by Zoe Sharp
“Of course.” Isobel’s smile became even sicklier. “Well, now I’ve found that certificate I can get on with it,” she said, her eyes locked on their entwined fingers. “You’ll be very happy together, I’m sure.”
The way she managed to inject just the faintest whiff of doubt into such otherwise hearty tones was a masterclass, all by itself.
After Isobel had gone I peeled off my leather jacket and took the chair she’d vacated. It was unbearably hot near the window and the two oscillating electric fans the staff had set up did little more than stir the warm air about a bit.
Clare looked tired and overheated, her normally lustrous long blonde hair hanging lank around her face.
“Are you OK?” I asked. Stupid question to ask anyone lying in a hospital bed, I know, but there are degrees of OK.
“Are you OK?” She smiled faintly. “Jacob said you’d come off the RGV.”
I glanced at him sharply. Had he avoided telling her about the van that had played a considerable part because it was too close to the bone?
He gave me the slightest nod, little more than a slow blink. Yes.
“I’m fine,” I said cheerfully, reaching up to push my hair out of my eyes. “The bike’s looking a bit worse for wear but it’s a good excuse to get that wacky paint job I’ve always wanted, I suppose.”
She frowned, her face anxious. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’ve got a hell of a bruise on your arm.”
I followed her gaze and discovered a mottled deep aubergine-coloured blotch across the outside of my left forearm, fading to yellow at the edges like my skin was sucking the colours out of it one at a time. The bruise ran in a narrow diagonal line across my arm and it hadn’t come from any accidental source. I dropped my arm quickly.
“That was Isobel’s little playmate, yesterday afternoon,” I said. “I don’t suppose she happened to mention that part of it, did she?”
Jacob frowned. “She said she was looking for a copy of our marriage certificate,” he said. “I’ve been nagging her to get the paperwork for the divorce sorted at her end for the last couple of months. She’d told me it was all in hand and reckons she was too embarrassed to admit that she had lost her copy.”
“So why was she ransacking the study when I arrived?”
He gave a half-smile. “Depends on your definition of ransacking,” he said. “I remember, if she was looking for something in a kitchen drawer she’d be likely to pull the whole drawer out of the dresser and tip it upside down onto the floor. Isobel’s just like that.”
“So if I’m exaggerating, why did she bring that tame psycho with her and set him onto me like a bloody attack dog?”
“According to her, Sean broke his nose.”
I sighed in frustration. “Yes, but that was after Eamonn had already started in on me and threatened to break both my ankles,” I said, my voice low with anger. “He went after me with an asp, for heaven’s sake. You don’t carry one of those for any other reason than to hit people, Jacob. It’s a tool of the trade.”
Jacob didn’t reply to that and I realised that I was probably reaping the rewards of having been so accusative with him this morning. Sean and I had gone in hard and lost his trust. Now it was payback time. I swallowed, trying to clear the bitter taste in my mouth.
“So what was Isobel doing here?” I asked, as calmly as I could.
“She came to see Clare,” Jacob said. I glanced at Clare and the look on her face told me what she thought about that. Came to gloat, more like. “And,” he went on, “she wanted to talk about Jamie.”
Because I was already watching Clare’s face I saw the flash of fear cross it at the mention of Jamie’s name. She disentangled her hand from Jacob’s to push herself a little more upright in the bed. The whole of the framework attached to her legs creaked as it readjusted.
“What about him?” I said.
“She doesn’t want him to go on this Devil’s Bridge Club outing either,” Jacob said. “She thinks that these lads he’s fallen in with will get him into trouble.”
“I’ve already told Charlie about this,” Clare said quickly, as though trying to hurry him off the subject.
“If you’re all so worried about him, why don’t you just tell him not to go?” I said, looking at Jacob again.
He grunted. “You’ve never had kids have you, Charlie?” he said and I thought I saw Clare flinch. “When they get beyond about four years old you can’t just tell them to do anything. You can suggest and persuade and that’s about it.”
“And you’ve tried suggesting and persuading him?”
“Mm. Waste of breath. Like trying to get him to eat spinach when he was a little boy,” he said and he smiled a little sadly. “Didn’t matter how many Popeye stories we told him. Wouldn’t touch the stuff.”
We lapsed into contemplative silence. Clare looked as though she was about to burst into tears at any moment. Oh God, what a mess.
“So,” I said, tentative, “do you still want me to go to Ireland with him?”
“Yes!” Clare said. “Charlie, I—”
“It’s all right, love,” Jacob interrupted, his voice firm but gentle. “Charlie will look after him, don’t you worry.”
A young nurse appeared round the edge of the curtain. She was wearing a polythene pinny and gloves and carrying a bowl of antiseptic wipes and paper towel.
“Sorry to barge in on you,” she said, sounding a lot more cheery than the nurse who’d thrown me out previously, “but we need to get those pins twiddled don’t we, Clare?”
Whatever she was planning to do, it sounded nasty. Jacob and I obediently got to our feet.
“We’ll go and grab a coffee, give you half an hour,” he said, bending to kiss Clare’s cheek. She put her arms round him and gave him a big hug, close to tears.
We moved away. The nurse had whizzed the curtains fully shut around the bed before we’d reached the ward door.
“What on earth is she going to do?” I asked.
“They have to manipulate the skin round where the pins go in, otherwise they heal into your flesh,” Jacob said, matter-of-fact. “First time they ever put me in an ex-fix they weren’t too assiduous about doing it. Hurt like the very devil when they took it out, I can tell you.”
We found a vending machine and took our coffees outside into the sunshine where there was enough of a breeze to make it cooler.
“So, did Clare tell you anything about what happened?”
“There was a van,” he said. “A white Transit with bull bars on the front of it. She said it seemed to swerve twice before it hit them, like it was a determined effort.”
“And never stopped,” I muttered. “Bastard.”
“Oh he stopped all right,” Jacob said, his voice grim. “Clare said she remembers lying in the middle of the road and seeing the brake lights come on, and hearing the transmission wind up as it went into reverse, like he was coming back for another go.”
“Jesus.”
“And then she heard more bikes approaching and the van just took off. For obvious reasons I didn’t tell her about the van that chased you to Gleet’s,” he added, his voice a little bitter now. “She’s got nothing to do but lay there and worry as it is.”
“Why didn’t she tell me the truth?” I asked quietly. “Why did she claim she couldn’t remember, when it sounds like she remembers only too well?”
Jacob frowned. “Jamie,” he said, and that churning feeling crept back into my stomach. “She says when he came in to see her yesterday morning he begged her not to say anything.”
I spent a moment in puzzled silence. When had Jamie had the chance to speak to Clare alone? Then I recalled my shock at Sean’s arrival. We’d only left the two of them together for a few minutes, but long enough.
“Why’s Jamie so desperate to keep Slick’s death low-key?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe it has something to do with the fact that Slick’s not the first.”
For a moment my brain
put all sorts of connotations on that last sentence. I took an ill-advised gulp of my coffee, burning my tongue.
“The first what?” I managed.
“Bike death on that road,” Jacob said. “You could put one or two down to stupidity but there have been quite a few more than usual so far this summer.”
“Twelve,” I said slowly, remembering MacMillan’s original visit back at the cottage, when he’d thrown statistics at me to try and get me to join the Devil’s Bridge Club and spy for him. “Slick makes it thirteen.”
“Does he?” Jacob shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you numbers. All I know is I don’t want my lad to become number fourteen.”
“But surely, if someone’s doing this deliberately – picking them off – Jamie would be safer going to Ireland than if he stayed here?” I said, testing the water. “Unless, of course, there’s more to it than that . . .”
Jacob frowned and I could see the conflict on his face. Would he come clean? Would he trust me enough to tell me?
“Look, Charlie, it’s complicated,” he said. “What with Clare and everything, I—” He broke off, sighed heavily. “I’d just be a lot happier if I knew Jamie had someone to watch his back for him while they’re over there. Will you go? Please?”
Well, that answered that question.
“All right,” I said, giving in.
“Thank you,” he said and he smiled, much closer to the old Jacob.
“You are overlooking one small point, of course,” I said, cutting across the relief on his face. “There’s no guarantee I’ll pass the audition.”
Fifteen
On Tuesday evening I went back to the cottage. It seemed sad and dingy when I walked in but I was fresh out of clean clothes and, besides, the first floor walls wouldn’t knock themselves down. I really needed to get on with it or I was still going to be camping on a building site come Christmas.
I left my mobile switched on all night but Sean didn’t ring. By Wednesday morning I realised he wasn’t going to. He would be up to his neck in the Heathrow job and it wasn’t fair to expect him to be at my beck and call when he was working. He’d spared me more than enough of his time already. More than I probably deserved, given the circumstances.
I spent the day clearing up the mess I’d made at the weekend, shovelling the rubble into bags and boxes so I could cart it downstairs. I knew I couldn’t put off hiring another skip for much longer.
The activity was physically hard work but required no particular cerebral participation, leaving my mind free to wander. Almost inevitably, I found myself thinking about Sean, and my father’s warning.
They’d never liked each other from the first time they met. Perhaps, as far as my parents were concerned, there was always going to be an element of whoever I chose to bring home with me would never be good enough for their little girl.
It didn’t help that Sean’s personal transport back then had been a motorbike. A Yamaha EXUP – the FireBlade of its day. I was on an old Yamaha 350 Power Valve, the first bike I’d bought when I passed my test.
I remember being nervous on that ride up to Cheshire nearly six years ago, as though I’d had some premonition of how it was going to go. We’d arrived in the dark on a Friday evening, so the full extent of the house was shrouded. Even so, as we’d turned onto the driveway and our headlights had swept across the imposing front facade, it didn’t occur to me how it must look to him.
“Your folks live here?” he’d asked when we’d pulled up by the front steps and cut the engines. “Which bit?”
“All of it,” I’d said. At the time I hadn’t registered the significance of the question but later I realised he’d thought – hoped, really – that a house this big might be split down into apartments. It wasn’t until I’d visited his mother, years afterwards, that it dawned on me her little council house on a run-down Lancaster estate would have fitted inside the garage at my parents’ place and barely touched the walls.
Sean had still been a sergeant then, one of the instructors on the Special Forces course I had fought my way onto. Any obvious relationship between us would have set alarm bells ringing – as it was destined to do so catastrophically. So, we’d snuck away, leaving separately, meeting up on a motorway services.
I knew having an affair with Sean was madness but, like any doomed enterprise, once I was in the grip of it the dangers seemed worth the risk. Going anywhere together where people knew us, even my parents, was reckless at best. I suppose I was hoping that they would be as taken with him as I was.
Some hope.
My mother had prepared an elaborate meal for us and gone to town on the silver candlesticks and the starched linen in the dining room. I don’t know if she was expecting to impress Sean or overawe him. At least, as an NCO, he’d attended enough formal army dinners to know his way around a knife and fork with some finesse, even if he didn’t look entirely comfortable while doing it. Now, he spent so much time with royalty and riches he was blasé in any company, but back then I was aware of watching him anxiously while we ate.
I wasn’t the only one. My mother might have been regarding him as if he’d come before her on the bench but at least she had made an effort to be sociable. Not easy when just about every aspect of our work could not be discussed with outsiders. My father had spent the first two courses in almost silent scrutiny before he’d condescended to join in the conversation.
“You’ll have been posted to Northern Ireland at some point, I assume, Sean?” he’d asked with cool detachment.
Sean had nodded cautiously. “I’ve spent a little time there, sir, yes.” I knew he’d done two tours as a squaddie and three more he wouldn’t talk about, even with me.
“I was there myself many years ago,” my father said casually, dabbing his mouth with his napkin. “It was not long after I qualified as a surgical registrar.”
“The City hospital?” Sean had asked.
“No, the Royal Victoria.”
Sean had a good face for playing poker but even he couldn’t prevent his eyebrows climbing at that. “That’s near the Falls Road,” he’d said, respect mingling with the surprise in his voice as he reached for his wine glass. “What kind of surgery did you specialise in?”
“Orthopaedics. By the time I was finished I’d become quite an expert on kneecaps.” He’d allowed himself a flicker of disgust. “Whenever we thought we’d developed a new technique for repairing the joint, they came up with a new way of destroying it.”
“Well, they’re nothing if not inventive when it comes to killing or maiming people over there,” Sean had said, his voice low.
“They’re not the only ones.”
Sean had heard the censure in his voice and put down his glass with a careful precision that made my shoulders tense. He’d tilted his head towards my father very slowly.
“Excuse me?”
“Come now, Sean,” my father had said with some asperity. “You can’t try to tell me that the soldiers weren’t just as guilty of delivering beatings – and worse – to people they thought were working against them. I’ve seen the results for myself.”
“And I’ve seen the results of a nail bomb being detonated by remote control when there was an eighteen-year-old soldier less than six feet away from it,” he said, his voice calm almost to the point of indifference.
My mother had given a soft gasp. “Oh, but that doesn’t happen any more, surely?” she’d said, shaky.
Sean had turned his head and pinned her with that dark and merciless gaze.
“It happens, just in a way that doesn’t offend middle-class sensibilities so much,” he’d said. He’d wiped his own mouth with his own napkin and thrown it onto the table, sitting back.
“If you’ve done something to offend the paramilitaries over there, they make you an appointment to have your kneecaps done,” he’d gone on, ignoring her averted head. “You have to turn up or, when they find you, you’re dead. And trust me, they will find you. People used to die from kneecappings. T
hey’d bleed to death before the ambulance got there and it would be reported in the papers – another death chalked up to terrorism.”
“But—”
“But now,” Sean had overridden her protest, rolled right over it and crushed it and kept on coming. “Now, they call the ambulance for you first and make you wait, and when they hear the sirens approaching, then they kneecap you. More people survive, that’s the only change. It looks better that way on the news. Somebody sat down and thought long and hard about how to do that. That’s the kind of people we’re up against.”
He’d turned back to my father who had listened to his quietly bitter outburst without expression. “So you can’t try and tell me that the occasional squaddie stepping out of line isn’t understandable, isn’t justified.”
