The Critic

Chapter Seven
I

Her hair fell across his face in the darkness. He felt her skin naked and warm against his. He smelled her breath, hot and sweet, her lips so very close. She reached down and held him, guiding him towards that place where he could lose himself in her forever. And the phone began to ring.

‘Jesus!’ he hissed. ‘Just leave it.’

‘We can’t. It might be important.’

‘Nothing’s more important than this.’ But already his ardour was diminishing.

‘The moment’s passed, Roger.’

He felt a stab of hurt. ‘I’m not Roger, I’m Enzo.’

‘Oh, shit,’ he heard her say in the dark, and he woke up in a tangle of sheets, perspiring, lying face down, an erection pressed hard into his belly. The phone was still ringing, an insistent, warbling, electronic rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He was torn between disappointment that her presence in his bed was only a dream and relief that she had not, after all, called him Roger. Somewhere deep in his subconscious, there must still have been a festering seed of jealousy over her relationship with Raffin. Which was ridiculous. It was months since she and Raffin had broken up. And it had been at Charlotte’s bidding.

The phone stopped ringing. Either the caller had given up, or Enzo’s answering service had kicked in. He had left the cellphone on a charger somewhere in the room but couldn’t remember where. Now he couldn’t decide whether to get up and try to find it or to stay in bed and go in search of his lost dream. He had no idea how long he had slept, and it was too dark to see his watch. But he was wide awake now and lay on his back staring up into nothingness. It was no good. He was not going to get back to sleep in a hurry. He cursed softly and rolled over, finding cold floorboards with warm feet.

He got up and walked smack into the rocking chair. He heard the crack of wood on shinbone almost before he felt it and, this time, cursed more loudly. He fumbled around, grabbing for bits of furniture until he found the table and the small green desklamp that stood on it.

Its light hurt his eyes, and he blinked several times to clear his focus. The cellphone was on the top of a bookcase behind the table. He looked at its display and saw that there was a message. As he dialled the repondeur the bedroom door opened, and a sleepy Charlotte emerged in her nightdress, the light from behind her outlining the shadow of the tall, elegant body he had been dreaming about only moments earlier.

‘Who’s calling at this hour?’

He looked at his watch. It was a little after two. Then he heard Nicole’s breathless voice. ‘Monsieur Macleod, where are you?’ There was a desperation in it. ‘They’ve found another body. In the same state as Gil Petty. Up in the woods, not far from where they found him.’