There were fewer used condoms on the ground, too, so someone was clearly making a real effort; but I wasn’t here to admire the view. The 61 bus put me off within sight of the gates, but I walked on by and did a circuit of the place first – both to see if I’d been followed and to think about what I’d already picked up while I’d been here. Not the jackpot, obviously – that I could only get from Anita herself – but a few little nuggets of possibility. Kenny’s obsession with Anita meant that the two of them playing house together two hundred miles from home was a smaller camel to swallow: particularly since Kenny had done his level best to drive Anita away from the ’Pool in the first place. Mind you, I reflected, there wouldn’t have been a lot keeping her here: as a single mum in Walton with no man in tow, she would have taken a lot of cheap shots, a lot of innuendo and collateral contempt from the matriarchs of my mum’s generation.
