Road Kill (23 page)

“As you’re well aware,” he went on, “I was in Ireland to buy motorbikes. Two Vincents and a Brough Superior that were due under the hammer this morning.” He jerked his head towards the hired Citroën outside. “The only reason they’re not in the back of the van right now is because I dropped everything when I got that phone call. I’ve already got a buyer lined up for one of the Vincents, who’s going to be very fucking pissed off that I’ve come back empty-handed, I can tell you.”

I hardly ever heard Jacob swear seriously and now, despite the evenness of his tone, it gave the profanity an uncommon weight.

And still I had to have one last go.

“Clare’s asked me to go to Ireland and keep an eye on Jamie,” I said. “She said she’s worried about him punching out of his weight, trying to keep up with the big boys. Can you think of any other reason why she might be worried for his safety?”

“I don’t know. Jamie and I don’t see as much of each other as we probably could – or should – have done,” Jacob said, candid. “But if he’s any sense he’ll have given Slick and his bunch of nutcase mates a wide berth. I’ve certainly been doing nothing underhand with them and you either believe that or you don’t,” he added with a quiet dignity. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time I went to see my other half.”

He didn’t even slam the kitchen door on his way out but the soft click it made when he pulled it shut behind him still made me flinch. He closed the front door on his way out with more force, though, and we watched him hurry across the forecourt to the Range Rover. I let out a long breath.

“Well, that went down well, I thought,” Sean said, heavy on the irony.

“Yeah, like a knackered lift.”

The elderly diesel Range Rover, ostensibly cream but long patinated with rust, started up in a cloud of black smoke. It swung round in a tight circle on the mossy cobbles, leaning precariously, and shot off up the driveway.

“So, do you believe him?” Sean asked then.

“About what?”

“That he’s nothing to do with the Devil’s Bridge brigade.”

“I’m not sure,” I said, aware of a low-level churning beneath my ribs that could have been anxiety. “When you first mentioned them, I don’t know, there was something in his face . . .” I broke off, remembering the doubt. “But when you mentioned Ireland he seemed a lot more . . . emphatic, somehow.”

“And you don’t fancy the idea of tying him to a chair and shining bright lights in his eyes until he cracks,” Sean said.

“No,” I said with a smile, “I guess I don’t.” I paused, let my breath out hard through my nose. “Why is it that it’s a hell of a lot easier asking questions of people when you don’t give a shit about them?” I muttered.

“I always make it a rule never to interrogate people I like,” Sean agreed gravely, although there was a flicker of amusement at the corner of his mouth.

“So, where do we go from here?” I asked, repeating his earlier question.

“I think you just have to wait and see what story Jacob comes back with.”

I glanced up. “
I
have to wait?”

He nodded. “Yeah. My gear’s already packed. I’m afraid I have to go back to work,” he said, softening the blow with a smile of his own. “There’s a diamond courier flying in to Heathrow tomorrow afternoon from Amsterdam and they want me to head the team looking after him personally.”

“Why do they need you?”
Can’t someone else do it?
“I mean, why are they so jumpy?”

“The customer is always right.” Sean shrugged. “And if you were walking round with a briefcase chained to your wrist with half a million in gems inside, you’d be jumpy, too.”

I didn’t answer that.
He’s going
. I felt a sudden tightness in my chest, the anxiety upgraded close to panic.

“I think it might be for the best, in any case,” he added.

“Oh. I see,” I said. Stupid, when clearly I didn’t. “Why?”

He shrugged again, little more than a restless lift of a shoulder. “I need you to come to a decision about me – us, the future,” he said, turning away. “I’m not sure you can do that when we’re together.”

I opened my mouth to speak, realised I didn’t have anything worthwhile to say, and shut it again. The silence stretched between us until it had become a chasm too wide to fill with mere words.

“OK,” I said at last.
Tell him
, an internal voice urged loudly in my ear.
Tell him not to go. Tell him how you feel.

But I couldn’t, and I didn’t.

The motorway was quiet. Sean kept the Shogun at a steady eighty-five in the centre lane, overtaking a strung out line of trucks. At the same time he was making arrangements for the Heathrow job on his mobile, which was plugged into a hands-free kit on the dash.

I sat in the passenger seat staring out at the countryside flowing past my window. I tuned out Sean going over the logistics of mapping the route they were going to take to the courier’s destination, the possible bottlenecks and choke points, how many vehicles, how many men.

I knew he would have already pre-planned all this meticulously enough not to need to double-check it now. It was just Sean’s inbuilt thoroughness.

That didn’t make it any easier to bear.

With my stomach clenched tight, I was trying not to let my desperation show on my face. But I could feel my chances of getting across half of what I wanted to say to him slipping away with each passing mile.

It had seemed like an ideal opportunity at first. Sean was heading back down to King’s Langley and I needed to collect my Honda FireBlade from my parents’ place in Cheshire. It meant only a relatively minor detour off the M6 for Sean and I’d thought the hour-and-a-half journey would have given us plenty of time to talk. As it was, we were already passing the Blackpool turnoff and had barely exchanged a word.

Before we’d left Jacob and Clare’s I’d had a thorough look at the damage to the Suzuki, just in case it could be patched together to last me a bit longer. It looked a lot worse in daylight than it had in Gleet’s workshop the night before. The back end was a mess. It was pure luck, I considered, that the Transit driver hadn’t wiped my rear wheel right out from under me. I patted the bike apologetically on its dented tank.

“What are you going to do with it?” Sean had asked. “Claim on your insurance?”

“It’s not worth it,” I’d said, shaking my head. “They’d just write it off. No, I’ll ring round some bike breakers and see what bits I can pick up secondhand. It might take me a while, but I’ll get it back on the road eventually.”

“And in the meantime?”

I knew he already had the answer to that one. He just wanted to hear me say it.

“Well, it’s a good job I’ve got the FireBlade,” I said, aiming for lightness.

Sean was well aware of the superbike I’d been given and, without us ever actually discussing the subject, I knew he wasn’t particularly happy about it. He stared at me for a long time without speaking and I felt it have the usual effect on my chin, which was rising almost of its own accord. I suppose we were just as stubborn as each other. Maybe that was the problem.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed, Charlie?” he demanded and there was a raw note to his voice I hadn’t heard for a long time. “I know you’re planning on trying out for this Devil’s Bridge Club, despite what’s happened. It was bad enough when you were planning to do it on the Suzuki, but on a ‘Blade . . .”

He let his voice trail off but I didn’t need him to finish the sentence.

“Clare’s my friend,” I said. “Probably my best friend. I know she’s not telling me the whole story and that hurts, but I have to do this for her.”

Sean made a rare gesture of frustration. “Friends don’t ask you to do something for them that could get you killed.”

A microsecond image flashed into my head like a strobe light. A picture of a dark cold night with the looting fires burning, of Sean wounded and vulnerable, of a man with a gun. And of me, putting myself between them without a second thought. Sean would willingly have died rather than have asked me to do it, but it had never occurred to me not to.

“That’s just it,” I said gently. “Friends don’t
have
to ask.”

***

My parent’s house, on the outskirts of a little village near Alderley Edge, was a gracefully proportioned Georgian pile with a stiflingly manicured walled garden at the back and impressive circular gravel drive at the front.

They’ve lived there since they were married, before the area went stratospheric and all the celebrity Manchester United footballers moved in. My mother pretends to sneer but I suspect that she’s secretly as smitten by their glamour as everyone else.

We arrived a little before eleven o’clock. Early enough that my mother’s beautiful manners didn’t oblige her to invite Sean to stay to lunch. Her barely concealed relief, when he apologised that he didn’t even have the time to come in for a cup of tea, might have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic.

Sean deposited the rucksack containing my bike gear on the old church pew in the tiled hallway and laid a hand on my arm.

“Take care of yourself, Charlie,” he murmured.

“Yeah, you too.”

“I’ll try and get back up again before the weekend.” Undoubtedly aware that my mother was hovering in the doorway at the end of the hall, he bent his head and kissed me, no more than a fleeting brush of his lips. “And remember what I said.”

“Which bit?” I asked, suddenly a little breathless and stupid from the effects of even so ephemeral a contact.

He smiled, a full-blown knock-you-off-your-feet kind of smile. One that had my heart turning somersaults and made me want to beg him either to stay, or to take me with him. Hell, or just to take me.

“All of it,” he said.

Then he walked out of the front door and climbed into the Shogun without looking back. I watched him turn out of the gateway at the end of the drive and disappear from view before I closed the door. I turned to find my mother had moved up into the hall, as though it was safe to venture closer now he’d gone. She was wearing pearls and a summer dress with an apron over the top of it, and wiping flour from her hands on a tea towel.

“
You’ll
stay for lunch, Charlotte, won’t you?” she said and although her voice was coolly gracious there was something a little despairing in her eyes.

In a moment of pity, I nodded. “I have to get back up to Lancaster this afternoon, though,” I said quickly, forestalling her next question.

“Of course,” she said, more brightly. “I’ll just go and check how those rhubarb pies are doing. We’ve had so much of it this year I’ve been baking for the WI market but I’m sure I can spare one for dessert.” She waited until her back was towards me and she was halfway to the kitchen door before she delivered her killer punch. “Your father will be so pleased to have caught you.”

I’d forgotten. I froze in the middle of picking up my rucksack and it bumped against my hip. “Excuse me?”

She paused then, turned to give me an anxious smile. “Oh, didn’t I say?” she said, artfully casual. “He rang earlier to let me know he’s on his way home. If the traffic isn’t too bad we should all be able to sit down together at one o’clock. Now, why don’t you go and wash your face and get changed, darling?” She gave my jeans and rumpled shirt a slightly pained glance. “I’m sure there are still some lovely dresses in your wardrobe.”

***

My father rolled up on the dot of twelve-thirty, as though he’d been waiting in some lay-by down the road in order to arrive at such a neat and precise time.

I heard the crunch of tyres on gravel and crossed to my bedroom window. When I looked down, I could see the roof of his dark green Jaguar XK-8 just disappearing into the garage. After a few moments, the car door thunked shut and he walked out carrying a small overnight bag and a briefcase. The garage door slid smoothly down behind him.

He looked tired, I realised. From this angle I could see the slight drag to his shoulders. As I watched, he paused and seemed to take a deep breath before climbing the two low steps to the front door more briskly.

It was interesting, I thought, to learn that even my father had to brace himself before he could face my mother’s company.

Not to put off the inevitable, I came downstairs straight away to greet him. I reached the half landing just as he was setting his luggage down on the pew in the hall. He heard my footsteps and looked up.

“Charlotte,” he greeted me distantly and his gaze skimmed over my clothing.

I had, as my mother suggested, washed my face and changed – into my bike leather jeans, ready to beat a hasty retreat as soon as lunch was over. Rather childishly, I’d been skulking upstairs until my father arrived, knowing she wouldn’t make a big production about it in front of him.

Now, I thought I saw a fractional smile tug at the corner of his mouth, as though he knew exactly what my motives had been.