- 2 -

Raining In My Heart

The atmosphere in Bristol West police station at this late hour reminded Nick of the time he had been stuck on Leeds railway station overnight. Dumped up there at one in the morning, no useful train till after five, too late to find a small hotel, he had sat in a heated stuffy waiting room with one or two drunks who had missed their train, several more without a home and a couple of teenagers without a brain. They had sat on hard chairs at garish tables. Occasionally someone would get up and fetch a coffee from the battered vending machine. One man had tried to read a book, but for the most part they had sat slumped, head on hands at the shining tables, trying to snatch some fitful sleep.

But tonight they wouldn't let him sleep.

Instead they subjected him to half an hour of questions, left him alone for twenty minutes, then came in and started again. They did this three times. He wondered whether it was the way that they softened up a suspect. The neatness of their technique was that towards the end of each twenty minutes his head would sag and he would sink into the shallows of a pool of sleep. Then they would come in and start again.

"Mr Chance, we can't find you on the voter's records."

"I haven't been at that flat long."

"A transient, are you?"

"Rent the place."

"And you have no proper job?"

"Musician. I told you that before."

"Oh yes, a musician, but not a proper job."

"Is there any news yet - about Babette?"

"Miss Hendry? No, nothing yet. You were close, were you, Mr Chance, or did you just work together?"

"Friends."

"A little more than that, I think. Getaway driver, shall we call it?"

"I was waiting for her."

He was numb. His head felt dry, hollow, beyond sleep. He remembered Babette walking across the road to the security gate, turning to wave before going in. He had waited another minute in case she had been refused entry. Then he had driven on.

"What time were you expecting her out?"

"I told you, eleven o'clock."

"And you had dropped her at ... "

Nick didn't answer. He would let the man glance back through his notes. But the man just repeated: "You dropped her at?"

"Nine thirty." Nick sighed.

"Well, at least you remember your story, Mr Chance."

That wave at the gate had been the last that he had seen of her. She had smiled. She had looked so pretty in her tomato-red blouson, hair primly pinned up. He remembered it like a photograph in his mind: one arm raised, her legs astride, her bright daredevil smile.

"Nine thirty to eleven - what did you do during all that time?"

"Went home. Tidied up."

The man was checking through his notes. "Back into Bristol. Back out. Seems a bit unnecessary."

Nick waited for him.

"By the time you'd got back home, it would've been time to drive back out again."

"Not at that time of night."

"Even so." The man stared.

"I had to kill an hour and a half."

She had apologised. She had told him to go because she had arranged everything with this woman - she would have plenty of time to sneak the photographs. Earlier, she and Nick had spent the evening in his flat, first in bed, then eating supper on the floor. They had smoked a joint together, just enough to enhance the luscious feeling of relaxation and contentment.

"Did you speak to anybody during that time?"

"No."

"Telephone?"

Nick shook his head.

"I'd prefer you to answer in words. You know that your answers are being recorded?"

"Yes."

"So did you telephone anybody?"

"No."

"You made contact with nobody at all?"

"That's right."

"And who was your friend Miss Hendry in contact with during the day?"

"Just me. We spent the day together."

"And the previous day - you'd spent that together, you said?"

"Yeah."

"So for two whole days, Miss Hendry was - what, never out of your sight?"

"Practically."

That wasn't quite right, although Nick wasn't feeling co-operative. Today midmorning, after they'd got up, she had driven back to her flat to fetch some things. He had made some lunch. Preparing food for her had been almost as sweet a feeling as lying beside her in the dark.

"You went out to ... where was it again?"

"The Arnolfini."

The Arnolfini's restaurant was vegetarian, but he had preferred to cook the meal himself. He made roasted peppers and warm salad. Plum crumble. It was so seldom that he cooked. He had learnt well and enjoyed it, but there was little point in cooking for one.

"Very cultured, Mr Chance. Did you spend long there?"

He and Babette had laughed at a typically far out exhibition that the Arnolfini had in its upstairs gallery showing woman's use of once exclusively masculine materials: hemp netting and steel, railway timetables, a rugby ball split to form a brassiere. There was a wall devoted to parodies of pin-up centrefolds, behind a ten foot plastic resin statue of a Barbie Doll with a two-foot staple through her midriff.

"We went there for lunch," he lied pointlessly.

"And who did you meet?"

"No one."

"And after that?"

"Wandered around."

It had been a breezy summer day, perfect for exploring the restored Bristol docks. They had strolled like tourists along the quayside to the SS Great Britain, and had taken a ferry back to the Watershed. Coffee at the harbourside never tasted so fine.

"Just filling in time, were you?"

Nick grunted.

"Or getting to know each other - you say you'd only recently met?"

"Known her for years."

"But you hadn't seen each other since ... ?"

"Not since school."

"And where exactly did you meet this time?"

The same questions, the same answers. His band had been booked for an animal rights gig at the Bath College of Art, less than an hour's drive away. The two towns were quite different - Bristol was brash and metropolitan while Bath was darker and more grand - but in the students' club those differences melted away. Students came from all over the country, but more than that, they were an émigré population in whichever town they ended up in. Bath students had more in common with those from Sheffield or York than with the mature residents of Bath.

The gig had been hot, dark and noisy. For a small band, Blue Delta made enough noise to fill a much larger hall. There had been another, semi-pro band that evening - hired because it too had an animal rights connection - which put its emphasis on natural sounding acoustic guitars. Blue Delta blew them away. The other band was committed and quite skilled, but to pit them against the raucous jazz-rock group had been a programming mistake - especially that night, when Blue Delta were without a vocalist. The band did make some attempt to choose numbers with an animal rights theme ("Nothing from Meat Loaf," Homer had said) but they didn't have many sweet and caring numbers in their repertoire. ("We could do Hound Dog," Homer continued. "If you ain't never killed a rabbit, then you ain't no friend of mine.") They concentrated on rock classics refashioned for jazz, in which guitar and drums kept to the rock theme while sax, brass and keyboard added jazz. Typically they would play a straight verse, chorus, verse again before letting either Nick or Tiger attack the melody. Nick played the sax and Tiger trumpet. Once those two had started, Quinnie would hold the line on keyboard while Cleo shifted from a metronomic drum beat to a more fluid jazz sound, like Gene Krupa on speed (her own words). Homer Jefferson played guitar. The band had a repertoire of rehearsed riffs but on a good night like the Bath gig they broke free and played what came.

"That's where you met her?"

Babette had appeared in the second interval. For a moment he hadn't recognised her. Her hair was longer than he remembered and they hadn't met for several years.

"Hey, Nico," she had murmured. "Teacher always said you'd throw away your life."

She had the same grin that he remembered - and among all those heaving people Babette looked calm. Just like at school. But she was older now, and the teenage school beauty was in a class of her own.

"You studying here?" he asked.

"I'm through. Been out of Uni more than two years."

"You got a First, I bet."

She grinned modestly and shrugged. He said, "Hey, what else would you have got?"

"So Nico, what d'you do for a day job?"

"This is it."

"You make money at this? Wow. Only you."

"We can play it for you, if you like - Only You."

They both laughed. "Are you living round here?" he asked.

"For a bit."

He leant forward. "We can't talk in all this noise. Why don't we meet up tomorrow? We could talk about old times."

"We don't need an excuse to talk, do we, Nico?"

She smiled, and it was as if someone had shone a torch into his face.

Babette said, "I expect I'll still be here when you finish."

*

At around two o'clock the police offered him a cup of tea.

"I'd prefer coffee."

"All comes out of the same machine, sir."

When he was drinking the coffee he noticed that their attitude had shifted - not a lot, but for the better. Perhaps they had begun to realise that his uncommunicativeness was not because he was fighting them. It wasn't the main reason.

"This girl, then - you hadn't met her for several years, and then she suddenly turned up out of the blue?"

"We went to school together. Her family still lives around here somewhere."

"Do you know where she lives?"

"Bath, she said. I think her parents moved house."

"But they used to live in Bristol?"

He had never been to their house. He had never been - properly - out with Babette. At school she had been a star - always top in the class, always effortless at exams, good at sport, too. By rights she ought to have been Head Girl, but in their school that position was voted for by pupils, and she had not put her name forward. Sometimes the brightest pupils try to dim their own light. Nick spent his own time at school quite differently. Like many teenage boys he found school irksome - he could do the work (reasonably, though nowhere near as effortlessly as she could) but he found the rules and day-to-day repetitiousness got him down. He would break rules and fool around. He was opposed both to the time lost in study and to whatever it was that they were studying for. He looked at the adult jobs they should aspire to and looked away.

Fortunately he had his sax. He could have dropped out and drifted, but instead he practised music and joined a band - several bands, until Blue Delta.

"So you lost contact with Miss Hendry when she left school?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't go to university?"

He had worked in a garage and played gigs at night. At around the time that Babette would have been graduating, he took the decision to give up the day job and try to earn the whole of his living from the sax. No compromise. Half measures don't get results.

The policeman began again: "How many years now is it since - "

"Look, what happened to her? Are you going to tell me?"

"What happened to her?"

"Yeah. Come on, for Christ's sake - they said she'd fallen into some kind of meat processing machinery, and ... Christ, you're quizzing me as if I pushed her in. Is that what you're thinking?"

The policeman stretched and grimaced. "No, we don't think you pushed her in, but we do think you were in league with her."

"I don't care what you think. I want to know what happened to her - I mean, is she dead, for instance? You know, stuff like that."

The policeman stared at him. Because he wasn't going to answer, Nick stood up. "You wonder why people hate you."

"I don't think that's called for, Mr Chance."

Nick moved for the door, but the policeman blocked his path. "You were waiting outside the plant tonight."

"So?"

"Then you already know what happened there."

"I heard what they said - "

Suddenly Nick lunged for a chair and sat down heavily. "It is true, then?"

The policeman paused. "You thought that it mightn't be?"

"I - "

Nick began to gasp as if about to throw up. The man slid a glass of water towards him. Nick glanced at it, then suddenly lashed out and knocked the glass across the room. Neither of them spoke.

Eventually the policeman asked, "What exactly did she intend to do in the factory?"

She had begun telling him about it yesterday on the beach at Clevedon - their first day together. The sun had shone, although a damp salty breeze whipped off the sea. Families sat on the sand while old people walked along the promenade. A few children paddled. "It's just a bit of a lark," Babette had said.

Her auburn hair was down, and the wind had blown it into rat-tails. Her brown eyes sparkled. "No one knows how disgusting the whole thing is. We like to use the word meat but we're talking about dead animals. Can you imagine a cold factory hall littered with dead bodies? I mean real bodies - heads and eyes, complete - lying in ungainly heaps. A room full of staring eyes - it'd be hard to believe that none of them could see you, wouldn't it? You'd wonder whether all of those animals were really dead. Meanwhile, people in waterproof boots wander unconcernedly among them; blood on their aprons. Do they just go home at night, d'you think, and tuck up their kiddies in their little beds?"

Nick said, "I would think they do."

"You don't want to think about it at all, do you, Nico? Most people don't. They just turn and look the other way."

"Nature isn't civilised. Animals eat other animals. They hunt and kill. In the wild they rip straight into the flesh of their victim before it's dead. It's a horrible thought, but it is reality."

They were not arguing. They were too new together to argue. But she stood for a moment with the sea behind her and she focused intently on Nick's face. "And that makes everything all right?"

"Civilisation ... well, it hides unpleasant truths, doesn't it? It's only in recent years we've had the luxury of distancing ourselves from the food we eat. There's an important difference between animals and humans, baby, and it's that while animals kill their own food, we have always divided the tasks - sending some people out to hunt, hiring some to farm, and leaving some at home to cook."

"Women."

"Traditionally."

"But that's changing, Nico. And if that particular ... tradition of women cooking can change, why can't everything else?"

"That amount of change is a hell of a lot for one generation to take on."

"No reason not to try."

Nick changed the subject. It wasn't something that he felt strongly about, and he didn't want to spoil what was developing between the two of them. At that point on their first sunny morning they were each rediscovering the person they had known before, hoping they wouldn't find too much had changed. The previous night's gig had been sponsored by a local animal rights group, which was presumably why Babette was there. Afterwards, she had hung around only long enough to take his address, then had disappeared. He had slept nervously, unsure if she would appear again. But that morning when she had arrived in her car, Nick had not invited her into his flat - he wanted neutral territory, somewhere bright, somewhere outdoors.

They spent the day in Clevedon, eating a surprisingly pleasant lunch in a small wholefood cafe overlooking the abandoned pier, and afterwards walking the length of the beach to the broken promontory of rocks that pointed into the estuary. They had plunged their hands into cool rock pools like children. She had kept some shells.

It was later that evening - much later, when they were no longer nervous of each other - that she had told him more about the lark she planned the following day.

"Remember I was talking about that meat factory?"

"Mm. This topic is forbidden out of season."

But she turned to him beneath the duvet. "When's the season?"

"Only when there's an R in the month."

She thought for a second. "Pig," she said. "That rules out the whole of summer."

He stretched luxuriously. "You'll just have to wait."

She ran her finger down his chest. "I know someone who can get me in."

He frowned.

She said, "I only want to take some photographs." She ran her fingers lower. "You don't mind that, do you?"

Briefly, she explained that she would photograph as much of the ghastly process as she could, then release the pictures later with a detailed statement.

"You're not on your own?" he queried.

"No." She twirled her finger slowly. "I'm with a small group."

*

Which he hadn't told the police. When she had told him, Babette had stressed it was a secret and until he had some time alone he didn't know how he would feel about revealing it. The policeman asked: "You and Miss Hendry must have been in some kind of group?"

"No."

"Just the two of you?"

"It was something she wanted to do on her own."

"Oh, come on, Mr Chance, on her own! Which group are you working with?"

"I'm not."

"Animal Liberation Front, is it?"

Nick shook his head and yawned.

"Oh, I know how late it is, Mr Chance, but if you want to get some sleep you're going to have to be a little more co-operative."

Nick thumped the table. "I've had enough of this!" He stood up. "The girl I love is dead, and you sit pumping me with questions."

"Oh, you love her, do you?" The policeman stared up at him incredulously. "Yet you only met two days ago. My, my."

Nick lurched at him across the table, but the other man was either faster or better trained. He grabbed Nick's wrist, twisted, and Nick found himself too tired to resist. The officer held him in a half Nelson and said in his ear: "Things are livening up, son. Are you on for more?"

But Nick had crumpled. When the man let him go, Nick sat down and put his head in his hands while the policeman spoke clearly for the tape recorder: "Mr Chance attempted to strike me but has now calmed down. Do you wish to add to that, Mr Chance?"

There was a period of silence.

"Now tell me, sir, what was the point of this set of photographs?"

Nick didn't answer.

"We're having them developed, you see, at the moment. So you might as well tell us."

"You've got her camera?"

"Oh, yes. Maybe there'll be a nice picture of you. Something revealing, shall we say? Or are they just holiday snaps?"

"Bastard."

"I've been called worse than that before. So, what sort of pictures are there on the film?"

Nick shook his head.

"You're not very helpful, are you? We'll soon find out. Yes, she left the camera beside the pulveriser, see? She put it down on the gantry." The man was studying him as he spoke. "What do you imagine happened? Let's try to imagine it. She puts the camera down, she reaches up. She looks into the vat, leans over ... Is that what you think happened?"

"How the hell do I know?"

"Yes, it might have been something like that. Of course, you were outside all the time, you say?"

Nick stared at him blankly.

"Well, were you, son?"

Nick continued to stare.

"OK. So let's say she puts the camera down, then leans into the vat and falls. Do you think that's likely?"

"No."

"Do you think she jumped?"

"What?"

"Did she say anything beforehand that might suggest she would?"

"Jump?"

"Yes, was Miss Hendry the suicidal type?"

"For Christ's sake." Nick shook his head. "Haven't you been listening to anything I told you?"

"About what?"

"About ... about our time together."

"Suicides are not always miserable, you know. How strongly did she feel about this group of yours? Was she fanatical?"

"That has nothing to do with it."

"I think it has. Most certainly. Maybe she fancied herself as a martyr."

"She did not commit suicide. That's bloody nonsense."

"Really? Well, it might have been an accident. Up there, you see, no one saw her fall. Mind you, that was the point, wasn't it - that no one should notice her? Even so, she must have chosen her moment. Wasn't that the plan?"

Nick muttered, "I don't bloody know."

"Anyway, Mr Chance, no one saw her fall. So we don't know whether she jumped or not."

"She didn't."

"Then why wasn't she carrying the camera? She'd placed it carefully on the gantry."

"You don't know that."

"It's a narrow gantry. If she'd dropped the camera, it would almost certainly have fallen to the floor. No, she placed it down, carefully. Then she slipped in the machine."

"Maybe she was ... trying to find out ... "

"Find out what? No, it doesn't gel, does it, Mr Chance? Of course, the whole thing could have been an accident - except that the machine has warning devices. It was one of those devices that shut it down. - A sensor, you know? When a worker is loading the vat he has to manually override it. But, of course, the machine couldn't cut off quickly enough to save her life."

"I don't believe it."

"Oh, you're in denial, sir, I can understand that."

The policeman paused, and then changed his tone. "Well, what's done is done. Look, Mr Chance, this has been pretty distressing for you, so I think you'd better go home and try to get some sleep. When you've had a good rest, I'd like you to think about this a little more carefully. We'll have another talk, and maybe you'll realise that it would be better if you told us everything you know. - Incidentally, do you know the address of the young lady's next of kin?"

"No."

"I'm serious, Mr Chance. We've got to let her parents know."

"I don't know it. I don't know where she lives."

"Didn't you used to go to school together?"

"They moved."

"I see. Well, you might as well go home."

Nick began towards the door, then stopped. "You haven't told her parents?"

"Not yet."

"Has anyone ... Do you want me to identify the body?"

"Um, no, there's no need for that."

"I'd like to see her."

The policeman looked away. "Mr Chance, I'm afraid there's no question of that."

Nick looked at him. "Is there a body?" he whispered.

"Oh yes, in a sense. But you wouldn't want to see it." He saw Nick's face. "No, you wouldn't," he said. "I'm sorry, son."

When Nick left the station the rain was falling, soft and salty from the estuary. It was a cold bleak dawn.

____________________________

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