A Sentimental Traitor (34 page)

He was clambering over a party wall, across the rooftop of the friendly gallery owner, when his phone began to ring. The noise would betray his whereabouts, so he reached into
his pocket to silence it. Then he saw it was Sloppy.

‘Not a great time,’ Harry began to say, but his own words froze as he began to listen to his friend. ‘I killed him, Harry,’ he mumbled. ‘Didn’t mean to but .
. .’

‘Who?’

‘Felix Wilton, that’s his name, not bloody Anderson. Wouldn’t tell me it at first so I . . .’ Sloppy’s voice faded, and Harry could hear a car engine in the
background, making it difficult to catch everything. ‘Didn’t know what to do, been driving all night . . .’

‘Where are you?’ Harry demanded, but the other man wasn’t listening. The words were slurred, with alcohol, with exhaustion, and something more. Despair.

Sloppy kept muttering that it was his fault; Harry stopped running and hid behind an old brick chimney breast to try to catch every word.

‘Cost him his front teeth, it did, before I got the name. Didn’t hurt him much. Nothing you and I haven’t seen before, done before . . . Remember that pub in Armagh? Lost some
of mine there . . .’ He sobbed, might have been crying, in great pain. ‘Jesus, I never meant to kill the bastard. Please believe me, Harry.’ He sobbed some more and Harry lost the
next few words. ‘But not your fault, Harry, all this. I made it easy for them. Screwed up. Big time.’

Harry glanced along the rooftops. Nothing. Yet.

‘Set me up, just so they could get to you, Harry.’

‘Who did? Why?’

‘That’s what I asked him. Said you’d been asking too many questions. Too nosy. Not your business. You were in too deep, he said. Much too deep.’

‘What, Sloppy? Concentrate, dammit! What wasn’t my business?’

‘Plane crash? Didn’t understand, so I broke one of his fingers. Shouldn’t have done that. He was crying, pissing himself. Mumbling. I just didn’t understand . .
.’

Harry heard a clattering from the fire escape. They would soon be upon him. He could see a head poking above the roofing now. He rolled over another party wall, ducked behind a water tank.

‘Sloppy, I’ve got to go. Where are you, Sloppy? I’ll come and get you.’

‘Can’t come with me, not where I’m going.’

A policeman had climbed onto the roof and was searching around. Harry scampered still further away, but he was running out of roof.

‘But who’s behind it all? Who did this to us?’

‘Broke another finger. That’s when he started to tell me. Something about the Russians.’

‘You sure? What about the Russians? This is important, Sloppy!’

‘He said they didn’t kill Ghazi straight away. Needed to know.’

‘Need to know what?’ Harry pleaded. From further down the roof he heard a shout; they had seen him.

‘That’s when he stopped talking, Harry. He just fucking died.’ Sloppy moaned, a misery that came from deep within and was inconsolable. ‘I hurt, Harry, God but I hurt.
I’m so sorry . . .’

He could hear them running on the roof now, their feet pounding on the felt, and getting louder. ‘Sloppy, I’ll call you back, I promise.’

But all he could hear down the phone was the revving of a car engine. He cut the link and started to run.

A desperate man has the upper hand in a fair race, because desperation, unlike health and safety regulations, doesn’t require fire-escape ladders to be climbed one rung at
a time. So Harry evaded the pursuit across the rooftops. Desperation is also more imaginative, and Harry didn’t use any of the fire escapes that the police spent their time swarming over, but
instead used a drainpipe, and jumped the last twelve feet, landing in a sprawl on the cobbles of an alleyway behind Berkeley Square. The pain from his complaining rib caused him to pass out for a
few moments; when he came round, he discovered he had gashed his arm. He staunched the flow of blood with a handkerchief. He lay back against a wheelie bin and groaned. How long could he outwit
them, remain free? Long enough to go bankrupt? Not even that long, not walking round with a bloodied arm and torn shirt, not with Arkwright and every one of his friends looking for him. And some
bloody Russians, too.

He spotted his phone on the cobbles, not his treacherous iPhone that he’d left behind but its cheap replacement. He reached out for it, trying to ignore the screaming from his ribs. The
screen had been cracked by the fall but mercifully it flickered back into life. He called Sloppy, as he had promised. A message came onto the screen. ‘Call Failed.’ He tried again,
several more times. And always with the same result.

He had nowhere else to go. He walked to Jemma’s, didn’t run, it would have excited too much attention for a man with a bloodied arm and a wild look in his eye. But
when eventually he made it to her place he bounded up the stairs three at a time. When she opened her door, he saw she was shaking. The television was on in the background.

‘You’re all over the news, Harry,’ she whispered, her voice hoarse with shock that was made no better by the sight of his arm. ‘They want you for questioning, they say.
In connection with a murder. Of . . .’ She could no longer fight the fear that was making her tremble. Her voice faded away, unwilling to complete the words and the terrible thoughts that
accompanied them.

‘It was Sloppy,’ he said, trying to take her arms, but she backed away, shaking her head, unable, or unwilling, to take in what he said. ‘Jem, you have to make up your
mind,’ he said, almost fiercely. ‘You’re with me, or you must wash your hands of me. And you have to make up your mind right now because there’s no time. They could be
knocking on your door any moment.’

‘What do
you
want?’ she said, hesitant.

‘Clothes. Another place to stay. Somewhere or someone who has no connection to me.’

She took a deep gulp of breath, she had stopped shaking. ‘I must be totally mad.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I must love you.’

Her words seemed to stop their world spinning for a moment, but not for long. The television was recounting how Harry Jones, the former MP who had lost his seat at the recent election, was
already on bail having been arrested for two earlier vicious assaults against a woman. Now a murder. The implication was clear. This was a dangerous man, in all probability a demented man. On no
account was he to be approached if sighted, the news reader instructed; the police were to be contacted immediately.

‘They will catch me eventually, Jem. But we need to buy time. Wilton talked to Sloppy before he died, we’re getting closer.’

‘And you look a mess. If you think I’m going to be seen with you looking like that . . .’ She crossed to the wardrobe in her bedroom and opened a drawer. She brought out two
new shirts, still in their wrapping. ‘I meant to give you these for Christmas. But then you really pissed me off.’

‘I’m glad I’ve made things so much simpler for you since then.’

She was also dangling a set of house keys. ‘A friend nearby, Caitlin, another teacher at my school. She’s on holiday. I’m watering the plants and taking care of the
cat.’

‘I promise I’ll try to behave myself,’ he said, ripping the cellophane off a shirt and scattering pins in every direction. Suddenly he stopped and turned.

‘Thank you,’ he said softly, the roughness of recent weeks gone from his voice.

‘At least when they catch us, I’ll be able to plead insanity. No question about it.’ She began throwing clothes into a shoulder bag.

From the television came the sight of Suzie being interviewed by a young journalist outside the Montreal. He was explaining in breathless fashion how Mr Wilton had been a valued customer and
that his death would devastate his many friends. ‘He often told me that this was his favourite bar,’ he said shamelessly, ‘and we’ll be holding a festival here all weekend
to commemorate what a beautiful person he was. The best party of the year. To celebrate his life. He wouldn’t want us to drown in misery, oh no, he wasn’t that sort of person, was our
Mr Wilton.’ Suzie paused to smile at the camera.

‘Do you know if he had any links to the former politician, Harry Jones?’ the reporter interjected, trying to reclaim control of his interview.

Suzie rolled his eyes and bounced on his toes. ‘Ah, the police have asked me to be especially discreet, as they expect me to be a key witness.’ Then his expression grew very serious.
‘But I can tell you this. He came looking for Mr Wilton. Searching him out. Even showed me a photograph. But I can’t breathe another word about it.’

Harry groaned. No wonder Arkwright was so enthusiastic.

‘Then do you think the murder could have anything to do with his sexuality?’ the young interviewer pressed.

‘But how could it?’ Suzie replied. ‘Everyone loved her.’

Harry switched off the television. He was feeling desperate enough without Suzie adding to his woes. Meanwhile Jemma finished her hurried packing, then stood taking a last look around her home.
The African violets would die. Her parents would never understand. Worst of all was her fear that she might never be allowed to teach her kids again. She was leaving everything behind. She
faltered, struggling to find the courage.

Harry took her into his arms, kissed her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered.

She grabbed him fiercely, clinging to her belief. He winced and pulled away. ‘I think I left some of the bloody pins in the shirt,’ he gasped.

‘Love can be a real pain,’ she said, grabbing her bag.

As they hurried away from the building where Jemma lived, they could hear the sound of approaching sirens. It could have been nothing more than the daily life of London, but
their pace quickened. They passed the entrance to the Underground where fresh piles of the
Standard
were waiting to be grabbed by scurrying commuters – the late edition, with a new
headline: ‘Ex-MP Link to London Murder’. It seemed as though everyone in the crowded street was looking at them, every CCTV camera pointed at them, every television store flashing
images of his face. Harry had been hunted before, many times, but never like this, not in his own country. His legs were beginning to ache in the heat, hinting they weren’t as young as when
he’d fled through the mountains of the Koh-i-Baba with Taliban on his trail, or pushed his troop on an insane trek through the Arctic wastes of northern Norway from Bardufoss to Bergen,
beating the ferry carrying the rest of the regiment, earning him a cataclysmic bollocking from his CO and bragging rights for years. But, damn it, he was allowed to hurt, from his broken rib, his
leap from the drainpipe, and that niggling voice from deep inside whispering that this was one battle Harry Jones wasn’t going to win.