The Fish Kisser by James Hawkins

four hours earlier, wondering if he would everreturn. He thought of his the little green Renault, his beloved computer, and the house. His house. The little terraced house on Junction Road, in Watford; that would really send his mother crazy if she ever found out. He’d forgotten all about the house.
    And then he thought of Trudy.
    â€œOh my God,” he screamed, suddenly wide awake. “What will happen to Trudy?”

chapter three
    A strident, demanding tone of a car alarm was echoing along Junction Road, Watford; the noise coming from an old Volvo abandoned on a patch of wasteland where number 33 had stood until a bomb had blasted the two-up and two-down terraced house to smithereens in 1940, at the height of the Blitz. The owners had never rebuilt. A volunteer fireman had found their mangled remains—still sheltering in the cupboard under the solid wooden stairs in strict accordance with the Ministry of Defence
Air Raid Manual.
But what to do if a direct hit collapsed the staircase on top of you? “Pray. And be damn quick about it,” was the only advice the fireman had to offer a scared sorrowful neighbour: a thirty-year-old housewife wearing the wartime cares of a fifty-year-old in her mother’s polka-dot pinafore dress, with her prematurely greying hair pushed up under an old beret. “That’s all you can do m’luv if they drop one right on top of yer,” he said. “Put your hands over yer ears and pray.”
    The dead couple’s nearest relative, a son packed off to his aunt in Australia—”For the duration,” in the jargon of the day—had intended to return home one day to sell the land, or even rebuild the house as a tribute to his parents. Now he was too old to bother, and too rich to care.
    It was only 3:30 a.m. in Watford, a full time zone to the west of the SS
Rotterdam,
and the rising sun was still an hour shy of trying to brighten up Junction Road, with its tarnished terraces of turn-of-the-century red brick houses.
    Finally, fed up with the constant whining of the car’s alarm, Mrs. Ramchuran, at number 70, slipped a dressing gown over her silk pyjamas, tied on a scarf, and stepped into the chilly pre-dawn air. With uncanny timing, her next door neighbour, the “guardian” of Junction Road, readied himself with an arsenal of advice for the offender and snapped open his door.
    â€œIs that your’s, Mr. Mitchell?” his neighbour enquired, nodding to the Jaguar.
    Caught off-balance, he laughed, and even his laughter had a clipped cockney ring. “Bugger off, will you. Nah, I’ve not seen it afore. ’T’aint anyone’s round here.”
    â€œHave you called the police?”
    â€œNah, waste of bloody time. They can’t be boverred with this. Anyhow, they’ve got more important fings to do.”
    Mrs. Ramchuran wondered, aloud, if either of the residents on the other side of the road, closest to the noise, had phoned the police.
    â€œDoubt it,” said Mr. Mitchell, an elderly widower who could have turned his knowledge of the street into an entire category of
Trivial Pursuit.
“There’s no one in at 34, and old daft Jack at 35 would never hear anyfing. He’s as bloomin’ deaf as a post.”
    The alarm stopped, mid-sound, as if an unseen hand had wrenched off the battery. Mrs. Ramchuran was startled by the sudden silence. “Oh,” she gave a tiny jump. “Thank God for that.”
    Mr. Mitchell, George to his friends at the British Legion, was uncharacteristically wrong about his neighbours—there was someone in at number 34. Trudy was there, Roger’s Trudy. She’d been there nearly a week, although George had not seen her and, as he and Mrs. Ramchuran went back to their beds, hoping the noise would not recur, Trudy was lying in bed, Roger’s bed wondering where Roger was and what he was doing.
    â€œI’ll only be away for a couple of days,