Dispossession (47 page)

Which she didn’t, again she came to do it herself. By the
time she arrived we were already outside the house, waiting barefoot on the
gravel, still in those sumptuous bathrobes. “Keep them,” Deverill had said, and
I was happy to do that. Our clothes were disgusting, unwearable, and I’d sooner
pinch a bathrobe than borrow a suit from this man. Suzie looked less persuaded,
more inclined to discard any mementoes, but I thought the sheer heavyweight
elegance of the thing might win her over yet.

Sitting in the back of the cab en route for home, with
Dulcie asking no questions, Suzie put in one of her own.

“Are you starting to remember things, Jonty? A couple of
times back there, it seemed almost like you weren’t guessing any more.”

“I don’t know. I did some heavy thinking when they had me
locked in that cabin, and everything seemed to fall into place. I guess I
persuaded myself; but I’m not sure what was just logical reasoning, and what
was maybe a bit of memory slipping back. Could be I’m starting to recover
things. I know I’m very certain about some of what went on, those missing
months...”

o0o

So certain I was, next morning I left Suzie still sleeping
while I slipped sneaky out of bed, out of the flat, out of the city.

God knows what Mrs Tuck’s thugs—or Deverill’s—had done with
the Mini; maybe I should buy Suzie a new car? Just walk into a showroom, flash
the gold card and drive out with something equally flashy? But no, the Mini
suited her style so well; if it was lost, she’d probably want another just the
same. And she’d want to buy it herself. She might let me keep Deverill’s money,
but I thought I’d not be allowed to spend much of it on her.

So I did the other thing instead, walked into a showroom and
flashed the gold card and bought a car for me. A compromise car, the instinct
for caution—
look after the ones you love
—fighting
the anticipated pleasure of her approval.

“I’ll take that one,” I said, waving a cheerfully casual
hand towards a low-slung sports model. Never mind Volvo’s propaganda, BMWs had
just as good a record for safety. Actually I’d have taken a Jag, only that
Deverill drove one.

“Test drive, sir?”

“No, no need for that. It’ll be fine.”

That fazed the salesman, but only slightly. He produced a
form, started asking questions about any extra features I’d like fitted before
they delivered it. I smiled, and really fazed him.

“No, I’ll take it as it is. And right now, please.”

He wasn’t happy, but gold cards are a wonderful persuader.
One phone call to my bank, to check up on me—and I must, I really
must
go to see my manager—and he was suddenly all
cooperation. The car had only been traded in the week before, so its tax disc
was still valid; inside half an hour it had been insured and registered to me,
and I was driving.

All the way across the country I drove, plenty far enough to
test it: over to the Lakes and up the hill, up the track to Luke.

He was just where I knew he would be, crouched over his fire
heating water.

“Jonty. I’ve been expecting you.”

“Yeah, I know.” I sat opposite him, waited quietly till he
passed me a tin mug of steaming water, my breakfast for the day; and then I
said, “It was you, wasn’t it? Who made me crash that night?”

“Yes,” he said, no thought of a lie.

I could see it, so clearly in my head. Returning memory or
logical deduction, I couldn’t say: but it was so easy, so obvious now. I’d come
to see him, told him I was working for the tree-killer Deverill; and that was
betrayal pure and simple, and enough to doom me as it had doomed the girl after
me. Luke had his own attitude towards treachery. Bred in his bones, I guess,
inherent in what he was. I’d driven off later, he’d tried and convicted me in
my absence, and sentence was inevitable and immediate.

So there I was, there I must have been, heading back to the
city; and suddenly there was Luke in the road ahead of me. Of course I’d
stopped, and of course I’d turned around when he said I should, to take him
home, to talk some more, something he had to tell me. Something important, it
must have been; what else could make him fly to find me, and then accept a ride
in a hated car?

We’d passed a kid on the way, the witness who’d seen me with
someone else in the car. And when there was no one else to see, Luke had just
lifted the car off the road as I’d seen him lift the cabin last night. And
stepped out then, no doubt, into the supportive air, and let me fall.

Only that I didn’t die, as I was meant to. Luck, or
physics—a car comes straight down, maybe it takes less damage than a car that
flies off a road and rolls—or else some power or principality beyond Luke
looking out for me, sheltering me from his judgement. Who knew? Not I. There
was only the fact, that I’d been meant to die but I’d lived regardless.

But my cowardly mind, so betrayed, had masked the truth of
it in a convenient amnesia. And masked so much else with it, left me so
confused I’d had to work the whole story out from first principles,
Luke only sees what’s on the surface, he doesn’t
understand about lies and hidden motives...

I’d come all this way to hear him say that one word, to hear
him confirm—as I knew he would, as he had to—what I already knew that he’d
done. And that word spoken, I might as well leave my mug of water undrunk, get
in my scorching new car and scorch back to the city. What more could I say, to
a creature who’d tried to kill me for the sake of some threatened trees and a
perceived disloyalty?

“Thanks,” I said. “For saving Suzie’s life, last night. You
didn’t have to do that.”

And then, as he said nothing, I stood up and left my mug of
water undrunk, got into my car and drove home. Wondering all the way whether,
next time I visited the Lakes, I’d just go to see my mother like a dutiful son
and not detour up that long-known track to visit my so-far-fallen angel.

o0o

Back in the city, back in the flat, I had a furious wife to
face. She was in the mood to hit me again, and with reason: “Sneaking off, not
saying, not even leaving a
note
, how could
you do this to me? Again? You must have known how scared I’d be. I wanted you
here, you bastard, and I didn’t know where the hell you were...”

I told her where I’d been, but that wasn’t enough; I told
her what I’d said, what he’d said, and that still wasn’t enough. I offered to
take her for a drive in the car, and then she did hit me.

A hard slap on the cheek, a harder fist in the ribs, and I
wondered if all our married life I’d be carrying bruises. But I wasn’t prepared
just to be a target; I grabbed her in a bear hug, too close for hitting, and
whispered laughing love-stuff into her ear as she squirmed and kicked. I only
had one of her arms trapped, though. Her other hand wriggled its way under my
belt and inside my jeans, and suddenly she was the one who was laughing as it
closed tight around my balls.

I yelped, and she grinned savagely up at me. “What now,
then?”

“Bed?” I suggested, ever the peacemaker, ever looking for
the easy way.

“If you think you’re up to it. Mini-dick.
Micro
-dick.”

I picked her up and carried her, and she was biting and
scratching all the way until I dropped her onto the futon from a great height.

o0o

Later, after storm and tempest came the inevitable calm; and
she lay with her head on my chest, idly licking salt from my nipple, and said,
“Your mum phoned, by the way.”

“Did she?” It was hard to drag my mind back, to start asking
questions again. I was infinitely weary, infinitely comfortable; yesterday was
behind us, and I wished it could stay that way.

“Yeah. She said she’s been to see Nolan, and he told her
everything.”

Of course he did. She wouldn’t have offered him the choice,
any more than Suzie was offering it to me. My hand made a suggestion to her
spine,
leave it till later
, but she just
grunted, shifted a little and went on determinedly.

“They had this scam they’d been running, he told her,
Deverill and Mrs Tuck between them, they’d been at it for years. Something to
do with smuggling gold; they bought it on the continent, brought it into the
country in Scimitar vans and sold it here. That way they could dodge the VAT,
she said. Only Nolan didn’t trust Mrs Tuck, he thought she might be ripping
Deverill off; so he hacked into her computers to check up on her, and figured
out that she was bringing hard drugs in from Amsterdam on the same runs. He
knew Deverill would go ape about that, he’d seen him kill a woman for dealing
drugs on his premises, and another just for knowing about it and keeping quiet.
But he was scared to blow the whistle himself, he’d already guessed it was Mrs
Tuck who killed Jacky, just for being a nuisance to her business. Any way this
went, it was going to end with killing, he thought, and he just wanted to
protect himself. So he set it up to look like he’d pinched all that money, and
then he put this dossier together, apparently, with enough about Scimitar to
get the Customs to run an investigation. He reckoned he’d got Deverill covered,
he said, and he’d be safe enough himself in Spain. He thought she’d never know
where the leak had come from.”

“Uh-huh.” That was more or less the way I’d guessed it. “So
what did he do with the dossier?”

Oddly, she giggled. Then, “He put it all on a computer,” she
said, “and he sent it to a solicitor by e-mail. Anonymously. Someone he didn’t
know, someone dead straight, who he was sure would pass it all on to the right
people.”

Oh, fuck. “
Me?
”

“Yeah. You. Ellie talks about you, you know.
Boasts
about you. Her son the solicitor. She
wouldn’t tell you, but she’s dead proud.”

Hard to believe, but let that go. I was busy remembering.

“Wait a minute, I did get something—but that was months ago,
before Christmas.”

She was nodding cheerfully. “Just at the time he flitted,
yes? He said it was the last thing he did, before he went.”

“Yes, but it was all encoded, I couldn’t read it.”

“That’s right. He’s a computer freak, of course he put it in
code. If Mrs Tuck ever heard that the leak went to the Customs just when Nolan
went to Spain, his life wouldn’t be worth fuck. He set it up with an engine, I
think your mum said, so that it would all unravel itself later, when he was
safely in jug and excommunicado and couldn’t possibly be accused of leaking
things he couldn’t possibly have known about.”

Yes. The gobbledygook had come with one instruction in
clear, to save it all on a floppy until February, then put the disk into a cold
machine and switch on. Weird, but solicitors do get asked to do some weird
things; I’d done exactly what I was told, with a live tendril of curiosity
running in my mind all through January to make sure I didn’t forget.

And clearly I hadn’t forgotten, though I didn’t remember
now. I must have run the program pretty much on the first day I could; seen the
information decode, read the dossier, and...

“Bastard.”

“What?”

“Lindsey Nolan, that’s what.” Chicken-hearted, chickenshit
Lindsey Nolan, who was so concerned about his own safety he can’t have given
much thought to my mother’s. I did that for him. I’d have had two separate
strands coming together in my head, in my life at pretty much the same time,
Nolan’s dossier and my own sighting of Marlon Thomas who was meant to be dead,
for whom some other boy had died. And then, what, most likely my mother’s
traditional Christmas card arrived, traditionally six or seven weeks late, with
all her news to bring me up to date; and no question but that the news would
have included her screwing Nolan. She’d have loved the notoriety of that.

And if Mrs Tuck ever learned that the leak that exposed her
had reached Customs via a solicitor whose mother had been bonking Lindsey
Nolan, she was going to add two and two and come up with an answer that was
totally, fatally wrong; and the inevitable consequence of her mathematics would
be Ellie very quickly, very nastily dead.

So no, I hadn’t passed the dossier on to Customs or anyone
else. I’d stashed it somewhere safe, undoubtedly—
should’ve
gone for that talk with your bank manager, Jonty, he’s probably got it in his
vault
—and set myself up to look like a patsy in her eyes, a man who knew
nothing, was no danger at all. Giving her a message,
like son like mother
, neither one of us any kind
of threat.

Meanwhile I’d gone on digging into Scimitar, learning all I
could, most likely stashing any physical evidence alongside Nolan’s to keep it
safe until I had enough to be absolutely certain. What I’d have been trying to
put together would be a dossier of my own, something that could go anonymously
to the police with enough facts and figures to have Mrs Tuck and all her crew
arrested and tried and sent to jail without ever involving me. So much
evidence, so many different facets that I wouldn’t have Nolan’s worry, there’d
be no obvious track back to where it had all come from. And then maybe I’d have
taken Ellie off round the world and picked up some plastic surgery en route to
make assurance doubly sure, change our names and our faces both,
protect the ones you love...

o0o

Now it was Suzie’s fingers on my skin, making slow, gentle
suggestions that I was happy to fall in with. No hard weather this time,
everything leisurely, tender, laughing; and afterwards she nestled close again,
going nowhere
, and said, “Still wondering
why you married me, then?”

“No.”

She chuckled contentedly, and reached across me to where a
half-smoked pack of cigarettes lay on the floor with an ashtray and too many
stubs, evidence of how anxious she’d been this morning.

I watched her light up, and thought,
It was because I didn’t love you, kitten. I’m sorry...