by Jodi Taylor
His smile was enormous. ‘I did, didn’t I?’
‘Everything all right here?’ said Jones, appearing beside me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Believe it or not, yes.’
‘We can’t hang around, Cage.’
‘Yes, I know. I won’t be a moment.’
He nodded and turned away. ‘One minute, Cage. Then we’re going. Ready or not.’
‘Iblis, listen. Time is short and we have to get out of here. Go and see Melek. Tell her what I told you.’
‘Melek,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I can’t … no …’
‘Listen, you went to her before and it was the right thing to do. She held you together. When it really mattered she was there for you. She’s been there for you ever since. Go and talk to her. Talk to each other. Please.’
Tears were rolling down my face, and when he turned back to me, I could see they were rolling down his face as well.
‘Elizabeth …’
‘I know,’ I said softly. ‘I understand. Just go and talk to her. I know it won’t be easy but you have to do it. Promise me you will.’
‘I will,’ he said hoarsely, cleared his throat and said, ‘I will,’ again, more strongly this time. He ran his hand through his hair. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘You’ll think of something. You’re Iblis. Your woman-handling skills are legendary.’
‘I mean, I don’t know what to say to you.’
‘Nothing’, I said quietly. ‘Between friends, there’s never any need to say anything.’
‘I can’t believe … All this time …’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘but it’s not as if time is a problem for you and the important thing is that you now know the truth.’
‘The truth,’ he echoed, and I could see him putting the pieces together, going back in his mind, seeing past events in a new light. A clearer light. One not distorted by guilt or shame.
Jones stuck his head out of the window. ‘Cage …’
‘Coming,’ I called. ‘Go and see her, Iblis. Talk.’
He nodded. ‘I will.’
‘Come on then. We have to go.’
‘No. No. If you don’t mind, I’ll walk. I need to think. To clear my mind. To think about what to say to her.’ He looked at me, his silver colour as fresh and new as a rain-washed cobweb through which the sun’s brilliance reflected every colour of the rainbow. It roared out towards me and, just for once, I didn’t mind. His grey eyes were blazing. He was dazzling. Perhaps, once, he had looked like this all the time. The playboy was gone. I assumed it was a persona he had manufactured in which to hide his disgrace. In its place stood a mature young man.
‘I didn’t do it, Elizabeth. I didn’t do it.’
‘No, you didn’t. Now go and tell her.’ I took a step backwards towards the car. ‘Good luck.’
We looked at each other and then he took my hand. His hand was very strong and cool and mine lay in it lightly, as if he was afraid of hurting me.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘With all my heart – thank you.’
‘You are very welcome,’ I said. ‘It was my pleasure. There is no need to speak of it again.’
He bowed.
‘I have to go,’ I said, edging back towards the car.
‘You’ve always been a good friend to me. Stay safe.’
‘Um … OK …You too.’
‘I will,’ he said, drawing himself up and beginning to look like his old self again. ‘My staying-safe skills are legendary. Now you must go before the man-mountain becomes over-anxious.’
‘That looked serious,’ said Jones as I climbed back into the car.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Thought so. Hang on a minute, Jerry.’
He jumped out of the car and Jerry cursed again. Catching up with Iblis, the two of them talked together for a moment.
‘What’s going on?’ I said to Jerry, suddenly anxious.
‘He’s just making sure the long thin streak of wind and piss is OK. Dunno what you said to him, but it certainly knocked him sideways.’
I sighed. ‘They don’t like each other, do they?’
He looked surprised. ‘No, they like each other very much. I’m amazed you missed that.’
I sighed again. ‘Men are very mysterious.’
He put the car in gear. ‘You want to try understanding women.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jones climbed back into Jerry’s car and we drove slowly away. Jones and Jerry were in the front. I was a little hurt Jones wasn’t in the back with me. I could really have done with a large and comforting presence nearby. Perhaps I should be less self-reliant in the future. It was hard to believe that only last night we’d shared a bed together – even if for only about ten minutes.
To break the silence, I asked Jerry what he’d been up to when I telephoned him.
‘Oh, I was up at yon posh pillock’s place.’
I was baffled. ‘What posh pillock’s place?’
Jones twisted in his seat and grinned at me. ‘He means Sorensen’s clinic.’
I gripped the front seat in alarm. Why? What were you doing?’
‘He wasn’t doing anything,’ said Jerry, changing gear to negotiate a bend.
‘All right, what were you doing?’
‘I was pinching his Auerbach.’
‘Ah, you got it, did you?’ said Jones, casually.
I gripped even more tightly, even though I knew the answer.
‘What Auerbach?’
‘You know – the one in his hall.’
‘The one you told him was a fake.’
‘And now it is.’
‘You stole it?’
‘I swapped it,’ he said reproachfully. ‘Not the same thing at all.’
‘I think you’ll find it is,’ said Jones, mildly.
I closed my eyes to shut out the dizzying sense of reality skidding away from me again. What had happened to my safe and well-ordered world?
‘Got someone lined up for it?’ Enquired Jones.
Jerry nodded. ‘I’ll just drop you two off and then be on me way.’
I was gouging great lumps out of the front seat. ‘It’s here? Now? In this car?’
‘You’re sitting on it.’
I resisted the urge to stand up and bang my head on the roof again.
‘But he’ll know it was you.’
‘Why would he think that? I’m the one who told him it was a fake.’
‘Was it?’
‘It is now.’
I closed my eyes again.
‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist, missis. If he remembers me at all – which I bet he doesn’t, because people like him don’t even think about people like me – but if he does then he’ll think, wow – that cabbie had a good eye. But he won’t. It could be years before it’s discovered. If ever.’
‘But when he calls the police …’
‘She has this thing about calling the police,’ said Jones in explanatory tones. ‘Just work through it and she’ll be fine.’
‘He’s not going to do that,’ said Jerry, in the slow and careful tones of one addressing a person of restricted intelligence. ‘Tell the world he’s not as clever as he thinks he is? I don’t think so, missis. My guess is that when he finds out – if he ever finds out – it’ll get shoved in a cupboard somewhere and forgotten.’
It struck me that in his own way, Jerry was as good at psychological games as Sorensen himself.
We reached the place where, last time, the car had been pulled back towards Greyston. I didn’t realise I was holding my breath until I wasn’t. We passed without incident.
‘Where shall I drop you?’ said Jerry.
‘I want to go home,’ I said, suddenly realising I very much wanted to go home. I was cold, dirty, starving hungry, exhausted, and my feet hurt. I kept thinking longingly of a long, hot bath and the glass of wine I really deserved.
‘And I would very much like to go home with you, as well,’ said Jones, ‘but I think w
e need to spend the night at the hotel first and pay our bill in the morning like normal people would do. And I still have something important to say to you, Cage.’
I was seized with a sudden panic. ‘I’m too hungry to concentrate.’
‘Well, no restaurant’s going to let us in looking like this,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Pull up at the first chippie, will you, Jerry.’
The lights of Rushby were all around us. I heard the ‘tink-tink’ of the indicator and Jerry pulled over.
‘I’ll go,’ he said, switching off the engine and undoing his seat belt. ‘You two stay here and sort out the rest of your lives.’ He slammed the door behind him.
Jones turned to me. ‘Back there – when you were shouting about me being a stone-cold killer – you were just talking me up to those women – right?’
I hesitated. Yes, I’d been trying to get my message across. Trying to make them understand they had a tiger by the tail. But I didn’t have to try very hard to see his face as it had been last Christmas. Detached. Dispassionate. Efficient. Brutal.
I’d hesitated for too long. He took his hand away. ‘This is about last Christmas, isn’t it? You just can’t get past it.’
I was about to refute this with indignation, but it was true. I hadn’t got past it. The more time passed, the more I was convinced I was right and the rest of the world was wrong. I remembered Mrs Barton saying, ‘All that angry snow.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I said. ‘You weren’t yourself.’
‘That’s not quite answering the question, Cage.’
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know what to think. On the surface he was a perfectly pleasant, charming man. People liked him. I liked him. But I’d seen the darkness that ran underneath. Well, of course I had. He’d be no good at his job without it. I probably hadn’t even seen the worst of him. He was no Ted. But on the other hand, Ted had married me on instructions from Sorensen. Was that better or worse than being Michael Jones? Who, at least, had never lied to me. And how fair was it to compare the two? And – the bottom line – if I had done what I was becoming increasingly convinced I had – for how many deaths was I myself responsible?
I’d been silent too long.
‘Look,’ he said softly, ‘it didn’t happen, Cage. I promise you it didn’t. I told you once I’d never do anything to hurt Ted’s wife and I meant it. I still mean it. But if you can’t get past it … if it’s all too much for you …’
He did mean it. I could see it in his colour. He was telling the truth. Well, the truth as he saw it. And now the time had come for me to make a decision. Whatever he’d done to me physically hadn’t been his fault. And his subsequent actions – bugging my house and so on, had been the result of Sorensen’s manipulations. But if I let it go … if I opened myself up to him … what would I get?
And should I let it go? Should I forget it and move on? Close the door and accept the official version – the one that said it had never happened – and get on with my life? And should that life include Michael Jones? For all his talk of flocks of dissatisfied girlfriends and failed relationships, I suspected he’d had few attachments and even fewer of those had been close. Apart from Clare, and Clare had died. As had Ted.
I suddenly remembered. ‘What was your question?’
‘What?’
I sighed patiently. ‘What was your question? The one you were going to ask me at the café?’
‘Well, I know it’s a little early to be talking about it, but I thought I’d get in ahead of the crowd, so to speak.’
He stopped.
‘Yes,’ I said impatiently.
‘I was going to ask you - what do you want to do for Christmas this year?’
This supposedly simple question stopped me dead in my tracks. Because that wasn’t what he was asking. He was really asking about us. Him and me. Whether we had any future together. And this would be the only time he would ask. There would be no do-overs. I had just this one chance to get it right. The answer to this one question would decide my future. And his.
I didn’t rush to answer and he didn’t press me. I sat looking at the bright lights of the fish and chip shop. And the off-licence next door. I looked at Jones, his golden-red colour muted and shot through with far more anxiety than showed in his face. It occurred to me that neither of us was making a success of our lives and this might be the last chance for both of us.
I smiled and took his hand. ‘Well, I think it’s my turn this year. Don’t you?’
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