have straightened, looking even prettier now that the effort had disappeared from her features.
From his hiding place, Cain watched as the old man came out on to the street. He didn’t even look Cain’s way, just bent at the waist and set off with a determined stride, as though conscious of stepping on cracks and inviting bad luck to fall upon him. When the old man was out of sight, Cain moved out of the alleyway and across the road. He shouldered his way through the palm-smudged glass door and into the foyer of Jennifer’s building. The gloom wasn’t so bad once he was inside, most of it down to the effect of the leaden sky on the glass doors. Opposite him the elevator doors had closed but the mechanism still groaned as it delivered its passenger to the upper floor. He made instead for a stairwell. The stairs were filthy, mud-stained and streaked with other things Cain shuddered to imagine. He went up as quickly as he could, pushed through on to a landing and saw the door to Jennifer’s flat closing. There followed a rattle of deadbolts and chains.
Cain shrugged, went back down the stairs.
The children weren’t home yet, so it was too soon at any rate. He left the building, made his way back across the road and took up position again. Then he thought, To hell with this! Jennifer wasn’t going anywhere. She’d be busy unloading her budget-priced shopping into her freezer. She’d be preparing a meal for when the children got in from school. Maybe she’d tidy up the house a little, or read a novel or watch some daytime TV. He didn’t have to stand in this crappy alley all day long.
He walked back out through the estate.
Manchester was a city with many faces. After a bomb was detonated by the IRA, it led to a revamp of the city centre, but here where the normal people lived things still looked a bit like the Bronx did in the 1970s. The only thing that shattered the time-slip illusion was the profusion of satellite TV dishes bolted to the sides of the buildings. Some of the poorer households, where he guessed it was a struggle to put food on the table, weren’t without the dishes either. That told him a lot about the people here.
Out on the main road things looked better. There were semi-detached Edwardian and Victorian-era houses with tiny gardens at the front. Parking was a problem; these roads had never been designed with such a number of vehicles in mind. It made him yearn for the wide open spaces of the roads he was familiar with back home. Most of the cars belonged to mothers waiting to go collect their brats from school. Soon enough the rush would be on. He crossed the road — jaywalking wasn’t an issue here — and approached a cafe. More accurately it was a tea shop, as the sign proclaimed. He pushed inside, a bell announcing his arrival, and caught a young woman picking off a hangnail. She perked up at sight of him, offered a gap-toothed smile.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Do you serve coffee on your menu?’
‘Yeah, of course. Come and sit down, over here by the heater. Mug of milky or water?’
Milky or water?
‘Uh, is a “milky” the same as a latte?’
‘Same thing but about two pounds cheaper,’ the woman said.
‘Sounds good to me.’ Cain walked to the table she’d indicated. Beside it was a convection heater that was welcoming after his stroll in the damp air. He held his hands over it while the woman wiped down the table. Judging by the state of the cloth, it would have been better to leave it as it was. The woman bustled off to make his drink, straightening the ties on her apron. He studied the menu that had quite obviously been designed and printed on a home computer. He was bewildered by the food on offer. What the hell was a barm cake?
He gazed around the tea shop: six tables, mismatched chairs, floral wallpaper, old black and white prints on the walls. There were no other customers so he studied the prints. The neighbourhood didn’t look that different now than it had ninety years ago: just the satellite dishes and more cars. As he looked to where the woman worked, he saw her heading over with his mug of milky coffee.
‘Have you had a chance?’
We both speak English, but it isn’t the same language at all, he thought.
At his blank look, she said, ‘The menu. Did you get a chance to read it?’
‘Uh, yeah,’ he said, tapping the menu. ‘I’ll have one of these.’
‘Sausage bap? OK, coming right up. Will there be anything else?’
Cain hadn’t realised he’d been staring at the woman’s hand. Where she’d pulled the hangnail loose, he could see a bright strip of red was showing through. He was picturing how much further he’d have to dig to find the bone. Yes, there was something else he wanted but he had to fight the urge to take it. He shook his head, lifted his milky coffee and tried not to grimace against the sickly sweet taste. As much as he’d have liked to take a bone from this woman he couldn’t afford the problems it might incur. He was here for Jennifer Telfer and must not allow his urges to control him. He concentrated on getting the coffee down.
His sausage bap arrived. Links of sausage, sliced and placed in a bun. Some sort of brown sauce had been smeared on them. It was actually delicious and he wolfed it down.
Through the windows he saw that the traffic flow had picked up. He glanced at his watch. Three thirty p.m. ‘Are the schools due to get out?’
The woman squinted at her own watch. ‘Yes.’
He approached the counter. Coming out to face him, the woman said, ‘We don’t get many Americans round here. What brings you to Longsight?’
‘The delicious sausage baps,’ he said, and smiled. He handed over a ten-pound note and got change direct from the pocket in her apron. A jar on the counter said ‘tips’. He rattled the coins into the jar. ‘Maybe they’ll bring me back another day and I can sample some other local delights.’
The woman laughed. She thought he was flirting. Let her think what she likes, Cain reflected. If she knew what he was really hinting at she would have run away screaming.
‘Well… if you need a guide, you know where to come.’
Cain winked at her. ‘Bet on it.’
‘I’ll hold you to that.’ The woman pulled her cloth from her apron, sashayed so that they bumped hips. Her laughter was throaty, but more from too many cigarettes than anything sexy. Cain allowed his hand to trail across her hip and down her lower back, as if guiding her around him. She never felt the swish of the box-cutter as he moved past her.
Later she’d note that one of the ties of her apron was much shorter than the other, and perhaps she’d reappraise her meeting with the handsome Yank, but for now Cain smiled as he pocketed his trophy. At the door he turned back. The woman was bending over his table, cocking her hip provocatively and peering doe-eyed over her shoulder. To Cain she resembled a five-buck whore. Jeez, he thought, all bets are off. Still, he offered a smile and a wave, and she grinned back, showing him the gaps in her teeth.
He left the tea shop, wondering if she could eat an apple through a birdcage without opening the door. He chuckled at the image, then let it go. There were more important things to consider. Along the roadside, the parking spaces had freed up and further down the street came the first drift of children in school uniforms. He wondered if he’d recognise John Telfer’s children when he saw them.