He considered turning round, walking backwards. Felt like it'd be a damn sight easier, leaning against the slope. But he needed to see where he was going. He'd stumble, fall, land on his neck or something.
Mierda. At this pace, he'd be here all night. Somebody might come home. Always a risk, even though it was late. If they did, there was the wedge under the front door and Maggie poised to stall them. But if someone who was already at home decided to head on out for some reason, there wasn't much he could do. Couldn't hide. Couldn't run away. He'd just have to own up. Which would ruin everything.
The thought had occurred to him before. He tried to remember why he'd decided it wouldn't be a problem.
Ideally, his mother's murder should have been committed elsewhere. But this was all for Maggie's benefit. Not that she could appreciate it. Or would if she could. He'd just have to get on with it. Tuesday night. One in the morning. Nobody was going to be coming in or out. Fuck it, everything'd be fine.
***
He limped his way down the rest of the steps, one careful step after another. By the time he reached the bottom, sweat was running into his eyes and the muscles in his neck and shoulder felt like they were being twisted around each other and pulled so tight they were about to snap. His thighs burned.
But so far, so good.Only ten feet between him and the front door. He took a breath, staggered forwards.
A few steps later, Maggie bent down, removed the wooden wedge from under the door. She fumbled the wedge, sprang back when it bounced on the floor with a clack. "Shit," she said. "Shit, shit." She picked up the wedge, her hand shaking. "Should I check outside?"
He wanted to nod but couldn't. And he was too out of breath to say anything. He let his eyes do the talking.
Yes.
She disappeared, returned a few seconds later. "Clear," she said. "I'll go open the van."
He still couldn't believe she was doing this.
***
Ten minutes later, Maggie removed her headphones, turned off her iPod. "Classical music. Bach," she said. "Thought I'd give it a go. Supposed to help you relax."
"And I thought you just didn't want to talk to me." Carlos grinned to show he wasn't serious.
"Hope Sofia's okay."
Their babysitter was a seventeen-year-old whose name Carlos couldn't remember. They'd used her before. Maggie was friends with her sister. Or someone. "She'll be just fine," he said. "Why don't you phone and check?"
"It's late," Maggie said. "I'm fretting. I have to worry about her, you know. Mother's duty."
He watched the white lines in the middle of the road, pushed the wheel of his palm against the steering wheel.
Maggie asked, "How's the shoulder?"
The pain was a fading ache now. "Gone," he said.
"Gone," Maggie said.
"Yeah," he said. "Just about."
Those white lines reminded him of when he was a kid, first time in a plane, looking out the window as they were about to land, still trying to work out how something so heavy could float in the air.
"What?" Maggie said.
"Nothing. Why?"
"You look like you're somewhere else."
"I do?" God, it was weird, but he felt some kind of sense of loss. Maybe it was because of what was going to happen to Maggie. A state of pre-mourning or something. His stomach felt empty. Not that he was hungry. It just felt like he hadn't eaten. And the sound of the car engine was too loud, high-pitched. Like an airplane.
"You know how I hate airports," he said, for something to say.
"I've noticed, yeah."
"You know why?"
She shrugged. "They're no fun. Nobody likes them. Security checks, all that crap."
"I've always hated them, long before the days of liquid bombs. First flight, I was nine or ten. We'd just got back from Spain, looking for Dad. The passengers were all clustered round the carousel at the baggage retrieval and there was this hubbub of chat floating around. You ever noticed airport acoustics?" He didn't wait for an answer. He was talking to himself anyway. "There's this swell of noise. You can pick out layers, but no words. And over the top you can hear the sound of rattling cutlery, like it's in your headphones, and someone's telling you he's dead. Your father's dead. And you look over to a coffee shop that's a hundred feet away and someone's stacking cups, that's all, and you go, fuck me, that's what I'm hearing, my dad's okay. That's what happened to me, anyway. After our failed trip to find Dad. But I thought my hearing was buggered for good, and it filled me with, I don't know, dread, I suppose, hearing that voice, and I felt this pressure behind my eyes and I burst into tears."
He felt her hand on his thigh, warming his tingling muscles.
"In fact, I wasn't so far wrong. My left ear's not so good, and maybe that's part of the problem. You know that, but did you know that my left eye's weaker than my right?"
"I didn't," she said. "But thanks for telling me."
"And my left foot's smaller than my right. My dad used to say that I was 'all right'. Funny guy, my dad. That was his best English joke. He was proud of it." He didn't want to tell her any more but he couldn't stop. "Ironic, my issues with airports. Cause up to that point, I believed I wanted to travel the world when I grew up. Used to have a model plane I took everywhere with me. A spitfire. War plane. Type 356-Mk 22. Teardrop canopy. Built it from a kit. Painted it camouflage colours. Green, light and dark brown. But the nose, for some reason, I painted the nose a dark blue. The underbelly was a pale cream. Apart from the decals on the wingtips, the eyes. They were blue, like the nose, and I spent a long time with a fine brush giving them perfect little evenly spaced eyelashes."
"Charlie."
"My mum bought me the plane. She worked for a travel agency. Spent her days selling holidays to places she never saw herself. I'd never flown before. I don't remember her flying either. Just that once. My dad left us nothing. Just disappeared without even saying goodbye. She married that rich fuck, George, who was able to take her places she'd only dreamed about. But that was a long time later. My dad, Pablo, he just walked away one day without so much as a goodbye kiss."
"Charlie."
"As a kid, that plane represented an escape route. And yeah, those guns fitted in the wings were probably significant, too."
"Charlie." She put her hand on his shoulder.
"Am I a monster?" he asked her.
She squeezed, fingers massaging the muscle. "Maybe in some people's eyes," she said.
"In my mother's, you mean."
She turned her head slightly, glanced through the loose chickenwire partition into the back. "Yes."
Carlos checked the rearview. Too dark to see much. But his brain compensated for the limitations of his eyes and he made out the bodybag, the heavy chains, the petrol cans, the holdall. "And in yours?"
She didn't reply.
"Well?"
"I'm here, ain't I?" she said.
"You are," he said. "I'm sorry about that."
She gave a little laugh. "It's okay."
But that wasn't what he'd meant.
"Tell me about you," he said.
"What do you mean?"
He wanted to know everything. There were plenty of things she hadn't told him. Not just the reason she'd taken out the contract on his mother. No, other things. Trivial things. Things he shouldn't care about but which seemed to matter now. He didn't know if there'd been a sandpit at her infant school; didn't know the name of the boy she first held hands with; didn't know if she could ride a horse; didn't know the name of her favourite dolls or teddy bears; didn't know her mother's maiden name.
Sentimentality. He had to put a stop to it. Think of something else.
He pictured them dragging the bodybag out of the van, laying it on the ground. He heard himself tell Maggie he wanted to say goodbye. Saw himself pull down the zipper. Jordan's face staring back at him. "Come closer," Carlos said to Maggie. "Say a few words." She kept her distance, a few feet away, said she'd rather not. He nodded, said he u
nderstood. He pulled the zipper all the way down. He said, "Okay," to Jordan and the kid sat up, hair matted to his forehead from the heat inside the bodybag, gun in his hand. And Carlos said to Maggie, "Are you sure there isn't anything you'd like to say?"
If she still didn't confess, facing certain death like that, then Carlos could assume it wasn't her who'd arranged the contract. And maybe he could let her go, like he'd promised his mother. Jordan, they'd agreed, was just to scare Maggie into admitting her guilt. Whatever happened afterwards, they'd have to divorce. He'd make sure he got custody. That wouldn't be a problem.
Course, the reality was that Carlos couldn't think of a scenario that didn't end up with Maggie having to take a long nap in the bodybag.
That's what he meant. It made his heart twitch.
But for now, all he said was, "Nothing. It doesn't matter."
***
A few minutes later, they were driving along a country road and Carlos was remembering his first time with Maggie — how she'd led him into his bedroom, yanked his trousers down to his knees, buried her head in his crotch, and moaned as she sucked and moaned and took her head away briefly to say fuck fuck fuck yeah and sucked and moaned until he spasmed and shuddered like a man in an electric chair, and then after she cleaned up with her t-shirt, she steered his mouth from nipple to nipple to bellybutton to crotch, telling him what he should do and where and how hard and fast and deep until she came in a series of fuck fuck fuck yeahs, but he just couldn't get it up again no matter how she coaxed and teased, so they didn't fuck until the following weekend — when he saw a flashing light in the rearview.
Couldn't be. Not now.
"Mierda," he said.
"What?" Maggie asked.
"Behind us."
She looked over her shoulder. "Shit. So much for my idea of taking the back roads."
"Just our fucking luck. You'd think the cops would have something better to do with their time than haul us up at two in the morning." He couldn't think of a way out of this.
"We'll have to pull over," Maggie said, confirming that she was out of ideas too.
"With a corpse in the back?"
"What do you suggest? This piece of junk can't outrun a police car."
She was right. They didn't have a choice. He slowed to a crawl.
***
The police car overtook them, pulled into the side of the road, and stopped.
Carlos swore. He kept swearing. Puta, puta, puta. Fuck.
After a bit, somebody climbed out of the car. A young guy. Late teens, maybe. He wasn't in uniform.
"He's not a cop," Carlos said to Maggie.
"Maybe he's a detective."
"Too young."
"Whoever he is, he's got a gun."
So he did. And he was pointing it their way.
But it was okay.
"Don't worry," Carlos said. "That's a Glock. Almost definitely a replica." Cause even Carlos, with all his connections, found it almost impossible to buy a reasonably priced fully operational Glock these days. He owned one once, but Richie's crazy dad had stolen it just before he got himself killed. Carlos didn't know for sure, but he suspected it was the same gun Jordan had used that night at the cottage. Unlike tonight, where he'd had to give Jordan a converted Valtro 98 "gas alarm" pistol. Lot of them about at the moment. Good business in buying replicas in bulk in Berlin, smuggling them into the UK, and adapting them to fire live rounds. So Carlos was told. But Glocks? Apparently they were hard to come by, priced accordingly. Supply and demand. But there were shitloads of replicas sold before the ban was introduced in October last year. So either this cop-teenager had more money than was likely, or that was a replica in his hand. Carlos was betting on the latter.
What the fucker was doing out here in a police car pretending to be a cop with a Glock, Carlos had no idea. He smiled, wound down the window, stuck his head out. Felt good to get some cool air on his skin. The night smelt of fox piss and rapeseed. "Problemo, Officer?"
The guy said nothing. Got closer to the car. "Turn off the engine and get out."
"Why?"
He waved the gun in Maggie's direction. His hand was big, fingers thick, looked swollen. "Tell him."
That was interesting. Almost as if he knew her.
And Maggie, well, she didn't look scared at all. She leaned across and turned off the engine.
"You a joyrider?" Carlos asked him. Seemed like a logical guess.
"Get out."
"Do what he says, Carlos," Maggie said.
"You heard her."
"I don't think so," Carlos said.
"Get the fuck out."
"I don't the fuck think so."
"If you don't, I'll kill you." He looked at Carlos, didn't move. "I'll shoot you in the head."
Carlos stared at him, pretty sure he was right about the Glock being a replica. Pretty damn fucking sure. Yeah. "Go on, then," Carlos said.
"Eh?"
"Kill me."
The guy's lips tightened. He said, "I want you to get out first."
"I know."
"You better do it," Maggie said.
"Listen to her."
Carlos said, "I'm fine where I am."
"You have to do what you're told."
"No posible. Sorry." He didn't know what was going on here, but he was going to find out. "Why don't you tell me what you want?"
The guy looked at Maggie, then back at Carlos. "I want you out of the van, standing the fuck right here."
"Is it the van you want?" Carlos asked. "Or me? Or my wife?"
"I told you." He was getting twitchy, jerking the gun around. "Just get the fuck out."
"Listen," Carlos said. "How about you fuck off back to your police car and drive away. Then we can all get on with what we were doing."
"Right. I'm going to shoot you."
Carlos folded his arms. "And I'm going to sit right here."
"You can't do that."
"Why not?"
"Cause I'll..."
"Shoot me?"
"Yeah."
"Glad that's settled."
The guy blinked hard. "You think I'm fucking messing around?"
Carlos uncrossed his arms. "How did you get the car?"
"Huh?"
"Stealing a cop car can't be easy."
He said, "What's it to you?"
"Just saying," Carlos said. "Must have taken a bit of planning. A bit of know-how."
"Not really. Just hung around Lothian Road. Only a matter of time before a police car showed up."
"Hmm," Carlos said. "I bet they didn't leave the door open and the key in the ignition."
"Got a technique," he said. "See —" He broke off as the passenger door clicked open.
Carlos turned to see Maggie getting out of the car. "Wait," he said.
"It's okay," she said, the door snicking shut behind her.
He watched her walk round the front of the van, no hesitation, sidle up to the joyrider.
"A police car," she said to him. "I didn't expect that."
"I'm good."
"So I see." She fingered her hair. "My husband doesn't think your gun's loaded, you know."
"Doesn't he?" He looked at Carlos. "You don't?"
"Maggie," Carlos said. "Don't taunt him."
"He thinks I'm taunting you," Maggie said to the joyrider. "Do you think so?"
"What I think," the guy said. "I think I should blow this fucker away."
"What's your problem?" Carlos asked. "You got some issue with me, spit it out? I'm getting bored of this."
"Bored? You're getting fucking bored?" The guy twisted his body, pointed the gun at the police car and fired. The windscreen exploded.
"Mierda." Carlos felt the explosion reverberate in his bowels, the sound of the windscreen shattering like an after-effect in his veins. He glanced in the rearview, saw the bodybag wriggle. Thank Christ. They'd left the zipper undone just enough to allow air into the bag. Should mean Jordan would be able to get the bag open from the insid
e. Wasn't the plan, of course. But the plan was all gone to fuck. From now on, there was no fucking plan.
The joyrider said, "If you don't get out of there right now, I'll shoot you where you sit. Last chance."
Looked like everybody was on their last chance tonight.
"What does it matter?" Carlos asked.
"I don't want Maggie having to drive with your blood all over the place."
Maggie?
The joyrider knew where to find them, he knew Maggie's name. This was definitely no accidental encounter.
"Maggie?" Carlos said, looking at his wife.
She nestled in close to the joyrider, stood facing Carlos. "You killed your mother," she said. "You crossed a line, Charlie. How do I know that you won't kill me? Or Sofia?"
Holy shit. Maggie was behind this? Bad enough that she'd want to get rid of his mum, but she was planning on getting rid of him as well? Fuck, what a bitch. Carlos felt stupid to have been so misled for so long.
"Christ's sake," he said. "Don't be fucking ridiculous."
"Is it?" Maggie said. "I thought long and hard about it. If you can bump off your mother, nobody's safe. Seems fucking logical to me."
"I'd never hurt Sofia."
"Right," Maggie said. "But you'd hurt me?"
"I didn't say that."
"You don't know how scary you are, Charlie. What you do. And it's bad enough when I'm not involved. But look what you've made me do now. I'm an accessory to murder. You think I like driving around with that thing in the back?" Her chin wobbled. "It fucking creeps me out. You creep me out. I need to protect myself."
He could tell her the truth. But, he thought, it was too late for that. He reached forward and turned the engine on.
"Hey," the guy said. "What d'you think you're doing? You're not going anywhere."
No, but the engine was making enough noise to allow Jordan to get the zip pulled down without being heard.
"I'm cold all of a sudden," Carlos said. "Just wanted to warm my hands."
"Turn it off."
"Just a couple of minutes."
"Turn it off!"
Carlos sighed, turned it off. Jordan was out of the bag now, but Carlos needed to keep talking, make a noise so he could get out of the van. "Do you have a name?" he asked.
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